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rambleonwaywardson · 5 months ago

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Clegan Astronaut AU - Part 14

Masterpost Read on AO3

AU Summary: the boys as modern day NASA astronauts. Taking place in 2025, Bucky is about to head to the moon as mission commander of Artemis III while Buck is CAPCOM at NASA. Established relationship (obnoxiously in love).

Author's Note: I've been absolutely blown away by some of your comments, especially on chapter 13. Not lying when I say they make my day. We are slightly shorter this week, just over 10k. There's a few new technical terms in the Mission Control transcript dialogue that I'll include at the end of the chapter.

---

We’re all made of stardust, Gale likes to say.

The human body is nothing but a fascinating and precisely messy, messily precise combination of the very elements that build up everything around us. Everything that has ever lived, everything that has ever been, came from the stars.

It’s hard not to be romantic about space. It’s the very star stuff, after all, that poets and philosophers and physicists alike have wondered and wandered about for as long as human thought has been able to comprehend the idea of an unknown. Our ancient ancestors stared up at the sky and, even without a concept of what it was or where it led to, they looked at the stars, and the stars looked back.

The stars from which we came, and the stars to which we will one day return, when the little miracle of a world on which our kind was born is swallowed by the sun that gave us life. Some may say that the vastness of an infinite universe renders a life lived, no matter how large, insignificant. Nothing but a speck in the cosmos, a blip on the timeline of something grander than we can ever comprehend.

But why can’t it be the other way around?

For life to come forth from the building blocks of a largely uninhabitable infinity feels like impossible odds, because the odds should be mathematically impossible. One in infinity. And yet, billions of years of chance and circumstance, and it resulted in you.

Who’s to say that a life lived, no matter how small, isn’t, by virtue of its very existence, the most significant thing imaginable? Perhaps it’s made even more so by the reality of a forever that we can’t comprehend. Because, of all the infinite possibilities in the universe, you are here. You are breathing. You exist. You are alive.

Our universe is a masterpiece with no artist to claim it, the most complex melody to ever be played. A human life, a human breath, may be but a moment on a vast canvas of reality that we can never touch.

But what a moment.

How special is it that such a thing is even possible. To one person, a life is everything. To the universe, many think it’s nothing. But in a sky of a million stars, every little thing is a puzzle piece, one stroke of a brush that fills in the gaps in this work of art. Where life seems impossible, every improbable life that beats those odds is nothing short of a miracle.

So. How lucky are we that this beautiful, complicated universe aligned so perfectly, that the laws of physics have permitted us to exist as we do, together, in this minute span of space and time?

We’re all made of stardust.

That thought has always made Bucky smile.

One day he’ll return to the stars that created him from nothing, but until then, he exists in a universe that gave him everything. A reality that, among improbable odds, gave him Gale.

—

November 22 Lunar South Pole, Starship

When Curt opens his eyes, he doesn’t recall closing them. He must have fallen asleep at some point in the night that, on this side of the moon’s south pole, is never actually night. Just a stone’s throw away, and he would be in total darkness all the time. But not here. Not where his ship sits, lonely in an ocean of glass and dust. Oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron. The same oxygen that fills his lungs. The same iron that courses through his blood.

He’s spent too long listening to Gale Cleven wax poetic about the universe.

When he blinks his eyes open, he can’t explain the vague feeling of dread pulling the walls of his chest inwards like a perpetually collapsing tower of cards. Perhaps that’s just the state in which he’s been living the past few days. Never sure what comes next, up here on this nowhere neverland. Unstable, ready to topple at the slightest breeze.

Maybe it’s a good thing, then, that there is no wind on the moon.

Music is playing. He must have forgotten to turn it off. Mournful notes surround him on all sides, washing over him in a surreal tide of sound.

One More Light, by Linkin Park. Who cares if one more light goes out in the sky of a million stars?

The dread in Curt’s gut quivers, spreading through him like a disease. He glances over at Bucky’s still form across the cabin, but he can’t see the rise and fall of his chest in the dimness of the lander’s simulated night. He swallows, feeling the painful lump of anxiety stuck in his dry throat. The song, no doubt, doesn’t help.

It plays on, though, as he rolls sloppily out of his hammock and wanders over to Bucky’s cot. Slowly, slowly, almost like he doesn’t want to know. As if his actions right this very second, this fraction of a second, could change an outcome that he’s fought tooth and nail to have any say in. He hears his own heartbeat, pumping blood that carries within it the same iron that courses through the veins of their solar system. He feels it pounding in his chest as he wades through this small ocean of a no man’s land. Schrodinger’s cat – alive or dead?

He looks. Slowly, slowly. And he swears he feels the moment his soul is crushed beneath a weight that it wasn’t designed to bear.

For a moment, he is consumed by all of his worst fears. A heart stopped. Chest still. Face pale. Fingers cold. Unmoving. Like a light gone out, the blink of a supernova that can’t be observed with the naked eye, nothing but the sudden absence of light to tell the universe that it’s moved on from this life.

Not even a flicker.

Bucky.

Just gone in the night.

Who cares when someone’s time runs out if a moment is all we are?

Curt wakes with a gasp, a ball of anxiety dislodging from his throat in a scream that he has to forcefully shove back down into his chest so it doesn’t ring out at a deafening pitch. His eyes snap open, his hands gripping the fabric of his hammock so tight his fingers hurt.

Alone. He’s alone.

The only living being on the surface of this whole desert-island world.

He can’t breathe.

He glances over at Bucky’s still form, squinting through the darkness of the cabin. He can’t see well enough. His fingers frantically search for the PTT button on his coms.

Curt: “Benny? Benny??”

Benny: “You okay, Curt?”

Curt: “Is he alive?” He can’t push the words out fast enough, desperate enough. Not a single person on shift misses the way his voice breaks on the third word.

Silence.

Curt can feel the panic rising up through his body, tears threatening to spill over. His heart is beating too fast in a chest that feels hollow and hopeless, and his head spins. He waits for Benny to tell him no, don’t you remember… Waits for the confirmation that he’s lost perhaps the most important person in his life. Nervously, though, he looks at the time displayed on the console across from him. It’s the same day as it was before, when he last remembers being awake.

The same day.

A dream.

But. It’s 5:30am GMT. He’s been asleep for at least four hours, the longest he’s dared to close his eyes in the past few days. Bucky’s progress gave him a sense of complacency, and now he worries it’ll cost him everything.

A lot can happen in four hours. But it doesn’t take a lot for a light to go out.

He swallows thickly. His whole face burns, his eyes stinging with the fear that is threatening to eat him alive if his CAPCOM doesn’t say something.

Curt: “Benny?”

Benny: “He’s fine, Curt. Did something happen? His vitals look as stable as can be expected.”

Curt shakes his head, as if he isn’t alone in the dark. He flexes his fingers against the side of the hammock, gripping and releasing, gripping and releasing. His eyes squeeze shut against unshed tears.

Curt: “No. Bad dream.” He tries to make his lungs work properly. Tries to force his body to stop shaking. He’s okay. He’s okay. “Forgot to turn the music off.”

Who cares if one more light goes out?Well I do.

Okay. Well. That’s certainly enough of that.

Curt throws himself out of the hammock with abandon, stumbling as his socked feet slide on the floor. He grabs his tablet, pauses the music, and he stares down at the screen long after it fades to black again, unblinking as the quiet descends around him.

Benny: “I told you we were concerned about the sad boy hours playlist.”

Curt: “Oh shut it, Benny.”

He hears Benny snicker.

Benny: “You okay, Curt?”

His heart is still pounding. The dread is still making a home deep in his chest. All he feels is a gripping fear that isn’t quite like anything he’s ever felt before. But he nods.

Curt: “Yeah. Thanks, Benny.”

He turns on the lights. And he wanders, slowly, slowly, over to Bucky’s cot. Relief washes over him when he sees the way Bucky’s hand twitches. The way it moves slowly, slowly, up from Bucky’s side to his chest. Blue eyes blink up at Curt, brow scrunched. The hint of a smile plays at the corner of Bucky’s mouth.

“Scream?” he says quietly, fighting to scrape the words out of a dry throat through lips that fumble across the messy syllable.

Curt huffs and rubs a hand over his face. He nods. “Yeah. I did.”

The expression on Bucky’s face changes, the quirk of his lips dropping as he squints up at Curt in concern, but it returns a second later. “The fuck?”

That makes Curt laugh, and he feels some of the nerves recede. A tide going out as the world continues to turn. “You’re just full of sass, aren’t you.”

Bucky makes a vague, minute motion with his shoulders that might be a shrug. Curt watches as Bucky’s left hand drifts in stiff, labored movements up to his chest to meet his right. His fingers brush over his wedding band, and Curt can visibly see some of the tension leave Bucky’s body.

“You remember him talkin’ to ya last night?” Curt asks. He reaches a hand out to rest on Bucky’s good leg and shakes it gently.

Bucky’s eyes flick back up to him even as his thumb continues to rub over the ring. “Buck,” he breathes out. His eyes, already glassy, take on a wet look and drift away from Curt’s. The corners of his mouth drop into a frown. “Don’t… cry.”

Curt doesn’t know who he’s saying it to, exactly. Himself or Gale. Belated words that he couldn’t force out hours ago. But the words, the look on Bucky’s face, make Curt feel like crying anyways.

And then Bucky’s out again.

—

Houston, TX

Marge is exhausted. She won’t complain, but she’s barely getting any more sleep than Gale is. She loves her job as Artemis PAO, she really does. But it was running her ragged even before catastrophe struck home. She’s dedicating all of her work hours and then some to keeping this mess controlled in the media. She’s been constantly communicating with the public about the mission status, monitoring media coverage, negotiating with media outlets about what to release when, and trying her best to keep the whole damn world off Gale’s back. She fights like a mother cat, baring her teeth and showing her claws as she pulls out every trick in the book to keep the ugliness of the press from descending on her best friend. Her brother.

She spends her entire ten hour work day between Mission Control and her office, trying to put out fires and keep up with the shit storm swirling around her, and she is never, ever done. She’s working before she gets to the office and she’s working after she leaves. She’s working in the middle of the night while she lies awake in Gale’s guest bedroom.

And when she’s not doing any of that, she’s keeping a sharp eye on Gale.

Gale, her best friend since they were just little kids in grade school, playing make believe in her bedroom or throwing sticks for the dog. Wandering through the countryside under a setting sun, Gale telling her all about the stars above, the stars he has always loved so much. Camping in her backyard, making pillow forts to watch movies and share secrets in, making up stupid handshakes that they could never quite remember.

Gale, who, at only eight years old, came to her house with tears staining his cheeks but trying so, so hard to hide how much he’d been crying after his dad hit him for the first time. Gale, who bit his lip until it bled because he was scared to go home but just as scared to tell Marge why. Gale, who learned too early that life can suck, but tried so hard to break free anyways.

Gale, who she grew up with, who she has watched become the incredible man he is. Who she loves so deeply. Her platonic soulmate, she likes to say, making him laugh as he hugs her tight. They’d go to the ends of the Earth for each other. Hell, they showed up on NASA’s doorstep together, prepared to do just that in their own ways.

She has seen him succeed. She has seen him on top of the world in every sense of the word. And she has seen him hurt. She has seen him cry. She has seen him seething with rage. But she has very rarely seen him scared. Not since he was that wide-eyed little boy watching bruises bloom on his arms and chest for the very first time.

Gale Cleven and scared are not words that feel right together, but they are words that, from time to time, do coexist. Marge is one of only two people in the whole world who ever sees what that intersection looks like. Her. And John.

Gale is scared, now. He’s angry. He’s grieving. He’s lost and confused and hurting and hesitantly hopeful but trying not to crumble, trying not to get caught beneath a landslide. He’s scared. Because John almost died. Could still, perhaps. He could come home, or he could not. He could come home, but if he does, he could be totally different. He could be fine. Or he could not. And no one knows. No one will know until he’s safe and sound with his feet on dry land, wrapped in Gale’s arms with a beating heart. It could happen. Or it could not. And now Marge has to hold the pieces of his husband together.

She’s trying her best, she really is. She’s terrified to take her eyes off of Gale, though. Everyone sees him as this stoic pillar of strength that can always be relied upon, because he is. She knows that he isn’t prone to dramatics or drastic measures. He’s level-headed, ready for anything, indomitable. He’s unbreakable, when it comes to everything except for John.

John, who has spent nearly two decades chipping away at Gale’s walls of stone. John, who calms the internal storm that Gale won’t let the world see. John, who takes care of Gale when no one else notices that he needs to be taken care of.

Buck and Bucky. One cannot exist without the other.

One half in limbo, and so the other won’t sleep. Gale barely even eats. It doesn’t seem to occur to him. Marge is worried that if he keeps going like this, he’ll simply keel over or get into an accident or simply vanish from this plane of existence. And if the absolute worst happens, yeah, she’s worried about that unbreakable will in him breaking.

Gale, who she has known as long as she’s known herself. Gale, who has always been there for her through the highs and the lows and the zigzags of this crazy life. Gale, who has always been the strongest person she knows. She doesn’t think she needs to worry, but she isn’t taking the chance.

Gale, who has always been just fine on his own. Gale, who never falters under pressure. Gale, who has never been afraid of anything.

Other than losing John.

Gale, who fell asleep in her bed last night because he was afraid to be alone. She held him close, and she let him sleep right there beside her like they were kids again, hiding from the monsters that he refused to talk about. She’ll call it a win that he slept for four whole hours before he woke around 3am and wandered out of the guest room. She found him sitting on the floor, his back against the door to his master bedroom, the dogs laying beside him. He was looking through the wedding photos, biting too hard on his lip. He’d finally made it to their first look, but he couldn’t bring himself to go further. He just sat there, staring at the emotional and ecstatic look on John’s face as he took in the sight of his fiancé dressed in white, lit up by the sun streaming through the windows. Gale smiled, and he frowned, grimaced at the blood on his lip, ran a hand through his messy hair. And then he smiled again.

“He’s gonna be okay,” he said, not even looking up. His voice was weak but carried a sense of certainty that Marge hadn’t heard since before the accident. “He has to be.”

It breaks her heart, seeing him like this. She wants so badly to make the world right, to bring John home safe, to personally guarantee that Gale doesn’t have to worry about a thing.

But she can’t.

So she’ll stay with him. She’ll keep an eye on him. She’ll make sure he eats and she’ll hold him up when he falls and she’ll get him through this if it kills her. No matter what happens.

But goddamn is she tired. And scared.

She’ll protect Gale with everything she has from the cruelty of this world, and she will stand by him in the aftermath. He’s her best friend. Her family.

But John is, too. John is her friend, too. He’s her family, too. Has been since the moment Gale introduced them so many years ago.

So here she is. She’s alone in her office bright and early the morning of November 22nd. Today, Starship leaves the lunar surface, whether John is ready or not. She and Gale arrived at JSC earlier than usual so she could get some extra work done. Normally, she’d stay in Mission Control for the entirety of Red Shift, but she has to moderate a press conference this afternoon. Time that she simply does not have to spare.

When they arrived, Gale went off in search of better coffee than Mission Control has to offer. He’s with Sandra, so they can discuss Artemis 4, though it’ll likely devolve into office gossip anyways. It was difficult for Marge to let him go off without her, somewhere where she can’t watch him, remind him to breathe, hold the broken pieces of him in place. But she thinks some time with one of his colleagues, talking about something that isn’t Artemis 3, will be good for him.

As for her, she’s supposed to be getting work done. Sending emails. Drafting press releases. Checking schedules. But she isn’t doing any of those things. All she’s managed to do since she got here is stare silently at the wall.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath and rubs a hand over her eyes. Fingers poised over her keyboard, she stares at her computer screen, willing herself to get to work on this statement about Major John Egan’s condition and the plans for getting him home. But every time she tries to type his name, she freezes.

Her eyes wander to a photograph on her desk. It’s her, Benny, Gale, John, and Curt standing in front of the SLS in KSC’s Vehicle Assembly Building. They’re all grinning from ear to ear, all of them, even her, in NASA flight suits. She reaches a hand out to touch it, her finger landing gently on John’s face, and all of a sudden there’s tears streaming down her cheeks.

She takes one gasping breath, a little sob that tries its hardest to release every awful thing she’s feeling but can’t even come close. She hides her face in her hands, bites her lip like she’s always telling Gale not to do, and she breathes. Slowly. In. Out.

She’s startled out of it by a knock on her door, and she rushes to brush her hair back out of her face. She wipes below her waterline, taking care not to smear her makeup, and she sits up tall, shoulders back. She plasters a smile to her face even though it will never reach her eyes.

“Come in,” she calls, forcing a steadiness into her voice and hoping it doesn’t betray her.

The door opens, and Benny walks in. Surprised, Marge checks the time. Not quite 8:00.

“Gale’s on console already?” she asks. They’d gotten to JSC around 6:30, but she didn’t expect Benny to leave Mission Control until at least 8am sharp.

He nods. “He wanted me to check on you. He’s concerned.”

Marge laughs wetly, letting her guard down just the littlest bit. It’s just Benny. “He’s concerned about me?”

Benny nods again and sits in the chair on the other side of her desk. He slides a cup of coffee across to her. “Says you’re wearing yourself out looking after him all the time.”

Marge frowns as she grabs the hot cup and inhales the scent of the caffeine she so desperately needs. “I don’t have a choice, Benny. He’s… not okay.”

“I know,” Benny agrees. “But you’re allowed to hurt, too. You love John nearly as much as he does.”

“I don’t think that’s even possible.”

Benny laughs halfheartedly. Marge loves her friends fiercely. But Gale loves John with a power that outshines every star in this universe. “Maybe not,” he says. “But this is hard for all of us. It’s allowed to be hard for you.”

She sips her coffee to keep her voice from trembling. “I know. But he needs me to be the strong one right now. I can’t afford to break.”

Benny nods in understanding and offers a sad smile, because he knows. He feels it, too. This pressing need to keep it together because there is simply no other choice. He can go home and throw things at the walls on his own time if he needs, but Marge can hardly even do that, since she’s basically on 24/7 Gale watch.

“How’s John doing today?” she asks. They’re getting dangerously close to their Starship launch window.

Benny runs a hand through his hair and sighs deeply. “He’s… improving. We’re seeing more and more signs of him. Just not as quickly as we’d like.” He smiles weakly and tells her about the last six or so hours. Bucky has woken up a few times, totaling about three hours of being conscious. His speech capabilities are returning. Mostly single words like “fuck,” “Gale,” “Curt,” and “shit.” He seems aware of his surroundings. He can answer yes/no questions, and most of the time he seems to remember what happened on the surface.

He can swallow, and has asked for water twice but is not eating on his own. Curt has had to help him with sitting up and holding his water packet. Sometimes he wakes up confused, startled, anxious, doesn’t seem to know where he is or why. Even awake, he drifts in and out of awareness. He keeps trying to pick at his IV or reach down to his leg, and he seems to be in considerable pain. He has not had another seizure, but his heart rate spikes every once in a while, or his breathing will become erratic, too slow or too fast.

Perhaps the most promising development is that, as long as Curt helps him get his comcap on, he’s able to speak to Mission Control well enough to convey basic needs. Sort of. Almost. This means, ideally, once Curt manages to get him all set for launch, he’ll be able to communicate with Curt and Gale if he needs anything. Curt, for all intents and purposes, is in charge of all flight and docking duties on Starship. Thankfully, he spent time training on all facets of these procedures, so he isn’t going in blind.

“How’d Gale seem?” Marge asks.

Benny shrugs. “He seemed okay. But, I mean, he usually seems okay on shift, you know?” When Marge frowns, he rushes to reassure her. “I think he’s gonna be alright, Marge. As long as John keeps improving, he’ll be alright.”

“What happens if he doesn’t? Keep improving?”

Benny sighs again and reaches across the desk to take her hand. He glances at the photo on her desk, the one of them all together. He doesn’t know, is the truth. But he’s a pilot. An astronaut. He always has a sense of the worst that can happen, but he can’t afford to actively anticipate that outcome. All he can do is move forward and take it as it comes. He offers Marge a weak smile. “We’re just gonna take this one minute at a time, okay?”

They don’t count in days anymore. Minutes and seconds. It’s all they can ever count on.

—

Bucky doesn’t like a single thing about this. No. Nope. Not at all.

He scowls at Curt in hopes that that will convey the general desire to burn this entire place to the ground and take the two of them with it.

“I know, dude,” Curt groans. “We don’t got a fuckin’ choice so work with me here.”

Bucky takes a deep breath, as controlled as he can manage, and glances out the window of Starship, which he can finally see out of again now that he’s sitting up. Even once he managed to open his eyes, he spent a long time just staring at the ugly ceiling of their little crew cabin, imagining stars above. Curt has helped him to sit up straight today, though, with his legs hanging over the side of the cot. Before Curt started helping him to dress in his first suit layer, he was finally able to see the damage done to his body – his leg hanging useless and throbbing, held together by a splint, and the faint remnants of a decompression rash mottling his skin. Curt removed the bandage from around his head, but Bucky keeps trying to reach his hand up to rub at the wound there.

Curt keeps swatting it away, saying “I didn’t stitch you up for you to break that open. So quit it or I’ll wrap you up again.”

Sitting up like this makes Bucky feel dizzy, the room tilting and blurring around him all funny, and he feels his heart rate spiking again. He tries to focus on the stars he can see through the window. Flickering lights in a dark, forever sky. He wonders if he can count them, but his brain keeps stalling after he reaches six or seven and his vision goes fuzzy.

Pain pulses in his leg with every heartbeat, and nausea keeps rising and fading, rising and fading. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe deeply, but the air chokes his lungs as his chest shakes with the effort.

“Hey, take it easy,” Curt says. Bucky feels Curt’s warm hand on his knee as his copilot kneels in front of him. He’s securing the booties of Bucky’s cooling garment, which has to be worn beneath the OCS suit to avoid overheating. How, exactly, to get Bucky into the layers of his suit required a lot of back and forth and arguing between Curt and “the idiots in Mission Control,” while all Bucky could do was sit and wait while they determined how best to dress him up like some sort of doll.

The results were excruciating, involving removing the splint to get the cooling garment over his broken leg, and it was a harrowing taste of what’s to come between now and touching down on Earth. Benny said Smokey wanted Curt to redo the splint anyways, since the swelling in his leg has likely gone down, making it too loose. Either way, Bucky kind of wants to be unconscious again so he doesn’t have to feel so much pain. Part of him thinks if it’s between this and never waking up again, he’d choose the latter. He can’t bear the thought of abandoning Gale like that, but he desperately needs all of this to stop.

Nausea rises up as Curt jostles his leg trying to get the splint back on over the cooling layer, and it doesn’t subside like it did before. Bucky tries to reach out to tap Curt on the shoulder, tries to say something to let him know, but all that comes out is a weak “uh?” And then he’s coughing up bile that misses Curt’s head by mere centimeters. Curt looks at the spot on the floor where it landed, looks up at Bucky with a mix of disgust and pity, and Bucky kind of wants to cry.

He hates this.

He hates it.

He hates the way he can feel it sticking to his mouth and the way it’s making him choke on little coughs that rattle his brain as he tries to keep from swallowing what didn’t make it past his lips. He hates how useless and incompetent he feels, like an overgrown child who can’t take care of himself or so much as communicate what he needs. He hates that he can’t dress himself or eat or drink. He can hardly move, can hardly balance enough to sit upright. He hates that Curt is stuck here taking care of him when that is not what he signed up for. And he is in so much pain.

He feels the wetness in his eyes, but thankfully the tears don’t fall.

Curt takes a deep breath and looks Bucky in the eye. “Just a second,” he says. He finishes fastening the splint, making Bucky grunt in pain again, and then Bucky is alone, focusing too hard on staying upright on the edge of the bed.

When Curt comes back, he has one of the rags they use for cleaning. He squirts some water from his water packet onto it and gently wipes Bucky’s face, then the floor. Then he holds the water towards Bucky. Bucky takes it between his lips and sucks weakly at the straw, feeling instant relief at the way the water coats his throat and washes away the acid taste.

Curt wipes his mouth again, drying up a drop of water below his lower lip. He frowns as he considers Bucky, barely able to handle getting into the first layer of his suit before launch. “This is probably gonna get a whole lot worse,” he tells him.

—

Gale feels sick.

If Starship liftoff and rendezvous weren’t scheduled for Red Shift, he absolutely would have been here anyways. But, even after everything, he didn’t anticipate how much being in Mission Control would hurt. How much it would physically hurt to know that his husband is confused and sick and in so much pain. How much it would hurt to sit here and bear witness to the unique torture that is launching Bucky off the moon despite all of it.

The moment Gale takes over the console, the first thing he hears is a weak voice crackling over the coms. “Gale?”

“I’m here,” he says. He wants to reach across space and time, hold Bucky to him and shelter him from everything that’s about to happen. He thinks, for the first time, that perhaps being unconscious was the most merciful thing for the Artemis 3 Commander these past few days. Perhaps he’d been selfish, wanting so badly for his husband to wake up. Because how is this any better?

The next thing he hears is a quiet sob, a voiceless scream that didn’t have the power to truly make a sound, as Curt tried to get Bucky’s bad leg into the OCS suit. Gale has to shut his eyes for a moment and take a breath, push past the bile rising in his throat at the sound of John in anguish. The completely irrational part of his brain wants to shut this whole operation down, make everyone stop what they’re doing, stop subjecting his husband to this abuse. The rest of him knows that that isn’t an option. They have to get this launch right, and they have to get it right now, excruciating pain be damned. So he holds his breath to keep the pieces of his shattered heart from overflowing right onto his console, because if he can’t deal with listening to Bucky’s suffering, then he can’t be here at all.

It’s not fair, but it’s what this job requires. As long as he is in Mission Control, he needs to put on a brave face, play Major Buck Cleven.

When he finally opens his eyes again and looks around the room, every flight controller is looking right at him. Painted on their faces is sorrow and pity, for him and for John, two of NASA’s most unassailable forces being shoved through Hell but fighting through it for each other. He looks at each of them, and he holds his head high, even as he swallows thickly to keep the tears stinging the backs of his eyes from welling up right here and now.

“Gale?” Bucky says again, his voice weak and thick and begging for something that Gale can’t give him.

And in that moment, Gale makes a decision. The only way to get John through this is to make room for both of them – Major Buck Cleven and Gale Cleven. He’ll be as strong as he has to; he’ll get these boys through this if it kills him. But in the end, even if the mission needs Buck at the helm, Bucky needs him. His husband.

So he tries out a watery, encouraging smile even though Bucky can’t see his face, and he softens his voice, like it’s just him and John, no one else. “I’m here,” he says again. “I know it hurts, darling. I’m sorry we’re making you do this. But it’s the only way to get you home.”

—

Curt managed, somehow, to get Bucky all set in his suit, even as Bucky cried out in agony and tried to push him away. Curt doesn’t know if it was easier or harder when Bucky started to get all disoriented, fading in and out of consciousness. He gave up fighting, but it left Curt trying to single handedly shove his body into the most complicated outfit known to man. “I’m sorry,” Curt kept saying, wincing every time Bucky gasped in pain or flinched away.

As much of an ordeal as it was to get Bucky dressed, it was nearly as difficult for Curt to dress himself. On launch day at KSC – a day that feels so terribly long ago now – they had a whole team of suit techs, specially trained to help them get into these OCS suits. They helped the astronauts put on every layer, checked the fit and positioning of every single component, triple checked every seal and zipper to make sure not a thing was out of place and everything was as comfortable as possible. Even up in space or on the moon, the astronauts are trained to help each other so no one ever has to try to get themselves into the suit without another set of hands and eyes. It is not, by any means, a task that they are meant to accomplish on their own. And Curt has quickly learned that the hard way.

He manages, though, and finally returns to the console to finish preparing for launch. Before getting himself suited up, he had to carry Bucky across the cabin bridal-style in order to settle him into one of the seats and strap him in. “Now, don’t you fuckin’ touch anything,” he instructs, pointing a finger at Bucky. “Look at me.”

Bucky tilts his head a little and his eyes slowly roam over to see Curt beside him. Curt can see it all on his face: the joke he wants to make, the stubbornness he doesn’t want to leave behind. I’m your commander, show some respect, he probably wants to say. This is my ship as much as it is yours.

But even John Egan isn’t stubborn or egoistic enough to think he can fly a spaceship when he can barely move or talk, when his brain keeps going all foggy and he can barely stay awake. The look on his face also tells Curt that he’s angry, he’s sad, he’s in pain both physically and emotionally. It says, Am I still the commander of this mission if I’m no more use than a goddamn toddler?

So Curt gives him his best reassuring smile. “You just sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride, Commander.” Bucky rolls his eyes, but the expression on his face eases into something less unsettled.

Luckily, Mission Control had foreseen the difficulties in suiting up, and they scheduled plenty of time into their morning for accomplishing a task that really shouldn’t have been harder than literal rocket science and yet managed to be just that. Before taking on that endeavor, Curt spent much of the morning preparing Starship for takeoff. Another task that was not meant to be accomplished by one person alone.

He never got to do his last EVA to retrieve their plants.

He lets himself look out the window one more time before he has to strap himself in. He can see the LEAF greenhouse far in the distance, and he presses his hand to the thick glass. He’d been really, really hoping for that one last moonwalk. That last chance to bound across the peaceful emptiness of the lunar surface, to take in the views he’s dreamed about since he was a kid. He really wanted to be able to bring home their little crops, the first living things to be born and to grow on the moon. But Bucky just wasn’t in a good enough place to be left alone for so long. No one could be sure if or when another seizure would occur, like a monster lurking in the darkness. And no one was confident that Bucky would be able to communicate his needs in Curt’s absence, or that he wouldn’t get agitated and accidentally hurt himself.

Curt doesn’t feel angry anymore. He might later, when it all catches up to him again. Now he’s just a little sad. A little disappointed. He looks out at the moon, at the Earthrise on the horizon, the stars in the sky, the vast expanse of fine rock and rubble that calls to him. He knows Bucky dreamed of the exact same thing. Neither of them are alone.

When he looks back at his commander, Bucky is watching him. His voice is quiet and scratchy, slow and unsure, but Curt can hear him over the coms. “Plants?” His eyes alone say more than that one word ever could. I’m sorry.

Curt smiles sadly and shrugs. “I’ll tell your husband to get them on Four.”

Then he nods to himself, looks at the console in front of him, and asks Houston for a launch checklist.

—

Shortly before takeoff, Gale is biting at his thumbnail in anticipation as he listens to the other flight controllers give their go/no-go. Typically, Curt and Bucky would have run through their pre-launch checklist together, only referencing Houston if they needed clarification on something. With Bucky unable to do much of anything, Gale had to take Curt through the checklist himself. He scans through the hard-copy packet of instructions in front of him, triple checking that he didn’t miss anything.

He pauses, his finger pressed with too much force to a line of text that smears ink on his skin, when he hears Bucky’s small voice coming over coms again.

Bucky: “Gale?”

Gale: “I’m here, darling.”

He can hear it: Bucky sounds nervous. Gale can’t seem to decide if he should smile or frown. On one hand, Bucky is awake, coherent, thinking, talking. On the other, Gale knows he’s scared. And John Egan and scared are not words that seem like they should fit in the same sentence.

He wonders how much of this makes sense to Bucky right now. He wonders if he knows how much this is all about to hurt, even more than it already does. He wonders if knowing in advance would make it better or worse, or if the fear etched into Bucky’s voice is simply because everything happening around him is already too much.

Gale: “He okay, Curt?”

Curt: “Think so. A little agitated, but I think he just wants to know you’re there.”

Dr. Huston informs him that this situation is extremely stress-inducing for Bucky, who is still not fully aware of what’s going on and is in a lot of pain. It’s natural for him to be seeking comfort. He’s reaching out because he doesn’t feel safe. And no matter what state he’s in, he seems to associate Gale with safe.

Gale has to fight back tears once again.

Gale: “I’m here, John. I love you.”

In the silence that follows, he can feel the words Bucky can’t actually say in his mind. I love you more, angel. Gale sips his coffee and looks across the room at Marge, who catches his eye and gives him a thumbs up.

Clark starts counting down. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.

—

Curt mutters under his breath. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Liftoff.”

The Starship engines shake the entire silver tower, jostling Curt in his seat. They could do as many simulations as they wanted, but nothing compares to the real thing. Even in partial gravity, the ship has a shocking amount of power. He watches moon dust kick up in a billowing cloud around them as they start to rise.

Bucky: “Gale?”

He sounds agitated again, and Curt can see his gloved hand trying to grab onto something, searching for stability. Curt reaches his hand out and squeezes Bucky’s fingers to let him know it’s okay. He wonders how excruciating this aggressive shaking feels when you’re coping with a traumatic brain injury. He doesn’t want to know.

Gale: “I’m here.”

Curt: “We’re going! 600 feet and climbing.”

The official mission transcript will indicate that something unintelligible was said, but Curt hears when Bucky says “pitch.”

Curt: “Yeah, we have pitchover. Right on time. Hear that, Gale?”

Gale: “I heard. Thank you Major Egan.”

Typically, this is the point in the launch when Curt would say something like what a fuckin’ ride , but he’s too nervous about the potential for Bucky to simply disintegrate into dust beside him, lost to the lunar sky. Stars from which we came, stars to which we will return.

Curt: “Alex, Rosie, we’re on our way to you. Heat us up somethin’ nice to eat would ya?”

Alex: “Want me to set the table, too?”

Curt: “That’d be great, honey… Trajectory good.”

Gale: “Trajectory good. Systems nominal.”

Curt: “Copy.”

Gale: “Alex, I want in on whatever you’re makin’.”

Alex: “I’ve got chicken ‘n rice. And wheat chex. I’d stick with whatever you have earthside, Major.”

Curt shifts his gaze back and forth between the rising trajectory displayed on the screen in front of him and the rapidly descending darkness out his window. They’re nearing 5,000 feet, velocity approaching 400 feet per second. Rate of ascent right where it should be.

Curt: “Right on the H-dot. Goin’ up as expected. One minute.”

Gale: “Starship, you’re go at one minute. Lookin’ good.”

Curt: “AGS and PGNS agree.”

Bucky: “Gale?”

Gale: “I’m here, John. You okay?”

There’s a garbled groan through the coms, and Curt glances over. He recognizes the weird, twisted expression on Bucky’s face immediately, the way the commander shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

Curt: “No. No no no. Do not be sick right now.”

Another groan. Bucky doesn’t have anything in him to throw up except for bile, but either way, vomit is the absolute last thing you want in your helmet. Once they hit zero G and things start floating… well, Curt is concerned Bucky won’t have the wherewithal to keep himself from choking on it.

Gale: “He doin’ okay, Curt?”

Curt: “Drink your water. Drink your damn water.”

Curt reaches a hand out to pat Bucky aggressively on the shoulder and then motions to the little straw sticking upwards into his helmet out of the neck ring. While they were suiting up, he even figured out a way to stick it up a little higher so Bucky doesn’t have to duck down so much to get at it. “Water,” he says again.

Bucky’s eyes follow his finger and try to see the straw, not really remembering where it is or what he’s supposed to do. Water. He doesn’t see how he’s supposed to get water out of that, but he ducks his head down and struggles to get it between his lips. He cries softly in frustration as the nausea rolls through him, but he manages, feeling cold water rush into his mouth faster than he was prepared for. He coughs a little as it dribbles down his throat, but he manages to swallow. Curt nods and pats him on the shoulder again.

Curt: “You’re gonna be alright. Just don’t fuckin’ throw up in there.”

—

“Trajectory nominal,” Croz reports. “We’re on target.”

Gale doesn’t even realize he’s standing, probably has been for a while, with one hand on his hip and the other pressed to his lips, until Croz looks up and asks him if he’s alright. Only then does Gale notice that he’s paced a few steps away from his console and is standing on Croz’s other side, behind Bubbles. With an unconvincing nod, he runs a hand through his hair and wanders back over to his own desk. He picks up his fourth cup of coffee of the day and frowns when he realizes it’s empty.

Gale: “Coming up on three. We have you at 15,000 feet per second.”

Curt: “Lookin’ damn good here. 22,000 feet and a sky full of stars out our window.”

Gale: “Targeting good. How’s-”

Bucky: “Gale.”

The twisted, pained way Bucky cries his name is another icy stab to Gale’s heart, and it stops him cold where he’s standing behind his console. He rubs his hand over his face before pressing his wedding ring to his lips and closing his eyes. Breathe. He flexes his right hand, feels the scabs tug at the skin. This morning, Dr. Huston had tried to prepare him, telling him that the pain Bucky would feel during launch would probably be excruciating. That if Bucky could communicate that, it would rip Gale apart and make him feel like the worst person in the world for forcing him through this.

But it’s no one’s fault. It’s what has to happen. Gale just needs to breathe and work through it.

Gale: “I’m here, darlin’. It’s gonna be alright. Close your eyes and breathe for me.”

Rosie, listening in from Orion, jumps in.

Rosie: “I know it hurts, Bucky. I want you to know it’s alright if you pass out.”

Bucky moans in response.

Gale asks Dr. Huston about John’s vitals, and the flight surgeon reports that his heart rate is high but that’s to be expected from the stress alone. He’s not concerned yet.

Bucky: “Buck.” Softer now, but the scared and defeated cry is almost harder to bear.

Gale: “I’m right here with you… Four minutes. Go at four minutes.”

Curt: “Pringles can is stayin’ strong. Hear that, John?”

—

Liftoff from the moon is something Bucky used to dream of. He’d stand at the top of his swing set, like the little peaked canopy above him was the nose of his ship, and he’d pretend he was launching towards the stars. He’d pretend the ground below him was made of moon dust, his own footsteps visible on the surface as he ascended higher and higher and higher until the world was nothing but a speck beneath him. “We’re lookin’ good, Houston,” he’d say, mimicking his heroes of the Apollo and Shuttle eras. “Right on target. Oh man it’s beautiful.”

He keeps trying to look out the window now, at that sky full of stars. That infinity that leads to nowhere and everywhere at the same time. His vision keeps fading in and out, though. Curt’s trying to talk to him but he can’t think straight.

His leg hurts. He doesn’t quite remember why. He tries to say Gale’s name, but he can’t.

His head feels… bad.

It’s hard to breathe.

A sky full of stars.

He pretends he’s one of them.

—

Gale: “Go at six. Doin’ okay?”

Curt: “Good here. Coming up on ascent termination. Bucky?.... Bucky?”

Silence.

Curt reaches a hand out and puts it on Bucky’s shoulder, then his chest. He shakes him gently. He leans forward as much as he can and sees Bucky’s head flopped to the side, lax against the inside of his helmet.

Curt: “He’s out, Buck.”

Gale: “Probably better for him.”

Curt frowns, even though he agrees. He’d rather Bucky be unconscious than in unbearable pain. But he misses having his commander at his side, sass and all.

He lets his hand drop away from Bucky’s body, and he listens to Gale giving him a countdown to engine shut-off over coms. A job that Bucky should be doing.

Gale: “Three. Two. One.”

Curt: “Ascent terminated.”

—

Bucky pops in and out of consciousness over the next several hours, sometimes perfectly aware and sometimes confused and agitated. Sometimes he speaks, and sometimes he stares in silence out the window, wondering where he’d end up if he just kept drifting forever. Here am I floating ‘round my tin can, far above the moon.

When they hit zero gravity, their indicator floats up in front of their faces. Beary Egan remained on Orion. On Starship they have the little Earth plush that SpaceX often uses on their spacecraft. It bumps Bucky’s helmet, and he smiles the littlest bit. It makes Curt laugh as he watches Bucky slowly reach a hand up to poke the plush toy, watching it drift away. For a moment, there’s no pain, no fear, no worries. Bucky is just John Egan again. Mission commander. That same little boy who is just excited to be in outer space.

One time he glances at the trajectory displayed on the console in front of them, and in a moment of lucidity, he says “Good.” Curt gives him a thumbs up.

One time he looks at it and notices they’re angled the littlest bit off course, and he says “Curt,” as he tries to point at the screen.

“I know, bud,” Curt tells him as he works on adjusting their position.

One time he groans as bile rises in his throat and he has to close his eyes again, force himself to swallow the acid-tasting liquid and wash it down with a small sip of water. That happens a few more times on their journey, with varying levels of concern.

Sometimes all he does is pop his eyes open, cry out Gale’s name, and wait for his husband to tell him that he’s still there.

“Leg,” he moans at one point. Curt has to reach across and smack him to get him to stop trying to reach down to mess with his leg. Rosie tells him they’ll pump him full of pain meds as soon as he’s onboard Orion.

Curt doesn’t know if it would be easier or harder to shift Bucky from the lander to Orion when he’s unconscious. But it’s not his choice to make. Soon after Curt and Alex maneuver their ships into docking position and make contact, White Shift enters Mission Control. Gale discusses with Bucky at length – a mostly one-sided conversation – that he’s going off console for the night. That he’s going to go get something to eat, get some rest, see their dogs, and he’ll talk to Bucky again in the morning. No one knows if Bucky understands.

While Curt conducts his post-docking cabin inspection and prepares for transfer to the crew capsule, Bucky wakes up again.

“Gale?” he says. He doesn’t sound so pained anymore, but his voice carries a distinct fear and need for comfort that kills Curt to hear.

The voice that comes back isn’t his husband’s. It’s Helen, gently reminding Bucky that Gale is off shift now.

Bucky goes quiet. Curt watches his eyes drift closed, a frown on his face. Rosie and Alex have to help maneuver his unconscious body through the hatch.

—

Even when he was just an awkward teenager in high school, still growing into the good looks that made the girls swoon, Gale knew that he would become a military man. Not only was it in his blood, but it was the only way he could afford to get to college. The only way he could afford to get out of the town that trapped him in his father’s misfortunes.

He always imagined himself marrying some nice girl with a stable, predictable job. Someone who he could count on coming home to. Someone who he could love and who could love him just as much. Someone who could give him a family. Someone, somewhere, who he didn’t have to worry about staying safe, staying alive.

For a long time, everyone, including him, thought that was Marge.

But well into his teenage years, during that tumultuous time when everything feels like a big deal and you’re trying so hard to figure out who you are, who you were, and who you want to be, he realized something. He didn’t love Marge like that. He didn’t particularly like girls at all. He found himself more interested in the boys around him. The hot football player with the kind smile who sat next to him in world history and made Gale, just for half a second, try to vaguely understand sports. The lead in the school musical who sometimes asked Gale for help with his homework in calculus. The cute exchange student with the adorable accent in his French class, who would compliment Gale on his pronunciation.

Okay.

So, not a girl, then. Some nice guy, perhaps. Some nice guy with a normal, stable, non-military, non-perilous job who Gale could come home to. Who he didn’t have to constantly worry about being in danger. That’s what Gale wanted.

And then he started college, and an absolute whirlwind named John Egan crashed into his life with all the subtlety of a category 4 hurricane. Gale tried his best not to fall for him, he really did. But it was absolutely hopeless from the very first time Bucky smiled at him, bright as the sun. He held out for a while, refusing John’s advances for months even as he secretly hoped the cute brown-haired boy with the broad shoulders and the irresistible smile and the wild personality wouldn’t give up.

He didn’t.

Because both of them were a little bit in love from that very first day. And Gale had to admit that his plans for someone stable, someone reliable, someone safe, had to be thrown out the window.

Because Bucky Egan was the complete opposite of everything Gale had ever hoped for.

He knew the risks. He keeps reminding himself of that. He knew the risks, but he just couldn’t stop himself from falling anyways. Just two boys – young men – who looked danger in the eye and laughed in its face, saw it as something to conquer for themselves. Two people with stars in their eyes and the sky in their hearts, trying their best to ground each other even when neither of them can seem to keep their feet on solid Earth.

He’s seen John off into danger more times than he can count. It’s gone both ways. They’ve gone months without seeing each other, weeks without knowing where the other was or if they were safe. They’ve waited with bated breath for someone to show up on their doorstep with the worst news imaginable. But it never came.

They’ve always come home to each other, because there is simply no other choice.

So Gale stands outside in his front yard as the sun sets over Nassau Bay. It physically pained him to tell Bucky that he was going off shift, especially when he couldn’t tell if Bucky understood. Or if he’d wake up again in an hour and Gale would be gone and he wouldn’t know why. Wouldn’t know why he’d left, why he’d abandoned him. Gale sat at that console with his head in his hands, wondering if he should stay. He sat there well past the end of his shift. Well past handing Helen the headset. He sat there until Harding gently pulled him up, wrapped him in his arms, and told him, “You need to go home, son. We’ll take care of him.”

So he left, and now he’s here, still not convinced that it was the right thing to do. He ate half of the sandwich that Marge made for him but couldn’t stomach the rest. He paced his living room, fighting the urge to turn on the news, to watch the press conference that Marge had moderated earlier in the afternoon. He broke open the scabs on his hands once again because he couldn’t stop picking at them, smearing blood across his face when he rubbed tiredly at his eyes. Marge had to wipe it off. He chucked his phone across the room because he couldn’t bear the way that it taunted him, inviting him to scroll social media or stare obsessively at the wedding photos that he still hasn’t been able to look through. It scared the dogs when the phone hit the wall, and it strangled his heart in a way that made him collapse to the floor all over again, angry and frustrated and scared.

Things are looking up, so why is he still so damn scared?

But the dogs came back. They crawled up beside him, Pepper with her head in his lap and Meatball nudging gently at his bloody hand. And they sat there together, a family waiting for dad to come home, until Marge took his hand and insisted that he needed fresh air.

So now they’re here, in his front yard as night falls upon them. Marge stands beside him, holding him up with her presence alone, the dogs sitting at their feet. Across the road, a door opens, and Maggie runs towards them, her red curls bouncing against her back as she skips across the road. A broad smile is on her face, but she grows somber when she sees the sadness on Gale’s.

Carefully, she takes his hand in her own, little fingers gripping his, and all of them look together towards the horizon.

“Is John coming home soon?” the girl asks.

Gale closes his eyes and holds his breath. He feels Maggie squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back. Marge wraps an arm around him, whispers the word breathe as she does.

“Yeah, Mags,” Gale finally says. “He’ll come home soon.” He has to.

As blacks and blues spread like ink over the sky, Marge points to a dim sliver of light above. The little hint of a crescent moon peeks out of the darkness, finally visible for the first time since Benny woke Gale in the night what seems like forever ago. It’s a moon that John is no longer on, just like he’s not on this Earth. Instead, he’s somewhere in between, floating in the beautiful, unpredictable void of the great infinity up above. A flicker among that sky of stars.

He’s somewhere up there, back aboard Orion once again.

Because he’s going to come home.

---

Part 15

Terms:

H-dot: time derivative of height (the rate of ascent) AGS: abort guidance system PGNS: primary guidance and navigation system (pronounced 'pings')

#“The fuck?”#“Gale?” “I'm here darling”#Gale “I'm fine” Cleven #spoiler: Gale is not fine #Bucky makes me cry #Marge is a saint and deserves the world #clegan astronaut au #clegan #mota #masters of the air #john egan #gale cleven #buck x bucky #clegan fic #bucky egan #buck cleven #mota fic

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rachthepoet · 7 months ago

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Keep Driving Analysis

Oh my, oh my. Keep Driving renders domesticity with vague tableaus, from the mundane to the utterly surreal, counting off on his fingers a new twist on the grocery list. Ahem, well, to me anyhow. It tacks together a collage, one representative of a dreamy relationship. Romantic, but showing simultaneous unsteadiness. It's a masterclass in delicate deception and extended metaphor, one of those songs I'd personally pull to illustrate just how beautiful Harry has a hold on his art lyrically and musically.

Maybe I'm a bit biased, I'll be so frank, due to the utilization of the stream-of-consciousness poetic style. The intentional lack of organization is such a willful move on the artist's part. A bold and unusual form to be brought into song lyrics due to how off-putting it can come off to the listener, but Harry takes that possibility into ownership and uses it to strengthen his work. The inclination to seek solace while in perpetual motion. Impeccably, may I add.

Here's a deep dive (or should I dare to say drive?) into Harry Styles' Keep Driving, from a poet.

Harry S. & Paul M. 🚗

Something that hit me on the first listen, and persistent in all the listens to follow, is the striking similarity between this song of Harry's and Paul McCartney's Junk. The Beatles and Paul himself have been ingrained in my livelihood since I was small, on car rides with my mother who took my conversion to Beatles fan very seriously. So, maybe it's too natural for me to find any association between the two, but I promise there's a direction to my madness. First, for context's sake, let's talk about McCartney's song, Junk.

Junk is a contemplative piece delving into themes of materialism, nostalgia, and the passage of time. The way I hear this song, it stands against the concept of "letting material things go" with a focus on keeping close to the heart old material things that hold the sentiments — but, parallel, it also opposes consumerism and frowns upon just how fast the economy wants people to live their lives. There's this encompassing of the transient nature of life itself, with a rattling list of items becoming metaphors. Acknowledging, though, the tendency for once-cherished items to turn forgotten & obsolete.

Keep Driving could be illustrating something similar, I suppose. Well, not suppose, I believe it, actually. The constant change of scenery in the song, very reminiscent of McCartney's, can illustrate this transient nature, and even a haunting sense of impermanence lingering underfoot. The narrator and subject drive a faulty car, passing memories and new technologies along the way. "Something old and something new", as Paul himself would say, and does so in Junk. Despite all this change, one thing is blatantly stated as permanent: I will always love you, a favorite part of the song for my hopeless romantic heart. Anywho. Despite the faults in the engine and the brake — all a metaphor, of course — this sense of adoration and devotion courses through his veins for his companion. And there's confidence that'll never change for him, despite the transient nature around them. Or, even, the transient nature that has seeped into their own dynamic, closing in. I find it quite romantic, this proclamation of love in the midst of it all, but I better save my yapping on that for now.

Lyric Pull Apart 🚗

[VERSE 1] Black-and-white film camera Yellow sunglasses Ash tray, swimming pool Hot wax, jump off the roof

The scenery has been set into motion, utilizing that writing technique I tried to sneak into your head before. Yes, stream-of-consciousness. Here, we're given a hint into the structure of the song lyrically: the verses will be chronicling and reminisicing on memories shared between the couple, while the chorus will be a constant that the song circles back to, a stark contrast between fantasy/nostalgia vs. reality. With this importance of the structure, each verse and further sections will be kept intact visually, like above. Okay, shall we get on with it?

Black-and-white film camera: This as the opening lyric is something so genius to me, as I'm accompanied by the visual of the clicking noses of an old camera before you go to watch back memories you've captured. Which, I believe, sets the tone for the rest of the verse — and then for the second verse and bridge to come — in terms of the whole piece's structure solidified. This also gives us a look into the two characters in our narrative I believe. The film camera leans into nostalgia, as both of them tend to lean heavily into memories. This feels like a bit of foreshadowing to the core conflict, the tendency to trick oneself into hiding in the pleasures of what has been instead of focusing on what is now.

Yellow sunglasses: I think there are two ways one could go with interpretations of this detail. Well, three, if you could that it could just be the color of the frame of the sunglasses he's noticed they always wear. So, yeah, correct that to three. The first perspective ties back to my ramble regarding memories and nostalgia. In films, yellow is used as a memory haze coloring, which further amplifies the conceptualization of memories being remembered.

The second perspective is how it very well could be a nod to the common cliche, seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. Yellow is a color commonly associated with happiness and buoyancy. The suggestion here, I think, could be that his vision of the relationship is more optimistic than realistic, and doesn't necessarily want to face how tings might be falling apart, even though there's already a small concern. That can so quickly turn into a big concern.

Both perspectives can coexist, and, truly, they help flesh out each other. And both are applicable to the core themes of the song, so, really, all of these thoughts can be true and working in cohesion.

Ash tray, swimming pool / Hot wax, jump off the roof: Bringing in the rest of the verse, and looking at the first verse altogether. To the listener, everything seems like a mishmash of words with no correlation to each other. But not to the two of them, and that integrates the smallest detail, but has the biggest implications attached. These are moments, summarizations, associations connected back to the speaker and his partner. Therefore, they're uninterpretable by anybody else. It radiates a sense of established intimacy, which, when we bring in the rift, it now holds so much more emphasis. A harder hit, because we get the taste of sweetness before the punch of the sour.

[1ST CHORUS] A small concern with how the engine sounds We held darkness in withheld clouds I would ask, "Should we just keep driving?"

He snaps back to the current day, the reality vs. the fantasy, thrown out of the yellow haze of nostalgia, face-to-face with the issue with the two of them, the quote-en-quote "engine" in this extending metaphor. The vehicle is symbolic of their relationship, therefore the engine is representative of the health of their bond. This is the metaphor one has to remember in order to envelop oneself in the true beauty of the song.

A small concern with how the engine sounds: The chord played in companionship with this line is a shock to the ear, pulling the listener out of the laidback groove. It amplifies the shift of the speaker, the reality vs. the fantasy. This is our first implication in the lyrics that something is off, something is in trouble. But the interest in the details is low — he aches to continue wading into the impressions left in his head, the memories he doesn't want to abandon to face reality, whether it's the relationship with this other or something that extends beyond.

A sprite of concern saying, "The engine's making a funny noise that could impact the car's health" evolves, then, to a sprite of concern saying, "There's this issue between us that could impact the relationship's health". At its very best, it will only make for a minor bump in the road. At its very worst, the damage will be far beyond repair.

We held darkness in withheld clouds: This is a bit of a juxtaposition here, but that in no way negates its value in extending the listener's understanding. It's a beautiful and poignant phrase and is one of my favorite lines ever penned at his hand. We've solidified that the speaker is aware of the troubling turbulence, now taking the form of rain clouds. He knew that storms were brewing under their noses, but decided to keep moving along in hopes they would go. He repressed them. Because he didn't just say clouds, but rather coupled it with the term withheld — to keep something back and not share it. And, a little detail in this line I find interesting is the use of past tense. We held darkness in withheld clouds, with the past tense informing that they were no longer in the situation. But he could be looking back with a tinge of regret, in this inner conflict with himself. Trying to work out if he should stick in his ways, in his unhealthy coping tactics, to continue his emotional coasting.

I would ask, "Should we just keep driving?": Is it avoidance? Is it acceptance? Complacency? Apathy? All of it? I'm partial to the last one. He knows something isn't quite right in the engine, but chose those yellow sunglasses of optimistic haze anyway. He wants to ignore the negative parts of their relationship like an inexperienced driver wants to ignore a weird engine sound they don't want to deal with. This common feeling that maybe things will be okay if they wait it out enough. But, still accompanied with I would ask, which I feels like has an undertone of uncertainty of his choice a bit, in the way the chorus ends.

All three of these lines working together makes the chorus intriguing and draws one in, even if kept in such a small package. There's an acknowledgment, concern, then avoidance masked as acceptance. It's such a great chorus, can you tell I love this chorus?

[VERSE 2] Maple syrup, coffee Pancakes for two Hash brown, egg yolk I will always love you

Full disclosure, this verse makes me blush and giggle whenever I hear it. His voice is the softest he has sounded in this piece, which makes sense because it's the softest moment in the song. It's so fairytale-esque and dreamy in the ear. Also, the simplicity of it is saccharine sweet, a beautiful love letter to domesticity that rocks juxtaposition in comparison to the first verse. A constant routine he's reciting because it means so much to him.

Maple syrup, coffee: What's on the table in mornings spent together...

Pancakes for two / Hash brown, egg yolk: Sharing breakfast and sleepy, still-waking-up conversations...

I will always love you: Breakfast, breakfast, and suddenly, a love declaration. It's arguably the most blatant he's been in a romantic song, not hidden behind flowery language or poetry. Though, it does have a poetic flow and intention, but I'll get into that soon. Anywho, through the verses we see him chronicling memories held onto, all the sweetness before the turbulence set in. The memories of mornings spent together in the sickeningly sweet domestic atmosphere, and those are the kind of things he wants to grasp onto as they hit these rough patches. But this line is a stark outlier and disrupts the flow a bit, demandin your attention to be drawn to it, and I believe strongly that it's all in smart design. A full senence of his feelings rather than the expection to continue chronicling what's tangibly in front of him.

In breaking the pattern, it feels like he just couldn't hold it in any longer, that those three little words had to come out then and there. Here are our memories [through the black-and-white film camera], and I loved you all during them. Let's keep driving, I love you still, love you now. Here's our favorite breakfast to have together, remember that? I want to love you for so long.

Before we move past this though, gotta poetry geek out for a moment. This verse is the only one of the song to follow a meter — 4/6, with four syllables in the first and third lines and six syllables in the second and fourth lines — and a rhyme — ABCB — which in turn creates a stable feel and flow to it. Though it's not a concrete rule, often, this is something used very purposeful in poetry and leans more coincidental when it comes to songwriting. But, no matter the medium, whenever a singular section of a piece is set to break the pattern of the rest, it draws attention, and that's more than likely intentional on the artist's part. And I don't underestimate Harry ever. So, I will be proceeding on with the assumption that it wasn't just coincidental.

With this understanding, the second verse becomes even sweeter as it implies stability, which means a lot in a verse that reads as a love letter/romanticization to the domestic life. Saying that those things will always remain stable, even with the metaphorical engine problems and the pent-up darkness in their withheld clouds. Among all, these are our constants I'll keep drawing us back to. The breakfast we like to share, and the fact that "I will always love you". The use of the word always adds a prominent subtext of confidence, even if it's through yellow colored sunglasses.

[2ND CHORUS] A small concern with how the engine sounds We held darkness in withheld clouds I would ask, "Should we just keep driving?" Should we just keep driving?

There's not much difference between this second chorus and the first rendition, except one thing. The repetition of the core conflict of the piece, and I find this significant because of the order of the song up until now. In the first verse, he thought about their exciting memories, ones that embodied fun but also fleeting. When facing the inner conflict the first time around in the first chorus, there's this admittance of a problem at hand, a reflection of how it was handled before, and then this wondering if the two should keep repressing the issue. The question still lingers as he's asking it, with an uncertainty of it being the next step to be taken, though it's presented as a substantial one.

In the second verse, we're also in a reminiscence stage, but this time with memories embodying the heart and a sense of routine, in turn, stability. Remembering love and domesticity in its wholesome glory, and a sense of permanence in its final line. Then, we're back to where we are currently, with the second rendition of the chorus, the inner conflict is revisited, and the core question is repeated without the I would ask preceding it. Which gives off a sense that he's made up his mind. He wishes to keep emotionally coasting with his partner, to pick the optimistic view, having remembered the constant feeling of love by the end of the second verse.

[BRIDGE] Passports in foot wells Kiss her and don't tells Wine glass, puff pass Tea with cyborgs Riot America Science and edibles Life hacks going viral in the bathroom Cocaine, side boob Choke her with a sea view Toothache, bad move Just act normal Moka pot Monday It's all good Hey, you

I call this the everything but the kitchen sink bridge. But, seriously, this bridge works so well in its chaos, and I'll explain. After the second verse, the natural assumption would be for the song to increase its intimacy and domesticity. But, rather, this bridge veers in the opposite direction, becoming less intimate, less domestic. This is all a part of their relationship, assumed, but it's not as specific to them as earlier in the song. And as we lose that intimacy, the grasp on the nostalgia over reality as they mesh into one another, the song's feel changes.

The writing style hasn't changed, but the intensity has. The music behind his voice swells, adding an underlying sense of urgency, trepidation, and apprehension when your focus goes to the instruments alone. Almost akin to a foot pressing on the gas, pushing the car engine too far, almost to the teetering line of complete engine failure. The chaotic nature of the bridge embodies the chaotic moments of the relationship. And, when the focus shifts to the chaos, the reality in opposition to the yellow-hazed memories he's been planting himself in, their bond suffers as felt in the rise of intensity of the instrumentals.

The bridge is significantly longer than the two verses before and is split into two chunks where he's allowed to take a breath. But, in no moment before the end does he stop to beg the question. He doesn't communicate as all this chaos finally rises to the surface, making it hard to ignore. I see this bridge as a moment of emotional release, as a result of the repression before, and it's only when everything is about to hit its peak that he leans back on how he's gotten through it before. Though unhealthy, he finally brings up the question again. The second he does, things return to the status quo -- the music mellows down to the same childlike glockenspiel, a laid-back sway the characters and listeners both fall back to. We have chosen the yellow sunglasses again, as the influx of chaos is too intense to face. We keep on driving, even if it's just a repression. We'll keep on emotional coasting.

[OUTRO] Should we just keep driving? Should we just keep driving? (Ooh) Should we just keep driving?

More repetition is added to the core conflict, to the core question, and the assumed conclusion is given: the choice is to keep on driving, to keep basking in the beauty of our bond instead of looking into the beasts, which will get us stuck in a rut I'm afraid we won't be able to find our way out of. By the outro, the question becomes superficial and redundant because he knows the answer, even before the question leaves his lips. He knows the cycle he's stuck in, the coping through delicate deception. He's stopped trying to bring up that the engine sounds a little off, but rather desperately tries to keep his quickening voice soft, creating a yellow haze in hopes that he won't have to face the chaos again.

I have an inkling this is one of those songs people either love or hate, but, if you couldn't tell by just how much I've been gushing, I love it so very much! It's a song that admits that life can be shitty at times, and that includes the relationships that were once filled with sugar-coated memories, but there's always a sense of permanence that gives the push to keep you driving. Finding the calm in the chaos but almost being chaos together, even in the darkest times. Though poetic, we aren't hiding behind poetry or prose or flowery language, but bringing in the rawness, the realness, the existing and beautiful, even at times our choices can vary into the bad. It's the shortest song on the album, but I don't think it needs to be longer, and think the more condensed feeling only aids. And, speaking from experience, Keep Driving is a whole Kodak memory-maker opportunity when screaming the song in the car. Windows down!

Thank you for reading, you're absolutely incredible! If there are any songs you'd like me to make an analysis of, please send your request to my inbox! along with any questions or insights you might have yourself!

#harry styles lyrics #harry styles lyric analysis #harry's house album #harry's house #keep driving #keep driving analysis #harry's house album analysis #lyric analysis #harry styles #keep driving lyric analysis #my posts #my analysis #opinion #commentary #discussion #theory #music #this song is so cute #I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU such a cutie pie

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someotherdog · 5 days ago

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I sincerely hope this is okay to ask~ do you have any tips or advice for creating characters? Your roster is so detailed and each character is so vastly different and unique, it's very inspiring :')

anon you're quite literally the sweetest human ever and i adore you so much ;-; i'd love to give you some advice!!! but i don't want seem like some self-aggrandizing asshole so i'm putting it under a readmore just in case anyone wants to scroll by it and not see me wax poetic about my own characters and writing process lmfao.

okay so again thank you for being so nice!!! to be honest, i don't have like a blueprint for character creation but this is my general advice that helps me out when it comes to making a new muse.

Be inspired by anything. now this is more of a roleplay thing, not necessarily writing like actual books to make money off of, but what i mean is do not be afraid to be like 'yeah anne rice (or whichever author you like) did this character pretty good, but i can do it better' or to be like 'hmm i like this trait of this character in a tv show, i want to write someone like them' and go from there. and when i say be inspired by anything, i do mean anything! tv shows, books, music, movies, real life events (as long as ur not a ghoul about it), etc. one of my favorite characters, saul weissberg, was partly inspired by julian sands' character in rose red, a stephen king miniseries from 2002 that i loved as a child that like five people have seen lol (specifically how any line of dialogue sounds like an innuendo/he had kind of a natural animalistic sexual swagger). some characters i have are partly inspired by people i actually know in real life, or of course inspired by myself and my own life. so sometimes you'll just want to do your own version of something, like how my desjardins family characters are my version of the show yellowstone or collie's my ripoff of my sweet audrina, or you'll just be like "hm i want a character that's kind of like lestat, but not french" and use that as a baseline/add on more later. sorry i keep using anne rice examples in this she's the only author i can think of rn lol

Don't be afraid to have two characters with similar backstories. like, don't psyche yourself out bc you're like "oh wait, this character i just came up is too much like a character i already have, i'll scrap them or get rid of the old one in order to have the new one." that's totally fine imo because now it's up to you to differentiate them and make them stand out from each other! for example, i have two characters that are drug addicts: hector and junior. now hector is a hedonistic narcissist that does drugs simply because he's trying to find the highest highs in life and he has no ability to care about others. junior is an addict because of a childhood tragedy by his older brother's hand that orphaned him and he tries to numb the pain of losing his entire family by using drugs. they both deal with the same affliction, but for entirely different reasons and they react differently to pretty much everything, so they might seem similar at first but they don't actually have much in common beyond their addiction struggles.

Sometimes the fc comes first, sometimes the concept does. by that i mean that sometimes i'll come up with an idea for a character (let's say... a character that's an artist that has prophetic dreams that inspires their art) and then i have to scramble for an fc that would fit their vibes, usually by just watching a new show or looking through gif pack blogs. other times, i'll have an fc i want to use... let's say... i want to make a margaret qualley character. so okay, what kind of storyline do i want to write with her? she's got lots of gifs where she looks scared/uncomfortable, so maybe she sees ghosts or something after a near-death experience. or she's quite tall, so maybe she's an inspiring runway model or something idk. a lot of characters i come up literally start with something simple as: i want to write about the satanic panic, so i'll make an oc that worships the devil in the bayous of louisiana (blair) or i want to make a character that's a final boy that survived a massacre à la wolf creek (benny). sometimes (or most times, lmao) i just see a face i think is pretty and want to use them, so i'll be like hmmm let's see what i can do with this face. your inspiration can be as simple or detailed as you like!

Rework characters at your own leisure. if you've got a character you just feel isn't working out, switch shit up! add to their storyline, change their storyline, drop them completely if you just aren't feeling a connection anymore. you can always change things back or un-retire a character, it's your blog!

Remember no one is going to care about your muses as much as you do. now that sounds a little cold but it's just like social anxiety in real life where no one is thinking about you as much as you're thinking about yourself. so what i mean is that does any random writer in the tag actually care about what my muse's exercise habits are or what allergies they have or if they have a bachelor's degree in communications? no, probably not!! and that's okay, because all the detail you put into a character is for you. i write detailed character sheets so i can remember than etan has asthma or that alice wears contacts or that frank has lived in detroit his whole life, not necessarily because i think my writing partner needs to know that information. it's for you to inform your writing of said character! but of course anyone that takes time out of their day to learn about your muses is a treasure and deserves three thousand smooches 🥰

alright i wrote enough bullshit up in here lol, so hopefully that helped you out nonnie!!! and i'm sorry if it didn't because i tend to write word salad ooc lmao sorry. if you want any more advice about anything, don't hesitate to ask <3

#* INBOX / answered .#indie rp #just one tag in case anyone is curious #drugs mention tw #addiction mention tw #this probably sounds so pretentious lmao but i am what i am okay!#you're a darling anon i love you

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cosmic-navel-gazin · 1 year ago

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Adam Warlock :^)

The free space is for :

🌌🌠⭐✨💫 SPAAAACEEEE 💫✨⭐🌠🌌

for him to fly around, wax poetic, philosophize and drown in cosmic existentialism!

(the lost potential and writers dropping the ball-spots are the inherent reality that comes with mainstream superhero comics, some good some bad, some writers and artists whose takes we prefer and some we don't)

Adam... my golden boi, my glamrock space jesus, my spiritual vampire, my ferrero rocher... have some reasons I love him in no particular order:

He's the reason I came to tumblr in the first place so I owe him for all the incredible people I've met on here since *points at you edith* Even my username is based on his vibes.

I love his design (well some of them), the floofy 80's mom hair, the eyeliner, the wizard cape, the lil skull brooch, the red and gold (and sometimes black) colour palette, etc

I love his relationship with the soul gem (he feels naked to me without it) and how it introduced the whole concept of infinity gems into the universe

I love how he's always an outsider, always apart, I love his contradictory nature: how he's the avatar of life but is unable to truly enjoy life; how he craves peace and quiet and yet is constantly being pulled to take part in universe-shattering conflicts; he's the master of the soul gem and thus has insight into other people's souls and yet is unable to truly connect with most beings, he's Thanos' self appointed psychologist and is way worse than him, etc

On that last point I love his constant mental breakdowns and I love that his head is a mess. Adam travels to Thanos' mind and it's regular goth shit with skulls and stuff, but when Thanos travels to Adam's mind he's like "whoa dude! this is fucked up!"

I love that he can't stay alive for more than 5 minutes at a time, shout-out to his tombstone for when he was only 10 years old, actual literal baby boi!

I love his journeys of self discovery that helped at a time where I was going on some introspective journeys of my own

I love that this cosmic being of incomprehensible power is afraid of women and relationships, he can deal with the fabric of the universe breaking, that's easy compared to feelings

I love his soon to be 50 year long incredible slow-burn relationship with Thanos they come in a package do not separate them, I love the similarities between the two and how they understand each other completely in spite of their differences, I love how they'd rather blow up the universe than resolve their issues without making it everybody's problem ;)

On that note, I love them finishing each other's sentences

Also on the similarities point, I love you “It wouldn’t be the first seed to his own destruction I’ve seen Thanos plant. I fear it is a trait I have in common with him.”

I love you "The Talk", “I know you as no other being in the universe does, better than even you do yourself!” the three pages that probably made me want to know all about them

I love the - largely criminally unexplored - Adam, Thanos and Mistress Death relationship, mostly on Death and Adam's side

I love how when Adam became God™ he thought the wisest thing to do to go about his new responsibilities was saying: fuck gender! , and get rid of them messy feminine and masculine traits of his

On that note I love that two huge marvel summer events were about said masculine (the magus), and feminine (the goddess) traits fucking over the universe (Infinity War and Infinity Crusade consecutively) and Adam eventually accepting them as part of himself instead of shunning them in the end

I love the holy trinity that is Adam, Gamora and Pip, my beloved trio... how they're always there for him no matter what they love his ass so much, look at this art, Adam's cape is for wrapping his loved ones with

I love you Adam and Gamora 💛💚💛💚💛💚 I love you "From Gamora I am discovering that there is more to life than action and adventure, strife and conflict. I never realized that mere words or a touch could prove to be such subtle treasures. Keys to unimagined happiness."

I have a soft spot for you Roy Thomas/Gil Kane Adam, you like many other Adams, had great unrealized potential

I love his sadomasochistic tendencies (lmao get crucified idiot, more than once btw!) and his self-destructive tendencies

I love how 90's!Adam took a new look at Thanos and went "I can fix him, I can make him worse", and it has been that way ever since, just inserting himself in Thanos' life any chance he gets... the way they self-destruct without the other

I love you exchange between Adam and Thanos that goes: “Travel well and safely, my friend.”

“Friend? Yes, I guess that is what we are.”"

I love you ending of Infinity Gauntlet

I love that the first thing Adam does upon arriving at an alien planet is start petting a cat, he's just like me for real

I love you relationship with whiny baby ass Eternity, old divorced couple dynamic my beloved

I love you "Look at yourself, Warlock! You've always been a creature of passion and excess! You either love dearly or hate viciously". Adam's holier-than-thou, self-righteous indignation, my beloved.

I love that Adam and the Infinity Watch tape low budget pornos in order to pay rent to Mole Man, their landlord

I love you "Death holds no terror for me. It's life I fear":

I love you endless cycles of death and rebirth, they're not uncommon in superhero comics but what I love is how being unable to truly die shaped his character and worldview on life (and I love how scared he was of suddenly dying when the prospect of no coming back this time arose, it didn't last though lol some amazing potential there that went unexplored right after it came up):

I love you Princess Bride meme that fits Adam and Thanos so well "- You mock my pain! - Life is pain, anyone who says otherwise is obviously selling something!”

I love you "I have no dreams/You know I've always wished to be longed to be normal", the whole thing really the way Thanos is trying to reach out to him at the end with his hand stretched out shut uuuuuuppppp

#I COULD GO ON AND ON YOU KNOW HOW IT IS EDITH BUT TY SO MUCH FOR THE ASK #edith #asks/replies #adam warlock #ask game #my internet sucks right now so I'm slowly going through these blorbo bingo cards

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randomvarious · 1 year ago

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Today's compilation:

Animal Liberation 1987 Industrial / Post-Punk / Synthpop / New Wave

God, this thing is just so fucking on-brand for PETA, folks. Back in 1987, the oft-ridiculed animal rights activist org teamed up with Chicago heavyweight indie label Wax Trax! Records in order to release this benefit comp that saw its royalties go straight into PETA's own coffers. And, as you might expect, like clockwork, it was made up almost entirely of pure, unadulterated cringe 🥴.

Now, to be perfectly clear, I'm definitely not here to evaluate or criticize the merits of animal liberation as an ideology itself in this post, but people have to understand that if you're trying to convert others to your own way of thinking, you're not likely to get through to them with ridiculously over-the-top, preachy propaganda that, in true PETA fashion, will leave your target scratching their head and wondering if all of this is actually just some elaborate ruse or a silly bit. What I think would've been a far more effective tack to take during this era that saw the concept of the benefit comp really flourish would've been to include maybe a song or two about animal rights, and then have the rest of the comp filled out with a bunch of other non-topical goodies.

But obviously, PETA and Wax Trax! didn't end up doing that here. What they chose to do instead was load up this album with almost nothing but ridiculous songs about animal rights and animal liberation; songs that certainly reflect Wax Trax!'s own love of self-aware irony and detachment as a bastion of the intersection between industrial, synthpop and punk and post-punk music, but are not likely to translate into swaying anyone to alter their own consumer habits in order to help lessen the plight of animals themselves. It really feels like just about everyone on here knows that what they're doing is already too on the nose to be taken seriously, and so they're just deciding to act accordingly. Like, if you were to make fun of animal rights activists through the art of musical comedy, you would probably just release this album pretty much as it already is.

The only track on here that would've kept you from using this CD as a coaster is the final one, "Assault & Battery," by Howard Jones, who wasn't even ever a Wax Trax! artist in the first place! This song, like the rest of them, is about animal rights too, but it's a bit more poetic and compelling in how it deals with the subject, rather than the vast majority of this slate, which takes the route of being very lyrically dogmatic and deliberately straight-forward to the point of being exasperatingly eyeroll-inducing 🙄. But with "Assault & Battery," a song that had previously appeared on Jones' 1985 album, Dream Into Action, he pairs his trained piano background with some synthpop and ends up delivering what is, by far, the most captivating and enjoyable song on this album.

So, an exceedingly bad and torturous release that seems par for the course when it comes to PETA's history of overly lame attempts at being provocative rather than actually being thought-provoking, but there is still one very good tune on here; it's just that Wax Trax! had to go outside of their own catalogue in order to obtain it 😆.

Highlights:

Howard Jones - "Assault & Battery"

#industrial #synthpop #synth pop #post punk #new wave #electronic #electronic music #music #80s #80s music #80's #80's music

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whamss · 2 years ago

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sorry to bring discourse thoughts here instead of on my private twitter account where nobody has to see it (especially because this is very much twitter-tier drama i feel like), but when it comes to discussions about the ratio of m/m work produced on ao3 vs f/f works i always found it absolutely crazy how people advocating for more f/f works always seem to stress that it isn’t that we need to be making LESS m/m and more that we just need to reflect on our willingness to write about male characters with depth and complexity over female characters, and how some underlying misogynistic thought may be at play for why we do that. yet people who consume/write mostly m/m who argue against that notion always just seem hell bent on justifying why we don’t need to be writing more f/f fiction in the first place and why they are completely justified in completely ignoring the existence of women in media in the first place. like lesbians saying that wlw deserve fanworks of similar quality and attention as mlm is like. an attack on their sacred right to write about men fucking each other in the ass or something.

i don’t think that we’re wrong in pointing out that, maybe not consciously, but on some level there’s a definite widespread reluctance in fandom to look at women in media and think about their characters beyond what’s delivered to us at a surface level. now it isn’t like everyone is like that, obviously, but when it comes to what people are willing to write, and what people are willing to read it definitely feels like male characters on average get way more? and you can see it so easily. over 5 million m/m works on ao3 and f/f doesn’t even break a million (last i checked), and i guarantee at least one third of that has f/f ships as background couples with little to no substance.

i’ve seen the argument around about how women in media are boring and that’s why men get more attention, and i feel like that’s an argument that could’ve worked in like 2013 anime communities when most of what got popular seemed to be shounen anime with primarily male casts but in the year of 2023 i just don’t think that’s true? like, at all. and not to mention that a character being ‘boring’ or lacking substance never seems to really keep male characters from gaining popularity. when people see a male character without much going on they seem to think “well how can i MAKE him interesting?” and so even the male characters with the least amount of substance can still get fanworks waxing poetic about their deep inner lives and struggles. but you never see that with female characters of similar quality, never. and the sad thing is that even as more media comes out that shows us female characters with rich narrative struggles and complexity we STILL don’t see that in 99% of fandom, save really for fandoms for media with female-dominated casts. so evidently it isn’t a ‘women are written bad’ problem. what is it then?

misogyny is such a no-no word in fandom and really i don’t know why. misogyny as a concept is something so deeply ingrained in society, i think that just about everyone regardless of gender or social status is guilty of some form of misogynistic thinking consciously or otherwise. and like i can totally get how it can feel like a personal attack when some random person online talks about the glaring lack of f/f works on ao3 and tosses out the word ‘misogyny’ as a possible root cause for why that gap exists. but also i feel like we as writers, artists, consumers, etc need to be willing to take a step back and recognize Why do people think this? why are we so unwilling to look at women in media with the same deeply analytical gaze as we do men? it isn’t to say that anyone who focuses more on m/m ships or writes mostly about men is a raging misogynist who hates women but i do think that there could be some unconscious misogyny at play, when looking at the bigger picture.

besides that i just think in general we as a society need to be more open and willing to listen when wlw in fandom bring up these issues. nobody is saying you can’t write about men but listening to wlw and having these discussions is important! it can be enlightening! and god i am just begging people to watch a piece of media and try to really pay attention to the women in it. not necessarily even for shipping but just like. look at the female mc and Think About Her the same way you think about men and try to reflect on her. what do you think is going on with her? what do you think she’s thinking as she does what she does, goes through what she goes through? what kind of conclusions can you come to about her deeper character from the way she acts on screen? and how do those compare to male characters who you think are written of a similar caliber? you can learn a lot from it, i think. and that willingness to extend critical thought to characters of all genders is extremely valuable.

#discourse #ao3 #rant #i guess #talk tag #why rant on twitter when you can rant for over 800 words on tumblr

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jonathankatwhatever · 1 month ago

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It’s 14 Nov 2024, and I don’t have much to say at this moment other than that I’ve been having a terrific time reaching understandings in and through you.

There’s something about Boundary in that, like maybe why I insist on the singular so much. I know that labels the concept, like in French it’s the difference between the and one of the.

But I feel the concept is there and there’s a fun stage where it fleshes out, where the figure not merely draws but colors and not merely colors but draws. I bought some more paint yesterday. Sort of maize and blue, LA Rams, bright and happy. I want to add some outright happiness to the walls. A kind that draws you in. I’m seeing it in blue spiraling into the wall and coming out, perhaps, in yellow, and because those make green then we make the artistic comment about the composition of reality, of life which we want to convey. The going out and the coming in touch each other to make the green of the heart which expresses in the green of verdant life.

Ah, yes, the green of the field divided into the blue and yellow. I never put that together. It’s clever. Yes, it could be poetic, or like an old time sportswriter waxing about the how the men in blue and yellow play with the natural power of the color of the grassy field of physical struggle.

Need to leave for a bit.

Before I stop though, the Boundary idea is singular because it is the abstraction of the gsProcess which makes a Boundary, and that is achieved through D-structure, meaning the way there is a shift from abstraction of an End to any End, any End at all, so from the uncountable conception of an End to a countable conception of an End, which is of course another example of the finite construction of gs within D-structure, within the finite construction of D3-4Space that we experience as reality, both subjective and objective. That last is meant to say physical and external to contrast with intangible and internal. As much as we wear our emotions on our sleeves, those are symptoms, are physical expressions of the intangible.

I no longer find it weird that we have figured this all out. It’s part of the process of taking things for granted, like I can drive to the gym and the grocery stores without assistance because I don’t question what I’m doing and relax with some assurance that I know the ways.

I keep almost saying a core idea, which is that this is by algorithm, by a running gsProcess which identifies the area, the Attachments and the Pathways, which shift focus so that which is at one End is intangible is at the other End tangible. That’s the creative process embodied in the division of the male into Ares and Hephaestus, the doer and the maker, and the Observer in this case is like in the Egyptian wall panels: that you connect through the lesson of the panel to the higher power at the other End, so that which comes to you from God can come to you. In the Greek case, it’s to what End? Meaning the impetus for The Iliad, the relationship of the Gods to the insides of human experience through the immortal killing machine’s discovery of his inner self. I see that fits exactly: he kills the killer of his companion and partner as though he’s killing himself, and that enables the shift over in perspective through Hector, whom he now sees as himself as well.

It’s the transition over or through the veil of death. That is done through Triangular. And that invokes Hexagonal, which invokes the algorithms of gsProcess. So yes, judgement happens. That finally connects me to that dream of the individual score cards, individual because they related potential across a variety of definitions to actual. I see now that the scores I saw were labels or composites for the explicit generation. That gets back to those prize questions, which goes to holes and Boundary.

Are there smooth solutions? Yes but you need to look closely in multiple places, more closely than you can look when things get really chaotic, so the issue is the labeling over where perspectives combine. I really need to leave but that’s an amazing answer. It’s labeling over composition, which means perspectives combining, which happens when there are too many to count over the counting period. Like can’t count a big waterfall when you’re near it. Same idea appears in jokes about 3 people misidentifying an elephant in the dark when each touches only one part.

We’re solving stuff left and right, up and down, boogaloo. Oh, I almost forgot: better answer to hairy ball, which is obviously composition, is that this example of that relies on the existence of blue and yellow, meaning hairy ball shows how that can be reduced to a point and why that is a point at infinity in religion, as in a chakra. You can also say we hear it in the silences of music or in the open space of any model of a sphere covered by a spiral, like an apple in a slicer.

Must go.

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serenafromoculis · 9 months ago

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One thing I find is not discussed in explicit enough terms, perhaps due to how abstract and subjective a subject it is, is the all-consuming force of art and the way it assimilates people into itself. Being an artist is like having eldritch knowledge bestowed upon you and I'm not even joking about this. The endless pursuit of creative exploration, of decyphering the abstract concepts floating in your mind and urging to be communicated is one that slowly absorbs more and more of your soul into itself until you stop doing it for long enough that it rots away on its own or until it takes over your entire life and defines you as a person every minute of your life, and still begs for more, unsatisfied. I'm not trying to wax poetic about this or anything, I mean literally that there's a line I'm crossing where every day I become physically less capable of incorporating artistic interpretation or my own form of idiosyncratic abstraction into the things I witness on my everyday life. I wouldn't call it dangerous, I think it is one of the most marvelous things to ever exist, but like, holy fuck does it consume everything. Being an artist is less of a choice and more of a natural result of events guiding you down a certain path and making you unable to do anything *but* art, fashioning your body into a medium for the manifestation of a bunch of weird-ass abstract shit coming from the deepest pits of the universe and eternally echoing in your mind.

It is possible to survive this, but not unaltered.

oculis

#artist

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theeverlastingshade · 1 year ago

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Favorite Albums of 2023

10. i’ve seen a way- Mandy, Indiana

2023 wasn’t a year lacking in compelling, well-realized debut LPs that hinted at artists with a completely fully-formed sound before a follow-up LP. Manchester’s Mandy, Indiana was one of those artists, and their debut LP, i’ve seen a way, was one of this year’s most satisfying surprises, with its potent blend of danceable beats, serrated guitars, menacing synths, and versatile vocals courtesy of Valentine Caulfield. Here, nimble rhythms collided with thick slabs of dissonance in a way that distilled the best of dance punk, no wave, post-punk, and noise music without sounding beholden to any single sensibility or stylistic presentation. Caulfield’s writing, sung entirely in French, was an evocative series of leftist insights made all the more potent juxtaposed against her band’s relentless sonic onslaught. It’s rare for music to achieve such an infectious, blood-pumping high with the visceral suggestion of violence emerging around every crevice in the mix, but M,I achieved just that with aplomb, making good on the tired “indie sleeze revival” narrative with music more assured and singular than pretty much anything to come from that dubious umbrella descriptor. Regardless of whether or not dance punk continues to sustain the momentum it achieved this year moving forward, M,I seem likely to continue growing into one of the most thrilling bands active today.

Essentials: “Pinking Shears”, “Peach Fuzz”, “Drag [Crashed]”

9. Everyone’s Crushed- Water From Your Eyes

Very few bands in 2023 experienced the kind of well-deserved payoff that Water From Your Eyes did. After years of honing their craft with increasingly strong records, playing over 90 shows this year, and garnering appreciation for their humor and talent through seemingly outlandish but impressively well-realized covers, the Brooklyn-based experimental pop duo that consists of vocalist Rachel Brown and multi-instrumentalist/producer Nate Amos seemed to have finally gotten their due. And in addition to the impressive aforementioned feats, (as well as the reason for the arrival of their due) WFYE also released their best record to date earlier this year with their perma-stoned art-pop opus, Everyone’s Crushed. On EC, the duo concocted a collection of 9 thrilling songs that veer from whiplash inducing sound collages (“Barley”), to superbly-textured drone compositions (“Open”) to string-laden ballads (“14”), to propulsive post-punk rippers (“Buy My Product”) with air-tight sequencing and finesse. Like many of the albums that I love from this year, EC walks a tightrope between being an impressive display of eclecticism and a disjointed mess, but to my ears it never quite veers into the latter category, and it’s that high-wire sense of ambition that makes it such a thrilling record. And Brown’s writing, which blends irreverence and absurdity with cutting capitalist critiques strewn over the top of their colorful cacophonies really elevates the album into a singular, sprawling fever dream.

Essentials: “Barley”, “True Life”, “Buy My Product”

8. Maps- billy woods and Kenny Segal

There’s been quite a bit of discussion surrounding 2023 being the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, and there wasn’t a single release from this year that I listened to that really showcased the indisputable longevity of the form quite like Maps, a full-length collaboration between rapper billy woods and produce Kenny Segal. Maps is the second collaboration between woods and Segal, and it’s the strongest release that either of them have released to date. The conceit is essentially a concept album about life on the road as a touring musician, and the pair deliver an eclectic collection of songs that revel in the absurdity of this necessary component of their chosen careers. The largest draw of Maps is undoubtedly woods at the center of the storm, waxing poetic on everything from food to drugs to sound checks with wit and candor in his distinctly deadpan drawl. But Segal is no slouch, and his beats are in rich in color and personality, drawing from disarmingly (at least for woods) melodic pockets of soul, funk, and jazz for woods to wade in. Danny Brown, Quelle Chris, Elucid, Aesop Rock, and ShrapKnel each drop by to deliver a show stopping verse, and it’s a testament to the craft on display that neither host is ever upstaged. Maps is the byproduct of two artists in complete command of their respective crafts, and operating at the highest level with a hunger that belies their status as veterans.

Essentials: “Year Zero” ft. Danny Brown, “Babylon By Bus” ft. ShrapKnel, “Kenwood Speakers”

7. Dogsbody- Model/Actriz

In another year dominated by discourse on terminally chill, sonically inoffensive indie music, Dogsbody, the debut LP from Model/Actriz, arrived like a refreshing Molotov lobbed at your favorite music publication. The Brooklyn 4 piece specialize in a brooding, blood-stained fusion of dance punk, post-punk, industrial, and noise music with glints of chamber pop peaking through the din. The music is extremely well-realized, and frontman Cole Hayden’s horny yet harrowing vocal prowess imbues the music with a truly idiosyncratic, unsettling allure. Their early EPs were satisfying early forays into shaping what would become their claustrophobic yet danceable sound, but on Dogsbody everything crystallized into a sharp distillation of their disparate influences (namely the musical Cats and Throbbing Gristle). Here, brutal noise-flecked floor-starters custom-tailored for igniting mosh-pits like “Mosquito” and “Amaranth” collide with disarming, tastefully rendered ballads like “Sleepless” and “Divers” without disrupting the sequencing or compromising any shred of the momentum. The band’s consistency and commitment with respect to both ends of their sonic spectrum proved that there’s far more to them than simply being a nightmarish incarnation of Brooklyn’s next generation of “indie sleeze”, or any other fabricated projection more fixated on their image and what they represent than what they’ve proven remarkably adept at musically.

Essentials: “Sleepless”, “Divers”, “Moquito”

6. Raven- Kelela

Kelela’s music has been so consistently excellent from the jump that it’s been easy to take the quality of her releases for granted, but the monumental leap forward that she made on her 2nd LP, Raven, was just too immense to gloss over. Raven unfolds like a meditative spell across its 15 song, hour-long runtime, with immaculate sequencing that lends the experience the feel of an air-tight dj set even throughout its quieter corners. Kelela initially made a name for herself by flirting with the conventions of r&b and experimental electronic music until the boundaries felt non-existent, and on Raven she incorporates garage, drum & bass, and ambient music (with the assistance of an all-star team of producers that includes Kaytranada, LSDXOXO, Bambii, Junglepussy, and more) into the proceedings in a way that feels ambitious and daring but never quite exceeds her depth. Bookended by two gorgeous ambient totems (“Washed Away” and “Far Away”, respectively) that tastefully frame the record, Raven finds Kelela masterfully juggling floor-filling heaters like “Happy Ending” and “Contact” with subdued breathers like “Closure” and “Sorbet” that result in a dynamic, multi-faceted journey. And the writing, which touches on themes of self-realization, reinvention, and acceptance delivered with her versatile vocal approach that’s expressive but delivered with a smoky nonchalance, is her most gripping work to date. Kelela’s been a singular, inimitable artist for over a decade now, and Raven finds her continuing to find compelling new avenues for her voice to flourish in.

Essentials: “Raven”, “Happy Endings”, “Contact”

5. Radical Romantics- Fever Ray

With each passing year I continue to mourn the dissolution of The Knife, the beloved Swedish experimental electronic duo comprised of siblings Karin and Olof Dreijer, who made some of the most striking music, electronic or otherwise, of the 21st century so far, but thankfully Karin continues to make thrilling music under their Fever Ray solo moniker (and Olof’s solo work is also pretty solid, fwiw). Fever Ray’s 3rd LP, Radical Romantics, is their strongest solo record to date; one that achieves a near perfect balance between pop’s pleasure center and the adventurous allure of the avant-garde. The amount of range on display here is impressive at every turn. Early highlight “New Utensils” lurches to life with an infectious visceral intensity all too uncommon in synth-pop while single “Carbon Dioxide” is a floor-filling heater that's disarming in its immediacy. And while their now familiar thematic focus on carnal desires is thoroughly present, particularly on the swaggering early cut “Shiver”, and the show stopping centerpiece ��Kandy”, RR finds Karin expanding their scope to tackle subjects like trans erasure (“What They Call Us”), the difficulty of dating as a middle-aged queer person (“Looking for a Ghost”), and what is easily the greatest helicopter parent bully revenge song ever penned (“Even It Out”). RR is just flex after flex of the most sublime synth-pop that I’ve heard all year fronted by the pied piper of goth-tinged off-kilter electronic music. We didn’t deserve the singularity of The Knife, and we sure as hell don’t deserve the singularity of Fever Ray.

Essentials: “Kandy”, “New Utensils”, “Carbon Dioxide”

4. This Stupid World- Yo La Tengo

It’s difficult to discuss Yo La Tengo without reference to the legendary indie rock institution’s nearly unparalleled longevity. The New Jersey based trio have been making good to great records since the mid-80s, and although what’s widely acknowledged as their “imperial phase” was from 1993-2000, they’ve still managed to release more great records in the years since that period than most bands manage to release halfway decent songs throughout their lifespan. The trio’s 17th LP, This Stupid World, happens to be one of their finest to date, and while generally praised as a “return to form”, which on some level it certainly is (the form in question being their penchant for pitch-perfect loud/soft dynamics, angelic vocal harmonies, generous use of distortion and feedback, and a general head in the clouds sort of dreaminess that almost threatens to belie the remarkable precision on display), but it’s not merely the sort of resting on past laurels at the highest possible level that that sort of designation tends to imply. The most satisfying development on TSW that pushes their sound into exciting new sonic realms for them is the pair of lengthy droning cuts in the form of the title track and “Miles Away” that close out the record. The band have flirted with drone before, but not quite like this, with the former sustaining distorted clusters of notes alongside a chugging floor tom/sleigh bell rhythm as they build steam through bludgeoning repetition and subtle tonal shifts while the latter takes a softer approach with a beating snare set against drummer Georgia Hubley’s ethereal croon and thick washes of white noise and negative space. They’re masterful exercises in restraint, and portend a few interesting directions the band could go next. And the prior 7 songs are just as compelling, whether we’re talking about the explosive stage setting opener (“Sinatra Drive Breakdown”), the lilting breather (“Aselestine”), the hypnotic, bass-led march (“Tonight’s Episode”) or anything else here. YLT’s consistency as indie rock lifers content to continue honing their craft, devoid of trend or clout chasing, remains as inspiring as ever.

Essentials: “Sinatra Drive Breakdown”, “This Stupid World” “Until It Happens”

3. the whaler- Home Is Where

This is probably the most underrated record that I’ve written about all year, which is a damn shame for several different reasons, but perhaps most of all because it’s a record with an appeal far beyond the fifth-wave emo wave that birthed it. Home Is Where are unabashedly emo, by their own admission, and they strike a sweet spot sonically, lyrically, and thematically between 4th wave emo legends, The Hotelier, and cult favorite Neutral Milk Hotel (which HIW have also acknowledged, albeit jokingly). And while there’s a lot of truth to through lines like raw, unvarnished vulnerability, surrealism, urgency, and ample use of singing saw that makes that parallel feel particularly apt, HIW are very much on their own trip. Their classic 2021 debut LP, I Became Birds, still feels like a lightning in a bottle 18 minute leftist masterwork that seamlessly blended emo, punk, hardcore, and folk into an idiosyncratic statement of purpose with more personality and purpose than the vast majority of their peers, emo or otherwise. The band’s follow-up, the whaler, doubles down on the promise of IBB with a more sobering tone and an even further refined sonic palette. The band’s eclecticism is still on display, but the ingenuity is even more pronounced, with whiplash inducing mid-song stylistic shifts such as the folk foundations of “lily pad puplis” slowly transitioning into a hardcore breakdown, or the tape loop sound collage of opener “skin meadow” bleeding into an anthemic emo rollercoaster, that are inventive and thrilling in their disregard for convention. Like on IBB, frontwoman Brandon MacDonald uses sublime surreal imagery in service of leftist sentiments, but her critiques are sharper and more colorful this time around. There’s a tremendous deal to unpack and admire about the 10 dynamic songs on tw, and the generous melodicism coursing throughout it all makes it all too easy to get lost in. Irreverent, earnest, adventurous, and flush with unabashed integrity, tw exemplifies so much of what I find exciting about in art, and cements HIW as one of the most exciting bands active.

Essentials: “floral organs”, “everyday feels like 9/11”, “skin meadow”

2. After the Magic- Parannoul

Shoegaze is in a tremendously exciting place right now. It’s undergone a completely unprecedented creative resurgence throughout the 2020s as arty projects have emerged from disparate scenes around the world putting their own spin on the genre through the increasingly low barrier to entry afforded by modern technology, and this coupled with the bizarre traction that many of its new practitioners have experienced on Tik-Tok this year has given it a curiously heightened level of visibility. Which makes it all the more fitting that one of, if not the most exciting shoegaze album of the decade so far is After the Magic, the 3rd LP courtesy of the anonymous, South Korea-based solo bedroom shoegaze act, Parannoul. After toiling away in obscurity for years, Parannoul had an unprecedented level of visibility with their 2021 breakthrough LP, To See the Next Part of the Dream, which lit up the blogs due to its adventurous strain of entirely MIDI-generated lo-fi, emo-leaning shoegaze, and ATM ups the ante of its predecessor on every conceivable level. The sound of ATM is still emo-leaning shoegaze, but the scale of the music here is simply enormous, incorporating elements of disparate genres like K-pop and hardcore into the fold of their stadium-sized shoegaze without diluting their approach. Early highlight “Arrival” erupts into a furious Siamese Dream style suite of blown-out guitars that feels like it could level buildings, while “Parade” unfolds like a disarmingly tender trojan horse imbued with gorgeous vocal harmonies juxtaposed against field recordings of fireworks and children playing, and it’s a testament to the sprawling ambition throughout that both pieces feel right at home and don’t even remotely disrupt the flow of the record. Naturally, the words are sung entirely in Korean, but you don’t need to understand a word of Korean to understand the emotional thrust of the music. On ATM, the music itself is more expressive than any words could ever really convey. Parannoul remains a rare talent who fully understands music’s expressive sonic potential, and thoroughly taps into that to distill worlds of feeling into their work.

Essentials: “We Shine at Night”, “Blossom”, “Arrival”

1. Rat Saw God- Wednesday

In my experience, it’s rare for an album that was hyped beyond reasonable expectation to actually live up to the hype, and maybe over deliver on the anticipated excitement, but Wednesday achieved just that with their fifth LP, Rat Saw God. The Ashville-based 5 piece have been making great music that sits at the intersection of shoegaze, lo-fi indie rock, grunge, and alt-county for a handful of years now, but RSG feels like the culmination of their sensibilities, and the album they've been working towards throughout their brief but substantial career so far. The music on RSG consists of bleak, bad-vibe bummer jams that are considerably more polished than Wednesday’s music has ever sounded, but the curdled undercurrent of observations accumulated through growing up in the late-capitalist American south still unfurl with the same harrowing disposition. The music roars to life with vivacious licks courtesy of guitarist MJ Lenderman on songs like opener “Hot Rotten Grass Smell” and early epic “Bull Believer”, but it’s equally arresting in the album’s moments of fleeting tranquility like on “Formula One” and “What’s So Funny”. The ensemble performances throughout RSG captivate at every turn, and it’s the scrappy execution that imbues the music with so much charm and personality which help the morose details go down smoother. References to Narcan, desolation, and crumbling infrastructure are ample, but so is the band’s generous melodicism and infectious communal spirit of perseverance against the odds. Frontwoman Karly Hartzman’s eye for detail is the album’s greatest appeal, and her storytelling on RSG, which touches on everything from a miserable New Year’s Eve party replete with Mortal Kombat and nosebleeds on the aforementioned single “Bull Believer” to domestic abuse that culminates in a drug bust on late album highlight “Quarry”, and so much more throughout these 10 immensely evocative songs. Wednesday exemplify the unbridled catharsis of the best art that any medium has to offer, and while the vignettes throughout RSG are often hard to stomach upon close inspection, they’re also more rewarding and richly rendered than anything else that I’ve had the pleasure of listening to this year.

Essentials: “Bull Believer”, “Quarry”, “Bath County”

#wednesday #parannoul #home is where #yo la tengo #fever ray #kelela #model/actriz #billy woods #kenny segal #water from your eyes #mandy indiana

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