#going back in time to tell my 2019 self you are not crazy she is a gymbro. please believe

[revuestarlight]

hysterical. happy birthday

[barbielanno]

Shut up and kiss me

warning : smut

summary: you are oscar's girlfriends' lily's friend and she sets you up with lando norris

“Where are you?”, I text to my bestfriend Lily as I’ve been waiting for her in a cafe for about 20 minutes now. “I’m sorry y/n, I can’t make it. I’m busy but I sent someone to pick you up. Please be nice to him. I told him about you and you’ll recognise him when he comes ;). I hope you are wearing a good pair of innies”. WHAT THE HELL! What does she mean? Who did she send? “Hello Miss. y/n”. LANDO??? SHE SENT LANDO NORRIS TO PICK ME UPPPPPP???? “I’m Lando Norris, Oscar’s teammate. Lily requested me to pick you up, Osc is quite sick and she is keeping him company.” Fuck… the words aren’t coming off my mouth. I’M froze. “Hi Lan, I have seen you on tv. You are more pretty in person. I’m so sorry, I would’ve booked a cab if she texted me earlier. Sorry to waste your time”. “First of all, thank you for calling me pretty as I’m too mesmerised by your beauty. And secondly, I offered Lily to pick you up. I’ve seen your photos with her and thought you were very cute.” DID LANDO NORRIS JUST TOLD ME I’M CUTEEE? ANY LACK OF SELF ESTEEM FROM THESE DAY ONWARDS WOULD BE AN INSULT TO LANDO. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DOOOOO? I CANNOT TELL THIS MAN THAT I’VE BEEN IN LOVE WITH HIM SINCE 2019. “What are you thinking pretty, are you uncomfortable with me?” “NO, no Lan, I um I uh um I just am starstruck at the moment.” “Haha, so shall we?” He tilts his head hinting me we should go to his car.

“Yes, let’s go” and I follow him. “you have a very pretty car”, I say and he opens the door for me. Ugh!!! Such a gentleman. “now I’ll have a pretty company to drive this pretty car” he replies SUCH A FLIRTTTTTTT. We sat In his car and he drives. Suddenly I get a text from lily. Oscar is having health issues so we are in the hospital. They do not allow visitors at this time so spend time with your crush ;). I sigh looking at text and Lando asks me if everything is alright. I tell him what lily texted and that we cannot go to them right now so he should drop me at the hotel. Lando: “well,  it’s your first time here in London and spending the evening at the hotel is not the most rational thinking. Let me show you the places if you are not uncomfortable.” “Uh no, I’m totally fine but you must be busy considering you have a race next week.” I say. “Trust me y/n, I can make time for you”. Oh my god. He has his way with words. My heart is melting and if I spend even a minute more with him, I’m gonna fall in love with him. He takes me to watch sunset but fuckkkkk uk’s weather. It started raining as we parked the car and went 10 mins up walking. Now idk what to do. I’m drenched and I’m wearing a white shirt.  He looks at me with his intense eyes and gives me his jacket to cover me up. “Uh thank you” I say. “It isn’t for you, it’s for me. I dont wan’t anyone looking at you when you are looking this hot”. What did he just sayyyyy? We rushed back to his car.

“ Look y/n, I really wanted to show you the sunset and ask you out for the coffee and since that didn’t work out because of this damn weather and look at you at the moment. You look so sexy with this wet hair and the white shirt. I’m known to be a good driver but at the moment you are driving me crazy. Please let me take you back to my apartment please?” My heart races as I hear him say those words. I’ve been thinking about him a lot specially when I’m alone at my room but now since it is happening in real life, my brain cannot process this all. We go back to his apartment and it’s amazing. I open the jacket he provided me earlier and give him back. I need to change my outfit. 

I want to ask where the bathroom is but he has been staring at me since I opened the jacket.  “Lando, I um ” . “Don’t look at me with those big brown eyes, I dont know what I’ll do next” he says. Fuck he is so hot, it’s turning me on and his curls are wet and I can’t stop thinking about what’s underneath that shirt of him. “SHOW me”. I say

He looks at me confused and says “what?”. “Show me what you’ll do next”. before I could see his reaction to my words, he pulled me by my waist and kissed me. That kiss, like a fairytale crescendo, outshone every sensation I've ever known. I melted right there. I wanted the time to stop and I didn’t wanna let that man go. He pulled back and looked into my eyes “so you have wanted this no y/n? You were just playing hard to get. Your body wants me as much as I want you sweetheart”. I was too turned on to reply what he had to say. “Shut up Lan” I said as I pulled him by his collar. Fuck why isn’t he coming close. “Y/n, my baby, I have a good neck exercise. You’re too weak for that”. This man is a tease and I need him right now. “Lan, I’m gonna walk away from here and sleep with the first man I see if you dont kiss me right now”. His eyes darkened as he heard those words coming from my mouth. He grabbed me by my neck and pulled me closer. “Cocky? Huh I know no one can make you wet if it’s not me, tell me you are mine and I’ll touch you”. I know I have to give myself to him because he will not touch me if I don’t say what I’m told. “Lan, I’m yours, all yours. Now, pl..” I couldn’t even complete what I was about to say an he kissed me. Harder this time, much intense and much sexier than earlier. He bit my lower lip and used his tongue. He is a pro. He slowly goes down to my neck and place soft kisses and I’m already wet. I try to unbutton his shirt but I can’t because my hands are cold and they are shivering. He understands what I need and rip his shirt off. Oh god he is so hot underneath that shirt. I look at his body with lusty eyes as I kiss his chest and proceed to move down while holding eye contact with him. He doesn’t let me go down and pulls me up and kissed me. He unbutton my shirt and undo my bra. He kisses every square inch of my body and squeeze my boobs. “Wow!! They are handful, I love them” he says. “Baby, can I go down on you” he asks me as if I was about to stop him. Who in the world could resist Lando Norris? I bit my lower lip and say “please”. He kisses my inner thighs, teases me and licks me. Wow he sure is best at everything he does. He press my lower abdomen as he continues eating me out. I moan in pleasure. “Uhh umm Lan”

“Baby” I roll my eyes. “keep making those sounds for me love” 

“I’m about to .. uh”

He knows I’m about to finish so he pulls himself away. Such a tease 😈 . I know what he wants.

“Baby I need you inside of me, NOW.” I say and didn’t even notice him taking off his pants already. “See what you’ve done to me”. He looks at my eyes and demands me to see him. “Can you take all of it?” He winks. “ try me” I say. I know he loves playing so I go along with it. He puts his little (BIG) lando inside of me and I scream in pain or should I say pleasure. “Baby you feel so good” he thrusts faster. “Harder Lannie” he knows the rhythm. He knows when to go slow and hard and when fast. “Mhmmm” he moans near my ears and I know he is enjoying it as much as I am. “Baby, I’m about to come” he says. And goes faster. We both finished at the same time and that was amazing. He takes it off of me and places a kiss on my forehead. “We need to clean the mess we have made baby.” And lays beside me. “I’m too tired for that Lan. Let’s clean it later” I say. “Y/n, will you be my girlfriend? I don’t want this to end. I want you everyday.”

Oh my god this man is a GENTLEMAN.

“Yes my love”. And we cuddle and sleep. 

[mightyflamethrower]

25 reasons Trump won’t pay a dime to E. Jean Carroll

That eye-popping $83 million judgment will not survive an appeal. A proper settlement would subtract at least $82,972,000.

In 2019, a strange woman named E. Jean Carroll accused Donald Trump of raping her in a changing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Midtown Manhattan. Trump called her crazy, and a jury found him liable for both sexually abusing her and defaming her with the “crazy” talk. Last week, a New York jury decided Carroll deserves $83 million for defamation.

Here are 25 reasons why that’s nuts.

1) Carroll has said rape is “sexy”

She backs up this insane statement with, “Think of the fantasies” (which my wife and I can’t stop saying to each other). For the record, having someone forcibly violate you against your will is the exact opposite of “sexy.”

2) She’s already bragging about shopping sprees

Remember in “Goodfellas” when that idiot shows up at the party with his wife wearing a $20,000 fur coat and De Niro tells him to “bring it back”? When you run a scam, you need to lay low for a while. Carroll, conversely, is making appearances on national television telling Rachel Maddow she’s going to buy her a “penthouse in Paris” as well as fishing gear and a motorcycle for her counsel (could she pick weirder presents?). Her lawyer awkwardly murmured, “Uh, that’s a joke.”

Yeah, this whole thing is a joke.

3) The scenario she described came from her favorite TV show

She is a self-described “Law & Order” fan, and there is an episode wherein a man muscles his way into a changing room at Bergdorf Goodman and sexually molests a woman. This is likely where she got the idea. She’s also a big fan of “The Apprentice.” Would you like to watch your rapist on TV?

4) She didn’t want to press criminal charges

Being on the cover of New York magazine is one thing, but taking your BS story into an actual courtroom is a whole other level of fraud. When Bill de Blasio said he would change the law to make the case admissible, Carroll kept awkwardly repeating, “The experts told me … the time has passed.”

5) They changed the law

The case had no merit because the statute of limitations on civil action had passed. So what happened? The New York State Legislature changed the law. Is there anything that screams “witch hunt” more than that? What are we, Zimbabwe?

6) The man who backed the lawsuit is a major DNC donor

Leftist activist billionaire Reid Hoffman is the money behind this operation. His motive is obviously to bankrupt Trump so he can’t run again. Carroll denied this at first because she’s a liar, but her lawyer was forced to come clean.

7) The whole thing was George Conway’s idea, apparently

Though she denies it, it’s clear this entire plan was concocted by “conservative lawyer” Conway at a radical leftist cocktail party in Manhattan.

8) Carroll’s lawyer is desperate to fix her reputation as a rape-enabler

Roberta Kaplan was supposed to champion victims of sexual assault with her #TimesUp movement, but she used it instead to run cover for perverts such as Andrew Cuomo. She got caught and she got fired. Her comeback included representing Ashley Biden (A Biden lawyer going after Trump? Is anyone surprised?), but this case could permanently rescue her Google results.

9) Carroll’s dress didn’t exist back then

Carroll said the rape happened in the early 1990s. We just learned the particular dress she said she was allegedly wearing did not exist at the time.

10) She cannot remember when the rape happened

We’re not talking about the exact date. She can’t tell us if it was 1993 or 1995.

11) She won’t let anyone test her coat for DNA

Carroll calls the dress her “bad luck dress” and told CNN she will never make a talisman out of it — as though the idea had occurred to anyone. Why did she keep it around? This could be the left’s Monica Lewinsky dress, but she refuses to let anyone analyze it.

12) She doesn’t know if Trump ejaculated

I don’t know if anyone reading this has engaged in sexual intercourse, but evidence of the male orgasm is almost impossible to hide.

13) She is a serial accuser

Despite being a 3.5, she has claimed men have sexually assaulted her at least a half-dozen times. This isn’t proof of Trump’s innocence in and of itself, but it becomes relevant when surrounded by 24 other points.

14) She said it wasn’t sexual

Carroll has said pretty much everything that you could say about this encounter, from “it was not sexual” to “it was the definition of rape.” She said she would not press charges, however, because it would trivialize the experience of illegal aliens who are being “raped around the clock.”

15) She’s not his type

Trump is into elegant Slavs. This woman is like that hysterical chicken lady from “The Kids in the Hall.”

16) The judge and Carroll’s lawyer are pals

We’re told Judge Lewis Kaplan was Roberta Kaplan’s (no relation) mentor back when they both worked at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Roberta Kaplan denies this, but it can’t be denied they worked at the same firm at the same time. That alone is a conflict of interest.

17) Carroll didn’t talk to anyone about the alleged assault, until she did

If a woman is sexually assaulted, she is morally obligated to report it immediately, so the rapist doesn’t do it again. Carroll did not do this. What’s more, she didn’t talk to any of her friends about it. At least not at first. This is peculiar behavior for a blabbermouth.

18) Even if it’s all true, the settlement would be tiny

Carroll alleged that Trump cost her a columnist job at Elle, but the magazine made it clear it ended her contract as an advice columnist based on nothing more than lack of interest. But let’s assume Elle fired her because Trump wrote a mean tweet. A good price for an advice column would be a couple of hundred bucks per piece. That’s $2,000 a year for Elle. Assuming Carroll lives as long as “Dear Abby” columnist Pauline Esther Friedman, who died at 94, that would be a whopping total of $28,000 (Carroll is 80).

So, we’re off by about $82,972,000.

19) She said women “love” being abducted

She told Charlie Rose (remember him?) in 1995 that women love the idea of a caveman knocking them unconscious with a club and then dragging them — by their hair — back to the cave. I’m no feminist, but I’m pretty sure the cerebral contusions from this kind of violence are not a turn-on.

20) She said it wasn’t a big deal

“I’m a mature woman,” she said. “I can handle it.” OK, then why does she need $83 million to recover? That’s four times the amount of money you get when your kid is decapitated.

21) She lives in a Mouse House

Anyone who doubts this lady’s mental state needs to check out her house. She calls it “The Mouse House” because it’s infested with rodents (to whom she has given individual names, such as “Terbrusky”). She has painted the trees blue. She has printed out 27 years of advice column questions and stacked them all over the place. Yes, writers can be weird. But it is impossible to look at her place and not think, “This is nuts.”

22) She is a hoarder

Hoarding is a mental disorder. You can’t sue someone for calling you “crazy” if you have a mental disorder.

23) Her cat is called “Vagina” — seriously

E. Jean Carroll is obsessed with sex and her vagina. She said she lives in the woods because if she lived in the city, she’d have 16 boyfriends. She’s 80, remember?

Her dog “Tits” has blue hair, and her cat is named “Vagina.” The left-wing media thinks this is irrelevant. “Among the stranger complaints made by the former president … was that the jury wasn’t informed about the name of his accuser’s cat: Vagina T. Fireball.” Uh, when the charge is “calling a sane woman crazy,” Vagina T. Fireball matters.

24) She writes notes to herself

Wait, doesn’t everyone do that? Not like this. “The Mouse House” is festooned with bizarre messages. Her microwave says, “Burn Baby Burn.” Her bookshelf says, “Always amused never angry.” And, in a moment of deranged honesty, she taped a note to a lamp that says, “Hold your nerve. Pursue your radical options to the bitter END!”

25) Carroll said she wanted to “rape” Trump

Apparently, she thought having rough sex with him in the changing room would make for a “funny story.” (Wait, I thought she didn’t tell anyone about what happened to her out of fear.) She also suggested she’d do it for $17,000 if he was unable to speak. Sounds awfully rapey, doesn’t it?

Anyone who takes this case seriously and doesn’t see E. Jean Carroll as a complete basket case is a complete basket case.

[cocainegirlsnblunts]

Smoothies In 1991

Jack Harlow - Officially meeting Jack

Interviewer: So can you two tell us where you first met and what were your first impressions on each other.

you started cracking up thinking about that day.

10/27/21.

After 2019 you weren’t so much in the spotlight, only because you chose too. You liked to be as private as possible and your work already got the recognition it deserved. Plus you’ve already done a few interviews here and there.

You were struggling with a lot at the time and the only option you had was to take a break from your career. You stayed lowkey, stopped posting, and anytime you were in a picture or anything it was RARE.

But anyway, 2021 you started to plan your comeback and so your friend Cole posted you on your Birthday

@colebennett ✓⃝

liked by madisonbeer, chanteljeffries, mariahthescientist and 238,595 others

colebennett happy 22nd birthday twin

And Cole has worked with many people, including Jack Harlow. Who you didn’t even know really but Cole had the amazing idea to take him to the Birthday Party your lovely Best Friend, Kali Uchis was throwing you.

Your Birthday is in late October so you always have a Costume Party. This year it was a Jazz Club/Old Hollywood themed.

Many people that you’ve worked with or have a bond with came. Here are some of the people who attended.

As you’re talking with friends, Cole approaches you with some people you’ve never met and didn’t really recognize.

“Yo Arlette” he yells.

“Cole Hey!!” you say noticing there’s some people behind him.

“Look I just wanted to introduce you to my boys here, you might know some of em, this is Jack, Jack Harlow.”

the world stopped spinning when you looked into his eyes, and you damn near lost your breath when he reached for handshake.

“Happy Birthday.” he says

“nice to meet you☺️☺️” omfg. LIKE WHO IS THIS???!??? you were screaming on the inside, last person you were geeking over was Jordan. (playboicarti)

“And then this is Urban and Druski” Cole continues to introduce you.

you greet them all with a smile and a nice to meet you, because like we mentioned earlier we aren’t so aware of the people poppin at the moment😬 but some knew you

“Hey I really love your work dude, New Choppa was insane” - Urban says

“Thank you so muchhh!” you say with a smile.

Fast forward the night, you took some pictures with your friends and everyone, including Jack because Cole insisted.

Cole posted it on his story and everyone was going crazy because this was your first appearance since 2019. (yk how we freak out when we see frank ocean, this is how everyone was reacting to you)

You: So yeah to break it all down, I wanted Jacks fine ass since the day I met him.

Jack’s Pov

At the time I was on the rise of my Career. The song I was featured on with Lil Nas X was the #1 song in the world. Got Nominated for hella stuff, got hella awards. I was really accomplishing my dreams.

My friend Cole Bennett, creator of Lyrical Lemonde, fucking legend. I’ve worked with him for the music video of What’s Poppin my first hit ever.

He had this friend, and I had known of Arlette because she was a big help in the artistic side of this industry and uh, Urban has mentioned her name to me before when he’d show me some album covers, or a music video but, i never knew the face behind all that was arlette’s beautiful self.

So it’s October, all these halloween parties are happening and Cole had hit me up and said, “Yo I have this friend, Arlette Viotto she works in the same category as me. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her but, she’s having a birthday party today at 9 PM they’re always really sick, i’d love for you to meet her man.

And me like I said I never even seen what she looked like, but I looked her up on google and I was sent to a whole different dimension looking at how beautiful she was. I was also appalled reading everything she was behind like damn I never knew. But I hit Cole back I said I am going to that party, we invited more of our friends and walking into this lil jazz club, they were playing that techno shit, it got turnt.

And I’m walking around I see hella people here, some people are coming to greet me ya know telling me congrats on being number one all that. Cole brings me to go meet this Arlette Viotto. And man was she even prettier in person.

Meanwhile Urban was over here fangirling, i remember. That shit was hilarious, but yeah I used my skills of eye contact and smooth talking. It was love at first sight.

okay first of all sorry for taking forever on this. I have gotten so unmotivated on like everything i been wanting to write about but here is what i have of this Jack Harlow series im attempting to do. I hope you love it and there’s more coming, trust and believe!!

[dandelionjack]

on the train journey home from visiting the town i spent 4 infuriating years going to secondary school in. hadn’t been back once since late 2019. still feels like a casual visit to hell. the most horrific part of it all? nothing there’s changed, at all, apart from maybe a few shopfronts. the toy store’s still in the same place, the coffeeshops all in their rightful order, the traffic lights in the familiar spots and gaggles of schoolgirls standing chatting along the pavements in the same uniform they’d — we’d — worn all those infinite lifetimes ago.

five years isn’t a lot, but a lot can happen in five years. a lot of reconsideration and reconciliation and forgetting. forgiveness, maybe, because holding a grudge against your teachers and peers back from when you were all a bunch of spoiled kids is an exercise in futility.

still found myself stepping warily and with caution as i approached the school building itself, the black tiling of its roofs looming over the little street. too genre aware for a character in a realist story, i half expected to slip through some unseen crack in time and find myself face-to-face with my awkward, dishevelled younger self, her uneven pigtails and tangled wire headphones, her too-long pleated skirt and ungainly walk, probably trailing on the sidewalk behind two friends, firmly deluding herself into believing that she’s part of an indivisible ‘trio’.

but i must have missed her. must have arrived too late. didn’t get the chance to hug her and tell her, “nothing’s wrong with you. it doesn’t get better for us, not really, but we make do, find new ways to deal with the fact that we’ll never be quite seen as human by the people around us. in my time — you still don’t have many true friends, you still dream of escape, still fictionalise and romanticise the everyday to cope with the knowledge that there’s no-one coming to save us. but we survive. we live. the future’s still ahead of us and there will be many beautiful moments. that’s what’s important, so keep holding on to that hope, baby”. and then she’d yell at me or hit me and run away to catch up with her “friends”, loudly complaining about “that crazy bitch back there” to impress them

but none of that happened. no temporal gaps, no magic, no horror. no ghosts but the ones that refuse to come out yet hide in every dark corner. haunting the sports field. the chapel. the benches in assembly hall. beckoning into a cursed past you never want to revisit.

i ran as fast as my legs could take me. sprinted all the way down the shadowed footpath back to the station to take me away. and i swear i could hear cruel laughter follow

[eg-writtenthoughts]

'Scarred' Book Review & Thoughts

Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, The Cult that Bound My Life

Sarah Edmonton (with Kristine Gasbarre); 2019

This is my first post, and what better book to start off with than Scarred by Sarah Edmonson? In 2017, Sarah was an integral part of the NXIVM whistleblowers. If you don’t recognize the name, NXIVM was a cult masquerading as a self-help company since the early 2000s. ‘Scarred’ solely focuses on Sarah’s story of being promoted through NXIVM and its Stripe Path while working on her “personal growth”. 

HBO’s ‘The Vow’ was my first real introduction to NXIVM. After bingeing the first season on my (ex)boyfriend’s couch, my interest had peeked. The directors perfectly set the stage by the end of the first episode, to make the audience, myself included, think ‘oh, it doesn’t sound that bad. I get why people tried it.’

‘Scarred’ is written to make the reader feel like Sarah is writing her story to you, a personal friend. The first chapter is when the reader is given a dose of discomfort. It tells of the day Sarah was branded under the watchful eye of her best friend, Lauren. This was filmed on Lauren’s phone and sent to Keith Raniere, the leader of NXIVM. It feels like Sarah is saying “this is the worst that happened. Here it is. Everything else you’ll read just leads up to my worst moment.” The chapter itself has the feeling you get when watching a horror movie, knowing the girl checking the empty bedroom where she heard the mysterious sounds coming from, is going to die. 

But then, as you’re about to be transported back to 2005 to start Sarah’s story, an image flashed through my mind. The moment in a movie where the crazy opening scene happens and the screen freezes on the main character’s warped face as the voice over says, “Hi there. Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here.”

‘Scarred’ has a cathartic feeling. As a reader, you understand that you’re reading a part of Sarah’s healing process. Some of her experiences are shared on camera in ‘The Vow’, but in ‘Scarred’, she lays it all out. You understand her thought process as to why she joined, allowed herself to spend the money/do a work exchange to learn more, and the decade of her life to be promoted up the Stripe Path (NXIVM’s company hierarchy) before opening her own education centre in Vancouver, British Columbia. 

While reading, I’d have loved more details. What sash did Nippy have when Sarah met him? Was Nancy’s home the one that every other senior leader copied? How long was David a member of NXIVM?  Did Sarah collect Air Miles? Did Sarah and Bonnie have a friendship? (Do any of these questions make sense if you haven’t read the book? No, which is why you should read it) It often felt like she gave the bare minimum of what happened in any situation. But I still read it, all 222 pages. If I didn’t make any notes while I read, it would’ve taken me two days to finish. 

The want for more information is a ‘me thing’. I always want to know more of somebody’s story if it’s out there. At the end of the day, I understand that Sarah (and her co-writer Kristine Gasbarre) could only share what’s important to her story. 

And if you’re wondering, NXIVM had its notes of wisdom. People wouldn’t have joined if it didn’t. Sarah was able to share those tidbits throughout her book. It’s how she could rationalise the strange things and behaviours she witnessed over twelve years within the company. Genuinely, they had sentences in their curriculum that could be applied to someone’s life to make them feel just a little lighter. And yes, I said sentences. Anything more, Raniere went WILD with confusing sentences. 

But of course, we know who created that curriculum. Every time I saw a sliver of sense, I thought “if it wasn’t NXIVM, this could be beneficial.”

Before I wrap up, I’d like to add that Sarah Edmonson is an absolute badass. I know she didn’t write this book to brag but holy crap, this woman has a work ethic and determination that I envy. The dedication she put into ESP (the company under the umbrella corporation NXIVM), to growing the first Canadian centre for ESP that she opened, to enrolling as many people as she could and helping them to expand their own personal growth, is admirable. I think she could run her own non-culty company any day.

But overall, this is a story Sarah could’ve kept in her drawer with her diary or in her therapist’s notebook. Her willingness to share her vulnerability with the anonymous audience is touching and admirable. In lamest terms, she’s warning everyone not to join a cult.

Do I think ‘Scarred’ is a good way to introduce people to the NXIVM story and crimes? As good as Sarah’s book is, no I don’t. I think if you want to know all of the details about NXIVM and the timeline leading up to the 2019 trial, you should watch ‘The Vow’ for that. 

Through HBO, ‘The Vow’, a docu-series was released in 2019. Sarah, her husband Anthony “Nippy” Ames, and other whistleblowers, Mark Vicente (who can be thanked for most of the in-the-moment NXIVM footage), Bonnie Piesse, and Catherine Oxobrough appear heavily in the first season. The second season focuses heavily on the trial of Keith Reniere, NXIVM’s creator and “Vanguard”. (I’d like to personally add that I cannot see the word vanguard now without being a little creeped out.)

After you watch the documentary series and pick your jaw off the ground, listen to ‘A Little Bit Culty’, Sarah’s and Nippy’s podcast (which I avidly listen to) and read ‘Scarred’. You read with Sarah’s empathy and wholesomeness in your head to know that she wasn’t your stereotypical person to fall for a cult. She was able to rationalise it and other than a few times, I don’t want to rip my hair out at just how obviously manipulative the people around her were.

My final note… ‘Coercive control’ is a term that’s becoming more familiar to the American legal system thanks to the NXIVM case. The United States Assistant Attorneys were able to show the 2019 jury that the women charged along with Raniere weren’t doing the horrible acts they committed because it’s what they wanted. They were manipulated (brainwashed, if you will), by Raniere, something he was highly talented at. Some of these women were under his influence for 20 years! Coercive control was recently mentioned in another high profile case; this time in Hollywood. Danny Masterson, of That 70s Show fame, was charged with the SA of three women. Masterson has been convicted at the time of writing this blog post.

[euphor1a]

Camelia, aloe vera and papyrus for the ask gameee???? I really wanna knowww

Hihi sweets! Thank you for sending in 💗; i appreciate it so much! 🥺

camellia ⇢ what were you like when you were younger? do you think you’ve changed a lot?

whoa this is gonna get heavy, so i’m warning everyone reading this beforehand. things have changed for sure, i’d say... but it’s hard to point it out exactly. my younger self went through a whole different spectrum of human experiences. things were... nice(?) when i was a literal child, but it got gradually worse, worse and worse to the point where i moved out at the age of 17 and started living in a dorm in a different town. younger me was incredibly strong willed, hardworking and hopeful. i still find it super crazy how i got through everything i did and that i’m still here, surviving. younger me had so many big dreams and was motivated to follow through. i was also a bit naive, and i struggled a lot with determining characters, so i ended up getting even more hurt trying to maintain friendships with the wrong people and such. it’s not the same anymore with these things... my mental health has been a constant issue since mid-2019 (although, i must say that i’m doing a LOT better now — people who’ve been here for a while would know), and the world just kinda turned black & white... i think a lot of young adults feel the same though. i’m also super cautious about making connections with people now, which has been... idk, both good and bad? like sure, i’m a pretty lonely being, but at least i’m not hurting for people who don’t deserve me! also, it all just crashed down with the pandemic, y’know? it’s hard to say how much i’ve exactly changed, because i was brought up in a situation where i was forced to mature very early. and to be uncomfortably honest, i might seem a bit childish when i get comfortable around someone. guess i had suppressed my inner child too much with everything going on, and whenever a comforting/reliable presence comes along, it resurfaces 😅. anyway, i’m still very very proud of the younger aleyna. i wish i could hug her and tell her how amazing she is, how thankful i am for everything she did that led to me being here (in a relatively stable position) now, how the lessons she learnt through hardships made it easier for me to navigate through this complicated world... the list is endless. i just hope that a few years from now on, i can look back to this self (my late teenage years and early twenties) and feel just as proud for doing whatever i am doing right now ☺️

aloe vera ⇢ what’s something (mundane) you really want to experience in life?

answered here ♡ !

papyrus ⇢ if you put your ‘on repeat’ playlist on shuffle, what’s the first song that comes up? what do you like about it / associate it with?

the song which came up this time is “to you” by seventeen. i, genuinely am, in love with this song. have been that way since it was released in 2021. see, i got into kpop back in 2019 through bts and twice (good times)! and it took me a lot of time to actually branch out from that starting point — txt playing a big role in it because i was obsessed with run away when it came out (still my fav title track by them). i came to know about seventeen on 2020 when left & right came out, and i loved it! but i didn’t exactly go straight to “stanning”, i just added them on spotify and just vibed along whenever it came up. after that it’s mostly a blur with svt for several reasons. until attacca came out on late 2021, i saw the rock with you mv, and was like: HOLD THE FUCK UP I NEED TO GET INTO THIS SHIT IMMEDIATELY?! i remember doing everything i possibly could (following their socials and stuff, adding all their albums to my spotify library, etc.)... believe me or not, it took me almost 7 months to catch up with all the content i wanted to check out. and well, the rest, i’m sure you can see/guess. about “to you” specifically though, my first impression was — “is it legal for a song to be this good?! did they put drugs in it or something 😭?” and it’s still the same. “to you” is a work of art, one that made me feel emotions i thought i’m not capable/eligible of feeling. i love attacca the mini album so much, from the top to bottom. what a gem!

— random get to know me asks 💌

[future-oscarwinner]

Don't worry about it I go through the same thing (me not sending you an ask for a whole week) I don't take it personal, you'll reply when you reply I can wait :)

Yea this will probably be a big one again so get comfortable.

Oh boy the whole cheating thing. It was back in Monaco, people saw him with this young girl and he cheated on his wife. Worst part of it all his wife had given birth to his child (idk if it was a boy or girl) a few weeks before. I don't remember all the details I just remember being disgusted and feeling sorry for his wife.

Don't apologize it already very cool that you got into this crazy ass sport <3 There is still al lot of carlando stuff on youtube, I really recommend wathing the McLaren unboxed from 2020/2019 and the challanges they did together if you want a good laugh. Yea this season ending is definetly one of the more crazy ones.

Reb bull in it self is a pretty good team, they just suck at managing more than one driver. Its something they struggled with since the beginning and I don't think that it's going to changes as long as Verstappen is there. They are to focused on him to give younger drivers any room to grow and it suprised my they still have Perez (but maybe they'll ditch him for Ricciardo who knows really) But even before Verstappen the whole Seb Mark thing was also a small problem.

I don't think Lando will be able to thrive there. But he is smart if what Horner says can be trusted. Every time Red bull approaches him he goes to sign with McLaren a day later. I think with George going into his second season and Hamilton saying he wants to stick around a bit longer a move to Merc isn't going to happen any time soon. Hopefully McLaren will be able to build a good car for the upcoming seasons. I really hope Charles wins the wdc next year or maybe Lewis.

Don't you just love it when men give unsolicited advice, like did we ask for your opinion?! Ugh the "when I tell you, you should listen to me" I would rather die than listen to anything told to me in that way.

That's so cute I love it when girls support girls, especially in this hypermasculine sport. It gives you something to do in the off season. I'm curently going over the seasons that I can't really remember from my childhood.

I think that combined with Pierre inviting the FIA to come look at his bare ass was just to much for them. They give him so many stupid penalties but honestly I didn't expect anything different from the FIA.

I was standing in the store with my mom when I saw the announcement, I got so excited. She was also very happy when I told her. She is the person that got me into the sport and she used to be a very big schumi fan. Now we get to enjoy schumini together it's kind of wild really.

Fred better go make some drastic changes in the strategy area because boy did they keep fucking it up every race.

To be honest I just don't like his face, and the fact that he was able to pull ginger spice like how?

Like you know my day and evening could have gone better :/ Have a good night as well (or more like morning at this point) <3 also now that I'm off anon I send pictues as well <3

Thank you for understanding 💖

Omg he cheated what a pig!!! And right after she gave birth!!!

Yeah, but I wish I was there to experience it even though I think living through Carlando break up, Yukierre break up would have been my last straw so I'm kinda glad I wasn't there but yk

Yeah, Red Bull as a team is pretty solid. I want them to ditch Perez just so Danny could be on the grid, but I don't think we'd see much difference, maybe even history repeating itself :/

Lando is smart and aware of himself and his abilities and will not move to a team that will not treat him as a priority so that's why he stays with McLaren (a spoiled little brat 😇) i think his contract is until 2024. Also he's been talking about McLaren being his dream so my theory is he wants to win with McLaren first before he moves <3

Yeah, too bad no one can really influence my opinion when I already fixated it

FIA is a joke, especially with the recent news

Omg your mom is an f1 fan that's so cute 🥺

Most are saying that Fred is going to favor Charles, what do you think?

Omg yeah when I found out he pulled a ginger spice girl I was like :ooo

And hey you're off anon! Nice to finally meet you!! I hope things got at least a little bit better in between these few days and that you have an amazing rest of the day <3

[yeniasworld]

All this information

and research

overwhelms my mind,

it hurts, confusing,

it places me in a state

where fear takes over,

and you start questioning

everything and everyone.

When I began my transition,

I watched endless tarot readings,

fasted for two weeks at a time,

smoked weed—not a lot,

just enough to sleep

while traveling across Europe,

France and Spain in a van

with the man I loved,

taking pictures, seeking peace.

Returning to London,

I continued—

but then paranoia came,

depression, anxiety in tow.

By February 2024,

the voices started,

whispers of death,

the paranoia grew.

Mid-February,

my so-called crossing over,

awakening came.

The voices told me,

I was going to die.

My paranoia

was through the roof.

I remember December 2023,

going to my aunt's house—

she said strange things,

saw the signs,

knew I was losing it.

She hinted at demons,

called me a witch,

suggested I go back

to Senegal for prayers.

She played dua songs,

burned sage, rituals in the air,

hoping for something to happen.

But she knew,

I was very spiritual,

prayed sometimes,

and back in 2016,

I started healing,

exploring religions, diets, therapy.

In 2019, I turned vegan,

fully alkaline, thanks to Dr. Sebi.

Super healthy, avoiding starch,

tapping into spiritual energy.

Experimenting with herbs,

bathing, cleansing,

feeling supercharged,

losing weight,

avoiding the heavy African foods.

I’m not saying my family

did anything—witchcraft, maybe,

but something always felt wrong.

Yet, my light,

my confidence was unshakable.

Luck followed me,

even my dad joked

about the favor I had,

compared to my twin.

Changing my diet,

everything shifted,

feeling whole,

a mini-god in my own right.

Everything was clear.

I stopped visiting my aunt,

her energy, her diet,

no longer for me.

I depended on her once,

for support, food,

but as I shifted,

I walked, hiked, jogged,

lost weight naturally.

Spent time alone,

reading books on spirituality,

meditation, growth.

I distanced myself from everyone,

especially my mother.

The energy release

was crazy—

I felt more connected,

achieving goals,

and finally,

reconnected with my ancestors.

Spirit energy like an aura,

guiding me,

sending signs to my higher self,

wealth in all aspects

of this lifetime.

But the voices,

telling me I would die,

were paranoia,

fueled by tarot readings

and inner fears.

I cut people off,

even my mother.

But on that night,

I heard a second voice,

God, telling me,

"You will be okay, my child."

Over time,

that voice became

my higher self—

my intuition,

guiding me,

stopping me

from spiraling deeper.

This journey,

reconnected me

to my true self,

my inner child.

Paranoia became therapy,

forcing me to face

what I ran from.

Oversharing on social media

helped me release.

Now I pick what resonates

from tarot,

using it to strengthen my mind.

Spirituality is real,

even if uncomfortable to share.

In closing,

God gave me mental health struggles,

and the hard times,

to grow, adapt,

to master myself.

I’m connected now,

to pure energy,

protected,

ready for this era—

my era—

with no hesitation.

[tearsofperseides]

I'm making this because I want to post something, but also am in somewhat of a manic episode and this is how I cope so-

Explaining some of my kins

Emily Dickinson (Dickinson)

If anyone knows that "Is this fuckin play about us?!" audio from Tiktok, that's how I felt when I first saw this woman on my screen. Aside from having siblings, there is NOTHING that sets us apart. The inflection in her voice, how she interacts with people around her, her family's dynamic, her internal monologues, and how she copes with things. I have two tattoos dedicated to this show because the show resonated with me to such a high extreme.

Rebecca Bunch (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend)

Without going into too much detail. Let's just say that I've been season 1 Rebecca in the past. I watched the show back in 2019 and multiple times, at some almost comedic scenes I started crying because I resonated with Rebecca to such a high degree. I saw, not parts of myself, but my whole self in her. A little funny thing is one of my friends is named Patrick, so I often sing "(Tell Me I'm Okay) Patrick" when he's around. And of course, the quote: "It just, it just feels like everyone is in this cabal of normal people, and they're all laughing at me like I'm the jester in my own Truman Show. Patrick, tell me what the secret is."

Robin Buckley (Stranger Things)

A lil Robin! She's one of the reasons why I changed my name! I love the name, Robin, I always did! I mean there's not much to say about her in terms of kinning. A little ball of anxiety that seems intimidating at first (apparently a lot of my friends found me intimidating when they saw me), a little fun comedic character that actually borders on tragedy (if the show would be written well-). Autistic as well, but that's fanon.

Eleanor Shellstrop (The Good Place)

UMM HELLO??? HI?? ME??? Mommy issues, daddy issues. Just issues in general, deflecting with humor??? I actually started hyper-fixating on philosophy because of this show, my friends constantly keep saying I'd be the main character in a sitcom too (which... I am...). I mean just watch the show if you haven't, it's really good.

Edward Teach (Our Flag Means Death)

When I made my friend watch OFMD I asked him which character he thinks I kin and the second Blackbeard showed up he pointed to him and I asked why, his response was "What do you mean, why?! Look at him! ADHD off the charts! He's all over the place! He's fascinated by the simplest of things!", then later on as the show continued, when we got Ed's backstory, he once again said "I can't believe you asked me why when he has daddy issues." And of course, there's more to me relating to him outside of these little traits. Will I share anything else? No, fuck you (/j), it's personal!

Nadine Franklin (The Edge of Seventeen)

SHE IS ME, I AM HER!!! MY MOM EVEN LOOKS LIKE HER MOM!! SHEEEEEE-

This is all for now, some more Robin lore I guess hahaha-

I think this could be classified as a shit-post but honestly I don't know

[paperpocalypse]

family outing.

50 Wordless Ways to Say “I Love You”: 29. Tucking their hair behind their ear to help them get it out of their face.

Pairing: Five Hargreeves x Reader

Word Count: 1,436 words

Warning: Mild swearing

[A/N: Mild S2 spoilers!]

“So,” Vanya’s brow furrows, “Five met you after the apocalypse?”

“Yep.” Leaning against her car, you cross your arms and sigh dreamily. “Hate at first sight. He almost shot me in the head.”

“… With a gun?”

You grin. “Well, he couldn’t’ve shot me with a Twinkie.”

Vanya looks ahead at where Five is talking to some middle-aged guy, his expression friendly and polite. What a businessman. Her eyes narrow in shocked disbelief. “This is crazy,” she murmurs. “My family is crazy.”

Your grin widens as she shakes her head. Something about her mannerisms helps you realize why Five is so fond of her, though he’s never said it outright. She’s definitely your favorite of the bunch. Sans murderous intent.

“Some types of crazy can be good,” you reply, nudging her arm. “But your family’s got all of them and it’s gonna get real messy. Time to spice up your little farm life, Vanya.”

She chuckles a little awkwardly and shrugs. “I just hope I’ll have time to talk to them. Again, I mean. Maybe I’ll remember something when we’re all together.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Noticing Five bidding farewell to the man, you push yourself off the bumper and wave at him. “Any luck, Five?”

He points down the street behind you as he walks back over. “Plano Street Rooming House for Solitary Men,” he answers. “It’s just a few blocks from here.”

“How do you know he’s there?” Vanya asks.

“I really doubt Luther would live anywhere else.”

You snort, raising your hands in surrender when Five returns it with a semi-faux withering look. With a sigh, he shakes his head and opens the rear passenger door, gesturing for you to get in.

As Vanya starts the car and turns into the street, you look through the rearview mirror at Five as he tells her where to go. Despite being stuck in a thirteen-year-old body, he still has that resting glower of his that makes him look perpetually stressed. 

(Of course, it’s not just a matter of looking stressed – he is definitely stressed. Wound up tighter than a spring. You’ll probably need to force him to sit down and relax for at least a half-hour tonight before he explodes.)

His hair is a little disheveled, so you reach over to brush it out of his eyes. It doesn’t really work, but just going through the familiar motion grounds you somehow. “You know,” you muse as Five glances back at you, “Luther’s probably living there, but I doubt he’ll be in right now. He’s probably with Ruby somewhere.”

“Even if he is, we can ask around. I assume that at least one person there knows his business.”

He absently lifts a hand to smooth his hair back, and you smile. “Good point.”

—

“Hello, do you know Luther Hargreeves by any chance?”

After some door-to-door work, someone from Luther’s hall finally answers your knock. He’s a burly man, though not nearly as big as Luther, and obviously drunk off his rocker. Definitely solitary. He squints at the three of you through red, puffy eyes.

“Luther? Yeahhh, I know ‘im. Huge bloke. Real hairy.”

“That’s the one,” Five confirms. “You see, we’re his brother and sister. He hasn’t visited home lately and we’re pretty worried, so we’re just wondering if you know where he is.”

Burly picks at his teeth. “Brother n’ sister, eh? Well,” he rumbles, “I dunno where he is, but I know some of the boys are gonna watch ‘im fight tonight.”

“Where’s the fight?” Vanya asks.

The man regards her with suspicion. “Well, it ain’t a place for a little lady like you.” He swirls his beer around in its bottle, then jabs a finger at all of you. “Don’t want you three squealing to the cops, either.”

“We won’t,” you assure him, smiling sweetly. “We just want to check on Luther.”

With a little more cajoling, you finally obtain the time and place for Luther’s fight before the man waves you away with a grunt, slamming his door shut. You give your companions a self-satisfied grin before descending the staircase back down to street level. Worked like a charm. (You suspect your youthful looks probably helped a lot, though.)

“How’d you do that?” Vanya wonders as the three of you step out onto the sidewalk.

“Simple,” you respond. “I have a knack for sweeping tough guys off their feet.”

You wink secretly at Five. He rolls his eyes, the minutest of smiles at the corner of his mouth, before ushering you and Vanya back to the Chevy.

Your little trio spends the next few hours driving and poking around, looking for Luther or Klaus or Allison. The optimist in you hopes you’ll run across at least one of them. But Dallas is a big place, and darkness begins to fall around 5:30 without a single sighting.

“Dammit.” Five clicks his tongue as you exit a paint shop alone.

“At least we know where Luther will be,” you point out, shoving your hands in your pockets. “How about we get something to eat before we head to the fight?”

Vanya unlocks the car. “There’s a place I know close by,” she says, lips quirking up. “They have sandwiches and donuts there.”

You pat her back. “Sounds great, Vanya. Five? You’ve got to eat something, too.”

Your favorite number crosses his arms as you and Vanya stare at him expectantly. “We’ll get something quick,” he eventually says.

The trip only takes a few minutes. The three of you get sandwiches and a donut each and unwrap them on the bench outside the bakery.

“Sissy and Harlan and I get something from here whenever we go into town,” Vanya says, finishing the last of her sandwich and picking her donut up. “It’s pretty good.”

“So good,” you agree. Lands alive, sitting out here like this makes you nostalgic. Ignoring the upcoming doomsday and the ‘60′s aesthetic, it feels like you’re back in 1927 again, staying out past curfew with your peers. You smile to yourself and look down at your half-finished maple bar. Best to enjoy it while it lasts.

A finger quickly sweeps your brow, tucking a lock of hair out of your face. You blink and glance over at Five, but he’s looking across the street and starting on his own pastry. (Apple fritter. Perhaps you’ll ask him one day why he always gets those.)

Heart feeling even softer than before, you lean silently against his side. He doesn’t move.

After a moment, Five speaks up. “When we were kids, I brought you to this donut shop near the academy a couple times.”

“You did?” Vanya asks.

“Yeah. Griddy’s.” Oh, the one near the academy. The one that had gotten destroyed along with everything else in 2019. He gestures at the last bit of donut – plain, glazed – in her hands. “You usually got that kind.”

She raises her eyebrows, looking into her napkin. “Oh, wow. I guess it must’ve been a subconscious choice or something, then.”

“Hm.”

“You know, I’m glad we found you, Vanya,” you offer warmly. “I didn’t … really have time to get to know you the last time we met.”

A smile spreads across her face. “Same here. For both things, I mean. Not that I’d know much about our first meeting.” She pauses, examining you for a second, then blurts, “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

She awkwardly motions between you and her brother. “Are you and Five …?”

“Partners,” you finish, “in every sense of the word. From what I know, at least.” With a grin, you turn to Five. “Is that more or less right?”

He rolls his eyes fondly. “Unfortunately,” he mutters as you move to smooth his hair back again. He sure had lovely hair when he was a kid – not that you didn’t appreciate his looks back in your Commission days. This de-aging thing really knocks you for a loop sometimes.

Vanya nods, still looking vaguely confused. “Okay. I don’t want to make things weird, I just – well, you two are kind of … young –”

“Believe me, we’re much older than we look,” you quip, standing up. “But that’s a tale for another time. We gotta go.”

Disposing of your trash, you join the others into the Chevy and start your next journey to Luther Hargreeves. Radio turned off, the leather seat squeaks as you lean back and listen to Vanya and Five murmuring in the front.

To see the siblings together again makes you glow inside, a bit of calm before the inevitable storm. You drink it in as much as you can.

[path-of-my-childhood]

CABIN FEVER - Aaron Dessner: Producing folklore and evermore

Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Tom Doyle

The pandemic gave Taylor Swift a chance to explore new musical paths, with two lockdown albums co-written and produced by the National's Aaron Dessner.

Few artists during the pandemic have been as prolific as Taylor Swift. In July 2020, she surprise-released folklore, a double-length album recorded entirely remotely and in isolation. It went on to become the biggest global seller of the year, with four million sales and counting. Then, in December, she repeated the trick with the 15-song evermore, which quickly became Swift's eighth consecutive US number one.

In contrast to her country-music roots and the shiny synth-pop that made her a superstar, both folklore and evermore showcased a very different Taylor Swift sound: one veering more towards atmospheric indie and folk. The former album was part-produced by Swift and her regular co-producer Jack Antonoff (St Vincent, Lana Del Rey), while the other half of the tracks were overseen by a new studio collaborator, Aaron Dessner of the National. For evermore, aside from one Antonoff-assisted song, Dessner took full control of production.

Good Timing

Although his band are hugely popular and even won a Grammy for their 2017 album Sleep Well Beast, Aaron Dessner admits that it initially felt strange for an indie-rock guitarist and keyboard player to be pulled into such a mainstream project. Swift had already declared herself a fan of the National, and first met the band back in 2014. Nonetheless, Dessner was still surprised when the singer sent him a text "out of the blue" last spring. "I mean, I didn't think it was a hoax," he laughs. "But it was very exciting and a moment where you think it's like serendipity or something, especially in the middle of the pandemic. When she asked if I would ever consider writing with her, I just happened to have a lot of music that I had worked really hard on. So, the timing was sort of lucky. It opened up this crazy period of collaboration. It was a pretty wild ride."

Since 2016, Aaron Dessner has been based at his self-built rural facility, Long Pond Studio, in the Hudson Valley, upstate New York. The only major change to the studio since SOS last spoke to Dessner in October 2017 has been the addition of a vintage WSW Siemens console built in 1965. "It had been refurbished by someone," he says, "and I think there's only three of them in the United States. I heard it was for sale from our friend [and the National producer/mixer] Peter Katis. That's a huge improvement here."

Although the National made Sleep Well Beast and its 2019 successor I Am Easy To Find at Long Pond, the band members are scattered around the US and Europe, meaning Dessner is no stranger to remote working and file sharing. This proved to be invaluable for his work with Swift. Dessner spent the first six weeks of lockdown writing music that he believed to be for Big Red Machine, his project with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. Instead, many of these work-in-progress tracks would end up on folklore. Their first collaboration (and the album's first single), 'cardigan', for instance, emerged from an idea Dessner had been working on backstage during the National's European arena tour of Winter 2019.

"I sent her a folder and in the middle of the night she sent me that song," Dessner explains. "So, the next morning I was just listening to it, like, `Woah, OK, this is crazy."

On The Move

As work progressed, it quickly became apparent that Swift and Dessner were very much in tune as a songwriting and producing unit. There was very little Dessner had to do, he says, in terms of chopping vocals around to shape the top lines. "I think it's because I'm so used to structuring things like a song, with verses and choruses and bridges," he reckons. "In most cases, she sort of kept the form. If she had a different idea, she would tell me when she was writing and I would chop it up for her and send it to her. But, mostly, things kind of stayed in the form that we had."

Dessner and Swift were working intensively and at high speed throughout 2020, so much so that on one occasion the producer sent the singer a track and went out for a run in the countryside around Long Pond. By the time he got back, Swift had already written 'the last great american dynasty' and it was waiting for him in his inbox. "That was a crazy moment," he laughs. "One of the astonishing things about Taylor is what a brilliant songwriter she is and the clarity of her ideas and, when she has a story to tell, the way she can tell it. I think she's just been doing it for so long, she has a facility that makes you feel like you could never do what she's capable of. But we were a good pair because I think the music was inspiring to her in such a way that the stories were coming."

Swift's contributions to folklore were recorded in a makeshift studio in her Los Angeles home. Laura Sisk engineered the sessions as the singer recorded her vocals, using a Neumann U47, in a neighbouring bedroom. Live contact between Swift, Sisk, Dessner and Long Pond engineer Jonathan Low was done through real-time online collaboration platform Audiomovers.

"We would listen in remotely and kind of go back and forth," says Dessner. "We used Audiomovers and then we would have Zoom as a backup. But mainly we were just using Audiomovers, so we could actually be in her headphones. It's powerful, it's great. I've used it a lot with people during this time. Then, later on, when we recorded evermore, a lot of the vocals were done here at the studio actually when Taylor was visiting when we did the [Disney+ documentary] Long Pond Sessions. But Taylor's vocals for folklore were all done remotely."

Keeping Secrets

Given the huge international interest in Swift, the team had to work with an elaborate file-sharing arrangement to ensure that the tracks didn't leak online. Understandably, Dessner won't be drawn on the specifics. "Yeah, I mean we had to be very careful, so everything was very secretive," he says. "There were passwords on both ends and we communicated in a specific way when sharing mixes and everything. There was a high level of confidentiality and data encryption. It was sort of a learning curve.

"I'm not used to that," he adds, "'cause usually we're just letting files kind of fly all over the Internet [laughs]. But I think with someone like her, there's just so many people that are paying attention to every move that she makes, which can be a little, I think, oppressive for her. We tried to make it as comfortable as possible and we got used to how to get things to her and back to us. It worked pretty well."

Drums & Guitars

For the generally minimalist beat programming on the records, Dessner would sometimes turn to his more expensive new analogue drum generators - Vermona's DRM1 and Dave Smith's Tempest - but more often used the Synthetic Bits iOS app FunkBox. "There's just a lot of great vintage drum machine sounds in there, and they sound pretty cool, especially if you overdrive it," he says. "Often I send that through an amplifier, or through effects into an amplifier. Then I have a [Roland) TR-8 and a TR-8S that I use a lot. I also use the drum machine in the [Teenage Engineering] OP-1. So, a song like 'willow', that's just me tapping the OP-1."

Elsewhere, Dessner's guitar work appears on the tracks, with the intricate melodic layering on 'the last great american dynasty' from folklore having been inspired by Radiohead's In Rainbows. "Almost all of the electric guitar on Taylor's records is played direct through a REDDI DI into the Siemens board," he says. "It's usually just my 1971 Telecaster played direct and it just sounds great. Oftentimes I just put a little spring reverb on it and sometimes I'll overdrive the board like it's an amplifier, 'cause it breaks up really beautifully.

"I have a 1965 [Gibson] Firebird that I play usually through this 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb. So, if I am playing into an amp, that's what it is. But on 'the last great american dynasty', those little pointillistic guitars, that's just played direct with the Telecaster through the board."

Elsewhere, Aaron Dessner took Taylor Swift even further out of her sonic comfort zone. A key track on folklore, the Cocteau Twins-styled 'epiphany', features her voice amid a wash of ambient textures, created by Dessner slowing down and reversing various instrumental parts in Pro Tools. "I created a drone using the Mellotron [MD4000D] and the Prophet and the OP-1 and all kinds of synth pads," he says. "Then I duplicated all the tracks, and some of them I reversed and some of them I dropped an octave. All manner of using varispeed and Polyphonic Elastic Audio and changing where they were sitting. Just to create like this Icelandic glacier of sounds was my idea. Then I wrote the chord progression against that.

"The [Pro Tools] session was not happy," he adds with a chuckle. "It kept crashing. Eventually I had to print the drone but I printed it by myself and there was some crackle in it. It was distorting. And then I couldn't recreate it so Jon Low, who was helping me, was kind of mad at me 'cause he was like, 'You can't do that.' And I was like, 'Well, I was working quickly. I didn't know it'd become a song."

Orchestra Of Nowhere

Meanwhile, the orchestrations that appear on several of the tracks were scored by Aaron's twin brother and National bandmate, Bryce Dessner, who is located in France. "I would just make him chord charts of the songs and send them to him in France," Aaron says. "Then he would orchestrate things in Sibelius and send the parts to me. I would send the parts and the instrumental tracks to different players remotely and they would record them literally in their bedrooms or in their attics. None of it was done as a group, it was all done separately. But that's how we've always worked in the National so it's quite natural."

On folklore standout track 'exile', Justin Vernon of Bon Iver delivered his stirring vocal for the duet remotely from his home in Eaux Claires, Wisconsin. "He's renovating his studio, so he has a little home studio in his garage," says Dessner. "It was Taylor's idea to approach him. I sent him Taylor's voice memo of her singing both parts, and he got really excited and loved the song and then he wrote the extra part in the bridge.

"I do a lot of work remotely with Justin also, so it was easy to send him tracks and he would track to it and send back his vocals. I was sending him stems, so usually it's just a vocal stem of Taylor and an instrumental stem and then if he wants something deeper, I'll give him more stems. But generally, he's just working with the vocal layers and an instrumental."

Vernon also provided the grainy beat that kicks off 'closure', one of two tracks on evermore that started life as a sketch for the second Big Red Machine album. "It was this little loop that Justin had given me in this folder of 'Starters', he calls them. I had heard that and been playing the piano to it. But I was hearing it in 5/4, although it's not in 5/4. 'Closure' really opened everything up further. There were no real limits to where we were gonna try to write songs."

Given the number of remote players, Dessner says there were surprisingly few problems with the file swapping and that it was a fairly painless technical process. "It was pretty smooth, but there were issues," he admits. "Sometimes sample-rate issues, or if I happened to give someone an instrumental that was an MP3, that sometimes lines up differently than if you send them an actual WAV that's bounced on the grid. So, sometimes I'd have to kinda eyeball things.

"If there was trouble it started to be because of track counts. I probably only used 20 percent of what was actually recorded, 'cause we would try a lot of things, y'know. So, eventually the sessions got kinda crazy and you'd have to deactivate a lot of things and print things. But we got used to that."

Soft Piano

Aaron Dessner's characteristic dampened upright piano sound, familiar from the National's albums, is much in evidence throughout both folklore and evermore. "The upright is a Yamaha U1 that I've had for more than a decade. Usually, I play it with the soft pedal down and that's the sound of 'hoax' or 'seven' or 'cardigan', y'know, that felted sound. It kind of almost sounds like an electric piano.

"I always mic it the same way, just with two [AKG] 414s, and they're always the same distance off the wall. I had a studio in Brooklyn for 10 years and then when I moved here, I copied the same [wooden] pattern on the wall. And the reason I did that is 'cause of how much I love how this piano sounds bouncing off that wall. It just does something really special for the harmonics."

When on other folklore songs, such as 'exile' or 'the 1', where the piano was the main sonic feature of the track, Dessner played his Steinway grand. "A lot of times we use a pair of Coles [4038s] on the Steinway, just cause it's darker. But sometimes we'll have the 414s there as well and choose."

Keeping Warm

On both folklore and evermore, Taylor Swift's voice is very much front and center and high in the mix, and generally sounds fairly dry. "I think the main thing was I wanted her vocals to have a more full range than maybe you typically hear," Dessner explains. "'Cause I think a lot of the more pop-oriented records are mixed a certain way and they take some of the warmth out of the vocal, so that it's very bright and it kinda cuts really well on the radio. But she has this wonderful lower warmth frequency in her voice which is particularly important on a song like `seven'. If you carved out that mud, y'know, it wouldn't hit you the same way. Or, like, `cardigan', I think it needs that warmth, the kind of fuller feeling to it. It makes it darker, but to me that's where a lot of emotion is."

Effects-wise, almost all of the treatments were done in the box. "There's no outboard reverbs printed," says Dessner. "The only things that we did print would be like an [Eventide] H3000 or sometimes the [WEM] CopiCat tape delay for just a really subtle slap. But generally, it's just different reverbs in the box that Jon was using. He uses the Valhalla stuff quite a bit and some other UAD reverbs, like the [Capitol] Chambers. I often just use Valhalla VintageVerb and the [Avid] Black Spring and simple things."

In some instances, the final mix ended up being the never-bettered rough mix, while other songs took far more work. "'cardigan' is basically the rough, as is `seven'. So, like the early, early mixes, when we didn't even know we were mixing, we never were able to make it better. Like if you make it sound 'good', it might not be as good 'cause it loses some of its weird magic, y'know. But songs like `the last great american dynasty' or 'mad woman', those songs were a little harder to create the dynamics the way you want them, and the pay-off without going too far, and with also just keeping in the kind of aesthetic that we were in. Those were harder, I would say.

"On evermore, I would say 'willow' was probably the hardest one to finish just because there were so many ways it could've gone. Eventually we settled back almost to the point where it began. So, there's a lot of stuff that was left out of 'willow', just because the simplicity of the idea I think was in a way the strongest."

The subject of this month's Inside Track article, 'willow' was the first song written for evermore, immediately following the release of folklore. "It almost felt like a dare or something," Dessner laughs. "We were writing, recording and mixing all in one kind of work stream and we went from one record to the other almost immediately. We were just sort off to the races. We didn't really ever stop since April."

Rubber & Vinyl

Sometimes, Dessner and Swift drew inspiration from unlikely sources; `no body, no crime', for instance, started when he gave her a 'rubber bridge' guitar made by Reuben Cox of the Old Style Guitar Shop in LA. "He's my very old friend," says Dessner of Cox. "He buys undervalued vintage guitars. Stuff that was made in the '50s and '60s as sort of learner guitars, like old Silvertones and Kays and Harmonys. These kinds of guitars which now are quite special, but they're still not valued the same way that vintage Fenders or Gibsons are valued. Then, he customizes them.

"Recently he started retrofitting these guitars with a rubber bridge and flatwound strings. He'll take, like, an acoustic Silvertone from 1958 and put a bridge on it that's covered in this kind of rubber that deadens the strings, so it really has this kind of dead thrum to it. And he puts two pickups in there, one that's more distorted and one that's cleaner. They're just incredible guitars. I thought Taylor would enjoy having one 'cause she loves the sound. So, I had Reuben make one for her and she used it to write `no body, no crime'."

Another friend of Dessner's, Ryan Olsen, has developed a piece of software called the Allovers Hi-Hat Generator which helped create the unusual harmonic loops that feature on `marjorie'. "It's not available on the market," Dessner says of the software. "It's just something that he uses personally, but I think hopefully eventually it'll come out. I wouldn't say it's artificial intelligence software but there's something very intelligent about it [laughs]. It basically analyses audio information and is able to separate audio into identifiable samples and then put them into a database. You then can design parameters for it to spit out sequences that are incredibly musical.

"When Ryan comes here, he'll just take all kinds of things that I give him and run it through there and then it'll spit out, like, three hours of stuff. Then I go through it and find the layers that I love, then I loop them. You can hear it also on the song 'happiness', the drumming in the background. It's not actually played. That's drums that have been sampled and then re-analyzed and re-sequenced out of this Allovers Hi-Hat Generator."

The song `marjorie' is named after Swift's opera-singer grandmother and so, fittingly, her voice can be heard flitting in and out of the mix at the end of the track. "Taylor's family gave us a bunch of recordings of her grandmother," Dessner explains. "But they were from old, very scratchy, noisy vinyl. So, we had to denoise it all using [iZotope's] RX and then I went in and I found some parts that I thought might work. I pitch-shifted them into the key and then placed them. It took a while to find the right ones, but it's really beautiful to be able to hear her. It's just an incredibly special thing, I think."

Meet At The Pond

Taylor Swift finally managed to get together with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff in September 2020 for the filming of folklore: the long pond studio sessions, featuring the trio live-performing the album. It also provided an opportunity for Swift to add her vocals to some of the evermore tracks.

"It did allow us to have more fun, I think," says Dessner. "Y'know, drink more wine and just kinda be in the same place and have the feeling of blasting the music here and dancing around and just enjoying ourselves. She's really a lovely person to hang out with, so in that sense I'm glad that we had that chance to work together in person.

"We were using a [Telefunken] U47 to record Taylor here," he adds. "Either we were using one of the Siemens preamps on the board, which are amazing. Or I have Neve 1064s [preamps/EQs] and we use a Lisson Grove [AR-i] tube compressor generally."

One entirely new song, `tis the damn season', came out of this face-to-face approach, which Swift wrote in the middle of the night after the team had stayed up late drinking. "We had a bunch of wine actually," Dessner laughs, "and then everybody went to sleep, I thought. But I think she must have had this idea swimming around in her head, 'cause the next morning when she arrived, she sang 'Us the damn season' for me in my kitchen. It's maybe my favourite song we've written together. Then she sang it at dinner for me and my wife Stine and we were all crying. It’s just that kind of a song, so it was quite special.”

National Unity

One key track on evermore, 'coney island', features all of the members of the National and sees Swift duetting with their singer Matt Berninger. "My brother [Bryce] actually originated that song," says Aaron Dessner. "I sent him a reference at one point - I can't remember what it was - and then he was sort of inspired to write that chord progression. Then we worked together to sort of develop it and I wrote a bunch of parts and we structured it.

"Taylor and William Bowery [the songwriting pseudonym of Swift's boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn] wrote 'coney island' and she sang a beautiful version. It felt kind of done, actually. But then I think we all collectively thought, Taylor and myself and Bryce, like this was the closest to a National song."

Dessner then asked the brothers who make up the National's rhythm section, drummer Bryan and bassist Scott Devendorf, to play on 'coney island'. Matt Berninger, as he often does with the band's own tracks, recorded his vocal at home in Los Angeles. "It was never in the same place, it was done remotely," says Dessner, "except Bryan was here at Long Pond when he played. It was great to collaborate as a band with Taylor."

No Compromise

folklore and evermore have been both enormous critical and commercial successes for Taylor Swift. Aaron Dessner reckons that making these anti-pop records has freed the singer up for the future. "I think it was very liberating for her," he says. "I think that's the thing that's been probably the biggest change for her has just been being able to make songs without compromise and then release them without the promotional requirements that she's used to from the past. Obviously, it comes at this time when we're all in lockdown and nobody can tour or go on talk shows or anything. But I think for her probably it will impact what she does in the future.

"But I also think she can shapeshift again," he concludes. "Who knows where she'll go? She's had many celebrated albums from the past, but to release two albums of this quality in such a short time, it really did shine a light on her songwriting talent and her storytelling ability and also just her willingness to experiment and collaborate. Somehow, I ended up in the middle of all that and I'm very grateful."

INSIDE TRACK - Jonathan Low: Secrets of the Mix Engineers

Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Paul Tingen

From sketches to final mixes, engineer Jonathan Low spent 2020 overseeing Taylor Swift’s hit lockdown albums folklore and evermore.

“I think the theme of a lot of my work nowadays, and especially with these two records, is that everything is getting mixed all the time. I always try to get the songs to sound as finalised as they can be. Obviously that’s hard when you’re not sure yet what all the elements will be. Tracks morph all the time, and yet everything is always moving forwards towards completion in some way. Everything should sound fun and inspiring to listen to all the time.”

Speaking is Jonathan Low, and the two records he refers to are, of course, Taylor Swift’s 2020 albums folklore and evermore, both of which reached number one in the UK and the US. Swift’s main producer and co‑writer on the two albums was the National’s Aaron Dessner, also interviewed in this issue. Low is the engineer, mixer and general right‑hand man at Long Pond Studios in upstate New York, where he and Dessner spent most of 2020 working on folklore and evermore, with Swift in Los Angeles for much of the time.

“In the beginning it did not feel real,” recalls Low. “There was this brand‑new collaboration, and it was amazing how quickly Aaron made these instrumental sketches and Taylor wrote lyrics and melodies to them, which she initially sent to us as iPhone voice memos. During our nightly family dinners in lockdown, Aaron would regularly pull up his phone and say, ‘Listen to this!’ and there would be another voice memo from Taylor with this beautiful song that she had written over a sketch of Aaron’s in a matter of hours. The rate at which it was happening was mind‑blowing. There was constant elevation, inspiration and just wanting to continue the momentum.

“We put her voice memos straight into Pro Tools. They had tons of character, because of the weird phone compression and cutting midrange quality you just would not get when you put someone in front of a pristine recording chain. Plus there was all this bleed. It’s interesting how that dictates the attitude of the vocal and of the song. Even though none of the original voice memos ended up on the albums, they often gave us unexpected hints. These voice memos were such on‑a‑whim things, they were really telling. Taylor had certain phrasings and inflections that we often returned to later on. They became our reference points.”

Pond Life

The making of the National’s 2017 album Sleep Well Beast and the setup at Long Pond were covered in SOS October 2017; today the studio remains pretty much the same, with the exception of a new desk. “The main space is really big, and the console sits in the middle,” says Low. “In 2019, I installed a 1965 WSW/Siemens, which has 24 line‑in and microphone channels and another 24 line channels. WSW is the Austrian branch of Siemens usually built for broadcast. It’s loaded with 811510B channels. The build quality is insane, the switches and pots feel like they were made yesterday. To me it hints at the warm haze of a Class‑A Neve channel but sits further forward in the speakers. The midrange band on the passive EQ is a huge part of its charm, it really does feel like you’re changing the tone of the actual source rather than the recording. Most microphones go through the desk on their way into Pro Tools, though we sometimes use outboard Neve 1064 mic pres. Occasionally I use the Siemens to sum a mix.

“We have a pair of ATC SCM45 monitors, which sound very clear in the large room. The ceiling is very high, and the front wall is about 25 feet behind the monitors. There are diffusers on the sidewalls and the back walls are absorbing, so there are very few reflections. Aaron and I will be listening in tons of different ways. I’ll listen in my home studio with similar ATC SCM20 monitors or on my ‘70s Marantz hi‑fi setup. Aaron is always checking things in his car, and if there’s something that is bugging him, I’ll join him in his car to find out what he hears.”

Low works at Long Pond and with Dessner most of the time, though he does find time to do other projects, among hem this last year the War On Drugs, Waxahatchee and Nap Eyes. When lockdown started in Spring 2020, Low tacked up on supplies and "had a bunch f mixes lined up". Meanwhile, on the Eest Coast, Swift had seen her Lover Fest our cancelled. With help from engineer aura Sisk, she set up a makeshift studio which she dubbed Kitty Committee in bedroom in her Los Angeles home, and began working with long-term producer nd co-writer Jack Antonoff. At the end of April, however, Swift also started working with Dessner, which took the project in different direction. The impressionistic, atmospheric, electro-folk instrumentals Dessner sent her were mostly composed nd recorded by him at Long Pond, assisted by Low.

Sketching Sessions

The instrumental sketches Aaron makes come into being in different ways," elaborates Low. "Sometimes they are more fleshed-out ideas, sometimes they are less formed. But normally Aaron will set himself up in the studio, surrounded by instruments and synths, and he'll construct a track. Once he feels it makes some kind of sense I'll come in and take a listen and then we together develop what's there.

"I don't call his sketches demos, because while many instruments are added and replaced later on, most of the original parts end up in the final version of the song. We end up in the final version of the song. We try to get the sketches to a place where they are already very engaging as instrumental are already very engaging as instrumental tracks. Aaron and I are always obsessively listening, because we constantly want to hear things that feel inspiring and musical, not just a bed of music in the background. It takes longer to create, but in this case also gave Taylor more to latch onto, both emotionally and in terms of musical inspiration. Hearing melodies woven in the music triggered new melodies."

Not long after Dessner and Low sent each sketch to Swift, they would receive her voice memos in return, and they'd load them into the Pro Tools session of the sketch in question. Dessner and Low then continued to develop the songs, in close collaboration with Swift. "Taylor's voice memos often came with suggestions for how to edit the sketches: maybe throw in a bridge somewhere, shorten a section, change the chords or arrangement somewhere, and so on. Aaron would have similar ideas, and he then developed the arrangements, often with his brother Bryce, adding or replacing instruments. This happened fast, and became very interactive between us and Taylor, even though we were working remotely. When we added instruments, we were reacting to the way my rough mixes felt at the very beginning. Of course, it was also dictated by how Taylor wrote and sang to the tracks."

Dessner supplied sketches for nine and produced 10 of folklore's 16 songs, playing many different types of guitars, keyboards and synths as well as percussion and programmed drums. Instruments that were added later include live strings, drums, trombone, accordion, clarinet, harpsichord and more, with his brother Bryce doing many of the orchestrations. Most overdubs by other musicians were done remotely as well. Throughout, Low was keeping an overview of everything that was going on and mixing the material, so it was as presentable and inspiring as possible.

Mixing folklore

Although Dessner has called folklore an "anti-pop album", the world's number-one pop mixer Serban Ghenea was drafted in to mix seven tracks, while Low did the remainder.

"It was exciting to have Serban involved," explains Low, "because he did things I'd never do or be able to do. The way the vocal sits always at the forefront, along with the clarity he gets in his mixes, is remarkable. A great example of this is on the song 'epiphany'. There is so much beautiful space and the vocal feels effortlessly placed. It was really interesting to hear where he took things, because we were so close to the entire process in every way. Hearing a totally new perspective was eye-opening and refreshing.

"Throughout the entire process we were trying to maintain the original feel. Sometimes this was hard, because that initial rawness would get lost in large arrangements and additional layering. With revisions of folklore in particular we sometimes were losing the emotional weight from earlier more casual mixes. Because I was always mixing, there was also always the danger of over-mixing.

"We were trying to get the best of each mix version, and sometimes that meant stepping backwards, and grabbing a piano chain from an earlier mix, or going three versions back to before we added orchestration. There were definitely moments of thinking, 'Is this going to compete sonically? Is this loud enough?' We knew we loved the way the songs sounded as we were building them, so we stuck with what we knew. There were times where I tried to keep pushing a mix forward but it didn't improve the song — 'cardigan' is an example of a song where we ended up choosing a very early mix."

The Low Down

"I'm originally from Philadelphia," says Jonathan Low, "and played piano, alto saxophone and guitar when growing up. My dad is an electrical engineer and audiophile hobbyist, and I learned a lot about circuit design and how to repair things. I then started building guitar pedals and guitar amps, and recorded bands at my high school using a minidisc player and some binaural microphones. After that I did a music industry programme at Drexel University, and spent a lot of time working at the recording facilities there.

"This led to me meeting Brian McTear, a producer and owner of Miner Street Studios, which became my home base from 2009 to 2014. I learned a lot from him, from developing an interest in creating sounds in untraditional ways, to how to see a record through to completion. The studio has a two-inch 16-track Ampex MM1200 tape machine and a beautiful MCI 400 console which very quickly shaped the way I think about routing and signal flow. I'm lucky to have learned this way, because a computer environment is like the Wild West: there are no rules in terms of how to get from point A to point B. This flexibility is incredible, but sometimes there are simply too many options.

"l met Aaron [Dessned] because singer-songwriter Sharon van Etten recorded her second album, Epic [2010] at Miner Street, with Brian producing. Her third album, Tramp [2012] was produced by Aaron. They came to Philly to record drums and I ended up mixing a bunch of that record. After that I would occasionally go to work in Aaron's garage studio in Brooklyn, and this became more and more a regular collaboration. I then moved from Philly up to the Hudson Valley to help Aaron build Long Pond. We first used the studio in the spring of 2016, when beginning to record the National's album Sleep Well Beast."

Onward & Upward

folklore was finished and released in July 2020. In a normal world everyone might have gone on to do other things, but without the option of touring, they simply continued writing songs, with Low holding the fort. In September, many of the musicians who played on the album gathered at Long Pond for the shooting of a making-of documentary, folklore: the long pond studio sessions, which is streamed on Disney+.

The temporary presence of Swift at Long Pond changed the working methods somewhat, as she could work with Dessner in the room, and Low was able record her vocals. After Swift left again, sessions continued until December, when evermore was released, with Dessner producing or co-producing all tracks, apart from 'gold rush' which was co-written and co-produced by Swift and Antonoff. Low recorded many of Swift's vocals for evermore, and mixed the entire album. The lead single 'willow' became the biggest hit from the album, reaching number one in the US and number three in the UK.

"Before Taylor came to Long Pond," remembers Low, "she had always recorded her vocals for folklore remotely in Los Angeles or Nashville. When I recorded, I used a modern Telefunken U47, which is our go-to vocal mic — we record all the National stuff with that — going straight into the Siemens desk, and then into a Lisson Grove AR-1 tube compressor, and via a Burl A-D converter into Pro Tools. Taylor creates and lays down her vocal arrangements very quickly, and it sounds like a finished record in very few takes."

Devils In The Detail

In his mixes, Low wanted listeners to share his own initial response to these vocal performances. "The element that draws me in is always Taylor's vocals. The first time I received files with her properly recorded but premixed vocals I was just floored. They sounded great, even with minimal EQ and compression. They were not the way I'm used to hearing her voice in her pop songs, with the vocal soaring and sitting at the very front edge of the soundscape. In these raw performances, I heard so much more intimacy and interaction with the music. It was wonderful to hear her voice with tons of detail and nuances in place: her phrasing, her tonality, her pitch, all very deliberate. We wanted to maintain that. It's more emotional, and it sounds so much more personal to me. Then there was the music..."

The arrangements on evermore are even more 'chamber pop' than on folklore, with instruments like glockenspiel, crotales, flute, French horn, celeste and harmonium in evidence. "As listeners of the National may know, Aaron's and Bryce's arrangements can be quite dense. They love lush orchestration, all sorts of percussion, synths and other electronic sounds. The challenge was trying to get them to speak, without getting in the way of the vocals. I want a casual listener to be drawn in by the vocal, but sense that something special is happening in the music as well. At the same time, someone who really is digging in can fully immerse themselves and take in all the beauty deeper in the details of the sound and arrangement. Finding the balance between presenting all the musical elements that were happening in the arrangement and this really beautiful, upfront, real-sounding vocal was the ticket."

A particular challenge is that a lot of the detail that Aaron gravitates towards happens in the low mids, which is a very warm part of our hearing spectrum that can quickly become too muddy or too woolly. A lot of the tonal and musical information lives in the low mids, and then the vocal sits more in the midrange and high mids. There's not too much in the higher frequency range, except the top of the guitars, and some elements like a shaker and the higher buzzy parts of the synths. Maintaining clarity and separation in those often complex arrangements was a major challenge."

In & Out The Box

According to Low, the final mix stage for evermore was "very short. There was a moment in the final week or so leading up to the release where the songs were developed far enough for me to sit down and try to make something very cohesive and final, finalising vocal volume, overall volume, and the vibe. There's a point in every mix where the moves get really small. When a volume ride of 0.1dB makes a difference, you're really close to being done. Earlier on, those little adjustments don't really matter.

"I often try to mix at the console, with some outboard on the two-bus, but folklore was mixed all in the box, because we were working so fast, plus initially the plan was for the mixes to be done elsewhere. I ran a couple of mixes for evermore through the console, and `closure' was the only one that stuck. It was summed through the Siemens, with an API 2500 compressor and a Thermionic Culture Phoenix and then back into Pro Tools via the Burl A-D. I will use hardware when mixing in the box, though mainly just two units: the Eventide H3000, because I have not found any plug-ins that do the same thing, and the [Thermionic] Culture Vulture, for its very broad tone shaping and distortion properties.

"The writing and the production happened closely in conjunction with the engineering and mixing, and the arrangements were dense, making many of the sessions super hefty and actually quite messy. Sounds would constantly change roles in the arrangement and sometimes plug-ins would just stack up. So final mixing involved cleaning up the sessions and stemming large groups down."

Across The Rubber Bridge

The Pro Tools mix session of 'willow' has close to 100 tracks, though there's none of the elaborate bussing that's the hallmark of some modern sessions. At the top are six drum machine tracks in green from the Teenage Engineering OP-1, an instrument that was used extensively on the album. Below that are five live percussion tracks (blue), three bass tracks (pink), and an `AUX Drums' programming track. There's a 'rubber bridge' guitar folder and aux, OP-1 synth tracks, piano tracks, 'Dream Machine' (Josh Kaufman's guitar) and E-bow tracks, Yamaha, Sequential Prophet X, Moog and Roland Juno synth tracks, and Strings and Horns aux stem tracks.

"Most of the drum tracks were performed on the OP-1 by Aaron. These are not programmed tracks. Bryan Devendorf, drummer of the National, programmed some beats on a Roland TR-8S. I ran those though the Fender Rumble bass amp, which adds some woofiness, like an acoustic kit room mic. There's an acoustic shaker, and there's an OP-1 backbeat that's subtle in the beginning, and then gets stronger towards the end of the song. I grouped all the drum elements and the bass, and sent those out to a hardware insert with the Culture Vulture, for saturation, so it got louder and more and more harmonically rich. There is this subtle growing and crescendo of intensity of the rhythm section by the end.

"The 'rubber bridge' guitars were the main anchor in the instruments. These guitars have a wooden bridge wrapped in rubber, and sound a bit like a nylon-string guitar, or a light palm mute. They're very percussive and sound best when recorded on our Neumann U47 and a DI. On many of those DI tracks I have a [SPL] Transient Designer to lower the sustain and keep them punchy, especially in the low end. There's a folder with five takes of 'rubber bridge' guitar in this session, creating this wall of unique guitar sound.

"I treated the 'rubber bridge' guitars quite extensively. There's a FabFilter Pro-Q3 cutting some midrange frequencies and some air around 10kHz. These guitars can splash out in the high end and have a boominess that's in the same range as the low end of Taylor's vocal, so I had to keep these things under control. Then I used a SoundToys Tremolator, with a quarter-note tremolo that makes the accents in the playing a bit more apparent. I like to get the acoustic guitars a little bit out of the way for the less important beats, so I have the Massey CT5 compressor side-chained to the kick drum. I also used the UAD Precision K-Stereo to make the guitars a bit wider. The iZotope Ozone Exciter adds some high mids and high-end harmonic saturation sparkly stuff, and the SoundToys EchoBoy delay is automated, with it only coming on in the bridge, where I wanted more ambience."

Growing Pains

"Once we had figured out how to sit the 'rubber bridge' guitars in the mix, the next challenge was to work out the end of the song, after the bridge. Taylor actually goes down an octave with her voice in the last chorus, and at the same time the music continues to push and grow. That meant using a lot of automation and Clip Gain adjustment to make sure the vocal always stayed on top. There also are ambient pianos playing counter-melodies, and balancing the vocals, guitars and pianos was the main focus on this song. We spent a lot of time balancing this, particularly as the track grows towards the end.

"The vocal tracks share many of the same plug-ins and settings. On the main lead vocal track I added the UAD Pultec EQP-1A, with a little bit of a cut in the low end at 30Hz, and a boost at 8kHz, which adds some modern air. The second plug-in is the Oeksound Soothe, which is just touching the vocal, and it helps with any harsh resonance stuff in the high mids, and a little in the lower mids. Next is the UAD 1176AE, and then the FabFilter Pro-Q3, doing some notches at 200Hz, 1kHz, 4kHz and close to 10kHz. I tend to do subtractive EQ on the Q3, and use more analogue-sounding plug-ins, like the Pultec or the Maag, to boost. After that is the FabFilter Pro-DS [de-esser], taking off a couple of decibels, followed by the FabFilter Saturn 2 [saturation processor], on a warm tape setting.

"Below the vocal tracks are three aux effects tracks, for the vocals. 'Long Delay' has a stereo EchoBoy going into an Altiverb with a spring reverb, for effect throws in the choruses. 'Chamber' is the UAD Capitol Chamber, which gives the vocal a nice density and size, without it being a long reverb. The 'Plate' aux is the UAD EMT140, for the longer tail. These two reverbs work in conjunction, with the chamber for the upfront space, determining where the vocal sits in the mix, and the plate more for the depth behind that.

"At the bottom of the session is a two-bus aux, which mimics the way I do the two-bus on the desk. The plug-ins are the UAD Massive Passive EQ, UAD API 2500 compressor, and the UAD Ampex ATR102. Depending on the song, I will choose 15ips or 30ips. In this case it was set to 15ips, half-inch GP9. That has a nice, aggressive, midrange push, and the GP9 bottom end goes that little bit lower. There's also a PSP Vintage Warmer, a Sonnox Oxford Inflator, plus a FabFilter Pro-L2 [limiter]. None of these things are doing very much on their own, but in conjunction give me the interaction I expect from an analogue mix chain."

[kimnjss]

if you asked me to | pjm

⤑ series: less of you

⤑ pairing: fratboy!jimin x dancer!reader

⤑ genre: angst - a little bit of fluff.

⤑ rating: PG13

⤑ word count: 6.8K

⤑ warnings: cursing, hickeys, slight dry humping, groping, mention of blue balls.

⤑ chapter song: moonlight // ariana grande

⤑ A/N: this is soooo much later than i wanted. i had finished the entire thing around 6ish.. and my computer decided to shit the bed in the middle of editing and literally had only two sentences saved. so i had to write he whole thing again! i like this version better, though - nd i hope you guys do too!! let me know what you think x 

DECEMBER 5TH, 2019 | 19:17

Heart pounding in your chest, comfortable in Jimin's arms but at the same time, not. It's a weird feeling, not entirely unfamiliar... but it is with him. Vividly you remember how it use to feel to be held by him. And you're not sure when that feeling had become a memory.

Actually, that was a lie. You've been doing a lot of that lately. Feelings for Jimin have not changed, instead, they've grown stronger and that was the problem. Completely impossible to be near him, see his smile, be held by him without feeling that pang of guilt in your chest. Heart starting to catch up with the fact that you and him?? were so deep in the wrong.

Now laying in his lap felt like a crime. As if you were stood in self-checkout, constantly glancing over your shoulder as you scanned an expensive pair of shoes as one of those 79 cent candy bars.

Barely able to concentrate on the intoxicating feeling of his lips trailing open mouth kisses against your heated skin. The not so discreet way he was sliding his hand underneath the hem of your shirt, toward your bra covered breasts. TV plays uselessly in the background, his pretty groans filling your ears instead.

Jeans unbuttoned and inched down to reveal the lace of your panties, body naturally reacting to the broad swipes of his thumb over your covered nipple. And your heart should be pounding with anticipation, eager to know how far he'd go – if he'd really fuck you in the middle of your living room.

But you can't shake the look on Miju's face you conjured, watching the two of you with that pouty frown of hers, arms crossed over her chest. Wondering how you, her best friend, could do something like this to her. Hurt he like this and lie about it, over and over again.

So lost in thought, you barely notice Jimin's lips lifting to cover yours. He kisses you sweetly, slowly while dragging his free hand down the length of your back, stopping once he's reached the swell of your ass. A playful slap landing on your jean covered bottom, followed by his firm grip, something that would have you letting out a giggled yelp, any other time.

You don't even notice, don't even budge. Jimin is pulling back from your lips upon noticing your lack of enthusiasm, furrowed brows searching your features. “You alright?” Inching his body up to rest his head on the armrest of the couch. Legs draped on either side of his hips, hands resting on his chest you nod. 

As if he'd let it go. As if he'd pick up on the slightest abnormality in your mood and just let it slip. Let you drive yourself mad with your racing thoughts and not let him in, not let him take on some of the weight. As if. 

“What are you thinking about?” He tries again, soothing fingers rubbing into your hips. “Do I stink?” His hand lifts from your body to pick at the front of his shirt, sniffing the inside of it. “Tae said this shirt had one more day in it,” You can't help but smile at his joking tone, an attempt to brighten the mood.

Quick to shake your head at his words, you're letting your body fall back against his. Chests pressed together as you had been before, arms wrapping around his torso to engulf him in a koala hug. “It smells like you, I like it.” At ease with the matched playful tone in your voice, Jimin allows himself to relax... a bit. He's smiling at your compliment, leaning down to press his lips against yours gently.

No idea what's wrong with you, but safely relieved that it's not him. That he could help you work through whatever it is. “So what is it?” 

 “I don't know... I just... keep thinking about Miju.” Jimin lets out a scoff, rolling his eyes in a really exaggerated way. “You're really thinking about a girl while I got my hand on your ass? Is there something I should know?” The playful smile sits prettily on his lips, the sight of it alone doing wonders for the anxiety creeping up your throat.

Arm hitting against his shoulder, you huff out a breath. “I'm being serious. I have this looming feeling that she's going to catch us before I get the chance to talk to her. It's driving me crazy.”

His face softens at the sound of your words, becoming serious for you. Obvious that you're really bothered right now and the least he could do is take the situation seriously. No matter how little cared about Miju finding out about the two of you. He knew that if it happened in an untimely fashion, you'd be really upset... that was something he cared very much about.

“You ready to talk to her then?” Fingers lacing with yours, he toys with your fingers gently while looking at you. Trying to get a good read at the emotions you've gotten a bit too good at hiding. 

With a huff, you're sitting up on his lap, shoulders shrugging. “I don't know! We should, right? It's been long enough...” It sounded more like you were convincing yourself than anything.

As much fun, Jimin was having sneaking around with you. And how cute he found your flustered expression each time you were close to being caught, he knew this was harder on you than it was for him. Keeping secrets, sneaking around, lying – they all had their expiration date and you were quickly realizing that.

Of course, he'd never ask you to lie – especially in this situation. If it were up to him, the two of you would be as out and loud as any other PDA loving couple out there. He knew, though, the courage that you needed to gain before you were ready to be like that – so he was willing to wait.

But it seemed that the guilt was starting to get to you, and it didn't take a genius to see that all of this lying and hiding was only going to make the outcome worse the longer you waited to say something. He knew it, and you knew it too. You just needed the proper push in the right direction.

“Let's tell her. I mean, you said yourself it's her loss if she can't find it in her heart to be okay with it. The longer we wait...” You're nodding at his words, agreeing before he's able to even fully finish his sentence.

The back and forth of this week with him and Gukkie were all of the same things. You just needed to get over the fear of losing her because of this. Have faith that she valued your friendship just as much as she did and will, hopefully, understand you. Or if not, be able to forgive you. With time, of course.

“You're right. It's only going to get worse. Tomorrow.” Declaring with a nod and Jimin is nodding his head, using his grip on your hand to pull your body back down onto his. He's easily setting your palm on the back of his neck while tilting his head up to look at you.

“Don't be nervous. You've known her your whole life. And I'll be there to back you up,” He assures you with a soft smile, you feel calmed by his promise to be there with you. Glad that you don't have to go through it on your own. Relaxed, knowing that he was willing to be there for you. With you.

His soft hand is trailing down the length of your back again, this time dipping into the open back of your jeans. “Now... before I was interrupted.” Movements slow as his palm closed around your lace-covered ass, watching your face for any telling signs. You don't stop the hum that falls from your lips.

Jimin lifts his head to press his mouth against your collarbone, plump lips sucking hickeys into your neck. Hips rolling against slightly, head tilting back allowing him as much as he needed to mark you. Sharp teeth nibble at your skin, pulling a whiny moan from your lips. “Fuck,” He groans, cock stiffening underneath your rocking hips.

The grip on your ass is used to guide you over his growing erections, panted breaths fanning over the clammy skin of your neck. And you should be enjoying yourself, should be teetering over the edge with how tightly wound you've been the past few days. Yet, you can't seem to clear your mind.

Although you loved Jimin's support, valued the way he was so quick to decide he'd do this with you. You couldn't help but wonder if that was the best way of going about it. If it wouldn't seem too much like an intervention if both of you were to show up at Miju's front steps ready to announce your relationship.

Relationship? That's what this was, right? You two weren't just having fun, right? Jimin said he liked you a lot and you liked him just as much... maybe more. You weren't throwing away your decade long friendship over a situationship, right!?

“Wait. Should we really do it like this?” Jimin stills the raise of his hips at the sound of your voice, head lifting from your neck so he can look you in the face. “Do you even want to do it at all?” He huffs, arms lifting to push the messy hair on his forehead back. He's sitting his body up into a seated position, reaching between you two to adjust the bulge at his crotch.

It's clear that the two of you are talking about two different things. With an apologetic smile, you lean up to press a soft kiss against his lips. “No, I mean... talking to Miju. The both of us? You sure that's a good idea?”

“That's a terrible idea.” The door slams behind the new voice, your body instantly lunging from Jimin's lap to the vacant space behind him. Gukkie lets out a laugh at your haste, shaking life into his hair he had just freed from his buck hat. “Relax, Yn. This is a safe space.” Just Gukkie. You repeat, trying to calm your guilty pounding heart.

Seok and Joonie are steps behind him, kicking their shoes off in the threshold. Jimin's brow is furrowing at the sight of his best friend entering your house, following the other two guys into the kitchen.

“What are you doing here, Joonie?” He asks as he stands, stalking into the kitchen. You're entering the room behind him, Gukkie crouched in front of the fridge while Seok pulls bowls from the cabinets. Joonie is comfortably on the island, thumbing through the messages on his phone.

“Jin's meeting us here in a bit.” His words are directed to Jimin, who's nodding his head and sinking into the seat beside him.

Moving toward Jeongguk, you're poking a finger into his bent back. He's slow to raise, clutching various snacks to his chest. “What?” He's dumping the food onto the counter, before moving to fill the bowls Seok had set out for him.

“You said it was a bad idea to talk to Miju, me, and Jimin... why?” His brows furrow, not bothering to look up at you as he plucks grapes from the vine filling the medium-sized glass bowl. “Isn't it obvious?” He peaks up at your silence, eyes widening slightly at your genuinely confused expression.

“Guess not,” He huffs, setting the grapes down. “What are you going to talk to the girl about in the first place?” He doesn't give you a chance to answer, nudging the bowl closer to Seok who had been trying to reach underneath his arm. “You're going to be telling her that you've been lying to her for about a month. You, her best friend. And now on top of that, you want her to be rejected... in front of you, by the guy she's been crushing on for the longest?” Yeah, that was a terrible idea.

He takes your blank expression as a sign that you're still not understanding what he is saying. “It's the equivalent of stabbing her in the heart.” Guk's lifted the fork, turning into toward himself before gently pressing the prongs into his shirt. “Then our boy, Min coming around and twisting the damn thing while looking her right in the eyes.”

Gukkie makes a dramatic show of twisting the fork in his chest, exaggerated grunts of pain leaving his lips while his knees bend as if he'd drop any moment. “That's dramatic,” Jimin speaks at the same time Seok decides to jump in.

“You're talking about the end of Trojan She-War. I knew you liked that one,” He grins triumphantly, his grin only growing as he chomps down on his grapes.

“What's Trojan She-War?” Joonie wonders.

Hoseok is perking up to explain one of his earlier video games set in Ancient Greece starring an all female team. They're at war, go figure, with a group of sexiest warriors. It was a pretty cool game on paper, except the ending was a bit predictable Gukkie was beating it in the first hour of testing... straight back to the drawing board.

Your mind is so far from their conversation, though. The in-depth explanation Seok was giving on his game and other ideas he had like that one, that he was oh so positive wouldn't flop. You couldn't engage in the impromptu beat that Gukkie would beat whatever game he was thinking up within thirty minutes because you couldn't shake the very vivid picture he had painted.

Stabbing her in the heart? And then twisting it!? You knew that finding out would hurt her, but didn't take into account to what extent until this moment. What if you broke her heart? What if she hated you for it? What if she never wanted to see you again?

You're quick to shake that thought from your mind. Of course, she'd still want to see you. She might need some type to get over it, but the two of you were best friends... always have been, there was no way she'd just drop you after finding out what's been going on. Especially once you explain how it happened and how hard you tried to stop it from getting to this point.

Surely, she'd understand and forgive you, right? Your friendship was strong enough to withstand this, right? There's a gentle tug on your waist, the moment the front door is being pushed open and Jin is stepping through. Jimin's trying to get your attention, trying to coax you to come to be alone with him – but you ignore it. Guilt way to high for anyone on one time, instead you focus your attention on Jin as he enters the kitchen with a large smile on his face.

“I brought booze!” He whoops, holding up the case of wine coolers he had carried in before setting it down on the island. Gukkie is rolling his eyes at the brightly colored cardboard, stabbing at his salad with a grumbled breath. “That's not booze.”

Jin is rolling his eyes right back, “Don't worry I got your oh so manly whiskey.” He sets the bottle down on the table beside the coolers. “Are you guys throwing a party?” You wonder, easily slipping from Jimin's grasp to move closer to Jin.

“We're seeing how long it takes drunk Jeongguk to go through the TOP 25 HARDEST GAME list. You wanna watch?” Jin's eyes flicker from you to Jimin behind you, inviting the both of you to their made up tournament.

“No, I don't think-” “Ooh, yeah! We'd love to!” Your words overlap, but your voice is louder and Jin is smiling wide as he reaches into the case to hand a bottle over to you. “Fantastic. You can help keep score.”

He's moving toward Joonie who hasn't stopped staring since the boy first entered the room. Draping a lazy arm over his shoulder, hand lifting to tug on Joon's earring covered lobe. “I don't think I'll be able to pay much attention,” His words, although directed to you, are delivered quietly to Joonie, who's cheeks flush as his head bows.

“Not on my couch,” Gukkie calls toward the couple, but his words are ignored. Much more interest found in each other's mouths than whatever nonsense Guk is spewing.

Jimin's attention is on you, a confused expression on his features. And you take your time with noticing it, concentrating on popping your bottle open, bringing it to your lips, and taking a long sip. He's still staring at you as you lower the glass. “What?” You wonder with a laugh and he shakes his head.

“Just... when you asked me to sleepover. I kind of had a different image of how the night would go,” He tried not to sound too disappointed in his words. Honestly enjoyed every moment spent with you, no matter what you were doing. Would totally be cool to ditch the fooling around to hang out with your friends, if it had been under other circumstance.

If he wasn't positive that you were pushing it off. Avoiding it. If two weeks hadn't passed since the last time you two had been together like that. If he wasn't convinced that you were trying to distance yourself.

And he couldn't even blame you for it, not like he was looking for someone to blame. You had a lot on your mind, and the situation the two of you were in wasn't exactly... sexy? He just wished you talked to him about it, to easier silence his insecure thoughts wondering if it was something that he did. Something that he wasn't doing.

Could keep himself from constantly reminding himself that it was only because you were feeling guilty, not because of him. That you still wanted to be around him, just not in that way. At least not fully.

It was hard. You were complicated and too quiet about the things that bothered you. Jimin would have to file that away, though. For now. Try his best to be there for you because he knew you needed it right now. He'd help you tackle your emotional barrier at a later time. Hopefully.

All he could do right now was be there for you. So he's nodding in agreement when you're asking if he's okay with a shift in plans. If he'd still have as much fun hanging out and playing video games then whatever you'd come up with in your room. He agrees, and it's a half-lie because come on, video games over sex?? who in their right mind?

Yet, it's not a lie because he'd sit around and pretend he knew what a LUPP was and laugh with your friends and ignore how badly he just wants to kiss you, ravish you. Because you asked him to.

DECEMBER 6TH, 2019 | 00:43

Thankful that your silent 'no sex' rule didn't mean no physical contact, Jimin was pleased to have you sinking into his lap as everyone moved from the kitchen to the living room. It was fine, for a bit. Conversation coming easy with you and your friends as the six of you watch Jeongguk complete level after level.

They were an entertaining group of people and he was hardly thinking about the mean set of blue balls he's been sporting for the past two weeks. The mean set of blue balls he thought he'd be rid of by now. But, yeah, this was fine too. You were happy, comfortable – this was just fine.

Keyword, was. It had started being fine as the hours ticked by and around the five-hour mark it was starting to get hard for Jimin to mask his annoyance. Not annoyed with you, of course not. He got it, understood. Knew what you were going through and didn't want to push you, he was trying his best to be a good guy – honest.

He just didn't account for how boring this would get. How redundant Jeongguk's level ups have become, no matter how many shots he guzzled down his thick throat. Seok still cheered him on, the only one still keeping score. Oh and you, but he was sure that you weren't all that interested in the game and more interested in keeping your mind off the fact you were correctly sitting on his dick and not doing a single thing about it.

Jin and Joonie had lost interest in the game a long while ago, taken to groping each other directly across for you and Jimin. The tips of Jin's fingers threatened to sneak underneath the hem of Joonie's sweats, broad hips bared as he dared him to do it. They were answering a lot of questions that Jimin didn't even know he had and when he was finding himself oddly turned on by the display – he was deciding it was time for bed.

“I'm going to head up,” His words are mumbled to you, slightly hopeful. Maybe you'd decide to come up with him? Fool around a bit, or even grant him a blowjob... a handjob, something to get rid of this dull ache between his legs.

You don't. Just nod that pretty head of yours, standing to make it easier for him to rise to his feet. Don't even offer him a parting kiss as he heads towards the stairs. He doesn't complain but doesn't hide the stomp in his feet as he makes his way up the steps.

Trying to be careful, not make you think that he's only in it for the sex. But hello, the sex? Where was it? Two weeks was a long time to make a guy wait without the slightest bit of reason why. Although, he could piece together your reasoning behind wanting to hold back... he thought you inviting him over was a sign you had loosen up a bit.

Not that you had planned to rile him up to the point he was all set and ready to go, only to get distracted by your friends (which were great, don't get him wrong) and forget the star guest of this slumber party. Allowing your Miju fueled guilt to steer the night, he had half the mind to walk over there himself and set things straight just so he didn't have to be deprived anymore.

Again. Not your fault. He understood. Supported you. He wasn't the upset one in this scenario, it was his greedy dick that had gotten a taste of you and hasn't been able to feel satiated since.

Downstairs, you're nursing your second wine cooler. Paying much more attention to Guk's score then you usually do. It had been ten minutes since Jimin had left and gone upstairs, and you were still sat there – pretending to be interested in this half baked competition.

“Did you two fight?” Seok is asking the question both him and Guk had been wondering. Maybe Jin and Joonie are wondering the same, but their mouths are a little preoccupied to say anything about it.

“No, we didn't fight.” Tone a bit harsher than you intended, but you can't help it. Wanted nothing more than to take a rifle to your conscience and enjoy the fact that you had Jimin, here with you for an entire night. 

Just every time you were getting too close, here came Jiminy Cricket with his clipboard of reasons you shouldn't be enjoying yourself – speaking louder each time you tried to shut him out.

“Why aren't you up there with him, then?” Seok pressed on, full attention on you now. Jeongguk's high score being set on the back burner. “I don't have to be everywhere he is.” You snap, causing Hoseok to lift his hands in mock defense. “Sorry for asking.” He mumbles, turning his attention back to the screen.

“You know. Shutting him out is not going to help your situation.” Gukkie is pointing out, not even bothering to look up from the TV screen. “You're probably making it worse, to be honest.”

With a roll of your eyes, you're standing from the couch – setting your half finished bottle on the coffee table. “I'm going to bed,” You grumble, following the same stomped footsteps Jimin had taken just before.

You find him sat upon your bed, shirt ditched at the foot of your bed. Back pressed against your headboard. He holds his phone in one hand, thumb flicking against the screen as his free hand rests above his head. His head lifting at the sound of you entering the room, offering a small smile in your direction.

Not able to find the words, you don't say anything. Acknowledging him with a nod of your head before heading across the room toward your hamper. Jimin watches as you undo the buttons on your jeans, tugging them down your long legs. Not letting his stare linger too long on the way your ass spills out from the bottom of your panties. And he definitely doesn't admire the dip in the middle of your back as you lift your shirt over your head.

His gaze is snapping back to his phone as you toss your worn clothes into the hamper, turning to face him again. Of course, he's seen your boobs before. Paid them a lot of attention after realizing he had been neglecting them. But he's not seen them while trying not to look at them.

For some reason, they seemed... bigger? Rounder? A bit of a bounce to them with each sway of your hips. You're reaching for his discarded shirt, pulling it over your head and he can't help but wonder if you're doing this one purpose. Teasing him. Or were you just naturally this enticing?

“Will you shut the light when you're done?” You speak after getting comfortable in the space beside him. Yup, naturally that enticing. 

Jimin nods at your words, despite the fact you're not looking at him. Blanket pulled up to your chin, back to him as you stared out the window. “You're just going to sleep?” He asks after flicking the light off, sinking down so he's laying beside you.

“Did you want to go for a run?” There's a snappiness to your tone and it reminds Jimin of the attitude you use to give him when you first met. He can't help the smile that pushes onto his lips at the memory, reaching to wrap his arm around your waist. “Are you upset with me?” He knows you're not... well, he kind of knows. Asking helped to calm his nerves, though.

Rolling onto your back, you look up at him. Taking in his soft eyes and that dimpled smile. Your hand is lifting to rest on his bicep, noticing the automatic way he flexes the muscle underneath your palm. “No. I'm just upset...”

“You don't have to talk to her if you don't want to.” He says, even though it's not true. Of course, you had to talk to her. She was your best friend for crying out loud and what you were doing was wrong. And you were starting to loathe yourself for going behind her back like this, you had to talk to her.

“I mean it. We'll just make it real clear for her. Could go amateur on Instagram or be simple and make out at a party... I'm sure she'll get the hint,” He's leaning down to bury his face in the crook of your neck, pressing soft feather-like kisses against your heated skin.

“Jimin-” The laugh slips past your lips, even though you don't want it to. Jimin is picking up his head from your neck, grinning wide down at you and the sight alone has a flutter settling in your chest. 

“You can relax, okay?” He's lifting his hand to smooth the furrow between your brows. “I already said I'm not going to let her get in the way of us. And we're good together, I'm sure she'll be happy for us.”

You're scoffing, rolling your eyes at the absurd thought. “Wishful thinking.” Huffing with a roll of your eyes. You shift underneath him until you've got a thigh pressed on either side of his torso – hands set on his bare chest. He's got one hand in your hair, the other resting on your thigh, as innocent as it can be.

“What's her deal, anyway?” The tips of his fingers draw random patterns against your skin as you shrug your shoulders. Of all the years you spent so close to her, you were never able to pinpoint exactly what her deal was. Of course, there were the issues with her dad, but at times you felt like there was something deeper that.

Yet, you never bothered to try and figure it out. Only summed it up as 'that's just who she was'. Gotten used to it and made the proper adjustments that you needed to in order to keep things running smoothly, it's what you've always done – without a second thought.

Shoulders lifting in a slight shrug, “Certain things just bother her... and she likes things a certain way.” The number of times she had given you the silent treatment when she wasn't getting her way, refusing to say a word to you until the problem was resolved. By you, of course. It seemed you were always the one taking the first step. Always the one ready to make amends even if you hadn't been the one in the wrong.

Never once thought about it, figured that's just the work you had to put in to maintain the friendship. It had been just the two of you for so long, you didn't know anything else. But now with the other friendships... relationships you had made in the past years, you were quickly realizing that that wasn't normal.

“You know we started ballet together?” Jimin, who had found himself growing distracted with the peaks your nipples created through the fabric of his shirt, was quickly lifting his head to look at you. You notice the tint in his cheeks as if he had just been caught, his brow lifting slightly. “Oh, yeah?” 

“Mhm. She was 13 and I was 12. And she had just found out that her dad's new daughter was in ballet and it kind of became her obsession to do it too. I was playing soccer at the time and really didn't care either way. So when she asked me to quit soccer and join ballet with her, I did. Soccer was my dad's sport, anyway.”

Jimin listens to your words, imagining a younger version of you running the field in your cute little soccer uniform. Of course, you were the best on the field, knew you well enough that you wouldn't settle for anything but the best.

“I fell in love after the first class. I mean, soccer was easy – but ballet? Well, you know what I mean.” He did, all too well. Remembered the moment he fell in love with dancing, nothing being able to compare to the feeling of it. Well, except...

“I liked it a lot so I tried hard to be real good at it. And eventually, I was one of the best in the class. I loved it so much, but Miju... she hated it. Never wanted to practice with me and got pissed every time she was behind in class. A few months in she was ready to quit. Begged me to quit with her.” In the moment, you had written it off as your best friend not wanting to quit alone. Another one of the best friend things you were starting to realize wasn't best friendly at all.

She saw how much you loved it. Saw how good you were at it. What if you had quit? Followed behind her like sheep? Of course, she had no idea that ballet would have become such a big part of your life then. But it had. And she wanted you to quit. What would you even be doing now if you had listened to her?

“I couldn't do it, obviously. Honestly can't believe that I actually thought about it when she asked. She told me she hated me when I refused, didn't talk to me for a whole month because I 'violated the friendship rule book'. She was my only friend so I was lonely for a bit, which just meant more ballet. I was sure she'd never talk to me again, to be honest – we only started hanging out again because my family was going to The Hampton's that summer and my mom invited her along.”

Jimin's got this sad look on his face, the same expression that he hated. But it's different coming for him, he's not trying to pity you. He genuinely feels bad for 12-year-old you having to put up with a toxic friendship like that. Couldn't keep himself from wishing his 14-year-old self had been there when you were left alone in the practice room, knew the feeling all too well. Maybe you could've been able to be alone together.

“Can't wait to fast forward past all this shit. Feel like I haven't seen you smile in a while.” The large smiles and hearty laughs you use to carelessly display were now being reigned in right before they reached their full peak. Many of your thoughts so clouded with your problems with Miju, that you hadn't even realized the shift in your mood.

No idea that your emotions were so loud on your features that Jimin would pick up on it. Surprised that he even cared about the difference, but he did. And there was no stopping the flutter in your heart from that small fact. Pushing a soft smile onto your lips, you're tilting your head up so he's able to see. He takes it, although it doesn't quite reach your eyes.

“Pretty girlfriend,” He compliments with a large grin, leaning down to cover your lips with his. Kissing you slowly, and sweetly – pouring out every ounce of warmth and security you had stolen away from you. You kiss him back with just as much intensity, fingers curling in his dark locks as you let your mouth fall open – welcoming his wanting tongue into your mouth.

It takes a moment for his words to dawn on you, for you to put together what he had said and what he might've meant. Your mouth falls from his as you pull your head back, Jimin not fully realizing and instead moving on to nibble at the skin on your neck. “Did you just call me your girlfriend?” Your words have his head lifting, so he's able to look at your face.

That pretty pink tint is back on his cheeks. Had been hoping you didn't catch on to what he's been calling you in his head for the past month. Didn't mean to let it slip right then, while your emotions were a mess. But, he wasn't one to back out once he's already dipped his toe in.

“You are my girlfriend, right?” Plump lip trapped between his teeth, he tries to hide the nervous look in his eyes. Tries not to give away to the fear of you possibly rejecting him. Yes, he knew you liked him a lot and he liked you a lot... but labels were scary. And there's usually a whole talk that came before this, right?

“Do you want me to be?” Duh, of course, he did. Why would bring it up if he didn't want that? It was all you could come up with right now, though. With the way your heart and brain were in the middle of a standoff, it was all you could manage.

“No.” There's an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “I've only been referring you like that in my head for the past month for fun,” Sarcasm drips from his words and you're lifting your hand to land a punch into his shoulder. “I'm serious!” Lower lip jutting out to create a slight pout.

Jimin's got his fingers wrapped around your wrist, lifting your hand to set on the back of his neck. “Me too.” Arms dropping to wrap around your waist, he uses his grip to pull your body closer to his. “I want you to be my girlfriend. So that I can be your boyfriend. And we can be boyfriend and girlfriend to each other, together.” You're laughing at his words, like a real loud genuine laugh that has your eyes closing.

“My God...” He sighs, admiring the way you look in the moment. Heartwarming just from the sound of your laughter. Even when it stops, you're still wearing that pretty smile on your lips and he can't help but stare. He's vaguely realizing that he's screwed. Figuring if he's that affected just from the sound of your laugh, there's no way he's getting out now. “Come on, you gonna be my girlfriend?” He's asking one more time, heart rate speeding at the nod of your head.

“Okay. I'll be your girlfriend. Only if you're my boyfriend.” A moment saved to cringe at your corny words. You can't help it, though. He brings out that side of you.

Jimin is smiling wide, leaning in to press a dozen quick pecks to your lips. Smiles growing and laughs slipping as the sounds of his kisses grow louder – sloppier until he's just pressing your smiling teeth together before pulling back to admire your face then repeating it. “I think you might be it.” He's repeating the words he had said to you on your first night together.

You remember how confused you had been then, but now... now you get it. Unsure how he was making that declaration after just one night, but he was just as sure then as he was now. And despite all the confusion buzzing in your head, you were sure of one thing.

“I like you so much.” A confession that he could've guessed, but hearing you say it was a thousand times better than guessing. You're shifting in his arms, back pressed against his chest. The night sky is visible through your large bedroom window, and you find yourself searching for the moon. “I'm not supposed to. Am I?”

Couldn't help the words from falling from your lips. Sure of the way they must put a damper on the mood. The smile doesn't fall from Jimin's lips, instead, he's leaning down to press a soft kiss to your covered shoulder. “Go ahead. I'll protect you.”

Your eyes go wide at his words, wondering if he knows the weight they hold. If he even realizes what he just said. How unbelievably comforting just three simple words were for you to here. Not realizing how badly you needed to hear them until now. He was going to protect you. He said it. Did he mean it?

Wishing a million times that he meant it. Sending every last hushed prayer straight to the moon shining down on the two of you. Quietly Jimin admires you, hoping that you know how serious he is about you. That he intends to keep every promise made to you because you deserve it. He lays there, watching you watch the moon.

“We should pack up and go there, just you and me.” A soft laugh falls from your lips, shaking off the loving tension that rises in your chest. Turning in his grip, you're easily circling your arms around his waist. “The whole thing for just us two? Won't it get boring?”

There's that playful smirk resting on his pretty lips, his shoulders lifting in a slight shrug. “I'm sure we can find a way or two to past the time,” Teeth scraping against his lower lip before he's leaning in to trail a line of wet kisses over the length of your neck.

His kisses tickle, pulling a string of giggles from your lips. You don't remember the last time your heart has been this happy, this content. Head leaning back to give his mouth more room to work, fingers knitting in the soft strands of his hair.

“I'd go with you... if you asked me to.”

Jimin is pulling back from your neck almost instantly. Eyes scanning over your features and smiling growing. You had laughed it off when he said it to you first when he said he'd get try to get the moon for you. Of course, it had been a joke – come on, it was the moon. He wasn't some super villain in an after school special, but to have you quoting him... looking at him with that sincerity in your eyes. It was all he needed to know that you were all in.

So was he.

– girl code rule #1: never, ever, under any circumstances fall for your best friend’s crush. but what happens when your best friend’s crush checks all the boxes of your ideal guy… and to make matters worse… he’s crazy about you too.

↫ masterlist ↬

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A/N: timestamps make sense throughout the fic. to be added to the taglist, send me an ask !! feedback is highly !! appreciated, it’s the motivation i need to keep the fic going nd fun for you guys!!<33

[charlies-gillespie]

reminence | charlie gillespie

paring: fem!reader x charlie gillespie

summary: reader stays the night in a hotel but there are no rooms. her ex, Charlie, overheard her talking and offers reader to spend the night in his room

length: mediumish

rating: PG

warnings: none

!! NOT MY GIF !!

MASTERLIST

You get out of the Uber you took to get here from LAX. You thank the driver and get your suitcase out of the trunk of his car. You drag your suitcase and dufflebag into the hotel that you plan in staying at tonight. It’s about five and the lobby is kind of packed. The parking lot was pretty full. You get in line at the desk behind a couple and their child.

The desk receptionist hands the couple a key and they walk off. You approach the desk with a smile and say, “Hi, my name is Y/N L/N and I booked a room here for one night.” The desk receptionist nods and types on the computer.

She makes a face and says, “I’m sorry, Miss L/N but that was our last room available.”

Confused, you say, “I called three days ago and made a reservation for a room.”

“I am all out of rooms tonight, I apologize,” she says. “If you’d like to stay and wait in case someone checks out then you can. I thought we had more than one room available for tonight.”

With a sigh, you open your mouth to say something until you hear someone go “Y/N?” behind you. You turn your head to see Charlie Gillespie standing behind you. You blink at him. You haven’t seen him since he broke up with you almost two years ago after a three year relationship. His hair has gotten longer and he’s gotten ... cuter.

You say, “Charlie, wow. It’s been a long time.”

Charlie approaches you and asks, “Are you staying here tonight?”

“I was going to but they just gave away the last room when I called three days ago reserving a room,” you say. “Why are you staying here?”

He says, “I flew in from Canada yesterday and have been staying here until my friend gets back from Canada so I can stay at his place. Wait, did you say that they don’t have anymore rooms?” You nod. “You can stay with me tonight. I have a second bed in my room that you can use.”

With a smile forming on your lips, you say, “Thank you, Charlie.” The desk receptionist hands you a key to Charlie’s room and the two of you take the elevator up to the fourth floor.

When you’re on the elevator, you take a second to look at the man next to you. His hair was much shorter than it is now. He’s wearing a blue and white button-up shirt that’s a little big on him and the top three or four buttons are undone, revealing his chest. He wears khaki shorts and converse sneakers.

The elevator dings and you get off with Charlie, who leads you down the hallway to his hotel room. He uses his key to let you both in and he lets you walk in first. You look around the room. The bed he probably slept in last night is a mess and isn’t made. There’s a shirt thrown over a chair at the little circular table. A coffee mug sits on the table between the beds.

“It’s a little messy but I wasn’t expecting company,” Charlie says, closing the door behind you. “Sorry.”

You smile and say, “It’s okay. It’s not like you need to impress me or anything.”

Charlie chuckles a bit and says, “I can run and grab us some food while you unpack. I know you probably had a long flight and probably need real food.”

“Yes, please,” you say. “Are there any McDonald’s around here? Or Taco Bell?”

He grabs his wallet and asks, “Your usual from either?” You nod in response. “I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes then.” Charlie leaves the room and you sit on the neatly made bed.

Sometimes you don’t remember why your relationship with Charlie ended. He’s a sweetheart, even after not seeing you for two years.

Your mind wanders while you unpack some of your clothes, putting them in an unused drawer. You check the minifridge to see what Charlie has. He just has a few cans of soda and a few water bottles. You sigh and sit back down on your bed.

Charlie walks in moments later with a Taco Bell bag and two drinks. He sets everything down on the little table and says, “Three soft shell tacos, Nacho Fries, and a Baja Blast. After all this time, I still know your regular at Taco Bell.”

With a laugh, you get up and say, “It’s not that hard to remember three soft shell tacos, Nacho Fries, and a Baja Blast. But thank you, Charlie.”

He smiles as you take your food, your drink, and a few napkins before sitting with your legs cross on your bed.

“What do the channels look like here? Any good ones?” you ask, opening one of your tacos.

Charlie shrugs and says, “There’s HBO we can watch. I know know what movie is on right now. Let’s check though.” He plops down on his bed with his Crunchwrap Supreme and his own Baja Blast. He grabs the remote and scrolls to HBO. He puts the channel on and you recognize the movie as Five Feet Apart. You look at Charlie and he switches to a static filled channel. “Not that one.”

Five Feet Apart was the movie you and Charlie watched the day before your relationship with him ended. You saw it in the movie theater a few weeks after it came out. You haven’t been able to watch it since.

Quickly, Charlie scrolls through the guide and puts on Friends. “This is a good compromise,” you tell him. “We both love Friends.”

“It’s one of the greatest shows ever,” Charlie says enthusiastically.

You laugh and say, “You made me watch this show so many times when we were together. The theme song always got stuck in my head after we watched it.”

Charlie swallows the bite of his Crunchwrap that he took before he asks, “Do you know how much Grey’s Anatomy you made me watch?” You laugh. “We’re even, Y/N.”

After swallowing a bite of your taco, you say, “You made me watch un ungodly amount of Friends, Charlie. It was everyday. I only made you watch Grey’s on Thursdays when it aired.”

He chuckles and says, “Okay, you got me there. You made me watch a lot of TikToks though, Miss L/N. You spent hours showing me videos.”

“You were laughing so I didn’t stop!” you say, jumping to your defense. “Remember that one time we tried making a TikTok by dancing to Obsessed by Mariah Carrey. It took us hours because you couldn’t learn the moves.”

Your ex laughs and says, “I did learn the moves eventually though. I still remember them.”

You finish your taco and says, “I wanna see this. Show me.”

Charlie smiles and gets off the bed. He stands in front of you and starts to do the Obsessed dance from TikTok. You laugh as you watch how badly he does the dance.

“For a musician, you have no rhythm,” you tease.

He sits back down on his bed with a sigh as he says, “For a small person, you eat a lot. I don’t know where it goes.”

With a laugh, you say, “I have no idea where it all goes either.”

It feels nice to laugh and talk with Charlie. Neither of you have spoken to each other since you broke up in late 2019. Just seeing him again has made you really happy. You didn’t think you’d see him again. He’s still his crazy self that he was years ago.

Both of you finish and you sit back against the headboard of your bed with a pillow behind you. You’re watching and laughing with Friends even though you’ve seen this episode a thousand times.

Charlie sudden asks, “Do you remember why we broke up?”

You look over at Charlie, who’s laying in the same position that you are, and say, “We just grew apart after high school. You moved down here part time after you graduated and I still had a few months left.” Charlie graduated early, you still had six months left. You were 17 when you and Charlie started dating at the beginning of your senior year of high school. He had just turned 17 right before the school year started. You were 20 when the relationship ended and Charlie was just about to turn 21. It wasn’t quite three years when you broke up but it was close.

He says, “I tried to make it work with us, Y/N. You know that right? Between living down here and acting, I did try.”

“I know you did,” you tell him, sitting up and looking at him. “It just got tough for both of us. We ended things on good terms.”

Charlie nods and says, “We did.”

You blink and ask, “What have you been doing since we broke up? Focusing on music, I hope.”

With a little laugh, he says, “I was on Netflix.”

Almost surprised, you say, “I didn’t know you were on Netflix, Charlie! That’s incredible. Was it a show or movie?”

“A show,” he says. “It’s called Julie and the Phantoms. We’re still waiting to be picked up for a second season but we trending in the top ten for a little bit on there after the show dropped in September last year.” Charlie tells you all about his time on set. He tells you about the show too, and you’re happy to hear that he was able to do two of the things he loves to do while being on the show.

You smile and ask, “Can I hear a song from the show? I know you have a guitar somewhere in this room. You never go anywhere without one.”

Charlie laughs and says, “You’re right.” He gets up and opens the closet door, pulling out a guitar he has stashed away in there. You laugh and shake your head. You know him too well sometimes.

He sits at the end of your bed and you cross your legs, looking at him. He pulls the guitar out of it’s case and he grabs a pick. He tunes the guitar before he looks at you.

“The song I’m about to play is song I wrote with my co-star, Madi,” he says. “It’s called Perfect Harmony. I may or may not have been kind of thinking of you when coming up with the lyrics.”

You smile and say, “Awe, I didn’t know you were such a romantic, Charlie.”

A laugh leaves Charlie’s lips as he begins to play the chords.

Step into my world Bittersweet love story about a girl Shook me to the core Voice like an angel, I've never heard before

As he plays, you sway to the music. You smile, having always enjoyed hearing his voice and watching him play guitar. He’d spend hours practicing or writing songs and you’d sit outside whatever room he was in or sit beside him while he sang and played.

Charlie looks at you occasionally as he plays, almost like he’s singing to you.

You set me free You and me together is more than chemistry Love me as I am I'll hold your music here inside my hands

You watch him intently, the smile never leaving your face as he plays. Hearing his voice again makes you so happy.

I feel your rhythm in my heart, yeah-yeah You are my brightest, burning star, woah-woah I never knew a love so real (So real) We're heaven on earth, melody and words

As he finishes up the song, you stop swaying and you look at him. Charlie finishes and he looks at you. He laughs a bit and says, “And that’s Perfect Harmony.”

“It’s beautiful,” you tell him. “And I’m not just saying that because you kind of wrote the song while thinking about me. I think it’s really good, Charlie. You’re so talented.”

Charlie’s face gets a little flustered and he says, “I’m just decent at guitar and decent at singing.”

You say, “You wouldn’t have landed a huge Netflix role if you weren’t crazy talented, Charlie. You know that right?”

He packs up his guitar and says, “You don’t have to lie to me like we’re still dating, Y/N.” Charlie gets up and puts his guitar back in the closet he took it about from. You get up and walk over to him.

When he turns around, he jumps a bit, startled that you were right there. You stare up at him and say, “I’m telling you right now that you are insanely talented. I’m face to face with you now so you can’t tell me that I’m lying.”

After a moment of staring up into Charlie’s eyes, he takes a step toward you. Your heart begins to race in your chest and you take a deep breath. You feel his fingers touch your hand and butterflies erupt in your belly. His callused fingers intertwine with yours and you gasp.

“Can I kiss you?” Charlie suddenly asks.

You nod slowly, tilting your head up. It’s been so long since Charlie’s kissed you, and you always loved his kisses. Whenever you were upset, he’d kiss your forehead or your cheek or your neck and you’d feel better almost immediately.

Charlie’s free hand comes up to your face, cupping your cheek. He leans down and ghosts his lips over yours hesitantly. You lean your head up as Charlie becomes more sure and crashes his lips to yours. You gasp softly before kissing him back. The kiss is slow and soft as you both take in the moment.

In the two years apart, you’ve never lost feelings for Charlie. You tried to date but it never worked out because you never were able to get over the only man you ever really loved. Being able to hold his hand and kiss him again feels heavenly.

Both of you stand like this for a few moments before you pull back, looking up at Charlie. He looks down at you and asks, “How long will you be in Los Angeles?”

You say, “I’m moving into my new apartment tomorrow. I just flew in a day early.”

He smiles and asks, “So you’re here permanently?”

“I’m here permanently,” you say, smiling. “So if you’re willing to try the relationship thing again then-”

Charlie cuts you off with another kiss, this one rougher than the last. You laugh as Charlie pulls back, saying, “Are you kidding? I’d love to try the relationship thing again. The only reason I’m staying with my friend is because I’m looking for a new apartment too.”

With a huge smile on both your faces, you wrap your arms around Charlie’s neck. You hug him tight and say, “Looks like we ended up finding our way back to each other.”

“Thank God,” Charlie says against your ear. You laugh.

You spend the night wrapped around Charlie in some way until you begin to fall asleep.

As you doze off to sleep, you hear Charlie begin to sing softly.

The truth is finally breaking through Two worlds collide when I'm with you Our voices rise and soar so high We come to life when we're In perfect harmony

A smile forms on your face as you snuggle against Charlie’s side, falling asleep in his arms.

[emotions-ew]

A Collection of Queer Country Artists and Songs for anyone who doesn’t feel like there’s country music they can relate to...

There is this idea that country music is like just Republican men singing about beer, and trucks and also Jesus,  and that is kind of fair because loads of it is but there are some cool as hell queer/lgbtq+ country artists. Finding those and finding that representation in a genre of music I was literally raised on kind of changed my life in a tiny way and I wanted to share that.

(This is by no means a comprehensive list and also I’m basing the “Country” part of this sometimes on my subjective opinion/limited music knowledge so yuh please don’t hate me if I get some wrong)

Also link below for a Spotify playlist of my favourite gay/gayish country music, some mentioned in this post some not, (with a title that isn’t obviously gay for anyone who can’t openly listen to gay stuff on their public accounts for whatever reason) so feel free to skip the massive essay and just jump straight to that. And pretty please repost if I missed anyone/ any songs you love.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7KB6PmUxnpkU7lih8Bysvw

Artists To Follow:

Chely Wright

- Right off the bat, Chely Wright is a legend and I’m in love with her. So, in the 90′s Chely Wright was kind of a huge deal. She started her career as a singer/songwriter and released her first album in ‘94, which was critically acclaimed although never reached the commercial success of her later works. By ‘97 she was really hitting her stride, dropping her breakout hit “Shut up and Drive” (a personal favourite of mine) followed two years later by the biggest hit of her career “Single White Female”. Throughout all that Chely Wright was, to the world, a good old fashioned, heterosexual southern gal. Privately it was a bit of a different story. She had public relationships with male country artists, all while pursuing a secret decade long relationship with a woman. 

I hadn’t ever really heard a Chely Wright song until a few years ago so I never knew about her music or career pre-coming out but I do know that even though by the time she came out in 2010 she was by no means at the height of her fame Chely Wright is kind of one of the biggest names in country music to be out and proud (in my opinion) and I love her like an insane amount. I literally play her music in my car when I have passengers just so I can be like “fun fact this singer is actually gay-” and then subject them to a lengthy explanation of her entire career. She came out with an album and a memoir and the album is my favourite of her work because it’s so fucking raw and because I relate to most of it immensely. Anyways Chely Wright went fucking through it in her journey to being her authentic self and now she’s out and proud and married to a woman and they have a family together and I’m a fucking sucker for a happy ending and y’all should add her to every playlist you have. And on top of that her music is genuinely good. Coming out undoubtedly damaged her career but I think that

Brandi Carlile 

- As far as I can tell Brandi Carlile has been out her whole career. I feel like this list is just going to be me saying “I’m in love with her” about a bunch of women old enough to be my mother but in my defence, I am honestly in love with her. She’s been making music since she was like, seventeen, and has had a bunch of massive hits, as a singer, songwriter, and producer. If you want to cry kind of happy tears listen to her performance of “Bring my Flowers Now” with Tanya Tucker. She’s won Grammy’s and CMT awards and she’s done it all as an out Queer woman. She’s also a founding member of The Highwomen, an all-female country music group who released their first album in 2019, comprised of Carlile, Marren Morris, Natalie Hemby and Amanda Shires. I really love this band because they’re four artists who are immensely successfully in their own right collabing, much like the Highwaymen, and their music is phenomenal while also being a fuck you to mainstream country music and their inability to properly represent women in country music spaces. 

She’s been married to a woman (smoking hot and also brilliant) since 2012 and they have two kids together and if you want to cry (again) then you have to listen to her song “Mother” about her eldest daughter. A queer country artist absolutely worth adding to all your playlists. 

Brooke Eden

- As I understand it Eden came out publicly in January of this year. She’s engaged to Hilary Hoover, who she’s been dating since 2015 apparently. I can’t even imagine the pressure that must be on a person and how stressful it would be to keep a relationship secret from the whole world for years and personally I think they’re a cute as hell couple and I wish them literally all the happiness in the world. 

Brooke Eden has a few older songs that I think are really good, my favourite being “Act Like You Don’t”, and while her new stuff isn’t my usual country vibe I am a sucker for literally anything gay and it is legally my gay duty to stream any song that she releases to support my fellow queer. It’s quite different to anything Wright or Carlile sing but I actually kind of love that because it shows that country music of all different shapes and sizes and styles can be sung by queer artists. 

Amythyst Kiah

- Okay so I am a very new listener to Amythyst Kiah, but her music is literally so beautiful it would be a straight up sin to not include her on this list. Her music is country-blues-roots esq (more roots than country, I think?) and her voice is so unique. She grew up in Chattanooga and has been playing music since childhood. She recently made her Opry debut which is fucking awesome. She also belongs to a band called Our Native Daughters, described as “A supergroup of Black women in traditional music”. Their debut album “Songs of Our Native Daughters” did numbers and I haven’t listened to the whole thing but my favourite so far are “Black Myself” and “I Knew I Could Fly” so y’all add that to your playlists along with “Wild Turkey” by Amythyst Kiah because holy hell her voice on that will blow your mind.

Steve Grand

-        The first man to make this list, he should frankly be honoured. Grand has been an out and proud gay man making country music since like 2013, and I have so much respect for an artist who chose to simply never be in, choosing instead to simply write gay ass songs about being in love with men and letting the chips fall where they man. His music is always going to have a special place in my heart and, he’s cute so if you’re into men and music by men give him a google. add him to your playlists, his All-American Boy album is literally just a dozen songs that are perfect to yell-sing along to.

Katie Pruitt

-        Not hugely knowledgeable on Katie Pruitt but her music makes me feel crazy intense emotions and is absolutely gay

 Honorable Mention Artists I haven’t Really Listened to But Who I Know to be gay thanks to google and might be your thing so totally check them out:

Brandy Clark

Ty Herndon

Shelly Fairchild

Lavendar Country

Trixie Mattel

Cameron Hawthorn

Drop any other names of artists or songs you know of 

 Specific Songs That Make Me Fucking Cry or (in good and bad ways (but always in a gay way)) or basically are just gay as hell:

If She Ever Leaves Me; The Highwomen

- So, this album came out about a week before my first (and only) girlfriend broke up with me. The general gist of the song is a woman singing about how her loved isn’t ever going to leave her but if she does it sure as hell won’t be for a creepy man in a bar. A little ironic that I felt I related to it so intensely, considering she did in fact leave me. There’s this one lyric that goes “I’ve loved her in secret/I’ve lover here out loud/the sky hasn’t always been blue” and my girlfriend and I were crazy deep in the closet so I drew her a cute little picture of a grey cloud and on the back I wrote that lyric and I gave it to her and to me it was kind of a promise that one day I’d get a chance to love her out loud and even though I never actually did this song is forever going to make me cry because of the little bit of hope that lyric gave me and the way it’s inclusion on this overwhelmingly mainstream country album made me feel like acceptance was just that little bit closer. 

 All American Boy; Steve Grand

- Definitely one of the first gay country songs I ever heard, and Steve Grand didn’t once sacrifice a scrap of country for the gay. It’s beautiful, it’s a little sad, it’s hopeful. It’s forever going to hold a special place in my heart and the music videos is kind of one of my favourites ever. I found this song before I found myself and the way it made my heart warm should have been a stronger sign than I took it to be. 

Like Me; Chely Wright

- When you love someone you kind of make it your mission to know them in a way that no one else can. This song by Chely Wright is sort of an ode to that, and how even once you lost someone, you’re still going to know every little thing about them. On top of that it sort of speaks to the idea that all these things Wright learned about this woman, she learned in secret and she knew her and loved her in secret and now that they’re gone from each other she’s left with all of this knowledge and all of these questions and no one to answer them. I love the way it’s so slow and the melody and her voice, the way it’s low and a little raspy, make this one of my favourite Chely Wright songs.

The Mother; Brandi Carlile

-        Sorry but a song about being a mother by a queer woman is going to make me cry every time and actually I’m not that sorry. It’s quite a simple song, if any song written by Brandi Carlile can ever be described as ‘simple’, it’s an ode to her daughter. My favourite line is “you are not an accident/where no one thought it through” because it speaks to the fact that in order for queer women to have a kid together they have to want it so damn bad and also I just like the way her voice sounds on that line. This song is also the perfect thing to listen to if you ever for a second feel like being gay/queer is going to stand in the way of you having a family because it absolutely doesn’t have to and if that’s something you want, you can have it. Don’t let people try and convince you otherwise.

Loving Her; Katie Pruitt

-        Unapologetic gay love. Opening a song with “If loving hers a sin, I don’t wanna go to heaven” is a fucking baller move and she went there. The lyrics are beautiful, and her voice is phenomenal. It could be a sad song, about confronting religious repression and grappling with what that means for your love, but instead its triumphant. Katie Pruitt doesn’t give a fuck if you have a problem because she’s going to write songs for her lover.

Jesus From Texas; Semler

-        Not actually totally sure this is a country song, but it has the words ‘Jesus’ and ‘Texas’ in the title so I feel safe including it in this list. Honestly, I don’t really know why I relate so hard to this song. Like, I wasn’t really raised with religion, so I don’t know what it is about this funky little tune that makes me want to sob but there’s something about this tune that makes me want to do whatever the opposite of get up and dance is, but like, in a good way.

Lovin’ Again; Steve Grand

-        Breakup song that ends kind of positively? So good to sing along to at high, high volumes. The idea that losing someone doesn’t have to mean losing yourself and just because you can’t love them doesn’t mean you’re not ever going to love again. But also kind of about how it’s hard to get over someone, I don’t know it’s just good.

Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears; Lavender Country

-        Jesus christ if this isn’t the coolest shit I’ve ever heard in my life. Sorry but a gay country group formed in 1972 who dropped possibly the first gay themed country album, and this was the title of one of the songs. God I am in love.

 Songs that (to me) are a little fruity or that I just relate to in a gay way:

Picket Fences; Chely Wright

-          Chely Wright is gay but this song came out long before she did and when she wrote it, it wasn’t supposed to be gay which is why it’s in this section and not the previous. The reason it’s included at all is because frankly ma’am, Mrs Wright, it’s a little fruity. And I feel a little bad for joking because honestly to me, the way I hear this song and knowing the context (that Wright was deeply closeted at the time she wrote and released it), it’s kind of just sad. The general gist of the song is Wright asking what’s so great about a traditional lifestyle anyways. It could be read as a woman genuinely questioning why we push that expectation that she’ll have two kids and a husband and a picket fence lifestyle, or even could be read as a woman who’s trying to deflect how much she does in fact want that, you have to listen and form your own opinion. But to me, it feels like a woman who’s desperately trying to justify why she doesn’t want that life not because she can’t have it, but she knows it will never be right for her. I don’t know it’s hard to explain I just feel like this song is a little bit gay even though I’m sure she didn’t intend that.

Sinning with You; Sam Hunt

-          Sorry but this song is gay. Sorry but you can’t write the lines “I never felt like I was sinning with you/Always felt like I could talk to God in the morning” and “if it’s so wrong why did it feel so right” and “But I never felt shame, never felt sorry/Never felt guilty touching your body” and not to mention the opening line of “raised in the first pew/praises for yeshua/case of a small town repression”, and expect to not sit in my car sobbing as I realised that while I never felt like what we did was a sin she absolutely did, and wishing I could have told her that I was sorry for making her carry the weight of both our souls but also that it wasn’t a sin and nothing in the world could feel that good and be that bad and it isn’t right that she had to be so ashamed of something that was just so good. Sam Hunt actually said after he wrote the song that while it was reflection on his own relationship with faith he genuinely hopes that people in the lgbtq community can like find comfort or whatever in his words and like go off king, we stan an ally.

  How do I Get There; Deana Carter

-          This ones easy, it’s about falling in love with your best friend and suddenly realising you want more than just friendship with them. Sorry Deana, that’s gay. In my Deana Carter of like Year 10 I played this song on repeat and screamed along to the lyrics as though singing it hard enough would make her like me back.

[the-silentium]

Quits

Masterlist

Pairing: Five Hargreeves x Reader

Words: 2200 words

Warnings: TUA season 1 and 2 spoilers, violence, blood, swearing.

Requested by: Anon!

Hi!! Can i get a five x reader where the reader gets shot or stabbed or something but doesnt tell anyone and ends up passing out? Thanks!!

A/N: I’m back at my requests! Thank you Anon for this sweet lil’ idea and I hope it lives up to your expectations as it does with mine  ❤ Requests are still open!

You remember a time when you took pride in your capacity to make the right choice at the right time. When school asked you what you wanted to do in life, you chose the right one from the start unlike the majority of your friends who had to change classes multiple times and were now a happy veterinarian. When life put on your path the incarnation of your perfect partner, you decided to take it slow to see where it went. Fortunately for you, you quickly saw through his facade and kicked him out before he could create more permanent damage to your heart. 

Your life was full of important decisions that were though at the time. Sometimes you had to take some days to think about it when other times it took you hours. They were all risky shots that could end up badly for you in the end so you liked to take your time to think about it. 

This is why when Five Hargreeves, your childhood closest friend, knocked at your door one day and asked for your help to stop the fast-arriving apocalypse, you didn't think twice and immediately accepted. How could you make the bad choice by helping him save the world? If he failed you would die, he would die, everyone would die and this is obviously the bad end of the story, right?

Well, as of right now, you were starting to doubt it. After failing to stop 2019's apocalypse and after Five had time-traveled every living Hargreeves plus yourself in the 1960s, you found yourself in two precarious situations: one, you were back in your 13-year-old self and two, you were not fighting two crazy hard-ass Commissioners, but three crazy hard-ass IKEA mafioso! 

It was a miracle that you survived the raid on the Hargreeves Mansion unscathed. You had thanked your luck for allowing you to live another day, although you regret ever doing so. Clearly, you had jinxed yourself, for surviving the Swedes ambush at the Mexican consulate wasn't as painless as the raid. 

A very well-sharpened knife had managed to pierce your skin, getting in your abdomen all the way to the hilt before you managed to kick the white-haired man down a nice flight of stairs. Your medical instinct pushed you to hastily insert some absorbent tissue into your wound to control the bleed and allow you to check it later. 

Sadly, one thing led to another and you were now sitting with all six Hargreeves who were currently trying to formulate a plan of some sort while Diego was focussed on his JFK conspiracy and you were literally bleeding out. 

The once pristine washcloth you had stolen in the kitchen was completely soaked, staining your blue shirt with dark red spots. Speaking of spots, hundreds of tiny black ones were now dancing in your line of sight like dark fireflies. 

"Has anyone here done anything to screw up the timeline?" 

You lifted your hand hoping to get the attention of the others, obviously working when Luther asked what you'd done. 

"Anything yet, but would it screw the timeline if I died here?" 

You saw Five frowns in confusion, his mouth opening on a question before yelling your name when you couldn't hold yourself up anymore and fell to the ground. Strong arms lifted you from the floor and you landed on a comfy cloud. You smiled in contentment, it has been a while since you had a proper night of sleep. This cloud will be perfect for a nap. 

Tiny slaps on your left cheek forced your eyes to open and meet a concerned blue gaze. 

"So pretty." You mumbled, still focussing on the blue eyes frantically scanning your face. 

Oh did I mentioned earlier that you had a crush on Five? Because you do and it is not small if after 15 years your heart still accelerates when you merely meet his gaze. 

"Don't sleep okay? Keep your eyes open!" You laughed at his command, it is the same thing you told him the day he lost consciousness at Leonard's cabin. You had a snarky remark at the tip of your tongue but it died on your lips when darkness forced its way upon you. 

………………………

Even before your mind was operational enough to create thoughts, your brain was already running full speed and relentlessly reminded you that your abdomen was on fire. The pain was a great ally into your mission to wake up and open your eyes. Maybe you would be able to ask for some painkillers. 

The harsh neon light shining over your head made you tear up the second your eyes opened to assess your environment. You tried again, slower this time, and found yourself confused by your surroundings. 

Many times in your childhood you had passed time in this room, planning pranks, doing homework, reading, or just hanging out. Nothing had changed excepted the walls that were now covered in equations and names. 

Groggily, you attempted to seat up, your abdominal muscles screamed in agony at your movements forcing you to stay on your back. The groan that erupted from your throat alarmed a passer-by who raced to the door, opening it so fast that it collided with the wall. 

"She's awake!" Klaus shouted in the corridor when he saw your wide-open eyes. He only had time to put a foot into the bedroom that a blue light appeared out of nowhere announcing Five's arrival. Your heart was beating too quickly by the time Five had pushed Klaus out of his room and slammed the door shut behind him. 

“What were you thinking?!” Five's anger caused you to frown. What did you do? You searched your mind for an answer and quickly found one in the vivid memory of a knife diving into your flesh. 

You opened your mouth to talk your mind but nothing came out of the desert that was your throat. Noticing your problem, Five caught a water bottle from his nightstand, cautiously brought it to your lips, and let you drink small sips of the freshwater. Satisfied, you coughed once to prepare your throat. 

“Now you know how it felt so we are quits.” You answered, referring to the time in Leonard’s cabin where you felt like the world had stopped when Five lost consciousness. You took care of him as best as you could despite your field of expertise being animals you had a basic understanding of the human anatomy, so with your trembling hands covered in his blood while desperately trying to not notice how much there was, you worked as effectively as you could to keep the love of your life alive. 

"This is not a game! You could have died!" You would have believed his angry eyes if only his hands weren't shaking so much. You were friend with Five for long enough to know how to read his temper and now, he was scared. 

"But I didn't." You tried to calm him down with your calm voice. You remember jumping at his neck the second he woke up that time he passed out, why couldn't he do the same instead of yelling at you? 

You watched him open his mouth a couple of times before closing it, clearly thinking through what he was going to say. When he finally chose, his voice was barely audible. "Selfish." 

You blinked in confusion at his statement. "Me? Selfish?" With each word now, your voice was raising until you reached the point where you were yelling at the blue-eyed 30 years old man. "Everything I did was to save the damn world from the apocalypse and you call me selfish?! I took a fucking knife to the gut and dealt with it for the sake of the world and you call me self-" 

"I wasn't talking about you." Now this stopped you good. You frowned in confusion, not seeing where he was going. "I was talking about me." 

Your head tilted to the side, searching your brain as to why Five would call himself selfish. All he did was for his family, he never acted for himself, so why?

"I almost let everything down to make sure you made it back alive. I almost let the world end for you because I can't imagine living another 45 years where you're not there." His words were soft, a tone that you weren't aware was used exclusively around you. His gaze fled yours, switching between the scribbles on the walls and the foot of the bed. 

Color rushed to your face for his words definitely sounded like a confession to your ears. Your childhood self had waited for so long to hear something of the type, so long that you thought the friendzone was the ultimate area that you would be welcome in. You accepted that your feelings were strong enough to be pleased by his happiness even with someone else. 

A smile formed on your lips causing Five's heart to miss a beat in its rhythmic pumping. "I-"

"Guys they are doing it!" Klaus' loud voice on the other side of the door cut you off. 

"Doing what?" Allison had joined her brother at the door, confused of his antics. 

"Admitting their undying love for each other!" At this point Five had opened the door swiftly, his murderous gaze fell on his siblings, daring them to say something more. It was at this moment that Klaus realized how scary his brother was in reality, he wasn't the little Number Five anymore, but a grown-up man who could easily murder him in a thousand ways possible. 

"Oh heck no!" The words fell off your mouth against your will, the embarrassing situation making you nervous so your brain tried to defuse the situation by stating the opposite of what Klaus wanted. From your point of view, you totally missed the way Five's eyes lost their deadly rage, instead showing his pain at your words. He was quick to hide his feelings once more, but his siblings had enough time to acknowledge his true emotion. 

Slapping Klaus behind the head, Allison got a hold of his shirt and pulled him away to let the two of you clear this out. Everyone knew you two were pinning each other when you were younger. Even when fighting the two apocalypses! It was clear as day for the rest of the family, however, it wasn't the case for the both of you. 

The door slammed back in place once more making you jump and hiss in pain when your abdominal muscles contracted. In your field of vision, you noted that Five had tensed before closing his hands in tight fists and made his way to his desk, the only place in the room you couldn't see because of your incapacity to turn around. 

You knew what you said must have hurt him, it clearly seemed like you had rejected him. Stupid defense method. 

"Five?" No answer was given, his heavy breathing being the only sound resonating in the room. "I didn't mean that." A scoff fell off his lips. 

"You think I'll believe that?" The venom in his voice told you just how much you had hurt him, squeezing your heart in shame. 

"When you disappeared 15 years ago I developed a system to protect myself from new heartbreaks. It hurt way less to force myself to believe that my feelings for you were nonexistent than acknowledge them and continue living without you, Five." Water appeared in your eyes, pooled down your cheeks, and soaked your new shirt. "I was so used to deny my feelings that-" Your voice broke when a sob forced its way out of you. 

Hands found your cheeks, drying the wet trails before pulling you into a firm chest. You managed to slip your hands around his waist and cried for as long as needed. The exhaustion of the last endless days caught up to you along with the fact that the subject of your love was very well alive and here to stay, fueling the flow of tears falling down your eyes. 

"I really didn't mean it." You managed to croak out between sobs. 

One of Five's hand went to your hair, stroking your head tenderly. "I know." Your grip onto his shirt tightened when a kiss landed on the top of your head. 

Slowly, he pulled away to lay you back down onto his bed and snuggled to your side when your anxious eyes found his. One of his arms went under your head while the other took care to not accidentally touch the general area surrounding your wound when snaking around your waist to keep you as close to him as possible. 

His body heat was very much welcome, you snuggled your way into the crook of his neck in search of comfort. 

"Rest. I'll be there when you wake up." He whispered into your hair when his button-down crumpled in your hands. 

You sighed, allowing yourself to relax in his embrace. "I love you Five." You had to get it out before you let yourself fall asleep for you were scared that later would be too late. 

"I love you too." Delicate patterns were traced by his skilled fingers onto the bare skin of your waist making you shiver. Your heartbeat accelerated at his chuckle before stabilizing when you fell into a peaceful slumber.