#i swear i'm not exaggerating when i say this song fits the ending of the show perfectly

[absolute-lithops-effecting]

Making my midnight mass obsession worse by listening to alpha rats nest by the mountain goats on loop

[thelaurenshippen]

this month's mixtape is for Tex Bullock, one of the protagonists of my queer outlaw western (currently drafting). if you subscribe to my newsletter (linked in the previous sentence), then you'll have already read these, but for everyone else, my notes:

This playlist has been public on my Spotify for a while, but I don't think I've ever shared notes for it. Hell, I'm not sure I'd ever written notes for it, though I feel like I must have somewhere, at some point. But, anyway, to catch you up if you're new: Desperate Hollow is my currently unpublished queer outlaw romance. Tex Bullock and Sawyer Watson grow up in a gang together before Sawyer shoots Tex and leaves him for dead. Seven years later, they end up in the same dead-end town and have to deal with everything they've never said. 

The book goes back and forth between their perspectives - and in past/present - but we begin with Tex's perspective, so I thought we'd start with him in the playlists first. Like last month's main story playlist, I made this playlist 1000 years ago and I've found so many songs since that would fit it so much better. But I've kept the original three playlists the same because, even though the characters have become more fleshed out, they've largely stayed the same at their core. 

Tex is the classic Wild West outlaw - he's brash but charming, flirtatious and deadly, roguishly scarred and just the perfect amount of mysterious. And all of that is a carefully constructed persona that he's worked hard to cultivate. In reality, he's gentle with horses, loves a good novel, would happily cuddle Sawyer for hours at a time, and wants so desperately to be loved. He's a murderer, he isn't a good person, but he's a loyal one and very often kind. And he's been in love with Sawyer since he was a teenager. He can forgive Sawyer for shooting him - it's being left that cuts deep. 

1. "The Hell of It Is" - Sam Palladio & Clare Bowen

Yes, this is from the TV show "Nashville". I loved that show. I'm the only person who watched that show. The music slapped. It's all over tons of my playlists (I think the oldest Nashville add to one of playlists was on a Sam/Mark ship mix (if you're a plus pal, it's this one)). This particular set of characters were meant to be a kind of The Civil Wars rip-off and I love how love/hate their lyrics often are. 

The hell of it is/I love you even when I don't - I meannnnnnnn

I'd rather live with my mistakes/Honey say you'll do the same - in the beginning of the story, Tex has been torn between anger and love for seven years. He doesn't forgive Sawyer for leaving him for dead, but at the same time, he'd do anything to have the opportunity to forgive him. He'd rather live with Sawyer and their mistakes than not. 

2. "John Wayne" - Lady Gaga

This song just sounds like Tex to me. In your face, swaggering, a little sexy. Tex is a construct of his own making, an exaggeration of Wild West masculine violence like John Wayne. 

I crave a real wild man/I'm strung out on John Wayne - this is Tex  about himself. He doesn't want a wild man as a partner, he wants to be the wild man. And he needs to be a little enamored with himself in order to keep the construct alive. 

3. "Dress" - Charlotte Sands

This song is the reason the Desperate Hollow novel exists. It came up on one of my discovery playlists and that chorus - Love the way you wear that dress/Making everyone upset/Burning that cigarette boy/Swear to God, I confess, boy - just had me immediately thinking of Tex and Sawyer and the idea of Tex seeing Sawyer goofing off in a dress and being like "oh shit Something is happening". At the time, I was working on the story as a podcast taking place entirely in the present day, so I wrote a little drabble from their years in the gang as an exercise - Tex and Sawyer and the other men going through a haul they'd pulled, all of them trying on various fancy clothes. Sawyer throws on one of the dresses and is laughing and dancing, carefree for the first time since Tex has met him, and Tex is immediately in hell. 

Look so good I'm annoyed - this was the building block for the scene I wrote. Tex is really confronting his attraction to Sawyer for the first time and because, at this point, they do not get along, he's just annoyed by it. It's inconvenient that Sawyer is so smart and capable and also hot. 

So, anyway, I wrote that scene, kept working on the podcast and then...kept thinking about that scene, and how fun it was to write a flashback. And here we are, five years later, and I've got a 150k word novel that cuts between flashback and present day. 

You're so masculine/Taste like cherry cola - the juxtaposition of masculine and feminine in this song is so good and there's nothing inherently about cherry cola, but because of the cherry chapstick in "I Kissed a Girl", my mind just immediately went to that place. 

4. "I Will Never Die" - Delta Rae

There's an unmade playlist in my head that's "songs to crawl out of your grave to" and this is absolutely one of them. Tex is riddled with scars and has escaped death more times than anyone he knows and he just refuses to die. And even though "Dress" is a lot more pop-y, this song is more in line with the aesthetic.

5. "Bad" - Royal Deluxe

Another great little bit of outlaw rock from Royal Deluxe. This is very straightforward as a choice for Tex, but I'm bad, as bad can be/So bad that it's hard to believe/Oh, what they say about me is particularly good for the fact that Tex is all about the narrative of his own legend. 

6. "Raise Hell" - Dorothy

Another extremely self-explanatory one! This is pure vibes. Tex was raised to raise hell, and I'm always going to be a sucker for any talk of sinners in songs of this genre. 

7. "Slow Burn" - Kacey Musgraves

The flow of this whole playlist is not my best work, and we really take a hard turn into love songs here. But if I had to justify my own shitty construction, I would say that it mimics how Tex feels about Sawyer - it's total whiplash all the time. 

This song is so perfect for walking someone home at the end of a date, when there's a nice breeze and the sun is setting. It's the perfect song for falling into the initial infatuation - not love, but the knowledge that maybe, someday, it could grow into that. Tex hasn't had a lot of that kind of softness in his life, but he wants it desperately, and he and Sawyer did have moments that were like that that he holds as precious memories. 

8. "Love Story" - Sarah Cothran

This was originally the last song on this playlist, but I moved things around the more that "Night Shift" became theTex song. 

It's sad-dark Taylor Swift. Like the previous song, this is feeding into Tex's fantasies about what love could be like if he didn't live the way he did and didn't have blood on his hands. Sawyer has always been the storybook prince to him, and it's Tex who doesn't make a good princess (in his mind). 

9. "Night Shift" - Lucy Dacus*

This song makes me so catshit bananas. I could copy down every single lyric. The first time I tasted somebody else's spit/I had a coughing fit is one of my favorite opening lyrics of all time. The whole metaphor of the night shift. The tension between forgiveness and desire. Breakup song of all time!!!

Genuinely, there's so much about this song that is perfect for Tex. The first time I heard the song (which I believe was sent to me by a listener), I was bowled over, because I'd been thinking about the fact that Tex almost certainly pretended he was kissing Sawyer the first time he kissed someone. I was let down, it wasn't the same just kiiiiiills me. That's it exactly! 

And then, the night shift stuff. You've got a 9 to 5/so I'll take the night shift/And I'll never see you again/if I can help it - there's a whole thing in the book about Sawyer as the sun and Tex as the moon, so this really sends me off the deep end. 

In five years I hope these songs feel like covers/dedicated to new lovers - Tex is this way about his own legend and the narrative of his life. After he's shot, Sawyer isn't in his life anymore, so surely Sawyer can't be part of who he is anymore. Except you can't really ever untangle yourself from the people who shaped you and, no matter how much he tries, everything always reminds Tex of Sawyer. 

Don't hold your breath/forget you ever saw me at my best - Sawyer was the only one who really saw Tex's softer side and now that they're apart, Tex would give anything to remove that information from Sawyer's mind. 

Can't lose what you never had - a common sentiment, but one that punches me in the chest when it comes to Tex and Sawyer! 

Am I a masochist, resisting urges to punch you in the teeth...What was the plan? Absolve your guilt and shake hands/I feel no need to forgive but I might as well/But let me kiss your lips so I know how it felt - I'm walking into the ocean. The way that Lucy Dacus puts these different physical acts in the context of forgiveness - not punching you is hurting me, if we shook hands and parted would you feel absolved, would kissing you feel like forgiving you....Lucy, I am in your walls!!!   

p.s.if you want more queer outlaw ramblings, I've got a whole tumblr tag for it! 

[where-did-the-groove-go]

Boulder show report: Sparksblr Edition

Pre-show shenanigans... I bought The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman at the record shop that was a few blocks away from the venue. My mom was actually cool and helped me recreate the day's tour photo. Conversation topics with my neighbors while waiting for the show to start included complimenting everyone's black-and-red outfits and shoes, the gal to my right showing the photo she took of Ron and Russell at the airport earlier, and the gal to my left telling us she'd kept a few sequins from Russell's green suit that she collected off the stage after a show in the 80s.

Russell came on in his black-on-red jacket, so I was matching with him, yay! So May We Start received a tremendous reaction and had Ron smiling. I did the fist pump in unison with Russell during the beat drop in The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte, and I think Ron noticed because I swear he looked straight at me afterwards. Russell had added "the good news is, it's never too late to change" to his speech preceding It Doesn't Have To Be That Way since the last time I'd seen it, and while it still didn't hit me as hard as in Manchester, I was choked up. I was probably the sole person in the audience giving them a standing ovation afterwards, but it doesn't matter--that's how much that song means to me.

My neighbor gave me a look like "wut??" but stood up so that I wasn't the only one dancing during Balls, and Russell's shirt had gone from fully-buttoned to all the way halfway open by the time I noticed. Shopping Mall Of Love had one of the best responses I've ever heard; there were cheers after every single one of Ron's lines all the way to the end of the song. I'm pretty sure Russell held eye contact with me during the final "one fleeting glance" in Escalator, I nearly died, and it was extremely fitting since it was the only time it happened, whereas it seemed like Ron was looking my direction every other time I looked at him :3

Eli was totally working the Bon Voyage solo, unfortunately that was the only moment I noticed from him because Ron was mostly blocking him from my vantage point, not to mention it's impossible to ignore Russell when he's bouncing mere yards away from your face (the front row was knees-to-the-stage so even though I was in the second row I was still VERY close). There was a really sweet moment where Russell smiled at Ron during The No. 1 Song In Heaven when he wasn't looking. Ron was pulling silly faces during his shuffle, and this time there was absolutely no mistaking it, he stared me dead in the eye during the last few seconds of it, and I flashed him a hand heart when he sat back down.

Ron rubbed his hands together like a gleeful cartoon villain before he started My Baby's Taking Me Home. Russell introduced the backing band and cheerfully said "I think that's everybody", then just waited for the crowd's reaction before saying "Oh yeah... Mr. Ron Mael" to huge cheers, and then Ron actually reached out and grabbed the mic away from Russ to introduce his brother. Russell spoke before All That, saying it was a song that was "really apt for how we all feel about all of you guys, and especially on a night like tonight", and it nearly made me cry.

They basked in the final applause for a bit, and Russell gave a cute little gesture like "aw shucks". I climbed over into the front row, waving a card that I'd made for them, but I'm not sure that Russell noticed since he didn't take it from me (and he started giving out handshakes too far over to my right so I didn't get one, sad). So I did what a girl's gotta do, after the band had left I pulled a Fairfield Halls and hopped up onto the stage, and managed to put my card on Ron's keyboard before I got kicked off. I really hope they got it...

--

I'm not exaggerating when I say that Sparks have entirely changed my outlook on life. I don't know what or when, but I know that things are going to be drastically different for me sometime soon. This album and this tour have really solidified that. It's not even a choice anymore.

I'm in a void somewhere between euphoria and despair now, still on a high from my shows but the post-tour blues have kicked in. I know I'll never be able to cling to these memories as strongly as I'd like. I've been crying from emotions I can't even name. I'm so so so grateful for getting to take part in all of this, and forever thankful that the Maels have had such an unwavering commitment to Sparks and that they're still doing what they love.

[love-amihan]

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HYPING AOT BOYS FOR TIKTOK

amihan's note: fuck it i'm doing other aot charas too 😤 this will have many parts grrr i enjoyed imagining their different reactions, so here you go. happy reading!

mentioned charas; eren jaeger, jean kirstein, connie springer, porco galliard, reiner braun

-eren jaeger

you stepped in your shared bedroom without saying a word, not that he noticed anyway. he was busy with his workout, music blaring from his pocket-sized speakers. you stopped beside him, making your presence known, bending down you push the power off button on his speakers.

just as he’s about to complain, your phone starts blasting it’s own music. the countdown is already done as you set the phone on the table, fixing it to fit him in frame. he stands up, sweat running down his torso. you look at him with all seriousness in your face, your eyes trailing up and down his body before giving a thumbs up, “nice” you quickly commented.

eren smirked proudly, “i know” you then started clapping making him confused. “dance for me baby” that was all it took for eren to move. this boy got moves, no doubt about it. i feel like he will probably try to copy the clips he saw, prepare for some hot moves. oh he definitely will do the dolphin dive/floor grind.

-jean kirstein

jean was laying down on the couch with his eyes closed, arm covering them while you were laying on top of him, his other hand lazily draped over your frame. you're scrolling on your phone tiktok opened, you stopped on a particular video wherein they hype their significant other to dance to the song.

you took interest in the video and wonder what jean would do, you glance up at him seeing he's still half asleep. you poke his cheek trying to see if he'll wake up, he just grunts as a response not really giving you attention. this made you pout and stood up, his arm falling to his side.

you set up the phone by the television and saw that it captured both of you perfectly, once the timer runs out. you pulled him up which, surprisingly, he obliged without complaining. he looked at you in confusion, rubbing his eyes.

you stand aside putting him in the center of the frame. you begin hyping him up, trying to make him dance. it took a few seconds for him to process and start showing his moves.

i swear this fucker he started hip thrusting and grinding the floor the moment he realized, you actually posted the video and it garnered a lot of views. you bet there's lots of 'how to be air' and 'how to be a floor' comments.

-connie springer

you were currently out on a date, a picnic date that turned out to be disastrous.. well i expect nothing more from connie but hey! you are having fun and that’s all that matters, the day was filled with laughter. you leaned on his shoulder, the two of you sitting down already done with the food he packed.

you were scrolling through your phone while he watched beside you, cheek resting against the top of your head. suddenly you come across a video where their partner hype the other and see what they would do. like reading your mind, connie chuckles “alright, let’s do this” he gently pushed you aside, confidently standing up.

he offered you a hand and off you went setting up your phone, the countdown was down to three and you turned around facing him making sure you’re not blocking the frame. connie bops his head to the beat, big smile on his face. he looks at you for a moment before pointing at the camera.

he then busted out his moves, he shamelessly threw it back in public please people were staring when i say threw it back, i really meant it. "get it babe!!" you called out to him, encouraging him to continue. having his antics rubbed on you gave you confidence to come running behind him and catch his movements. he definitely exaggerated the movements and did more slutty moves once you did.

-porco galliard

you rushed to your shared room, the countdown already starting. you set your phone on the table, the countdown already in five seconds. through all your rushed actions, porco just sat there with a very confused expression.

as porco was about to ask what you were doing, you dragged him up and made him stand in the middle of the frame. you peaked from behind him and see that the countdown is done, his eyes following your every movement.

you went out of frame shaking your hips a little, “come on show me your moves, love” porco blushed a little, “i’m shy” he whispered to you, slowly coming closer to you. you shake your index finger at him, “uh uh baby, you gotta show me what those hips do” you giggle while pointing at his hips.

your hand found its way on his hips swaying them side to side, in which he complied. “see~ you got this” you remove your hands from him and wink, “fine” he rolls his eyes, his lips forming a smile. “you better watch closely” he then turned and saw that the video’s coming to an end.

his moves went hard, like he gave his all to it. it was mesmerizing to watch, your mouth hanging open. after snapping out of it, you complained to him how it didn't fit the video in time, “i can do it again,” he wrapped his arms around you, leaning to whisper in your ear, “but i want no cameras involved.”

-reiner braun

you've already set up your phone on top of the table when you came up to him and took both of his hands. he looked up to you and raised a brow, "anything i can help you with, angel?" you didn't answer his question, tugging his hands signalling him to stand up.

as soon as he did, you dragged him to where your phone was, you pushed the button to start recording. reiner, like the good boyfriend he is, stood where you left him. he innocently followed every movement you made, looking like a lost puppy.

when you heard the music from your phone, you smiled at him before hyping him up. "dance for me darling" you playfully gave him a lil' dancy dance to encourage him. now, don't get reiner wrong, he's usually the hypeman for his friends but he doesn't know how to react when it's done to him.

with small, shy, and timid movements, he did just as you wanted. his face red in embarrassment, you can't help but giggle joining on dancing with him to comfort him. he buried his face on the crook of your neck mumbling against your skin, "i don't know how to dance" he shyly admitted, you stroke his hair, "it's okay, i'm sorry for making you do so" you leave a kiss on his temple, temporarily forgetting about your phone that was still recording for the rest of its seconds.

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