#i think i just peaked in my art career

[not-agoose]

no one asked, yet you shall recieve...

[thefugitivesaint]

Someone whose work I greatly appreciated and would suggest you (oh dear reader) seek out and read. In simplest terms, Scott explored the avenues in which people resisted and evaded authority and hierarchical systems of control. A good part of his scholarship involved trying to understand peasantry, one the largest "classes" in the world. Coupled to that was the study of subsistence economies and how people involved in those economies work around impositions made by State actors (and non-state actors). This led to a larger exploration of the above mentioned resistance and the various forms that this resistance took around the world. He also explored the relationship between State and non-state peoples. "What I learned is that centralised revolutionary movements have almost always resulted in a State that was more oppressive then the ones they aimed to replace. In other words, when the revolution becomes the State, it becomes my enemy again. That is why it matters greatly which methods are used in order to achieve power. .... "I am the enemy of hierarchical movements of opposition because I think they replicate State structures in their own organisation."

If you would like some suggestions that offer a peak into Scott's scholarship interests (which are similar to my own), here's some videos for you to peruse (if you have the time): 1. A Short Account of the Deep History of State Evasion 2. Beyond the Pale: The Earliest Agrarian States and “their Barbarians” 3. The Art of Not Being Governed 4. The Domestication of Fire, Animals, Grains and…….Us (Later) Edit: Some revelations concerning Scott's involvement with the CIA in the early 1960s in their anti-Communist activities has come out after his recent death that complicates his legacy as a "radical scholar". Take that for what you will. I haven't been able to find a great deal of detail about that involvement and the revelations here aren't exactly new but people have decided to highlight that relationship in the wake of Scott's passing as a way to discredit or cast a shadow over his later anti-statist research. I just wanted to note this. (Even Later) Edit: The Oral History Center at UC Berkeley released a documentary on Scott called In A Field All His Own: The Life and Career of James C. Scott. Just in case you wanted more Scott related material.

[b0r3dtod3ath]

LITERALLY anything for Art PLEASE I need him so desperately. Maybe something with an argument that leads to fluff? idk

Thanks for the request!

The living room is illuminated by the soft glow of lamplight, casting shadows across the walls. You pace back and forth, your frustration reaching its peak. Art, your boyfriend and a professional tennis player, sits on the couch, his tennis racket leaning against the armrest, his expression tense. 

“I just don't get it, Arthur! Why do you always let your coach push you around? You never stand up for yourself!”

"It's not that simple," Art says defensively. "She knows what's best for my game."

You stop pacing, almost speechless. "Your game? You have been losing for the past months! What about you? And don’t lie, you don’t even enjoy it anymore! When was the last time you did something for yourself without worrying about what your coach or your sponsors might think?"

"You know it's not that easy," he responds, frustrated. "Tennis is my career. I have to do what Tashi says to succeed."

Your voice softens. "I understand that, Artie. But at what cost? You're constantly sacrificing your own happiness and well-being just to please others."

He sighs. "It's not just about pleasing others. It's about fulfilling my dreams, about making something of myself."

"It’s her dream and not yours! You know it. She just uses you to achieve what she’s not able to! Remember when we used to talk about having a family, about living together? You always wanted to be a dad! And now, you don’t even spend half a day at home."

Art looks at his hands. "Maybe I sometimes forget that there’s life beyond the court. Tennis has been my life for so long."

You take a step closer, standing between his legs, you stroke his hair as he wraps his arms around you. "I know. And I admire your dedication, I really do. But you have to remember that you're more than just a tennis player. You're a person with feelings and desires that matter too. And I don’t want you to quit because of what I said. I know it's hard, Art. But you don't have to do it alone. I'm here for you, always. I just want you to be happy and not devote your life to someone else’s dream."

He smiles weakly, bullying you even closer. "I'm lucky to have you. I'll try to find a balance, I promise. I will call Tashi, tell her I want to retire soon. I have been thinking about it but I guess I didn't have the guts. I just want to spend time with you. Well, maybe still occasionally play tennis."

"Whatever you want to do we'll figure it out together."

You don’t move from this position, in comfortable silence, the tension slowly melts away as you hold onto each other. In the warmth of each other's presence, Art finds peace and stability.

May 1, 2024

[jewishregulus]

i could talk for hours abt regulus being a college drop out like it just fits him so well. I’m sorry i know the public will disagree but no one gets him like i do. he thinks he has to go to uni and get a degree bc it’s what hes supposed to do but honestly ? he doesn’t like it he wants to learn at his own pace w his own structure he wants to explore the world he has barred himself from for so long . like i love fics where reg drops out and gets like a sugar daddy just to have the money to go to the fanciest art museums across the world and look through them at his own pace….. free from his parents to do what he wants in his own way, not in theirs ….. my sweet angel boy

so many ppl think that regulus like genuinely wants to be like his parents and do what they do and that!! is so wrong…. even in canon…. yes he willingly joined the D.E but it’s bc he didn’t realize he could do anything else … why would he think abt anything else ???? he doesn’t have any other life this is his only option. so he will live in denial abt how much he actually wants it. he’s alicentpilled in that way (those who know know)….

that’s why the moment regulus realizes he’s unhappy he literally kills himself instead of trying to rebel: he doesn’t think he Can rebel. this is his only option. if he is miserable living like this than living will just be miserable. he only has one other thing to do and that would be to die.

anyways back on topic Soz but i don’t like it when reg like owns a business or still gets his masters or a phd or something like to me that doesn’t feel like him … i’m a big fan of sirius n reg ending up in the opposite of spots as to where their parents expected. his parents thought sirius would end up poor and uneducated doing odd jobs for cash and regulus, their puppet child, would end up rich and successful making connections and such…. and then it turns out sirius gets an education and proves himself as capable of being something without them, and regulus let’s go of his parents standards of living. sirius is designing his business cards while regulus is smoking weed in the back of barty’s fuck ass car . they are both at peak happiness. regulus gets to live his own life.

sirius proves to himself he is worth something and capable outside of his family, that he can succeed without them, that he isn’t going to fall from grace without them, and regulus proves to himself that the fall from grace isn’t much of a fall, and that he’s happier with the people he loves than with the career his parents wanted for him. that’s my vision

[neon-catarina]

i don't normally participate in these tag games but oh my god it was so funny drawing these

@sleepymushrxxm, @octdl-lee, @metdrantom, @finleyforevermore, @pinkcove & @k1ttygam3r

Moots come get y'all's juice

Moots in order; @skeleton-origami @andewdrop @z00blez @raining-somewhere-else @xyz-shenanigans @v4mp-bun @klavierpanda @cherrycokeluvr919 @mrsrosemary

[indiaalphawhiskey]

Just some thoughts.

“There’s only so high you can go. At some point you’re not gonna make that expectation. Going out on a high and now feeling like I’m starting a fresh, came to terms with the fact that, that was so great and if I never get to do that on that level again, that’s okay.”

— Harry Styles, Behind the Album

Ever since Harry’s started saying his goodbyes on stage, this quote as been echoing in my head. All the variations of how he’s been saying thank you, and I’ll miss you, and talking about his break; it’s an unpopular opinion, but none of them ever really strike me as some big, final “goodbye” in the strictest sense. Rather, it feels like he’s thanking this era, giving it it’s time in the sun and reveling in what he has whilst he has it, before giving it a proper send off and putting it to bed.

The Fine Line and Harry’s House eras have meant an unprecedented skyrocket in his profile, and for a person who thought One Direction would be the pinnacle of his time in music, to find out it wasn’t, is a lot. A lot of joy, a lot of pride, but also a lot of pressure.

It’s safe to say this is the most popular and most successful he’s ever been, and I’m sure it’s incredibly reminiscent of where he was and how he felt when the band went on hiatus, which can easily bring about those same anxieties of “Well, what happens next?”

I think the reason he’s using this certain language to say his goodbyes is, in my opinion, not because he’s leaving and never coming back. It reads more like he’s giving himself the room to acknowledge that this chapter of his career (just like the last) was so beautiful, so memorable, such a high, in order to come to terms with the fact that if it’s never like this again — if it turns out he comes back and is met with (much) less success, or popularity, or love — it’ll be okay.

It seems like this is a lesson he’s taken with him from going solo: that natural breaks in your career shouldn’t be spent worrying about what comes next, that the goal of each phase of your career isn’t to “top” the last, because what that leads to is working from a place of fear. (Which he’s said he doesn’t want to do anymore.)

And so, I think, by saying a proper goodbye to this chapter, he’s releasing himself of the pressure to “top” it. He’s honoring this moment, this peak, for what it is, and by doing that, he’s also allowing himself and his art not to be defined entirely by these eras and this level of success. Releasing himself of that pressure, allowing himself to acknowledge that a long career means highs and lows and ebbs and flows, allowing himself to be “less than” who he is now in the future, is what’s going to make making music for his next era fun and personal, and maybe, in turn, end up making him a bigger and better artist than what he’s leaving behind. Or not.

The point is, either way, he’ll be okay, and happy, and healthy. And most importantly, peak of his career or not, everything that comes after will still be entirely Harry. 🩵

[taylortruther]

Hello, I have a strange question, but since I consider you extremely levelheaded when it comes to expressing opinions on Taylor I think you can give me an answer.

Do you think that Taylor actually resents us fans? I have been ruminating on this thought for quite a while, even before bdilh, but with the release of ttpd and the subsequent promo I lowkey think she does. I think she’s been brewing this feeling for quite some time, and I consider that a sort of “natural consequence” of having such a large and varied fan base, but I think that with bdilh and waolom (and also a gas? a little bit) she made clear how she wants to distance herself from us as much as possible. I don’t know how to explain it, but it feels pretty ironic to release songs calling out fans for their behaviour and made them listen to them (I use “made” in a very broad sense, I know that nobody is forced to listen to those songs). She could’ve chosen a different strategy to tell the fans to fuck off, instead she chose songs through which she can “profit off” of the Sarahs and Hannahs (I’m being extremely crude, I know, I’m acting this way for the sake of the argument). I don’t know I think it could be seen as a revenge?

i just reblogged several asks on this topic that explain some of my thoughts!

the thing is, taylor chooses to go on stage every night and work herself to the bone to make art. she could go into hiding and never release another album or project again. but she loves doing it - and she's learned, over the course of her career and all the pitfalls and peaks, that the best way to enjoy it is to stop sharing parts of herself, set boundaries, and not be shaped by other people's demands (at least, not all of their demands.)

of COURSE she has moments of resentment and pain. i believe all fans are included in that sentiment sometimes. yes, all. and taylor is demanding for that part of her experience to be acknowledged. it doesn't mean she feels resentful all the time but she's very explicitly saying: you all had a hand in making me this way.

this is a really common mentality among famous people. fame is a fickle curse, it's a gilded cage, it's a glass prison. of course she hates it sometimes.

[apolloscastellan]

Never quite buried | loss of my life chapter 4

Pairing: Art Donaldson x Tashi Duncan x Patrick Zweig x FemaleTennisPlayer!reader

Summary: Your life had always been divided in two: before you met Tashi and after you met Tashi. The second you had laid eyes on her for the first time you knew you had been changed. You were soulmates, meant for each other Nothing could ever tear you two apart, or so you had thought. You could've pinpointed the junior U.S. Open as the night that changed everything. Now you have to juggle your hate-love relationship with tennis with your love-love relationship with Tashi and the two guys who you can't seem to stay away from. Tennis, after all, was only one of the most fucked up relationships of your life.

Warnings: challengers spoiler, challengers content warnings, super minor character death, terrible mother figure, use of y/n, polyamory.

Word count: 6.5K

A/N: Please let me know what you think bc my motivation is severely lacking rn, i feel like i'm writing into the void

series masterlist | prev | next

Tashi remembers perfectly the day your retirement from singles hit the news. It was all everyone could talk about. First, it was the statement on your social media. A well thought out paragraph about your struggles with continuing to enjoy tennis the way you used to and deciding to take a new route, it ended with a promise for more and better news soon. Then it was the teasing posts from Adidas, the “she is not done just yet” and the “love conquers all”. It all came to a peak with the release of the pictures of you and Patrick. Both of you wearing matching Adidas apparel, practicing in the private court you had in your backyard. The chemistry between the two of you was obvious to everyone who saw them. There was a glint in your eyes that no one had seen since you went pro. She knew the smile you were giving Patrick all too well, it used to be reserved for her. 

Her and Art, who had just very recently reconnected, sat on his couch for hours watching the tennis channel, waiting for updates. The relief they felt when it was announced that you were not quitting because you were fatally injured, as everyone had originally thought, was short lived. Neither of them spoke as the commentators showed the images of you and Patrick. Practicing, giggling, getting closer, him giving you that teasing smirk they both knew, you throwing your head back laughing, him beaming at you when you weren’t even looking, both of you focused on the ball, kissing… They both thought about turning off the TV, hitting some balls to work out how they were feeling, but then you were introduced into the set, a vibrant smile as you walked in, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt too big to be yours. The Mark Rebellato Tennis Academy logo only confirmed the obvious. You shook hands with everyone, sitting on the sofa they had reserved for you.

“Y/n Y/l/n, thank you for being here” the older man said, over the clapping of the crowd.

“Thanks for having me!”

“What a day it’s been for all of us, tennis fans. You’ve had us on the edge of our seats! First we mourned, now we’re celebrating… Please tell us why did you do this to us?”

“I am so sorry! I am, I really am” you laughed as the man teased you, God how they missed that laugh. “I have a flair for the dramatic, I must admit, and I am, in a way, saying goodbye to my career as I know it. It’s the start of a new chapter, and it’s really exciting, but it is also a goodbye and it felt right to give it its proper moment. I didn’t realize so many people were going to be so upset about it.”

“Why the switch? Why decide to give up singles completely?”

“I wasn’t enjoying it anymore, it was painful and I had started dreading every second of it. Fortunately, I am in a position where I can decide I don’t want to keep doing something that is bringing me down, so I took advantage of it. I didn’t want my stubbornness to completely ruin my love for tennis. I thought I could step back, maybe take up teaching and try to find that passion again. I was going to quit regardless, so this playing doubles thing happened at just the right time.”

“Yeah, let’s talk about that! You’ve decided to become a full time mixed doubles player with Patrick Zweig, who is a challengers player, somewhere in the two-hundreds. You are currently ranked number one in the world, how does this happen?”

“I think rankings and numbers can be misleading sometimes. Sometimes a player is not playing their best because of external reasons, or simply because they are not meant to be where they are. I think me and Patrick are meant to play together, I really do. And if you can’t trust anything else, trust this: I am really competitive and I hate losing, I would not put myself in a situation like this if I really thought we couldn’t win.”

“From what I’ve heard Zweig and you are committed to each other both on and off the court. You’ve never been open about your private life in the media, and he is the first boyfriend you’ve ever made public, what’s different about him?”

They couldn’t take their eyes off you as you let a bashful smile spread on your face.

“I mean…  Everything. I am pretty possessive of my privacy and we still don’t plan to share everything we do, but the truth is that I have never been open about any boyfriends because I have not had any serious relationships since I went pro. Patrick and I will be playing and training together so I thought it was bound to come out, so to me, I'd rather have that happen on my terms. And I do think Patrick is very different to all relationships I’ve had before, in the best way possible”

Art swallowed, refusing to look at Tashi when she turned to watch him. He didn’t deserve to be jealous. He knew that, if he had treated you right, you would still be together. That knowledge didn’t change how he felt.

“How does that happen? How does one manage to make the Y/n Y/l/n fall in love with them?”

“Well, me and Patrick met each other a while ago, at the U.S Junior Open, actually. He won it, I got second, we hit it off instantly. But it was one of those situations where it’s never the right time, you know? We kept missing each other, we were in relationships with other people, and we ended up drifting apart when I went pro. And then, funnily enough, we bumped into each other at an Adidas party about a year ago, and the rest is history.”

Art couldn’t bring himself to be angry when the TV shut off. He turned to look at Tashi who stood there with the remote in her hand, not looking at him. 

“I’ll see you in ten in the court. We need to work on your serve.”

He didn’t need to be told twice, grateful for the excuse to take his feelings out on the ball. To think about anything that wasn’t your smile as you talked about Patrick. He didn’t say it out loud, but he knew Tashi felt the same way, the sudden urge to train had not come out of nowhere. 

New Rochelle, New York. August 24, 2019:

You look down, shaking your head as Patrick crashes his racquet repeatedly against the floor. The umpire’s voice ominously announcing the score. You raise your face back up when Patrick gets given a penalty. Art walks nonchalantly back to the bench, you can feel Tashi’s smug grin beside you. You make eye contact with your husband and shake your head, he rubs his face with both hands, then nods. As much as you both don’t really care to win this tournament, he knows you’ll be angry if he just lets it go, gets angry and in his head and lets Art have it on conduct alone. So he sits back and waits, ready to be better, to prove himself to you once again, like every time he steps on the court.

Earlier that week. New Rochelle, New York. August 18, 2019:

Tashi is working, writing stats on her computer when she sees Patrick walking towards her from the corner of her eye. She rolls her eyes as he stops behind her, pointing at her screen before he speaks:

“He’s not bad, I played him at a few of these things when I did singles.”

“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be practicing to not humiliate your wife before she carries you through the U.S. Open?”

“I just finished, thanks for caring.”

“Wonderful” she says, not a hint of amusement in her voice.

“Hey, come have a cigarette with me, I have to talk to you.”

“Yeah I don’t smoke, and I’m not talking to you.”

“Neither do I. It was just an excuse.”

She looks back at him, unimpressed, but he doesn’t let up. He stands there, staring at her until she gives in, closing her computer and standing up. Patrick is not sure what he is doing. He probably shouldn’t be doing anything at all, if he’s honest with himself. But he has dug a hole too deep to jump out of now, so he is going to follow through. He is doing this for you, he reminds himself, no matter how angry you’ll be with him at first, he is doing this for you. They find an empty alley and look back at each other, Tashi waits for him to speak, he takes his time collecting his thoughts before he does.

“I’m gonna propose something to you and it’s going to make you angry. It’s going to make you very angry,” he can’t help the smirk growing on his face, her expression doesn’t let up. “I want you to be our coach next season.”

“What?”

“Our coach is retiring, we need someone else. I want you to be our coach from next season on.”

“Does she know you’re offering me this position?”

“No, not yet. But she will, and she’ll agree with me.”

“You know that’s bullshit. Plus, why would I want to coach you guys? I already have a highly successful athlete under my wing.”

“Yeah, but even if he wins the Open and completes his career grand slam, Art’s still gonna retire as someone who was really, really good. That’s what you guys will have done together. But imagine if you could get your hands on us. Imagine if you could make us great. You’d go down in history. We have a couple more seasons. We still have a couple more good seasons and I need you to bring it out of us. What do you think?”

He doesn’t expect Tashi to slap him, turning his face completely, although he really should have. He mumbles a curse under his breath.

“How fucking dare you?” she sounds angry, too angry for his stupid proposition. “You want me to give you my best piece of advice? To coach you? Ok, quit.”

Patrick can’t even begin to think of a response, the murderous gaze Tashi gives him fixes him to the spot.

“Quit right now, right fucking now, quit.”

“What are you talking about?” he is too shocked to be offended.

“You’re dragging her down. She should’ve gone down in history as the best ever player. She would have broken records. She should have been good enough to beat the men, and she is what? Going around playing mixed doubles with you? It’s pathetic. Quit, and maybe she’ll have a chance at being an ounce of what she should’ve been.”

“You’re fucking joking”

And now Patrick is angry too. Because he is tired. He is so tired of the endless comments and judgment. He is tired of being blamed for ruining you and your career as if it hadn’t been your decision. As if it hadn’t been your idea. As if he was capable of ever doing that to you. As if he hadn’t begged for you to think it over a million times before you took a step that you wouldn’t be able to come back from. As if he hadn’t been the sole reason the world of tennis hadn’t lost you completely. As if he didn’t try harder than he had ever tried to be enough for you and make sure you never resented him or regretted being with him in any way. The thing that makes him the most angry, though, is that it’s Tashi. And how dare Tashi, the woman who had abandoned you and ruined your love for tennis in the first place, blame him for something she had pushed you to do. Something that was nobody’s fault but hers.

“You must be fucking delusional if you think for just one second that I would ever, ever, ask her to give up on her career for me. You know whose idea it was to play mixed doubles only? Y/n’s. She thought of it, she asked me to do it, she orchestrated every single little detail. And you wanna know why she did it? Because she hated tennis. She was going to quit. She couldn’t stand the thing she loved the most anymore. And you wanna know what made her start to hate tennis, even though her love for it never wavered before, not even with her borderline abusive mum who only loved her for her talent in it? You, Tashi. You did. You ruined tennis for her. So get the fuck off that high horse you continue to ride everywhere, because if there’s one person here to blame for ruining her career, it’s the one I’m looking at.”

He is out of breath when he finishes speaking, and he doesn't know what to do. He has so much shit he wants to throw at her, so much resentment for all that she had put you, and him, through. But he can’t say anything else, the second Tashi’s expression falls, even if it is only for a moment, he can feel his heart shatter inside his chest. No matter how much he hates Tashi, how much he resents her, he loves her. He loves her so much it hurts deep inside his chest, like an ache that is so present he had almost forgotten it existed. But looking at her right now, he feels it, pulsating all through him, and he knows, with a certainty he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge before, that he will never not feel this way about her.

“You don’t know what you’re saying” her voice is stern, but Patrick knows her too well to believe her tone.

“You hate me” it’s not a question. “And you hate her too. Me, for having her. Her for having the career you deserved. And it’s driving you crazy, because as much as you hate us both, you also love us. And as much as you love Art, you hate him too.”

“Excuse me?”

“You hate him because he is just Art, that’s all he can ever be. He will never be me, and he will never be her. And as much as you love him, just Art will never be enough for you.”

“I don’t know what gives you the right to speak about my marriage…”

“The same thing that gives you the right to speak about mine. Does Art know about Atlanta?” he cuts her off.

The pure, unfiltered shock on her face lets him know he has caught her off guard. She did not expect him to know about it. She collects herself quickly, but she doesn’t say anything.

“You keep saying you came here because Art needed matches, but I think you came for something else.”

“You think I came here for you?”

“And for her” he says nodding. “I’ve been signed up for this tournament for months, there’s no way you didn’t see my name in the participants list.”

“You think I came here, to throw it all away for you?”

“Maybe you just wanted to see us…”

“I don’t need to see you to know that you look like shit, and she should get as far away from you as soon as possible.”

She starts to walk away, decisively.

“I’m going to beat him,” he says, it stops her in her tracks, she turns her face to look at him. “If we both make it to the final I’m going to beat him.”

“Even if you did, it wouldn’t change anything.”

“It would break him, you know it would.”

She shakes her head and starts to walk away, too exasperated to come up with another hurtful retort about his failed career. She jogs after her, catching up with her pace almost effortlessly. He grabs her arm, makes her stop walking. He pulls up a piece of paper from the back pocket of his jeans.

“My number, in case you change your mind about the coaching… Or about seeing us again.”

“I won’t.”

He nods, shrugs his shoulders. Then, he watches her put the note in her pocket. He smiles.

New Rochelle, New York. August 24, 2019:

Patrick hasn’t looked away from you even once. You know even though you are looking into your lap. You are hyper aware of every single person around you. Most accurately, you are hyper aware of the woman next to you and the two men playing against each other. You play with your ring as you feel Tashi tell Art to focus. When you finally meet Patrick’s eyes he doesn’t smile. He raises his left hand and kisses the ring on his finger without breaking eye contact as the umpire announces the start of the next set. He crosses paths with Art as he makes his way to the other side of the net but he doesn’t move his eyes from you until he is getting ready to serve. You know then, with absolute certainty, that he is doing this for you.

Atlanta Open, Atlanta. July 18, 2011:

Even though Patrick and you both know why you are sitting in the stands during practice time instead of walking around the venue, or actually practicing, you are still shocked when you see Tashi and Art walk into the court. Your hand reaches for Patrick, holding on to his thigh as if on a rollercoaster that is suddenly going down. You both try to look composed and careless, but you don’t know if you are doing a good job. Art and Tashi do the same, pretending they can’t see you, even though you are the only other ones there and you stick out like a sore thumb. Patrick and you talk to each other, although neither of you would be able to recall anything said during your conversation, and share the fries you had bought before walking over. You pretend you just casually stumbled to sit there for a snack, that you hadn’t checked the schedule to figure out what time and what court Art Donaldson had for pre-match practice. Art hits the ball like he hasn’t been able to hit it in a while, grunting as his racket made contact with it. Tashi looks at you for a second, then back at Art. She nods, satisfied. You want to run away, want to erase that satisfied smirk from her face and your memory. But you stay glued to your seat, hand in your boyfriend’s thigh, heart pounding, and you take the way they ignore you like a punishment.

New Rochelle, New York. August 23, 2019:

The wind is relentless, the trees hitting against the window making repetitive thwack noises that remind Patrick of the sound of the ball hitting the racket. You have been answering emails and making calls to finish preparing things for tomorrow, the U.S. Open, and whatever lies in store for you both after that. Patrick knows that you’ve been messaging potential coaches and though the guilt pit on his stomach keeps growing, he can’t bring himself to say anything to you. He hopes you haven’t set in stone anything, because he is still delusionally confident that Tashi will accept his offer. He knows he should help, whatever you are doing affects him too, but he is too nervous to do anything productive so he just lays around, throwing a ball against the ceiling, or the wall, or whatever he can find. After the third time the ball slips from his hand too early or too late and hits you, you stand up and point to the door.

“Leave, right now” he makes no attempt to move. “Patrick, I mean it. I’m working and I know that you are nervous but you’re stressing me out so go down to the sauna, or get a drink or something that’s not going to make me ask you for a divorce or have to spend the rest of the night finding a place to hide your body.”

Patrick smiles as he stands up. He picks one of the keys from your bedside table and walks over to you, kissing your head before making his way to the door.

“I love you.” 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, love you too. Leave now, please.”

He giggles all the way down the elevator. He doesn’t feel like drinking, which means he doesn’t feel like making a fool of himself tomorrow for getting drunk the night before a match, especially not in front of Art and Tashi. So he walks around until he finds the sauna, maybe that will help him calm down. But as he gets naked and opens the door he can’t believe his bad luck. Although there is a white towel covering his face, there is no denying the naked man sitting right in front of him is Art Donaldson. Patrick doesn’t think there’s a world where he wouldn’t recognize him, no matter how much he’s changed from that scrawny blonde boy he once knew like the back of his hand. He thinks about turning around, walking out, pretending he never saw him, and finding something else to do for the night. But there’s no way Art hasn’t heard the door opening, and Patrick has never been one to run from conflict, not really. So he steps forward, lets his mind get a little bit caught up in the past, sue him he hasn’t seen this guy in years, and opens his mouth:

“Can you do me a favor? Can you not like, demolish me tomorrow?” He says it with the inflection of a pick up line, and before he can even finish his sentence Art is pulling the towel away from his face and looking at him like he already knew that it was him standing at the door, even before he said anything.

They are both smiling as Patrick pulls the sauna door closed and walks toward Art. He is acting far more comfortably than he feels, but if he stops to think about what is actually happening he might start shaking and poop his pants, which would be a terrible thing seeing as he isn’t wearing any. He gets way too close to him, and raises one of his legs on the bench, dick fully on display. Art makes a valiant attempt pretending he doesn’t look down.

“Hey, congrats on being a Phil Tire’s Town Challenger finalist.”

“Yeah, you too” Art says, looking forward to not have to look at Patrick, who is smiling far too wide for the situation they are in and the past that they have.

“Hopefully the wind dies down by tomorrow and we can have a fair fight” Patrick lets himself pretend this is normal, like they are two competitors getting ready for the final, maybe even pals catching up after not having seen each other in a while.

Art doesn’t let him have a second of the little fantasy he’s made up in his head, though. He slides down the bench, getting as far away from him as he can without looking like he is actually running away.

“C’mon, can we talk?” Patrick says, and his voice sounds pitiful even to his own ears.

“Can you put your dick away” Art’s voice is stern, but he looks him in the eye for the first time since he walked in, so he counts it as a win.

“This is a sauna,” Patrick scoffs, putting up a fight so Art won’t notice he’d do anything he told him to. “Look, we've been here for a week and we haven’t said two words to each other. It's just… it’s silly, man. It’s dramatic. I mean, really, why are you so angry with me?”

He sits down, obeying Art and covering his dick. Art is finally looking at him, really looking at him. It has the same effect it did back when they were kids, Art looking at him makes him feel brave. He can’t stop himself from rambling on.

“Look, I don’t buy that it’s because of Tashi, I don’t think it’s because of what happened to her. And I hope it’s not about Y/n, because you have no right… So, I think, maybe, you’re just really disturbed by the fact that they could’ve been into someone like me. Both of them”

“Tashi liked you when we were teenagers.”

“Sure, but I just got married to the girl you said was the love of your life.”

“I ended things with her.”

“And you regret it every single day of your life,” Patrick knew, because it was the same way you and him felt about him and Tashi, “and you know that Tashi does too.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“We both know that if Tashi had been a little more brave back then, she would’ve never taken either of our numbers. If she had been a little bit more honest with herself, she would’ve swept Y/n away and neither of us would’ve had a chance with either of them.”

“That still happened when they were teenagers. When we were teenagers.”

“Huh” Patrick looks thoughtful. “When they were teenagers…”

Atlanta Open, Atlanta. July 18, 2011:

You slip out of your room in a t-shirt that is definitely not yours and the first shorts you stumble across on your way to the door. You can’t sleep and Patrick’s soft snores, which you often find endearing, are getting on your nerves. He doesn’t stir, even as you close the door softly behind you. You don’t know what you are doing, or where you’re going. You take the stairs down, needing to move your body for a little bit. You walk outside, feeling like no matter how hard you breathe in there’s not enough air in your lungs. You lay your weight against the brick wall of the hotel. You get your breathing under control after a couple minutes of staring at the sky trying to look for constellations you don’t know the name of anyways. When you turn around, to go back inside the hotel, you realize that right next to where you were standing there’s a window to the hotel’s bar. There, sitting down, nursing a glass that you can only assume contains something strong, already staring at you, is Tashi Duncan. You don’t know what you’re doing, but you let your feet guide you inside. Then, instead of going up the stairs like you should, you take a right turn and walk right into the bar. Tashi finds you immediately, having been looking at the door. You don’t understand what you’re doing, but before you can think about it you are sitting right in front of her. You haven’t looked at her this up close in years. You search, but you can’t find many differences. She looks exactly like the girl you knew with her hair a little shorter. You wonder if it’s the same on the inside, if the million secrets you knew about her still hold true. If you could still tell which of her smiles were fake, or when she was about to cry but was trying to hold it down.

“I heard you gave up,” she whispers after a minute of staring into each other’s eyes.

“I quit singles, I didn’t give up,” but you can tell she doesn’t really believe you, so you scan her, trying to find something else to talk about. Your eyes lock on the ring in her finger. “That’s a gorgeous ring.”

Your fingers find your own ring instinctively. You don’t know if you’re trying to make sure it’s still there, or if you are trying to ask your dad for strength. Her gaze lowers, first to your ring, then to her own.

“It’s his grandmother’s.”

You nod, you know what that means. Art had always talked about wanting to propose to his future wife with his grandmother’s ring. Back when he fantasized with you about it, it was your hand that ring ended up on. He always talked about taking you to the residency so you could meet his grandmother, completely sure she would love you and give you her blessing immediately. You think of your own sentimental family ring, unsure you would ever be able to trust anyone enough to carry it, no matter how much you loved them.

“How is she?” you ask, more out of politeness than anything else, you never got to meet her, after all.

“She died. Stroke”

You grimace, knowing the feeling of losing the one person who truly believes in you too well.  You look around, trying desperately to find something to say, you will your brain to remember the million icebreakers and conversation starters you had been forced to memorize for the awfully boring networking parties your mum used to throw for you. You come up with nothing, so you look back at her and lean over the table and she imitates you. Your faces inches away from each other. You feel drunk even though you haven’t had a single sip of alcohol all day. You don’t question it, Tashi always made you feel like you were going crazy and a little bit drunk. It must be that what pushes you to say what comes out of your mouth next:

“I miss you.”

She doesn’t say anything, but she leans further over the table, getting impossible close to your face without touching it. Then, when you are completely sure she is going to tell you to go fuck yourself and leave her alone, her hand makes her way to the back of your neck pushing you towards her until your eyes meet. There might be a million things that have changed since the last time you did this, but kissing Tashi Duncan feels exactly the same as the first time you did it. It feels like coming home.

New Rochelle, New York. August 23, 2019:

“You’re right” Art says finally, leaning his back against the wall. “I do find it disturbing.”

“There’s no need, man. Lots of girls were into me, but only one of them wanted to marry me. I’ve always thought that was not what I was for, so I don’t know how I did it.”

“Yeah, neither do I.”

Patrick feels his entire skin burn with the way Art looks him up and down. He curses in his head the years they’ve spent apart and the secretive, mature person Art has become, he can’t read him like he could. He can’t tell if he is teasing, or trying to humiliate him. He can’t tell if he’s angry, or just as desperately sad as he is.

Atlanta Open, Atlanta. July 18, 2011:

You don’t know how but you and Tashi have stumbled onto a hotel room that you don’t recognize. It’s much bigger and fancier than yours so you assume it’s hers. You want to ask where Art is, if he is about to walk in on the two of you making out on his bed, but the way she is kissing you makes you forget about everything. You roll onto the bed, hands on either side of her face as hers roam your body freely. It’s too much and not enough simultaneously and you moan and pant on her lips. It’s everything you’ve always dreamt of and you can’t help wanting more. More of her and her body, of her lips, more of her heart. You try to not be greedy, take what she gives you, and soon you’re seeing stars and rolling over, breathing with difficulty.

“That was…” 

“Yeah” she mumbles.

“So… What happens now?”

“What do you mean what happens now?” she seems confused as she stands from the bed, walking around until she finds your clothes.

“We just had sex,” you say, obviously.

“Look, we shouldn’t have done this. It was a mistake.” She throws your t-shirt at you, you put it on slowly.

“A mistake?” you’re getting angrier by the second, but you don’t want to yell and alert whoever is sleeping in the room next to this one.

“Yeah, we will act as if nothing happened.”

“What about Art?

“He doesn’t need to know,” you shake your head as you finish putting on your clothes.

“That’s fucked up.”

“Do not act as if I was the only one who cheated! Aren’t you and Patrick dating?”

“I never said that! You can’t just run away from everything you refuse to accept. You haven’t talked to me in years!”

“Yeah, and it should have stayed that way.”

“One day you’re going to wake up and realize that everything you’ve refused to accept all your life is catching up to you, and by then, it might be too late.”

“Get out” she says, instead of replying to what you said, you don’t need to be told twice.

You manage to hold back your tears until you are standing in front of the elevator. You’re fully sobbing when the doors open, revealing a very confused Art. You see him step towards you, but you refuse to let either of them continue breaking your heart. You step backwards, then turn around. You run until you find the stairs. By the time you make it back to your room you look like a mess. You knock on the door, you must have left your key in Tashi’s room but you are too upset to care about that or waking Patrick up. His entire face changes when he opens the door. Worry taking over his expression.

“Y/n, what happened? Where were you?

You fall onto his arms, sobbing. He leads you in, closing the door behind you. You don’t speak until you’re both seating in bed.

“I saw Tashi… And I… We…” you don’t say anything else, but you don’t need to, he understands.

He holds you through the night. The next morning, you forfeit the tournament and go home.

New Rochelle, New York. August 23, 2019:

“Honestly, I thought you’d be happy I was in the draw” Patrick is not ready to let it go, to shut up and walk away from Art, he doesn’t know when’s the next time he’ll be able to talk to him again, so he runs his mouth. “I mean, you’ve always wanted to beat me in a tournament, and two weeks before the open… It’s the perfect confidence booster.

He settles on cocky because he doesn’t know what else to do. He has never been very good at being vulnerable, not with Art, and no amount of therapy is going to make him start now, when he can see how done he is with him from a mile away.

“I know what you’re trying to do right now,” Art smiles.

“I’m not trying to do anything, Art,” but he doesn’t know if he’s telling the truth. “This is a challenger, I don’t need to play mind games with you.”

“Right, you don’t give a shit.”

“Hey, I didn’t say that…”

“We both know that you have a considerably higher stake here than I do.”

“Do I?”

Art laughs, but there’s no real humor to it. Patrick does too, trying to conceal the way he is sure his entire body is shaking.

“Oh, fuck… Where do you get your swagger from, man?” Patrick can tell, from the way Art is looking at him, that this is the part that’s going to hurt, he doesn’t try to stop it. “I mean you come in here swinging your dick around like I’m supposed to be afraid of it but do you realize how embarrassing it is that you are here right now?”

“Not quite as embarrassing as you being here,” Patrick has never known a way to back down, so he stirs the pot.

He’d rather have Art yelling at him or humiliating him than not talking to him at all. His therapist would not be very proud.

“I’m just stopping by, man. You would live here if it wasn’t for her” there’s a pause, suddenly Patrick wants to take everything back, run away with his tail between his legs, but it’s too late. “You know, I’ve always tried to figure out what happened to you, but the more I thought about it the more I realized… It’s what didn’t happen. You never grew up. You still think you can talk to me like you’re my peer because we came from the same place, because you’ve managed to stumble into some of the same competitions. But it’s not about where you came from in tennis, Patrick, it’s about winning. And I do, a lot. And you only do because you tricked Y/n into playing with you. But one day, she’s going to wake up and realize she wasted her entire fucking life in a pathetic man who thinks he’s the shit because he won the junior U.S Open a trillion years ago. And then, you’ll be left with what you deserve: nothing.”

“You’ve never beaten me,” he says, as if it’s what matters out of everything he said.

He says it because if he focuses on what Art said about you, he might cry. He doesn’t want to cry, not in front of Art, not right now. He doesn’t have enough willpower to fight him, like he knows he should, like he did with Tashi.

“So what? I haven’t beaten most of the guys who play in these things, or the ones who only make it into the big tournaments playing doubles. This is a game about winning the points that matter.”

“I don’t matter?” he doesn’t know why he says it, or what he is expecting to get in return.

“Not even to the most obsessive tennis fan in the entire world,” his voice is monotone, tired, Patrick wants to crawl out of his skin.

“We’re not talking about tennis.”

“What the fuck else do I have to talk to you about?”

“I wanted to come in here to wish you good luck, Art,” he says, and he means it.

“That makes no sense,” Art scoffs, looking away, he’s talking to himself more than Patrick.

“I wanted to say that I’m looking forward to it, I miss playing with you,” he is being vulnerable, but he knows Art won’t believe him, which is probably why he says it in the first place.

“Yeah,” he nods his head and he looks amused, but Patrick can see right through him, he’s about to finish him off. “Well, I don’t miss playing with you, man. I’m too old for it.”

As soon as the door is closed behind Art, Patrick lets himself drop onto the bench. He tells himself he is not going to cry. There’s tears running down his face by the time you open the door of your room to him. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t need to, you understand.

[artdcnaldson]

can't stop thinking about arts wedding ring, it's ricocheting in my head I NEED HIM I NEED HIM I NEED HIM i'm hyperfixating on it, how outrageously good it looks on his hand, it just looks so completely natural. it fits him perfectly. that man was meant to be a husband, y'know? but i need to be his side piece, i need to be his dirty secret. doesn't matter if he's retired or at the peak of his career i just need to have him, and he needs to be married, an all american family man. kinda fits with the last ask i sent about him telling me he's too old while cuming inside me. i need to feel his ring against my cheek, whether he's holding me gently, grabbing me roughly or slapping me across my cheek. i just know it would feel so good, a cooling sensation, a constant reminder of the weight of what you're doing, the infidelity. need to feel it as he's gripping my ass, lifting me, pulling me back against him. need to feel it as he spanks my pussy for being a brat :((( need to feel like as he's fingering me open on his big fingers :((( I WANT HIM SO BAD need to feel it against my cunt with every thrust of his hand, he does it on purpose, he knows what it does to me. need to feel it against my tongue as he makes me suck his fingers clean. need to have him press his fingers down on my tongue just to make me drool like a little bimbo. AAAAAAHHHHHH i need him to call me a dumb bimbo. omg omg omg i'm sorry i'm tweaking this is so serious.

real time revelation. art donaldson calling me a dumb bimbo. full stop ✋ need to ponder that one for a second... that's very interesting indeed... will ponder on that a little more..........

-🐞

Oh my GODDDD </3

Hnhnhnnggg the cool wedding band digging into your jaw as he grips your face with one hand and slaps it with the other. Makes you keep eye contact as he smacks you again and again. You’re the one tormenting him, stealing him away from his wife and daughter, teasing him with sweet, young pussy he shouldn’t want. He hates you, he hates that he keeps finding himself buried inside of your tight cunt even though he knows it’s wrong.

He wants you to feel the ring, cold and icy against your burning hot skin as he grabs your hips and pulls you onto his cock and makes you bounce on it. Makes you do the work, fucking yourself on him, crying out and babbling about how good it feels, how deep, how much you fucking worship his cock.

The first time he saw you he knew you were going to be trouble. All wet from swimming in the pool with Lily, wearing one of his shirts because your clothes were in the dryer. You looked so pretty in it, wrapped up in something of his, looking sweet and vulnerable and dangerous. He drove you home that night, asked where Tashi found you (friend of a friend), if Lily gave you any trouble (no, Mr. Donaldson), how old you were (almost twenty-one). So young. He had a fucking decade on you and you were looking at him like a meal.

His grip was firm on the steering wheel, knuckles practically white.

“You’re really sweet, Mr. Donaldson,” you said after he parked on your floor of the garage.

“Art.”

You smiled, soft and pretty. “You’re really sweet, Art. And handsome.”

“I’m married,” was all he could think to respond. “Tashi— I love my wife. I love my family.”

“I’m sure you do.”

You sucked his cock in the front seat. When he stroked your cheek, you felt that ring cool against your skin and moaned.

Tashi keeps hiring you, and he keeps going back because he’s so weak. He doesn’t take off his ring— he thinks you like it. You drool around his fingers, tonguing the spot where the ring sits, laving the metal with tiny laps of your tongue. You drool around them, eyes rolling back as he presses them deep, until his fingertips prod at the back of your throat and stringy spit spills from your mouth.

You pull the ring off with your mouth, hold it between your teeth to offer it back. He thinks you’re actually evil.

[gunnrblze]

what do you think the ghosts would be like as fathers?

Ooh the Ghosties as fathers, this is a good one. Prepare for me to get maybe a little too in depth below the cut, cus this got too gahdamn long lol

Hesh- peak dad/husband material. giggling kicking his feet ‘n crying when he finds out he’s gonna be a father lol. he’d be as involved as possible and I see this being something he’s the most proud of in his life. i think a bit of cycle breaking would be going on with him as far as the way he and Logan were raised (looking at you Elias, yea🤨), he’d do things a little different but in a good way. would still model his parenting style quite a bit after Elias’ though in many ways. def a worrier too, and may be a little overbearing sometimes bc of it

Logan- similar to Hesh, he’d be an enthusiastic dad I think. would brag about his kids consistently, regardless of what they do/become. type to be like “my kid made macaroni art at school the other day, it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen” lmao. i see him also being veryyy supportive in general, like do/be whatever you want, as long as you’re a good person. would also parent similar to how he and Hesh were raised, but i almost see him being more lenient in some ways. def the kind to let his kids learn from their mistakes and learn good, though.

Elias- ofc we saw a lot of how he was as a father in the game (lots of debatable choices being made💀), but i think he honest to god, like most parents, did the best he could. doesn’t necessarily excuse certain things, and i think Hesh specifically prob has a lot of baggage from that, but he was also a good dad in many ways methinks. generally solid father material alongside the easily criticizable behavior LMAO

Merrick- first, he def gives me girl dad energy lol. but regardless, i see him being very very loving to his kid(s) actually, like “this is my heart and soul, everything is for them, I live breath and die for them” type shit. I can see him being a bit strict at times, mostly due to his protective nature. under the personality we see from him in the game, I think his kids/kids in general would probably bring out a goofier side of him too, the dad jokes would be unlocked immediately lol

Keegan- I see him being like a mix of Hesh ‘n Merrick tbh. Very very proud to be a father, like “I’d put it on my resume if I could”, and would love unconditionally. i think he’d be the type to maybe be a bit overbearing/intense at times like Hesh, mostly due to how much he cares about his kids wellbeing/success in life. also very supportive, and i could see him struggling a bit with how to juggle his fatherhood vs his career (like a lot of military parents tbh). he’d be the kinda dad that his kid(s) really respect i think

Kick- i honestly can’t see him being a father too much, i think he’d probably be the one here to not have kids. however if he were a father, he’d take it very seriously. i think he’d be the loving and goofy kind, his personality would really shine as a dad methinks. in his kids early years, I think he’d be tweaking out a lot like “what if I’m not good enough, what if something happens to them”, but as they get older i see his attitude almost changing like “oh yea, they love to swan dive off the back of the couch, we just let them” lol.

Rorke-pre fed here cause let’s be honest…🫥. i see him being a great dad, probably struggles with balancing that vs his career like Keegan might. he’d also be a bragger when he could like Logan, but in a more “yea my kid is on the honor roll…literally got all A’s, wtf can your kid do?🙄”proud type way lmfao. i see him being very dynamic as a father, a bit strict but a bit lax. sometimes he’s more present, sometimes he’s not. I think he’d value teaching and guiding his kid(s) like Elias. also a “you’ll learn your lesson” type of guy. you fuck up and complain and he’s like “hmm, tough shit, better luck next time” after he imparts his fatherly wisdom about it lol

[amymbona]

I think that people who hate on the Challengers main three really forget that no human is perfect, that people are flawed and you can't expect everyone to always make the best decision.

As much as it may offend someone, you can't always be the good guy. People tend to overreact or act irrationally when something crashes with their plans or just causes some issues. I myself am very aware of this and know I am a bitch in certain situations, that I have hurt some people before or done something that may not have been the best decision at the moment. But things happen, have happened and as much as you regret something, you can't really change your decision.

Tashi, who's probably the most hated out of the three (which is really fucking odd, considering that she's literally the main character of the movie), has gone through something really fucking hard. She lost her whole goddamn career, the thing that was her fuel, the main purpose of her life, and she never even made the decision to end it. It simply ended mid way, before she could become the world champion and call herself the best. She was so young and healthy and successful and then lost it all because of one goddamn injury.

It's obvious that at first she blamed Patrick because of their argument before that match. She must have been so fucking stressed not to see her boyfriend at the match, knowing that he's gonna be gone for the next few months. At that moment, she needed to blame someone and Patrick was the right one. Though I agree it was unfair that she was that rude to him in 2019 too, but then again when I think about it, the interaction probably reminded her of the injury once again. But then, when she slept with him, in my eyes it was because he reminded her of the peak of tennis. Because he was better than Art. And the better the tennis is, the more Tashi is tempted to grasp it.

Patrick, poor guy, is seen as this sex obsessed bad boy who only find pleasure in fucking women. And while his movie personality is concerned about those things, he is much more. I believe he really genuinely loved both Tashi and Art and then when they left him found himself totally lost. They were his compass, his safe space, each of them offering something different but something he very much needed. He was hurt by them too, first Tashi after Atlanta 2011 when she just went on living with Art, and then when he hoped she'd fuck him in his car in 2019, but she only did it to save her marriage with Art. (That's also why I believed she truly loved Art. I think she wanted to sleep with Patrick at that time, but she could have done it without asking Patrick to lose.) And then by Art, in the sauna, telling him he doesn't matter. It's obvious that Patrick was seeking revenge against Art, hrnce performing the ball gesture during the final match.

In my opinion, Patrick is the most "innocent" one, having not sinned as much. But he's not flawless either. Using his tinder dates to find a place to sleep, flirting with women to earn what he needs. As I'm writing this, honestly, I can't think of many more bad things that he's done. And that only shows the dishonesty, how we were almost showed that he is the bad guy, only because two successful people have decided that they hate him. What happened wasn't really his fault, but the mutual hate he received from Art and Tashi convinced us as well that he deserved it.

Art is honestly a bit of bitch, too victimized and babied, but then again on the other side, he's the prime example of someone who stands up for himself and then gets hated for it. He got too fed up with his own best friend for constantly casting a shadow over him. Went so fucking far to spread rumors over Patrick, how he's a womanizer and all that stuff, just to eventually play the good guy with Tashi, take care of her and then marry his way into her life. (He went a bit overboard with that, but good fucking job, plotting such a thing.) Poor Art, people say, how Tashi responds that she knows to the fact that he loves her. But once I read somewhere that she responded this way because she was aware that Art can't really verbally display his feelings, and she just wanted to make sure that she knows he loves her. And that's what I believe.

It's obvious that Art fell into depression, the combination of his injury and non fulfilling tennis career. This probably caused him to be almdor indifferent, perhaps rude and bitchy too Tashi, getting fed up with the career he has built for her. Oh, he definitely loved tennis, I'm sure of it, but not as much as Tashi did. And because he loved her, he allowed her to mold him into her good tennis boy. But he was a human with free will too, and didn't really need to ask for Tashi's approval, despite her being his coach. Doing all that back arch, sad expression thing, he was just trying to manipulate her to feel bad for him, probably a form of self defense or response caused by his depression. Again, not a flawless human.

All three of them lost something. Tashi lost tennis, her biggest passion. Patrick lost Art and Tashi, the people be loved. Art lost all the enjoyment of life, becoming miserable. Many things have caused them to behave the way they behaved and showed us that nobody can be fucking perfect, that sometimes people just are bitchy and you really can't find them being all sunshine and rainbows. But we also know that all three of them are tender, capable of love and giggles, we know that they can be nice and kind and loving and that's okay too. People are colourful and full of emotions, each one of them different and made not to be perfect.

[novy2sirius]

hi nova! i have my saturn in my second house (gemini). ik that one interpretation of that is having struggles with self worth and my money/income being restricted (also get that just based off my experience with it). i'm interested though in what you think it means career wise because ik your saturn placement can also be a career indicator. It being in my second house though feels tricky and ironic (its also conjunct my nn. mercury + sun in the 3rd.).

hey, hope you’re doing well. thank u for the question 🩵

yes it can bring struggles with self worth and finances, but the finances and self worth can easily be fixed through healing bad karma (i’m going to post abt ways to do this soon). often in terms of money though it more so indicates struggles with saving your money and having a spending problem when someone’s at a lower vibration. i’ll list more traits other than the basic stuff u always hear abt it though ↯

saturn in the 2h experience:

tw - weight

careers - saturn represents work so saturn and capricorn placements can both show u what jobs r good for u. with saturn in the 2h, being an accountant, singer, banker, pawn shop owner, and any career related to the arts since the house’s natural ruler is taurus so acting, fashion, etc related careers too

karmic lessons - the karmic lesson to learn here is when u have bad values and doubts in ur abilities then ur life will never change for the better. u must learn karmic lessons surrounding having stronger self discipline and also you’re actually meant to experience materialism and be materialistic a little (just don’t make it ur main goal in life)

received karma - u may notice whenever u cause others pain u receive bad karma back in the form of issues w self worth, weight, finances, or material items. the same goes for when ppl hurt u tho. it sounds crazy but i’ve noticed ppl who cause saturn in 2h ppl harm will randomly gain a bunch of weight after, lose money, or struggle with self esteem issues a lot

pros - can indicate being wealthy after ur saturn return or through hard work, indicates becoming more beautiful with age (maybe not peaking in ur younger years beauty wise), and can gain more self worth with age

conjunct the nn/mercury/sun: ur specific aspects to this placement indicate that ppl will get karma even worse for saying mean things to u and being narcissistic towards u. balancing karma is a major life lesson of urs. u can stand up for urself when someone strikes first, but it will negatively affect u if u cause harm to others in any way whether it be emotionally, physically, spirituality, etc without good reason

[presiding]

I'm not a new follower and I've been here long enough but i do have a relatively bad memory

So I've wanted to ask, what's your opinion on "Dishonored: death of the outsider"?

Right now I'm replaying Dishonored games not in the release order, i already finished DH2 and started Daud dlcs. Maybe I'll go for vanilla DH later

But thoughts about going through death of the outsider again makes me feel something that i can't explain... 😬

It has some interesting ideas but antagonists are underused. Locations repeat a lot. And Billie herself deserved SO much better than whatever is going on with her character

I'm genuinely debating if i should revisit *this* one or pretend that DH2 is the last game. I know that some people love DOTO but i can't find strength in me

love to chat about death of the outsider, ty for the ask!

i feel your pain. it's the one game i struggle to revisit. but! i was thinking about your points and how DotO has the feel of budget cuts.

it's been about a year since my last DotO post - so, essay time -

a measured response to common DotO criticisms

(the thousand bugs of dishonored 2 I had borne as I best could, but when doto ventured upon sidelining billie and retconning daud's arc I vowed revenge*

*can't resist a cask of amontillado joke

criticism is easy and creation is hard, so, if this isn't the type of response you wanted, you can read my other DotO posts:

how i'd write death of the outsider

that post i did after trying to play doto a third time and couldn't make it past the opening scene (you might like my tags on this re: your comment "makes me feel something i can't explain")

billie lurk as a nonprotagonist & misogynoir (more on this below...)

gonna leapfrog off your comments cause I agree!

antagonists are underused/locations repeat a lot.

who is steering the boat?

let's start up at the top; everything stems from there.

DotO was caught up in ownership/transition issues. here's an article about harvey smith and raphael colantanio at that time. if you didnt know, colantonio is the main founder of arkane (semi-related but just for fun look his appearance up then go through arkane's protags and tell me what you notice...).

quote from harvey smith re: DotO -

“Then, just as I move back, [Colantonio is] announcing that he’s leaving. Going forward, I’ll focus more and more on the Austin studio and what we’re going to do there. Death of the Outsider is my wrapping up with the guys in Lyon – the first half of that we planned together while I was living there, but the second half was worked on while I was living in Austin. I’ve been communicating with them through video conferences and stuff, so they carry a lot of the load of the second half of it.”

so the founder jumped ship and the co-creative director has to step away from his usual position (over to sinking ship Austin). meanwhile, DotO is still in development. i'm a big believer in people making art, and not companies (even in this article Smith acknowledges much of their "secret sauce" can be traceable to specific devs but i digress)

$$$ kaching - some speculation

on the note of founders - past this point in arkane's history (ie. the main founder stepping back), arkane would have been being primed for sale. this translates to high scrutiny on project expenditure (such as hiring cheaper early career staff, hiring less workers, denying your best staff raises causing them to leave and hiring cheaper workers in their place, etc) to make the company's EBITDA look more appealing to buyers (briefly, its the piece of paper that proves you're profitable). based on speculative timelines, from a purely $ perspective within the first year of dh2 being released is when you'd be looking to slim down your capitalised expenditure (aka: cutting staff while the revenue is at a peak to make number go brr and make your company look like a better investment) because to maximise the profit of a company's sale, you really have a great track record for a few years.

this is purely speculation based on timelines. companies are very careful to hide when they're doing this, ideally they want ~3 years of a great track record (and staff that will keep working their hardest).

big goals and no money

DotO was meant to be a two-part DLC like the Dh1 DLCs, so shout out to what could have been made if their original pitch had worked.

On locations & antagonists & budget - this dev's site discusses the Conservatory level in game AND specifies it was budget constraints being the reason for cutting off traversable area from that mission. Great link for comparing the original level & the DotO version, especially re: your point about reused assets/levels.

We could pick other examples here but this post is already long so -

Billie herself deserved SO much better than whatever is going on with her character

i would forgive this game anything if there was any good billie storywriting.

:')

its never just the writers

after revisiting articles to fact-check for this essay, i've seen a lot of articles blaming writers by name (you didn't do this anon which i love <3)

games are made by teams, and decision making is generally done top-down, so blaming individual contributors is shit. 1) writer's pay isn't good enough to cop this kind of abuse. 2) it's rarely in their control - you can write a beautiful scene only to have that level cut due to costs (etc), and then you need to work out how to make the story make sense. ideation & decision-making are separate and i guess 'this idea was [X]'s' should not be mistaken for 'this is the fault of [X]'s.'

on hiring fans (& imm-sim writing strategies)

the new writers [...] already had an idea of the world, as they’d seen it from the outside, as fans. “These are all people that knew this world we had created and they took it as canonical, as the gospel. Whereas, for us, it was bits and pieces we’d made up along the way.”

as someone who used to hire writers, and i promise this isn't in bad faith: don't hire fans unless your priority is cost then, sure, fans are likely to put in overtime (and not be in a position in their career where they can ask for higher remuneration - they'll pay the passion tax to be involved).

writers (esp new career writers) have to be open to receiving feedback assuming healthy/functional processes, and being a fan makes that harder because you care more. and, as a fan, you know what loose ends exist and that's where you'll naturally jump to, even though writers should start with target audience and branding, and build from there. if i expand on this i'll get offtopic so let's keep going!

DotO feels lifeless because it doesn't add anything to the DH universe, it only takes away by closing storylines without the satisfaction of closure. sure, stuff was added - the cult subplot, locations, some NPCs/enemies, etc. but they feel like part of the objectives, not part of the dishonored universe. you can feel the decision-making process when you play: there's a feeling that the priority was to finish the assets required for missions, instead of writing a story that feels immersive.

compared to standard videogame writing, where you can generally get away with "everything you touch and read relates to your objectives as the protagonist", as an imm-sim writer, you need to focus on:

how does this text build the universe so that the player feels like they're only seeing a small part of the world?

of course - this is difficult with budget/time concerns. i've said it before but this is part of why we rarely have games as rich as dishonored 1 & 2, because imm-sim design philosophy flies against the current videogame industry trends of microtransactions & cheap-to-make addictive mobile games. given a tight budget you focus on the high level story, but player immersion is a function of details.

most likely, dh2 was the end of an era. typing that out makes me sad.

what did the devs say about writing billie

*breathes deeply*

the death of the outsider protag was originally pitched as being about a regular human, someone not related to emily and corvo but instead an overseer or a brigmore witch. daud was also pitched.

this could have worked! really cool to have a nobody, or a heretic, or an overseer, be involved with the death of a god. and i've mentioned before that storywise DotO's protag could have been anyone (i think i made a joke about wyman? hah) and wouldn't change the story much, bar some daud bits.

quote from the same article:

eventually Arkane settled on Billie Lurk, Emily's companion from Dishonored 2. [...] Bakaba tells me that because Billie had already received her redemption arc in Dishonored 2, Death Of The Outsider's story could be about something more than that.

welp.

so there's two things here - a redemption arc claim, and DotO's actual story.

in addition to not being the first pick, the view was that billie's story was over. i question the 'redemption arc' claim - sure, billie helps the protag in dh2 but after her confession, if you tell her she's changed, she brushes it off and you part awkwardly without forgiving her... does that count? if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound? if a character redeems themselves but the story never tells you, are they redeemed?

billie's role in dh2 isn't really that different to the dlcs, where she follows you around being Mr Exposition while withholding a LOT of information that could have actually helped the protag. given DotO's plot, going after the killer who shaped her doesn't scream 'reformed' either. ludonarratively speaking, the lack of chaos implies billie never changed from being a callous killer - which i'm not against, it would have been a cool story.

and! contrast this with daud who already had his redemption arc!

When first conceptualising Death Of The Outsider in around 2014, Smith and Duval knew they wanted two things: Billie Lurk being used to get to The Outsider himself, and closure for Dishonored villain (and later ally) Daud.

in the two DLCs, as we know, he comes to realise his actions sucked, and as the player you actively make things right (related: my post about ludonarrative dissonance in dh2). so if billie had "already received her redemption arc", why was this another daud story?

imo this isn't a budget issue but a misogynoir issue. "we want this story to be not about the protagonist so any random NPC will do, how about we go with billie lurk and get a black woman as a dishonored protag?" this logic, which is what i'm reading of the above two quotes, feels frustratingly tokenistic when she's an established character with a rich background. it's an example of surface level diversity because DotO is not about her by arkane's own admission. it's a similar vibe to the companies who say they have a diverse team but you check their staff page and all the people of colour have 'assistant' in their title and the board is all white, so it's not people of colour who are driving the business. maybe this was entirely by accident but these accidents add up to systematic failure - billie gets her own game but never her own story. it feels like she got assigned the caretaker role for these two guys. great.

for fairness, let's compare to dh2. corvo & emily are relatively hands-off protags in terms of their ongoing thoughts about their surroundings and the lore placement about them specifically is sparse, and this style continues in DotO. the issue is the core narrative: corvo & emily are both the protagonists of their story in the sense that dh2's story reflects their goals ("take back what's yours"), whereas Billie is an established character who has arguably little reason to go along with each mission. worse, the main plotline she's literally forced into going along with. in the opening scene billie gets assaulted and still helps the guy who assaulted her.

fundamentally, DotO's narrative is not about billie but about daud and the outsider, and this article makes clear that was by design.

whats the takeaway

DotO is the weakest entry in the Dishonored series for most people, and blaming budget & a corporate changeover makes me feel... uh well it doesn't really help me tbh but your mileage may vary. it does interest me to think about what we could have had!

for me, my opinion is that if writing billie was a priority (link to my own post where i describe the feeling of playing doto as someone interested in billie) arkane would have made it a priority, even amidst constraints. billie's redemption arc was not resolved imo, and putting her in a game without a chaos system feels like as much a backwards slide for her as daud's plotline to kill the outsider was for his arc.

we absolutely 🤝 on not being in a rush to play the game again.

on the upside. dishonored 2 is a really wonderful game and i love it very much.

[pinenutposts]

I am old enough to have watched Twin Peaks on tv in its original run (I was a child, mind you, but I did catch a few episodes of season 2 while my mom and stepdad were watching it.) I didn't see the entire series until it was re-aired on Bravo when I was in high school. I also read the Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch (very eye opening for a relatively sheltered girl like me, and also crucial to understanding the show from Laura's perspective, before FWWM existed). I subscribed to the legendary fanzine Wrapped in Plastic by Craig Miller and John Thorne, through my local comic book store. I read alt.tv.twinpeaks. I read theories and news on websites like Glastonberry Grove and Mike Dunn's Lynchnet. I asked my dad to buy me the book of essays "Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks" from Wayne State University Press, and was introduced to things like Foucault, Critical Theory, and Feminist Theory, while my little teenage brain was just entering college and starting to work out what "critical thinking" even was. I obsessed over David Lynch and his art.

Why I mention all this, is that I think having been this type of fan for my entire adult life, and my formative teenage years, I'm able to hold several different and sometimes contradictory opinions about Twin Peaks and its creators, and more importantly, I'm able to enjoy wildly varied aspects of the show and fandom, all at the same time!

When I first saw The Return in 2017, it absolutely repulsed me. I hated it. Then last year I picked up "Ominous Woosh - A Wandering Mind Returns to Twin Peaks," by John Thorne, the only currently living editor of Wrapped in Plastic, and it opened my mind to understanding The Return in a way that I wasn't able to before. I'm not saying it's the definitive explanation (and he certainly does not claim that), but it helped me see it in a way that I just couldn't before, and even begin to enjoy it. There are still parts of it I deeply dislike, but that's okay. Twin Peaks is not a one size fits all. It can be approached from many different viewpoints and readings, and as David Lynch has said about all of his work, everyone will have a different experience of it based on their own experience and perspective. My views of Twin Peaks, including who I ship and don't ship, have certainly changed over the course of three decades!

I would like to encourage people who become frustrated and disappointed at the turns the show takes, and how the third season feels vastly different from what came before, to consider the history of the show. What happened with the network, the actors, Lynch's movie career, when it was made, why it ended when it did. And of course The Return doesn't look or feel like a show made in 1990! It's 25 years later! Lynch and Frost are old men now! Half the cast is dead! It would be absurd if it seamlessly picked up where season 2 (which was a jumbled, but still lovable mess, itself) left off. There's no way it could.

If season 3 had been allowed to be made as originally planned in the '90s, it would look vastly different than The Return. I will forever mourn what could have been, but that's the stuff of fanfiction now. Also, we may not have gotten the masterpiece that is Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which I consider to be the creative and emotional pinnacle of the series, and absolutely critical to having a full picture of what Twin Peaks is about, if the show had continued. Just food for thought.

I'm also an advocate of simply ignoring things if you really don't like them. There's no reason one has to accept The Return as part of your own personal headcanon. As the creators will say, there really is no definitive "canon" in the Twin Peaks universe!

I don't really know what the purpose of this ramble was, but I felt like going on about it because Twin Peaks has been my "favorite song" for years, and I'm always thinking about it in one way or another ^_^

- Pine Nut

[changedmyminditsnicehere]

So I know I posted a thing about Dreamling approximately 1252 months ago and then never did anything but I opened the google doc today and instead of doing anything on that I was immediately hit by the idea of gallerygirl!Dream (Sources for this AU - me and continued career as a gallery girl, or as my mother called me a 'girl Friday', which made me sound like a prostitute but is apparently a Cary Grant film) Anyway, I think Dream would make an amazing gallery girl. What else do pale goths with dramatic fashion tastes and who listen to way too much joy division do other than sit behind a desk and imperiously ignore rich people? Of course, he would secretly own the gallery because in addition to being a pathetic arts grad he is also a trust fund baby, but he's not telling that to the sexy art handler who comes in to install the gallery's very intermittent exhibitions.

The first time Hob entered the gallery, he immediately turned to Dream, who was doing peak gallery girl you-can't-afford-anything here-so-just-leave impression behind his desk in his ergonomic desk chair, and pointed out the marble statue he was moving looked both like a penis and a very peurile take on Louise Bourgeois. He then picked it up entirely by himself and the experience of seeing his biceps made Dream instantly forgive him for everything and totally forget about how much the insurance on the hideous sculpture was (if any, any of his employees mention that they suddenly start doing a lot more sculpture shows, Dream will personally end them.)

Anyway, no plans as yet, but if this inspires anyone else please do let me know, I want to read this without having to make the effort of writing it lol

[flamingplay]

Everything Everything's Mountainhead: a Track-by-Track commentary from AppleMusic

Everything Everything lead vocalist Jonathan Higgs thinks that the thread running all the way through the Manchester quartet’s catalogue is the urge to encapsulate the effect on humanity of living in this time. “That’s really what all our albums are about,” Higgs tells Apple Music. “It’s a varying degree of looking inward and outward, observing how it feels to be alive in this place in this time. This one is very much looking outward for the most part.” “This one” is Mountainhead, Everything Everything’s seventh record and another astounding leap forward from one of the UK’s most inventive bands. It mixes pulsing synths and gleaming guitar licks, euphoric electro grooves and art-rock dynamism—music where the strange and the soothing seamlessly overlap.

The album pairs a dystopian concept about a society which has built a huge mountain and its people live in the shadowed pit it has created at the bottom (a “Mountainhead” is someone who believes the mountain must continue to grow taller no matter the cost) with some of their most rhapsodic pop hooks yet. It’s all been created with the confidence that there is an audience for this sound. “It always feels like we’ve got a lot of goodwill from the last thing we did, so a lot of people are waiting for the next thing we do,” says Higgs. “I think people really liked the last record [2022’s Raw Data Feel] and this one’s better.” This is the sound of Everything Everything on the crest of a wave, confidently hitting new peaks seven albums into their career. Allow Higgs to guide you on a journey to the top of Mountainhead, track by track.

“Wild Guess”

“This was a little demo we made on tour with Foals back in 2017 or something. I put a vocal on it but it was all sung an octave up from what you hear, which was ridiculous. We happened to rediscover it and were like, ‘Remember how ridiculous this song was? Maybe it’s fine to do it now.’ There was just something about the confidence of that big fat solo beginning the record, no vocal for ages and it’s not very nicely played. It’s the same recording Alex [Robertshaw, guitarist and keyboardist] did backstage into his laptop all those years ago. It just felt like this was a good way to start a record, basically, like, ‘Fuck you. Here’s your big fat solo that sounds awful and you’re going to have to wait for your vocal.’”

“The End of the Contender”

“This is vaguely about Ronnie Pickering [ex-boxer who went viral in 2015 for a road rage incident] and people of his ilk, but it’s also about the creep of capitalism and how it’s seeping into everything. I’ve tried to put a reference to money or electricity on every song, so he talks a lot about it in that song—whoever ‘he’ is. Obviously, ‘It’s all about the Benjamins’ is quite a cheeky thing to sing in the chorus, but I don’t think I’m going to get sued for it.”

“Cold Reactor”

“This is setting out the stall of the record. It really hinges on the human element of it and the desperation of it. The ‘I haven’t left the house’ line, somebody being quite isolated and communicating through screens and emojis, felt very relatable. There’s a sad longing for connection that you can’t quite get to that runs through it and because it has this rushing feeling of everything coming to a point, it really emphasises the desperation of it. It was a question of getting the right sort of heartbreaking-versus-hopeful tone and trying to get across a lot of exposition in the verses in quite a short time. It feels like a film script in terms of its simplicity.”

“Buddy, Come Over”

“This is about cancel culture a little bit, it’s got this dark-side- and underworld-type feeling to it. There’s a line, ‘Make me a website so I can completely ruin my life’ and that made the guys laugh quite a lot. Sometimes when that happens, we’re just like, ‘Yeah, let’s go down this path.’ It fell together quite easily, it was more like a really fun one to play live, like, ‘What can we play that feels good in the moment rather than trying to get all these tracks on the go.’”

“R U Happy?”

“This is about the effect of isolation, living in cities, living now and asking the question, ‘Are you happy? Does all this stuff make you happy?’ in the simplest way I could, which is to literally say, ‘Are you happy?’ over and over again. There’s definitely a through line of being an animal and the ‘dance in a skeleton way’ line was me saying if there’s a skeleton there, you’re dead but if there’s a skeleton there, you’re alive as well, talking about being alive and trying not to be sad all the time.”

“The Mad Stone”

“This is more about the religious element to the idea [of the album]. It’s more like a spiritual song in its presentation and its content. It sounds like an argument between two or three people who really believe in this idea of the mountain and people who are very doubtful about it. The thing on top of the mountain [in the chorus] is this big mirror that reflects you over and over again into infinity—that’s the more magical element of what might be at the top of the mountain. I was trying to come up with a metaphor for an idea of something that would be an actual goal that someone might want to get to, but it’s also really obviously selfish and self-aggrandising. It took an afternoon of singing it to get the chorus right, getting it so it just didn’t sound silly—being understood and not sound like I’m mumbling.”

“TV Dog”

“This was a demo that Alex had made that he called ‘Coney Island’ and we all thought it sounded like a New York string quartet. Coupled with that title, it opened up a few little avenues on the record, some strings that appear on other songs. I had about twice as many lyrics and we were like, ‘Is this song going to develop into a bigger thing? Are we going to bring the drums in?’ and then we were like, ‘The most poignant thing you can do is just hear it for a minute and a half, a couple of good lines and then it’s gone.’ Alex went down to a cathedral and recorded loads of ambience in there and put that all over the track in the background, so you get this sense of it being in a huge space.”

“Canary”

“If some of the other songs feel like you’re on the mountain, this one’s very much in the pit, it’s being in the dark. It’s the canary in a coal mine, a warning song that just so happens to fit very well with the larger concept. It’s the darkest underbelly of the album and the imagery is the most fucked up. It feels like a warning about something bad that’s coming, which tends to be where I often find myself as a character in my songs—as a warning character. This was a big production number for Alex, I think he wanted it to be a bit Björk or something.”

“Don’t Ask Me to Beg”

“I started with layering up vocals, I was trying to make a kind of choir thing. I was listening to Massive Attack, even though they don’t really use choirs. We tried different rhythmic schemes for ages to try and get it sounding less white-boy funk and cool. It took us ages working on the drums, actually, and then trying to re-record all of those cluster vocals. I think we just gave up in the end and used the demo ones, so no one knows how to sing those parts. If we have to do it live, we’re going to struggle!”

“Enter the Mirror”

“This is about a friend of mine who was struggling and I wasn’t sure if he was going to make it through. It’s a song about singing to him as if he was gone and remembering our childhood. I haven’t really worked out what it means yet. I think I wanted to say that we’re both the same deep down, even though there’s two of us. But there’s also the mirror on top of the mountain, which might be like you find yourself if you go into it. I don’t know, I’m still a bit too close to that song to even fully say.”

“Your Money, My Summer”

“This was another demo from around the same time as ‘Wild Guess’, something that we thought was just a bit too silly to do something with back then and now, I guess we didn’t. In the past, we would have had a litany of reasons why we wouldn’t do that and now it was like, ‘This is good.’ It’s definitely the most relaxed track of ours you’ll ever find. You won’t find us playing like that anywhere else, a sort of Chili Peppers rhythm section. We would usually run a mile from that stuff but we were just like, ‘Why are we running?’ It’s an example of us being relaxed with each other.”

“Dagger’s Edge”

“This was an older demo. It always had that feeling of being a song of two halves. I think I wrote the second half and Alex wrote the first. We’d binned it because we thought it was too silly. It does sound pretty light-hearted in the first bit, but then the tone changes. I’m taking the piss out of somebody and saying a lot of ridiculous things and then suddenly just turn into this really desperate old wise man on a mountain. No other band could do that and I really believe that that’s very much our thing—a song that sounds like Dr. Dre and I’m taking the piss out of a guy, calling him those ridiculous names, and then suddenly, a harpsichord comes in and it’s turned into a really existential thing about everyone turning into bacon.”

“City Song”

“This is another one that’s got that New York strings thing going on. I wrote the demo and it was much more hip-hoppy. It’s got a hip-hop speed, but, stylistically, that’s been shed. I was trying to do like a David Byrne-style lyric, the sadness of mundanity or trying to make mundane things special. I think there was also some elements of the Mark Fisher book Capitalist Realism, where he was talking about how impersonal it can be to work for a big company where no one really knows each other. I wanted to get across that feeling of isolation, but also no one really knowing who you are and no one knowing each other, living under the lights of the city and it all being very anonymous.”

“The Witness”

“I’ve barely listened back to this because it makes me quite emotional. It was about witnessing somebody go through a weird transition, thinking that it might be a kind of religious experience. It was written on guitars but Alex swapped out the guitars for synths because it sounded like a Radiohead-type song, two guitars picking and a sad guy with a falsetto. It was just like, ‘People would like it but this is really music from 25 years ago that we could do standing on our heads.’ It’s what we were trained to do, we’re good at it, but it wasn’t pushing us in any direction. So we swapped out the guitars for synths and we made a few other weird changes.