#i will definitely have to check that podcast out now as well lol

[jellicle-chants]

I love this explanation, and I hope you don't mind if I use this space to gush a little about Lumi myself, since I don't get many opportunities to do so 😅

I definitely think that belief in the Force is a core aspect of Luminara's character, even more so than other Jedi. I have to assume this comes from Mirial's cultural traditions -- even before she discovered her sensitivity, she probably would've been taught belief in the Force's omnipresence, a teaching that only strengthened during her time in the Order. (This could also explain, tangentially, why she has such a mastery over object manipulation. Although I think it's been relegated to Legends, the book scene where she manipulates thousands of sand grains at once is a key moment for me.)

Another part of her character that I interpret from her that's very much informed by her belief is her humility. Not just being willing to admit her mistakes, which we see in the show, or letting others take the lead even when she's perfectly qualified to. (It might be personal bias talking, but I think that Luminara could easily be on the Council if that's something she aspired to -- she's in the same age group as most of the other members, and she's clearly highly respected amongst the Order. So there must be some reason why she's not up there, and I think this interpretation fits nicely.)

More than that, I think what this artwork and your explanation brilliantly illustrate is Luminara's cosmic humility -- her ability to see her place in the greater plan of the Force, to know that she'll need to make sacrifices for the good of all life in the universe. It's an incredibly hard truth to bear, and she has fostered an incredibly strong will to adapt to it, which is also why I think she's so willing to stick to her convictions and practice what she preaches, like you said. I love the idea that she foresaw the downfall of the Jedi while looking into an eclipse, as it's one of the most powerful images of the enormousness of the universe I can imagine.

🟢A Luminara in honor of the clone wars podcast I'm listening to 🟢

[sugrhigh]

FAMILY TIES - ( m.s & c.s )

REQUESTED**

summary- you, matt, and chris go to a bruins game with the kids

warnings- none i don’t think!

girl dad!matt and boy dad!chris

a/n: i tried so hard to write this well and im still not sure if im satisfied, but i hope u enjoy!! kinda short but i think after this weeks podcast we all need a bit of fluff lol

@cutenote @rootbeerworshiper @bb-1s-blog @rileysturniolo @mbbsgf @sturnlova @angelworldspost @l9vesick @st7rnioiossblog

“it’s ridiculous that you always wear my clothes better than i do.” matt speaks, interrupting you as you stare at yourself in the full-length mirror.

you’re in one of his many bruins sweatshirts, which is a little too big for you so you have one side tucked into the pocket of your jeans.

you pad over to give him a quick kiss, hand pressed to his chest. “you still look very handsome.”

“thank you, babe.” he gives you a tiny pat on the ass, which still to this day makes your cheeks ignite.

your daughter, eve, comes flying around the corner into your bedroom moments later, almost running right into her dad. she’s all dressed up for the occasion too, clad in her mini bruins jersey.

“woah, slow it down there partner.” he scoops her up into his arms easily, and her eruption of laughter makes you smile.

“can we go now?” eve says through giggles.

“you don’t want to wait for uncle chris and parker?” you ask knowingly, and she sighs, leaning her small head against matt’s chin.

“i guess.”

as if on que, there’s a loud pounding on the front door, and you hear it open. eve’s face lights up, and she claps her hands together in excitement.

“they’re here, they’re here!”

“we’re here evie!” chris calls back, and the smile is clear in his voice.

matt sets your daughter down so she can run for the stairs, the both of you following closely behind her.

parker is hiding behind chris’s legs, one hand grabbing onto his dad’s black cargos for safety. the second eve comes rushing toward him, though, he opens right up as always.

they hold each other tightly for a second as you finally reach the bottom of the grand staircase, which gives you time to pull chris into a quick embrace too.

“good to see you, as always.” you grin, and he matches your expression.

“i can never turn down some family time.”

matt chuckles a little, clapping his brother on the back as they hug next. “you just want an excuse for me to drive so you can get a drink.”

“well, i can’t turn that down either.” chris jokes back.

“alright, who’s ready for some hockey?” you ask, mainly to eve and parker, who both bounce around with each other happily.

“me!”

“me too!”

you herd everyone into the car and get the kids situated in their respective booster seats beside chris. there’s always an extra in your vehicle, just in case parker is around, which is often.

you love the little guy. he really is like a mini version of his dad, and chris’s wife is gorgeous too, which also shows in his face. you were so upset when you found out she was sick, but she insisted you guys needed to go enjoy without her, so here you are.

most of the drive to the garden is spent singing along to the radio and keeping eve and parker in check. as cute as they are together as cousins, they’re also trouble. to be fair, they’re only three, so it’s in their nature.

you used to think that eve got her rebel streak from her father, but matt insisted it’s a trait that came from you. as the time went on, you realized that she’s definitely inherited it from your side of the family.

thinking about it makes you grin a little bit to yourself. she’s definitely equal parts of you and matt.

eve’s voice interrupts your thoughts, almost like she knew what was going on in your brain.

“are we there mommy?”

“almost, i promise.”

“pinky?” parker chimes in next.

“oh, of course.” you fully lean across the center console so you can extend your pinky finger to him.

he loops his own little hand with yours and shakes it, and you do the same with eve.

it seems like only seconds later you’re pulling into the arena’s parking deck, and the kids start kicking in their seats eagerly.

chris unbuckles them and helps them out into the chilly air as you round the corner of the car. thankfully they’re both all bundled up in their outfits, even complete with their little matching bruins beanies that matt had picked out months ago.

the whole walk toward the entrance, chris and matt take turns swinging parker and eve between themselves, and you’re all still laughing as you approach security.

matt scans the tickets and suddenly you’re meshing with the crowd, keeping the kids close as you head for concessions first.

the rink is all lit up as you finally make your way to your seats minutes later, equipped with two beers, two sodas, and two tubs of popcorn.

the kids munch happily from their seats as they watch warm-ups, just a couple rows back from the glass. you can’t help but beam, sneakily taking pictures of the two of them together because it just warms your heart.

“looking at the two of them kind of makes me want more, you know.” matt leans over from the seat on the other side of you, breath tickling your ear.

you nudge him playfully, though it makes your pulse skyrocket as you turn to look at him.

“just say the word.”

it’s his turn to go slack-jawed, and he has to clear his throat to force himself to stop thinking about the possibility of more children with you, the woman he fucking adores.

you’d never really talked about it after eve, since you were both so hyper-focused on her as new parents. plus, she’s always had her cousin every step of the way.

but maybe she’d like having a little brother or sister of her own.

“maybe they can stay at chris’s place tonight?” matt thinks out loud.

“let him drink that beer a little longer and i’m sure you can convince him.” you grin as you take a sip of your own.

a few minutes later the arena gets dark as the announcer hypes up the crowd, and you’re (mostly) all on your feet cheering once the bruins skate onto the ice.

parker is piggy-backing on chris’s shoulders, arms flung around his neck as his dad supports him. you’ve got eve on your hip so she can get a good view as well, watching the players while the spotlights focus in on the rink.

her eyes are as wide as saucers, like she’s totally entranced by the noise and the movement.

“daddy, look!” eve points at them excitedly, leaning in your arms so she can glance over at matt.

“i know baby! isn’t it cool?” he feeds into her enthusiasm with a wide grin.

your heart soars as you transfer her into matt’s arms, watching as he ruffles her beanie a little bit so she shrieks with laughter. it’s precious, watching him treat her like the little princess she is.

the national anthem plays shortly after, and the game officially begins. you watch as he points out players to eve, telling her different fun facts about each of them.

chris is bopping parker around on his back to the beat of the music, and he smiles along with his dad.

for a moment, you’re completely consumed by your own thoughts, so thankful for this little found family of yours. you turn your head to look at matt, and he meets your eyes immediately.

“i love you.” you mouth, unable to contain your smile.

“i love you more.” he mouths back.

[kenananamin]

I saw a TikTok of a mom cleaning her daughters room while she slept and I think Nanami would do that with his messy partner. 😭 ❤️

damn, you’re so right anon 😚👌🏼 he would absolutely do that for and with his messy partner and would talk about his whole day and let you rant about literally anything. so with that…

Here are my hcs of Nanami with his partner after the kids go to bed and the next morning

it gets a little suggestive in there but overall fluffy lol

he will go to you for a hug and kiss right after closing the kid’s door. they don’t always lead to something else or get too spicy but its part of the routine now. even on the bad and/or tiring days, he’ll meet you in the hallway for a quick peck and hug that’s got you both happily sighing

he’ll use the time after that to go around the house looking for any dishes the kids may have hidden or just dropped somewhere as you get the dry clothes from the dryer

he’ll pop everything in the dishwasher (yes, he’s a dishwasher user now bc kids go through dishes like it’s their job and they have overtime to do) and meets you on the couch to fold the clothes

sometimes you’ll both talk about the parts of your day that he didn’t see and he’ll do the same, other times you’ll listen to music or a podcast, and other times you’ll watch some brainrotting television

once you both know the kids are definitely asleep and not faking it, you’ll sneak back into the rooms to organize what the kids couldn’t. of course, you both tell the kids to clean but they’re young and don’t always fix everything where it should be (and you’re both a little OCD so you have to fix it behind your children’s back to avoid hurting their feelings)

laughs whenever a toy or thing clanks too loud and your immediate reaction is turn around with your mouth and eyes wide open, panicking if that woke up the sleeping child

gives the kids another kiss before leaving their room and sometimes snuggles with them while they’re sleeping. they’re growing up and don’t want to be hugged all the time and nanami misses when they’d crawl all over him and beg to be carried

will make you a nighttime tea as you put the clothes away and meets you in your room to get ready for bed

will set the bed while you shower and will quickly shower while you do your skincare

gets out of the shower and grabs the hairdryer to dry both his and your hair

you sit him down on your vanity stool and do his skincare while he holds your hips and he uses that time to just look at you. ✨lovingly✨ of course, mucho mucho amor 🥹

pretends to look away while you switch your robe for your pjs. well “pjs” — nanami likes buying silky or lighter pajama sets and he uses the pants while you use the top which is usually always a soft button down or oversized shirt

you pretend to know he’s not looking but give a lil extra while you change bc it’s fun to see him twitch a bit and clear his throat

makes sure the door is locked before… mommy and daddy time 😃👍🏼 does not want to traumatize his kids or have the talk too early on

PRAISES YOU — i will die on this hill but nanami loves praising you. whether it’s your thing or not, he does it from the bottom of his heart bc he loves you and appreciates every single thing you do for him and the kids

…if it is your thing… he likes watching you twitch and squirm 🤭🤭

he’s a giver, what else can i say 🤷🏻‍♀️

unlocks the door afterwards bc emergencies can happen at anytime and wants easy access to the kids and for the kids

will check in with you about 3 different times to see if it’s too cold or hot in the room

will tuck you in on one side then will hug you from the other

if it’s not a snuggling kind of night, he’ll sleep close to you and on his stomach with one arm wrapped above his head or arm stretched out to scratch your head as he drifts off. if he can’t touch your head or hair then his hand is either on your back or stomach as you sleep. always some kind of contact

he’s a light sleeper and wakes up often so he’ll check on the kids once a night then will return to you in bed. once he comes back then it’s a guaranteed snuggle, you feel him and lean into him

wakes up first and early either from the alarm on weekdays or naturally on weekends and goes to wake the kids and make sure they’re out of bed and in restroom/living room/kitchen anywhere but close to a bed where they can lie back down and sleep then be late for school

goes back to the room to wake you up so softly and gently whispers a variation of a soft ‘good morning darling’, ‘it’s time to get up’, ‘you look beautiful’ etc etc

likes brushing his teeth w you. he likes the visual of you both standing next to each other, both with crazy bed head, winkled pajamas and the kids running in to say good morning as your toothbrush hangs between your teeth to hug the kids. so domestic, so simple, and so incredibly cozy

you both get the kid’s clothes out and help in washing their faces, brushing teeth and getting their hair done

you both go back to your room to change for the day. sometimes it’s quick if the kids are still eating breakfast, but if they’re playing or just watching tv…. nanami locks the door again

kisses. lots and lots of kisses. short and quick or long and slow, you both love kisses

OVERALL, nanami just loves and lives for domestic bliss. it’s all he wants, he doesn’t want a crazy life with so many hectic and crazy parts (the kids are hectic enough for now at such a young age but he’s def looking forward to retirement). he wants simple, happy, and completely fulfilling domestic bliss 🖤

[fifarts]

“it’s nice to know you work alone” 🪐⚡️

(click for better quality, more info and alt text below cut)

another jupeter piece and some recommended songs from my jupeter playlist!

I have synesthesia which means my brain associates certain audio and music with different colors and shapes, so I worked a lot with the colors on this piece and especially the background to kind of translate some of the visualizations I get when I listen to these songs together! If you read the lyrics of both you’ll see why I heavily associate them with juno and peter!

I have another piece that I’ll hopefully post circa S3 that goes along with There’s No Secrets This Year (the most jupeter song ever) and a comic for Waltz in E-Major, Op. 15 “Moon Waltz” by Cojum Dip that I really want to work on soon! My playlist is still a work in progress and I’m currently in the process of moving my spotify accounts around but as of right now the full playlist link is here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6SP3sUjzSTBCPhouCe4xXY?si=277Hd2pqTGmRzPLcSx6dvQ

I organized it partially by season so hopefully it’s easier to understand the character connections of the songs. (The first song of the playlist is an instrumental guitar piece that my dad’s guitarist is doing as a side project which is super cool and you should definitely check out his stuff (and also please send some streams his way) If you love vocal-like sexy guitar riffs and weird time signatures and video game-esque music, Vision Swords is for you lol)

Alt Text:

A lineless digital art painting of Juno Steel and Peter Nureyev from the Penumbra Podcast. Juno's face is visible in a profile view as he holds his blaster in his outstretched hand. Juno is a short Black and South Asian person with dark brown skin, a scar across his nose bridge, and black hair that is lit with purple lighting. Juno has short locs and a high undercut with a star design shaved in. He is wearing a tan trenchcoat, a white button up, and black tie. He is also wearing a cochlear implant, hot pink star earrings, and hot pink acrylic nails. Peter stands behind him with his face partially obscured. He is a tall South Asian man with medium brown skin and dark shoulder length brown hair. He is pointing his blaster and wearing a black suit jacket with gold details. The background of the painting is hot pink, neon purple, and bright blue. The background colors mix in with one another in a perspective blur from the center of the painting. [end alt text]

Thank you so much for the support while I’ve been on hiatus! I’m going to college this fall for Robotics Engineering and I’ve been dealing with some pretty big health problems as well (I literally just got out of surgery today lol) which has left little time for art (fanart or otherwise) 😅 Love ya!

[urdreamgirls-dreamgirl]

have any fic recommendations?

yesssssssss.

I just read Intricate Rituals by zade (AO3)/@racetrackthehiggins because it was recently rec'd to me (E, Complete, 11/11). I asked the people for something very sad but with a happy ending and the people delivered. I ate this up and read it basically in a single sitting if you don't include the time I took to go do my job for two hours lol. This hit every single spot in terms of very heartbreaking relationship dynamic that I was looking for. I love earnest but confused Steve who's just in love but scared to tell it until he literally can't keep it in anymore and a scared Eddie who lashes out and hurts Steve when he's honest and then deeply regrets it. That's what I care abt... morning, noon, and night, I care about her. She is who I want, that is where my loyalties lie. Definitely mind the tags on this one though!

I love love love Trouble Looks Good on You by indelicate (AO3)/@steddielations. (E, WIP, 2/4) I love the dynamic between Eddie and Steve here and I absolutely adore the way they flirt here. 10/10 flirting !! Also, if you love this then definitely check out Melt Me on Your Tongue (E, Complete, 1/1). Steve taking care of Eddie and both of them loving it. Both of these make me go 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

I really love you looking at me, looking at you by emryses (AO3)/@emryses (M, Complete, 10/10). Very much in the same vein as Intricate Rituals, with a heartbreaking FWB-type relationship where Steve is clearly falling in love and Eddie breaks his heart because he's scared. So good.

Anything by Adure (AO3)/@toburnup, but particularly is your light on? (E, WIP, 12/16) which spans years of Eddie and Steve's relationship and is in progress right now (recently updated!). Another heartbreaking slowburn FWB situation for the boys (are we sensing a theme here yet??). Lots of internalized homophobia/self-policing in this one, so mind that, but so worth the read and so insanely well-written, it makes me jealous to read it. I also really particularly love throw me one (E, Complete, 5/5)!

Looks like we're in for nasty weather (E, Complete, 10/10) by prufrocks (AO3)/@geddyqueer is so so so so so so so so so s ooo cute. So cute!!!! Modern!AU where Steve is training to be a park ranger, Eddie can talk to ghosts, Robin hosts a monster podcast, and there's something spooky in the woods. :) :) :) :) Very fun and did I mention cute?

The Sad Steddie Scenario by @steddierthings. Steve and Eddie suffer a misunderstanding and Eddie is... harsh. I am (very very very) patiently! waiting for more more more of this. I love this. It's so good.

wonderin' where i am, lost without you by @outpastthebrakers was rec'd to me when I asked for something sad but with a happy ending. Definitely hit the spot! Eddie forgets Steve's birthday and has to deal with the consequences. Very sad and then very sweet <3

I loooooooove reputation by theamazingbard (AO3)/@theamazingbard (E, Complete, 2/2). Steve learns that Eddie is perhaps even more promiscuous than himself and doesn't know what to do with that information. I love me some idiots-to-lovers. That is my all-time favorite trope. They can have each other but they're just so stupid. It's very fun.

Please read off the beaten path by pukner (AO3)/@pukner (E, Complete, 6/6). You have to. I don't make the rules, I just enforce them (acab tho). Steve is aware of and secure with his sexuality and recognizes that Eddie is flagging. However!!!!!! Eddie is flagging accidentally. He is not aware of his sexuality!!! And then he is scared and accidentally hurts Steve. Which, as we've established, is my favorite dynamic. And I love the fandom reversal of "Steve is aware, it's Eddie who isn't!!!!!" Sooo good, soooo cute. Steve is just so adorable in this and I love him and cherish him deeply.

I asked for sad fic recs last week and was rec'd Stevie's Time Loop by stevesbipanic (AO3)/@stevesbipanic (M, Complete, 2/2), which I have not had the chance to read yet, but I am confident I'll really enjoy it!!!!

I was also rec'd The Man That I Could Be by ohstars (AO3) (ohstars autocorrected to oysters, stop it I am SCREAMING lol)/@oh-stars (E, Complete, 26/26), which I'm currently reading right now and really enjoying. I'm on chapter 5!!! We could read it together. Book club.

Also, you should read sorry about the blood in your mouth (I wish it was mine) 🙃

[destielfanfic]

from the inbox, #9

From the inbox, #9, special edition - Destiel fic reccing Now and Then

Hi! First of all, your blog is absolutely wonderful! I wish there were a billion more like it for all pairings and fandoms lol. Do you know of any other good supernatural rec blogs?

As long as there were destiel fics, there were also dedicated fic reccers. Some stayed with fandom longer, some moved on faster, so, now we have a mix of active blogs and archived blogs. Here’s small collection of destiel fic rec resources that I’ve come across on tumblr. This is by no means a definite list and you are welcome to add your own resources in the notes! Let’s keep fic reccing craft alive and diverse!

Destiel Fic reccing NOW, currently active blogs in 2023

@profoundbondfanfic - an active and prolific destiel fic rec blog with dedicated mod team. Follow them on tumblr and have a rec every day!

@destielficbasket - a blog that reblogs a wide variety of destiel fic rec posts from other Tumblr blogs. All goods in one place!

@deancasfanficrecs - destiel fic recs and fic rec reblogs, lots of posts to chose from!

@destieltaggedfic - blog full of original themed fic rec posts, sorting destiel fics from different angles.

@mixtapebookclub - a tumblr blog for destiel fic podcast. Thematic podcasts and fic rec lists at the same time. There is also a Mixtape Book Club AO3 collection for your convenience. 

@cocklesdestielfiction - what it says on the tin! They have destiel, but they also have cockles recs and gif sets. Check them out!

@destieltropecollection - a very unique blog that collects themed self recs from the authors. Check out their neatly organized Master List Collection 2017-2022 or follow them to get the latest Destiel Trope Collection 2023 rec lists every day in May.

The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection on AO3 contains 2793 fics and 668 bookmarked fics that were chosen by destiel readers in several fic surveys organized by destiel writer @unforth. Check out this vast collection of reader choice fics!

Destiel Fic reccing THEN

@destielmybeatingheart-deactivated - what to say, this was the main blog for destiel fic rec back in the day. Unfortunately, the mod left fandom and later took down the blog and, with it, all their fic rec posts. See this post to appreciate what we used to have. In coming weeks, @destiel-fic-rec-lists will continue to reblog available destielmybeatingheart’s rec lists with updated links to AO3 when possible. You can find them under #creator: destielmybeatingheart tag. 

ask about other spn blogs like ours - this is 10 years old ask and a lot of blogs here are not active anymore or full of dead links, but if they are up, you can still browse them. The list includes some non spn fic rec blogs as well.

@deancasfix - destiel fic rec blog, reviews, rec lists and asks, last update May, 2020.

@deancasfanficnet - a blog to promote destiel fic writers, various posts, last update April, 2020.

@destiel-fics-for-you - destiel fic rec blog, reviews, rec lists and asks, last update June 2016.

Last but not least, don’t forget to browse our destiel fic challenge master post Where Is Destiel Fic In 2022 and occasionally check out @destiel-fic-rec-lists​ blog for fic rec lists made by other fans. (hint - all reblogs are tagged with their creator’s urls, so you can easily find their other posts on the blog)

Support and cherish your local fanfic reccer. You never know when you’ll need their help to find your next favorite fic!

Destiel fanworks on AO3 - 111,567 (May 8, 2023)

You can find previous From The Inbox posts here.

[bleue-flora]

I think the prison being a "just in case" for not having to do exile2 again it's a good theory. Like a theory or a thought of "what if" dont need to be in cannon exactly, just be based on it. And I can see it might be something it could pass throught cdream's head while creating the prison before thinking about locking himself on it. And now I've been thinking about the "what if he had this in mind too", so more thoughts about this "what if" below that might be wrong or not:

Like "what if someone who is ctechno level of powerful has to be stopped and teached to do better but you can just kill him for it bc 3 lifes system?" A place were to have them grounted sounds good, and like cdream is someone that thought exile and a bit of insolation can work. Like while exile was half cdream just taking his emotions on ctommy and the other half was him trying to lean him into his side, I personally vision he saw it as "teaching him to do better" in some way. So it's on his profile for me. Tho there's one thing that might contradict this, the revival book.

Why dont just let someone in limbo and bring them back, so why a prison? Well bc it's not secure. We dont know for sure if by this point cdream have made the death experiments with cpunz or not. When he revives ctommy he acts as if the first time he send someone to limbo. So why use something you are not sure it'll work? and even if he was faking it and he did the experiments before the prison. I dont think he would actually do that even if he threatened ctommy with it in the future.

And we know cdream nomally does not like to use limbo itself as a way to get things done. He could have killed ctommy and bring him back until he "learned the lesson" and joined his side in exile or do that to csam until he gives the keycards when was in prison but he does neither. cDream could have let cQ hurt/kill ctechno on the prison and later revive him like ctechno said, but he seemed worried about ctechno being on limbo in the prison podcast and not liking the idea of him being there. And i consider it's bc he prefers to not sent people there unless he sees it as necesary to knowledge or prove a point like in the revival experiments and when he kills ctommy and revives him those two time. He doesnt seem to ureally use limbo itself a weapon very often or ever. I think there's only two people he has let in limbo for a long time, cwil and cranboo. Without reviving the second one. But He didnt let them in limbo as way to get something from them exactly. Thought he did revived cwil as a way to gain his favour. He will intent to use killing as a way of intimidation like we saw in the ending with ctommy while making his act of being all evil how powerful his revival power is but not the limbo himself.

So what's the best alternative when you dont want to use the hell nightmare of limbo and want to lock someone in a contained place? A prison, a prison that's impossible to escape unlike exile. Impossible for others to go and force you out. That not even yourself ;) can break out of

I hope this makes sense 😅If I got something wrong im open to corrections. It's interesting to think about this and checking the wiki to remenber the exact time cdream had taken to revive people. Also sorry for any misspell

[context]

Well we do know definitively that Dream and Punz hadn't done experiments on Vikk and Lazar at this point before the prison, as seen by the map [post] showing L'manhole. But you are right we are not sure on whether that means they hadn't done any experiments whatsoever. I would say whether or not they have, it does seem to me that Dream seems afraid of death and Limbo, a reason for the experiments later, so he perhaps wouldn't want to depend on Limbo as the "time out" lol XD for "learning their lesson", limbo is also very much out of his control so there is no guarantee it would help someone (in the hypothetical of that being his reasoning of course). Time is really screwed in Limbo as well, so while perhaps other people need separate time from that person for whatever reason, their time in limbo is times 30 so just one day of them being dead is a month in limbo, which might be too extreme a punishment. And as you said, in general it doesn't seem that Dream uses Limbo just willy nilly for his point, where one explanation could be him not wanting to mess with death and the other of him knowing how painful and terrible it is so not wanting people to needlessly experience that if there is alternative ways.... um anyways what were we talking about?... I don't think that if he had planned to use the prison to make sure people learned their lesson it would be by anyway about learning through in the prison more of incentive to not make the same mistake. The conditions of the prison are hardly comfortable making me think it's more about a thing to avoid then a means to learn. Also, not to dive into the topic of Exile, but I don't think Dream isolating him was as much about isolation as it was removing Tommy from outside influences something I've talked about before somewhere. That if the theory is he was trying to turn Tommy to not be against him, having Tommy interact with Quackity constantly reminding him of how terrible Dream is, is going to kinda undo all that work and manipulation.... I'm not sure I'm making sense anymore but whatever, there is also something to be said that given the experiments on Vikk and Lazar being after prison kinda highlights Dream's fear that perhaps the revival book doesn't work on all deaths so that would be another reason he would be considering the prison not Limbo...

[pleaseeeimjustagirl]

Things You Should Prioritize In Your Resting Season

Heyyy babes<3 I'm surprised I never made this blog post I was looking back at my resting season post that a lot of you love and realized I never listed activities that could optimize your resting season so here It is<3. 

♡ Journaling. My favorite form of journaling that I talked about in ‘Building A Productive Routine And Being Consistent’  is gratitude journaling I always start my day with a gratitude prompt. You can do regular journaling as well. Journaling is a great way to let out your emotions. I prefer the pen and paper method I connect more than when I use my laptop.

♡ Mood Tracker. The app I use is Daily Bean the app allows you to track your emotions every day and shows you a diagram of your emotions for the overall week, month, and year. It does have a journaling feature as well I don't use it but if you prefer digital journaling I recommend it.

♡ Reading. Start reading self-help books I have listed many recommendations in ‘Reinvent Yourself In 2024’. Reading can help give you a lot of insight and allow you to learn new things. There are so many books on so many different topics find books that relate to the issues you face, read, and implement the teachings into your life. When I'm not reading self-help books I love romance books so much I'm forever a lover girl lol.

♡ Listen to podcasts. Start listening to podcasts that you relate to and actually find interesting. there are so many great podcasts out there. The podcasts I listen to usually focus on self-improvement, femininity, fitness, and mental/physical health. My favorite podcaster is Leo Skepi he is so real I don’t agree with all of his takes but I agree with most of them. I also love Hailey Gamba her YouTube channel is definitely a must-watch.

♡ Hobbies. Write out a list of hobbies that interest you and give them a try. Give yourself time to see what works and what doesn’t. I've learned so much about myself through hobbies and most of the hobbies I have are related to my goals and of course, some are not. Hobbies are a great way to get yourself out there and make new friends as well.

♡ Solo dates. Take yourself out once a month. It is super important to date yourself babes<3. Spending alone time with yourself is beneficial. You can do at-home solo dates as well. Here is a list of solo date ideas.

♡ Eating Cleaner. You are what you eat is so real! I'm not gonna get too deep into the science behind your gut health and brain health and how they are connected. But watch the two videos created by Andrew Huberman ‘Food And Emotions’ ‘Sugar And Your Brain’. Eating cleaner is good for your overall health. You can still eat out and processed food but an 80/20 lifestyle is key babes!

♡ Sleeping Routine. You can tell by now I love Andrew Huberman (Daddy Huberman) because again I'm going to drop some gems from him. He states that you should try and get a consistent amount of hours of sleep rather than trying to force yourself to get 8 hours of sleep every night. Try creating a sleep schedule my days start at 5:30am so I usually fall asleep at the earliest 8pm or the latest 11pm because I know getting 6-8 hours of sleep is best for me and keeps me going throughout the day. Everyone's body is different do what works for you. Video Link 

You don’t have to do the things that I have listed above if they do not fit into what you require from your resting season. I hope you loved this post babes check for this week’s affirmations<3.

[pebblysand]

[castles update]

hello 👋. i hope you're all doing well. i'm going away skiing for a week tomorrow and thought it would be a good time to check in and talk about how writing is going for a bit.

as some of you might know if you are regular readers of this blog/listeners of the podcast, i've been working on chapter 20 for about two months, now, and it's been.... difficult. i think it's karma coming back to bite me because chapter 19 was so easy but this one has been a lot of: write, delete, write, delete, look through my docs history, getting back stuff i've deleted, sticking them back on, writing again, deleting again, etc.

i think what i'm struggling with is the fact that writing family vibes and people having children is... not my forte 😅. first of all, because #fluff and particularly, #familyfluff is not my forte (lol) but also because as a member of the #childfreebychoice gang, it's required a lot of research, a lot of trial and error, a lot of going back and forth to figure out what i really wanted to say. castles is obviously a fic that doesn't just exist as rainbows and butterflies, and the difficulties of modern parenting offer plenty of opportunities to discuss systemic issues to do with women's rights, etc. (all the hugs and support to all the mothers out there!) but it's been hard to figure out what i wanted to write about, exactly, how to write it without just being like "babies are hard" and moving on, and basically, who i wanted mum!ginny and dad!harry to be.

i also think that as someone who does not have (and does not want children), i feel very illegitimate writing this, and thus paradoxically feel a sense of duty to do it right and perfectly, which is a doomed enterprise given that a) every experience of parenthood is unique and b) no one is perfect. i think it's been an interesting exercise, and it's one that is necessary in terms of where i want this story to go, but a very humbling one. i don't think i've struggled this much on any chapter in the past. add to that the extra technical challenge that i need to basically cover 13 years in two chapters, which is an outlining and pacing mindfuck ✨ and you've got a recipe for ... a lot of swearing and hair-pulling.

having said that, the good news is that i've made... progress. i have about 20k of stuff. very messy stuff that needs to be badly cut down and edited, but stuff nonetheless. i really wanted to get a first draft down before going on holidays but it's past 10pm, i have a podcast episode to edit before tomorrow night and i need to pack, eat, and sleep, so i'm throwing in the towel. it'll wait until i get back.

i think at this point in time, i have a publication date in mind (18th february), and i'd like to get 20 & 21 out at the same time. i kind of see them as a single unit, that "parenting" and "before hogwarts" stage, and i've also made a number of choices with 20 so far where i would like to write 21 before publication, just to see how they pan out. also, frankly, they're not the most interesting of chapter to me, so i kind of want to get them out and move on 😅. i think it's just going to be some of those chapters where i need to be okay with "good" rather than "great", which i always struggle with. there definitely has been some of those in the past (i hate chapters 9 & 12 with all my soul) and that's okay. we deal, haha.

so, anyway, that's sort of where i'm at. i really am so excited to write 22, 23 & 24, so i think that's what keeps me going.

i hope you guys have a lovely week ❤️

[pliablehead]

I guess if I want to write a travelogue/write up post about my 4-stop journey following the first chunk of Everything Everything's 2023 US tour then I have to just... do it!! If this is of interest to anyone other than me then GREAT and if not then it's still special to me to try to write down and remember everything I can uwu

FIRST STOP WASHINGTO-- wait, no, actually, first stop, on my way out of town, the local donut shop in my neighborhood, a place that I absolutely adore and patronize all the time with staff who mostly know me by now/some of whom are my instagram friends/etc. i'd checked with the Pittsburgh venue ahead of time to see if it was okay to send in outside food as a gift to the band even though they have a cafe/bar in their own right, and whoever I corresponded with said it would be totally fine, so I talked to the donut shop manager and set up a delivery of a dozen for the lads for Saturday before their show here. advance paid for that, as well as getting my own breakfast and coffee hehe, and then hit the road. OKAY FOR REAL FIRST STOP WASHINGTON DC!!! This was the second-longest leg of my Car Driving and it was definitely a wee bit exhausting but I had a podcast or two and a ton of E E on shuffle to bolster me through and I made it to my mom's friends' house, where I was staying, with relative ease. The venue was within a not-too-unreasonable walking distance too so after a change of clothes (I had very distinct and deliberate Show Outfits for each night that were fully separate from my travelin' clothes) and a bunch of fussing with the bracelets™ I headed over!! stopped for empanadas and a smoothie on the way and then queued up!!

aaaaahh this was such a nice fun queue. I was maybe about a dozen-ish people back from the front, down about half a block, and once I finished scarfing down my food this was my first real experience with doling out the bracelets. so fun! I'm glad it was basically an instant hit! AND I even got a few trades in this queue--one person gave me a Man Alive / Tin / E E bracelet with teeny tiny beads, super fun, and one person with a SHITTON of kandi stuff gave me one that had the name of a flower genus on it?? i think they said it was?? I love the colors on this one! And one person traded me a Blow Pop. lmao. I should eat that before it sits in my fanny pack for too long. I also really enjoyed chatting with the two guys right in front of me (Nick and Alex?), who were from south-central PA and had a couple other fandom touchstones in common with me (mcelroys/dnd/BDG! I love this Venn diagram!!) as well as a big love for E E. We didn't really see much of each other beyond the point of getting inside but I liked y'all a lot!! Hope you had as great a time as I did!!

Black Cat is where I saw E E the first time I EVER SAW THEM, which was almost exactly six years ago from this gig, which is insaaaane. The space is kind of narrow so there's not a huge amount of stage barrier space right at the front, so Becky and I ended up pretty much at the front but almost aa-all the way stage left/Jeremy-side. coulda been worse hehehe. We kind of loitered and chatted with nearby folks, I think maybe becky checked out merch ahead of the show ? but I kind of just held down the fort, enjoying setup stuff, pete running around etc hehe. getting BLASTED by the AC, which was nice.

the ummmm the opener! our first experience with Pierre! I gotta say his general style is not for me, despite the fact that I do think he's very talented and good at the thing he's doing. this first night especially he was SO sweaty and I felt bad for him lmao, you could like see it dripping off him. i am so curious as to why/how he got paired with the boys for this tour, like, what aligned in such a way that this match was made, because my general vibe on the crowd/his audience/etc was that we the fans of the nerdy white english mathy rocker guys were not exactly his demo LOL. BUT i will say in DC I do think he had one little pocket of strong-contingency fans because I kept hearing big whoops and cheers coming from one specific audience spot and I loved that for him lmao. for some reason i cannot explain I actually almost found his backing/support musician guy (the guy who was basically his version of peter) more compelling. I wanna know THAT dude's story lol.

so when he finished up we had a little interlude aaaannndd the setlist appeared... hehe. I could def have peered up to look at it from where I was, but I was telling myself I wanted to be surprised, and was deliberately looking away........ until suddenly everyone around me was gasping and going HOLY SHIT and I was like, ugghhh okay, I will check JUST enough to figure out what that's all about, and what that was all about was immediately apparent because smack in the middle of the set were a Man Alive track (which we never get in the states bar MY KZ) and something that just said "New Song." AND LIKE, OKAY, THAT'S A JUSTIFIED HOLY SHIT. new song????? so now we had THAT to contend with coming up, and aaaaaaah. ahh. yeah holy shit indeed.

it's also while we're standing there that AG pops into view, (or maybe I first spotted him during Pierre's set? Chronology is irrelevant), back off behind Becky from me in the other direction, and we waved over at him to say hi and he says to us, "All four of them are bleached blond." And my gut instinct was to be like, I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, but also the truth in my heart was that there was absolutely no justification for not believing them, because of course they would, and sure enough these bozos roll out onto the stage and they are all four draco malfoy-ass bleach blond. God it looks a mess on Jeremy LOL and while the color/dye job wasn't bad on Alex, it was clear his finer hair wasn't holding up as well against the chemicals because it was just a fluffy riot mess. BUT GOD IT WAS REALLY SO INCREDIBLY STRIKING OF A VISUAL for them to be all be wearing all pure white/beige clothes and then to have this bleach-white hair and all of it catching and glowing under the stage lights... god... clearly the effect they were going for and it WORKED, IT REALLY DID. I think it looks so damn goofy (mostly on jez) out of context but it's ABSOLUTELY nailing the Everything Everything Gig Costumes energy/uniform thing that I felt like they'd drifted away from a little the past couple tour cycles, I'm so incredibly here for it

The set!!!! The gig!!!!!!! it wasn't a wildly different set from what we'd seen in CA last year, obviously RDF-heavy supplemented with a heaping helping of singles from the other albums too, but I remember thinking Leviathan and Pizza Boy were especially excellent aaaah. And Schoolin'! And the NEW SONG! The two pieces of it I IMMEDIATELY absorbed and retained were 'the image of a little yellow face to tell you that I'm sorry' and 'I love you like an atom bomb,' and I was spouting those two pieces back to anyone who wanted to talk to me about it for the rest of the night. I'm so lyrics-pilled/vocalist-biased. Which was.... Unfortunate, for this DC gig, because I do think the audio mix was pretty rough - at least from where we were standing so close to the front, I wonder if it was at least a tiny bit better further back into the crowd in the area the sound system was probably primarily calibrated for - and we were REALLY losing Jon in the mix, especially underneath how enthusiastically the crowd was singing along a lot of the time. We were on Jeremy's side of the stage and we were really just getting a LOT of Jeremy. (Which, the bass did sound absolutely fantastic, so hard to complain about that, at least, but still.) I was very thankful to be going to a few more gigs beyond this one so that this wasn't my only experience with it, especially New Song!!! Plus there were a bunch of other little tech difficulties too? Near the beginning of the new song, Jon's guitar strap came detached and wouldn't reconnect, and after struggling a bit with that he decided to just drift back and pass it off the stage to their tech guy--but he was still kind of singing/holding the mic, so as he moved on stage, the mic cable yanked the microphone stand straight over, too. Then the rest of the night that stand was pretty precarious and nearly fell two other times, only caught at the last minute by a true homie who was standing directly in front of it in the audience lmao. I think Becky yelled HIRE HIM! at one point. Annnnd also for like a whole verse of NOTLK jez's bass boards just kind of Gave Up. He tried switching to his other instrument but that wasn't working either, and then finally it all sort of came back online, so he played a little stretch with the wrong bass and then was able to switch back to the right bass when there was a lull in his part. SHAMBLES. lmfao. god it was a great gig though. SO FUCKING GOOD TO BE BACK I LOVE BAND UWAAAAAHH I WAS SO SWEATY AND HAPPY

afterrrr da gig, we needed very badly to drink water and so we managed to do that I believe, and we kind of loitered in the Merch Line Situation trying to figure out what was going on. I had kind of resolved not to buy merch until at least NY, part because I really didn't want to be lugging anything around with me for too much of my trip (esp on this night where I walked) and part because I'd read a post that Irving Plaza was among the venues who'd committed to not taking a cut of band merch sales and letting them keep it all, and I was like, well obvi that's where I want to spend my money. Plus it was cash only in DC and since I'd kind of told myself NY I didn't even have cash out, so it was nothing. BUT!!! homie Adrian whomst I had met at the DC Foals show last December had been there, a few people ahead of me in the queue and also rocking out yaayyy, and he was trying to get merch but the ATM inside the venue literally did not have any more cash left inside it to dispense because everyone was taking out so much of it to buy merch AAAH. so he reached out to me like 'you're going to more shows than just this one right?' and asked if I'd pick him up the stuff he wanted later and then mail it to him so he didn't have to contend with international shipping and I was like aaaah absolutely! yay gig comradeship!

so I think becky finally committed to getting in the merch line and I was mostly just waiting With Becky and there weren't a ton of people left because the venue was trying to clear out, but the handful of us who were still there, a wild Alex Robertshaw appeared up near the stage/bar. we vibed out whether he was receptive to Fan Bothering at this time but it seemed legit, so a bunch of us went over and socialized with him and took some pics, got some signatures, etc, woooo. We tried to vibe out from him also if the other guys were gonna be coming out, and when and where, but y'all know Alex is the awkwardest member of this band by a country mile and we didn't really have too coherent of a discourse at this point in time lmao. Not sure who talked to him about what at this point as I was just trying to hold down the fort and be Normal. I was able to give Alex the bracelet I'd made for him at this point (he was so cute studying on it and reading it ahaha - "rave-- kevin-- kevins rave KEVIN'S RAVE" and he smiled and I felt cool), and also meanwhile Pete was still running around stage doing roadietech type stuff and I sort of politely flagged him down like "do what you need to do if you need to do it but also: Hi lol" and I got to give him his bracelet as well! yay ♥. He complimented my shirt--I'd been getting a lot of compliments on it honestly, it's their Yellow Bird Project shirt that Jon designed some time ago, only I replaced the plain white sleeves of the original unisex tee with some sort of vermilion "girly fit" sleeves that are more comfy to me and kind of give the shirt a different look haha--and I sort of joked on that, said as much, oh, I swapped the sleeves out, "It's to cover up how sweaty I get." and Pete gave me a deadpan look and went "You don't even want to go there with me" and I was like "YEP I FEEL MUCH THE SAME" and I think we both enjoyed a moment of feeling very Seen about the sweatiness hehehehehe. I love Pete he is my heckin Friend With no additional merch purchases (merchases) (hm, no) the venue was finally for realsies ejecting us so we drifted back out into the streets and just like... okay... now what........ this was the point at which I think our Band Groupie-ing Crew became me, Becky, Danielle in the fox ears/tail, and a lanky youth named S.P. whom I'd talked to in line earlier while doling out bracelets (he had the good E E baseball cap; he asked for an Arc bracelet and I commended him for being an Arc fan, since I feel like they are a dwindling/rarer breed, and then I offered up my hot take that Violent Sun is just the second coming and second pass at Duet, which he thought was spicy, and then he asked for my most controversial E E take and I told him that I don't really like Tin very much and he told me he doesn't really like Shark Week very much and we agreed to disagree and have a good night LOL) (anyway I digress !). It was a warm enough night and none of us really had places to be so we didn't mind just loitering and trying to suss out some more Guys other than just Alex and Pete, but slowly but surely we became basically the only fans left sticking it out. so we stuck together! We split up to try to find if there was a rear stage door at the back and SP and I went one way (the long way RIP) and Becky and Danielle went the other way and it turns out the way that SP and I went was an alleyway just FULL of rats. Too many rats in DC!! People like to talk about rats in NYC but I saw WAY more in Washington just vibing out on the sidewalks and eating trash. I'm not anti-rat, they live there and deserve to live, but oh man it was just. I did not especially want a rat encounter LOL. The rat alley DID actually lead us to where the bus was though!!, but there was also a venue security guy there who was immediately like "Nope, back up, leave, bye" and we were like. understood have a nice day, and doubled around a different way to meet back up with the other two. wwwwelp.

We loitered a bunch more and eventually saw Alex and his homies like, AT LEAST two more times, but we ultimately never saw anyone else. They p much confirmed for us that because this was the first night of the tour, they had a really intense load-out, and everyone was jetlagged to all fuck, that they probably wouldn't ever make it out, even though at least once Alex had said something ambiguous/optimistic enough to imply that they might yet, but really it just got SO late that we couldn't justify still being there for nothing instead of being like. asleep. lol. SP and Danielle got rideshares, Becky and I walked back as far as her hotel together, and then I hiked the rest of my way back too and went the fuck to SLEEP!!! FIRST GIG IN THE BOOKS!! WHAT A LOVELY NIGHT GOD IT WAS JUST SO BEAUTIFUL TO BE SEEING THEM AGAIN ngl I think the blond is really attractive on Mike with his darker brows/beard and I'm always a sl*t for jonathan so like. beautiful. finally some delicious fucking food

it was super nice of my mom's friend to let me stay with him!!! I was so delighted to see his cats again, I remembered them from the last time I was there like six or so years ago, they're sooooo floofy and beautiful aahh. he also provided me with a white noise fan without me even asking which was SO choice. zzzzz. My plan was to get up in the morning, get coffee someplace nearby at wherever he recommended, and then hit the road forrrr... Philadelphia!!! Night two!!!! I got some breakfast tacos at a hella legit place, messed up my coffee/milk/sugar ratio ever so slightly but not in an undrinkable way, and then frickin. autobot rolled out. This drive was not bad at ALL, I timed it pretty much exactly like I planned it to, which was to: get to my friend's place where I was crashing in philly with, ideally, enough time to take a small nap before I had to do anything else, because, god, despite being pretty exhausted and sleeping okay on the nice guest bed in DC, I had BARELY slept the night before I left just from Travel Antsiness and from both staying up way later and waking up way earlier than I meant to unintentionally, and a second little recharge zzz before I went and did it all over again really hit the spot.

It was soooo nice to see Mads again and to see Mr. Angus and also meet BENNY!! More host cats!! They are suuuch silly good little lads, Mads and I had a ton of Kitty Chat and just vibing out and talking about concerts and fandom and stuff, I was so thankful she let me stay with her and getting to hang out was icing on the cake of this trip! She pointed me toward the trolley I'd need to take to get to the venue, and after my baby snzzz and drinking a ton of water and suiting up in my Arc-inspired look (literally just a sweatshirt dress I bought specifically because it was color-blocked very very much like the jackets/outfits they toured Arc in, I saw it and bought it immediately lmfao) I journeyed into the city, hoping to just find a place to eat in the vicinity of the gig! I was way closer up in the queue this time, the people in front of me were really just like.... the usual suspects, Annika+squad and David+squad (incl. Becky, who'd apparently already been there when I got there but wasn't there when I arrived), and also a super-nice woman immediately in front of me named Robin who I MEGA hit it off with!!! Hanging out with her was such an awesome part of my experience at this gig!!! she's COMPLETELY Offline which is so powerful for her but I hope there's some capacity in which we can continue to be friends because she ruled.

There was a Dominican(? I think) place like one block down from the venue where a couple in front of me had gotten some stuff and so I ran down there to snag food too and holy shit this man gave me so much goddamn food. Just a HUGE pile of rice and beans and some pork ribs, and I got a pineapple fanta, and I just popped a squat on the sidewalk and ate as much of it as I could which was probably not even half of what he gave me but it wasn't even that expensive so god bless. Once I wasn't dealing with my food sitch any more I was freed up to pass out a bunch of bracelets again, and I even got a couple more trades, one that was just a bunch of black beads and a bunch of Xs and one that says 'BUSSY' which I am elated about, thank you so fucking much lmao. Also someone offered to trade me an ibuprofen LOL and I was like no that's fine the bracelet can be free... for now, but I will keep that in mind if I change my mind later LOL aaahhh i was just so excited to give the bracelets out it was such a good vector for socializing and making Friends and Gig Buddies. I did learn p quickly at Philly that I should have made way more Man Alive, GTH, and Raw Data feel bracelets because those were basically the first to go every night and then I got stuck with just sad unloved Re-Animators and AFDs :( I was trying to like! do equal amounts of everything to give everything the love because I love them all! but people got favorites out there damn lmao. I was happy to be able to give Robin the MY KZ one because she said that's the first song she ever heard by them and it's special to her because of that (and then also it's been in the touring set and she got to hear them perform it too yay!!! I don't remember if she said she'd seen them before but it had just been a very very long time, or what, idk, aaaah).

We were R I G H T on the stage at this venue, slightly more to Alex's side this time, and the lip/rise of the stage was not very high at ALL and it felt almost like... intimidating, or like it shouldn't have been ALLOWED, for us to be that close to the stage. :flushed emoji: jeez lmao. I didn't fuck w merch here either but some people around me did I think and I held their spots, and a nice kid from right behind me in the queue brought me a Liquid Death which was so incredibly sweet. Pierre's set passed much as it had in DC, lmao; his other musician guy had a sweet fit on, though, this like two-piece set that was a really really dark/muted camo, a blazer over a black top and then matching like athleisure-fit pants and black boots, it was a fuckin look. They had a song at the very end of Pierre's Philly set that I don't think they'd done in DC (and that I didn't get in PGH either, it turned out), and ironically that was actually probably far and away the song of his I enjoyed the most, so I got kind of into it there at the end! but MAN was I ready to see the boys instead. hnnnn.

LADS SO CLOSE TO ME. JUST RIGHT THERE AND SINGING AND ROCKING. the set was aaaalmost exactly the same as DC, but in Philly they shifted Bad Friday up out of the encore and back into the set proper, and then replaced it in the encore with Violent Sun, which I admit I'd been bummed to not see in DC because I think the Violent Sun/No Reptiles encore double whammy is so incredibly crucial to the vibe. Warmed me to have it back in. Obviously Pittsburgh had so many other contributing factors that put it over the edge, but if it weren't for all of those, I think Philly would've been my favorite/best experience of these four gigs. Jon was spicy (he sang so many of the Original Rejected naughty lyrics, this is where we got 'he's a vegetable now' for the first and only time and also the only gig of the four where he leaned into the 'Arch Jeremy' gag in Arch Enemy, hehehehe, plus also motherfuckin' distant past which is not uncommon), and we got way more of the New Song-- through the whisper network of Becky, AG, David, etc., etc., we'd pieced together enough info to know by now that apparently the title of the song was in the lyrics of the chorus, and so I think it was in Philly that we all pretty much determined/decided that this was Cold Reactor. I love you like an atom bomb and I've become a cold reactor. I wasn't diving as DEEP into SONG DECIPHERING as some other folks were, but I did like kind of working on it at my own pace and absorbing it into my heart and my understanding of the band and what they're about to start doing, and so this was really great, for me, here, beautiful, beautiful. I took almost NO pics and vids at this one because my phone was kind of dying but also mostly just because I was honestly having such an enormously great time and I didn't feel the need to try to do anything other than be present in my body at the gig and experience it live. you KNOW?? LIKE!! MUSIC. man. EDIT TO ADD: I forgot to mention a small tech flub that was actually so charming, where near the very end of Arch Enemy jon seemed to be having trouble with his guitar board in the front, and he spent so long in the outro squinting down at it and trying to resolve the issue that he didn't fully come in on the It's time to show your face! bit at the proper time, and he ended up just saying "It's time to show your face." right into the mic very unaffected and straight-up in his regular speaking voice at the very, very end when the song was basically over. lol. he is cute. everyone is cute.

(I WILL ALSO SAY I got the giggles SO BAD at david and amanda's gudetama they slipped onto the stage, oh my god--I was going to take a joke video just dramatically zooming in on it, as one does, except right when I went to do that it got caught up in jon's mic cable and just TUMBLED AND JOSTLED ALL OVER THE PLACE and that fucking GOT me and I was DYING and it was right at like. the serious, heartstring-tugging, fuck-yeah parts of No Reptiles where I'm supposed to be at CHURCH and instead I'm losing my shit into hysterics over this poor gudetama just rolling everywhere alksdhjglaksd, I had to bury my face in Becky's shoulder for a measure or more and try to recover, oh my godddd. EGGS!) -- (OH ALSO I LMAO I HAVE SEVERAL AUDIENCE MEMBER ~BITS THAT I AM DOING just like, clapping here or there, participating actively in certain parts of things, and one that I kept doing for some asshole clown reason was singing along with/lampshading Alex's quick backing vox on the second verse of Spring Sun Winter Dread-- Philly was probably the place where I was the most prominent/obvious/easy to see doing it, and it made both him and Jeremy REALLY snicker, ahahaha I'm sorryyyyyyy for being obnoxioussssss)

The merch/loitering sitch was sli-iiightly more locked down, in here; there was only so long Marty and I could pretend to be thinking about merch/hanging out with people who were actually in line but not actually being in line before they really truly wanted us to leave, and they were pretty pissed that I even left the venue with an empty/ice-only water cup, never mind any dreams of re-entry. The militant energy of the security at this venue compared to how relatively chill and normal DC had been (for two venues I would say of comparable size/seriousness) was def my least favorite part of the Philly experience. I was outside, finishing my water and chitchatting with some artsy youths who were also unimpressed with security, and Becky's messaging me like "they're in here!" and I'm like "well I'm not and I can't come back so you gotta tell them to come out here!" lmao. But they did!!! All the guys came out before too long and I very delightfully got to talk to everyone. I gave Mike and Jeremy the bracelets I'd made for them - THEY both apologized to ME outright for not coming out to chat the night before?? like hello you’re the band we’re the fans you don’t owe us anything - they kind of came toward my side of the door first, and talked and chatted some, vs Jon sort of peeling the other way to the other half of the loiterers - I honestly have lost track of the sequence of events here and what happened when, but it was largely unimportant hehe. (Gosh, but then I keep randomly remembering other unrelated details. Like, for example, Black Cat gave me their big ol' signature black cat hand stamp, and I'd been thinking, oh this will be fun to watch my four hand stamps stack from these four gigs, the way I got two together from The Altogether/Matt Duncan double feature back in July, and then Underground Arts put theirs on the INSIDE OF MY WRIST and not the back of my hand, and both Irving and T-Bird just did wristbands. BUMMER.) But mostly just Seeing Band, Talking To Band. This was when I overheard Alex definitely confirm to someone that the new song is called Cold Reactor, and he sort of half-seriously half-not said they just didn't call it that on the setlist in case there was another "New Song" they might want to decide to start playing there instead at the last minute, even though the longer this goes on the more confident we are that they're not going to do that and that Cold Reactor is gonna be a new single that probably drops once this tour is over <___< eyes emoji. Also, between Wednesday and Thursday we also knew that the bleach-blond hair is for Lore Reasons, which we assume are to do with Cold Reactor and the album it will be on, because of course it is. stupid. jonathan higgs I want to crawl inside your deranged pisces mind and meld with it vulcan style.

anyway, as far as my short term memory can be relied upon/will tell me is the truth, I think Jon was actually the last person I ended up in contact with on this night; I was drifting over toward him but someone else was still engaged in an active conversation with him, so I was like, well obviously I will wait my turn and let other people have jonathan time even though I'm the biggest jonathan girlie, I can just hang and go in when he frees up, and so I was turned slightly away from him listening in on other convos and talking to Becky and maybe Annika or a couple other people, and then suddenly there's a delicate hand on the back of my shoulder and Jon's right in my fucking ear ominously going "hello." askdjhgka. He was soooo cute and nice, I gave him the bracelet I made him as well (which was "I wanna be there" from Violent Sun and shades of re-animator orange) and he was immediately like Oh, of course you, are the bracelet distributor, and I was like hehehe yes, and he asked if I also had to do with the gudetama and I was like absolutely not I have no idea what is going on there lmfao. and I think amanda and david did take credit for it at that time of course so yes hehe. Ended up in a fun casual chitchat with Jon and Becky for most of the rest of the time here, with her trying to squeeze him for info about the new song and album and lore hehehe and him being his typical cryptic trolly cagey Jon, and it was all in incredibly good fun; he noticed her bracelet too, and she pointed it out like Yes I got the one that says This Is The Prophecy from big climb because it hearkens back to that bit they were doing on twitter from way before that song even came out so I gave her that one on purpose duh lol, and Jon says "Oooh yep I forgot about that. .. Album..." and mimed swiping his hair back like whoopsie lmao and it was such a silly little half-self-neg on Re-Animator lol, and so I said "WELP too bad! because the one I made from you is one of those too haha!" and he took another look at it as if to remind himself about it and then went "Well yeah that one's good" with a wryer wickeder laugh and I was like lmao tell us how you really feel. But like he's right violent sun is perfect and I actually labored so long over what I was going to have jon's say because he was the only person I didn't have a really solid concrete idea of what to make for and ALSO he was the only one I REALLY wanted to get PERFECT because it's important to me and yeah. so it was. reassuring for him to like the violent sun one. idk anyway.

The woman we'd seen running around doing a lot for them, including merch, who recognized us from DC the night before and was fun and glib about it, and who turns out to be: Tour Manager Sam, finally had enough of our fucking about and started very efficiently organizing us all into "everyone who wants a pic with themself + all four guys come get in Now and I'm gonna play photographer and then we all gotta go the fuck home" and I respected it SO much lmao, so we had sort of a rotating queue of group picture taking and then the guys all went back inside the venue (I kind of fingerguns'd Jon like "New York :D?" and he looked at me just SO Put Out and just deadpanned "Of course you're going to be there." of course!! lmfao) and we started talking amongst ourselves just out of reluctance to let the night end/social energy we still wanted to wallow in and that was cute and nice. I said goodbye to some folks who weren't going any further on the tour. I had such a wonderful night. Then, lo and behold, we turn around and Jeremy's up on the stoop of the venue, and he's like, I think I've locked myself out. I am locked out and I also don't have my phone on me. lmfao jez. he goes "I am going to blame jonathan" and we allowed him that. I was like, do you want me to TWEET AT SOMEONE LOL and he was like good god no they'll come back for me eventually, and then yes they did, and THEN we all left hahahaha. becky insisted on sticking with me part of the way to the trolley but I was like, it is coming in 14 minutes and it says it's gonna take me 12 minutes to get there I gotta GO!, and I freaking missed it anyway!!! and then I had to wait like OVER HALF AN HOUR MORE for the next one and i didn't even get ON the trolley till like 12:50 and it was soooo late before I was back at mads's place aiyaa. But, all in all, TRULY SUCH A GOOD NIGHT I JUST LOVE BEING IN AN ACTIVE BUZZY FANDOM SPACE AND MEETING FANS AND PARASOCIALING AND DANCING AND SINGING AND DOING ARTS N CRAFTS. you KNOW?? you know. you're on tumblr you get it.

The Philly to Jersey (pre-NYC) leg of my road tripping was set to be Thee shortest drive I had to make the whole time, so I let myself have time in the morning to keep snoozing and fucking about, even though I once again woke up way earlier than I'd hoped to and didn't ever make it back to sleep after that. But the tradeoff was still super nice and relaxing vibing with Madeline--I offered to buy her breakfast in exchange for the couch-crashin' and we got hella bagel sandwiches and cold brew from a place real close by her apartment, and scarfed 'em down while watching the most recent ep of Make Some Noise and just shooting the shit (again, largely about either fandom or kitty cats. We are simple folk). My sandwich contained salmon, a fried egg, and the most incredible sloppy caramelized onions, what a banger. The last truly good food I truly enjoyed before my mega super Travel Tummy set in and wrecked my whole shop metabolically speaking, rip. I took a little rinsy-rinse shower at her place too, and then finally made myself get up and Go to do the runaround silly business of driving to and parking in NJ, taking the ferry in to Manhattan, and then taking the subway to Allegra's place for NIGHT THREE IN NEW YORK CITY WOOOOO. I LOVE going to E E with Allegra!!!!! Once again I used her place primarily as a spot to change out of my car clothes and into my gig clothes (it's RDF night; I wore an oversized pale beige button-up shirt, actually left over from my Foals Antidotes costume from last halloween hahaha, gussied up with E E pins and jewelry) and to fuck about with bracelets. I made Allegra a special In Birdsong bracelet, the only one I did from that song :) because allegra is my special E E friend!! and she needs one of her special song!!! Fandom... is good. Allegra also had a kickass outfit. We stopped in at a tex-mex place she really wanted to try that was nearby the venue, and i got pretty nervous that it was gonna be a little late before doors for us to be hitting a sit-down dinner spot, but we rushed it along pretty well on the food and got our slice of dessert cake to go in a box and everything was A-OK. And I had time to hit a bodega for merch cash from the ATM and a pineapple soda for fortitude! let's GOOO irving plaza.

God, Irving was kind of a shitshow when it came to queuing and security though. There were a fair few people in line ahead of us, maybe just as many or slightly more than what I'd had in DC (definitely further back than Philly, although in line near us were the same also-eating-Dominican-food couple from the Philly gig, and I recognized them and was glad to see them again-- I FULLY DO NOT REMEMBER/DID NOT CATCH Y'ALL'S NAMES, AND I FEEL TERRIBLE BECAUSE WE HUNG OUT AND WORKED TOGETHER SO MUCH, i am so sorryyyyy), but then because it's not a sweet local friendly indie venue but is in fact Livenation As Hell, there's some person affiliated with the venue wandering up front offering some sort of VIP/fast pass line experience where you can just cough up some extra cash and get in your own special line and get to go in first regardless of how long other people have been queuing--you know the deal. Wack as hell. I think David and Amanda opted for this in some capacity, so I was happy for them about it, but a lot of the other people who ended up doing it had kind of rancid vibes of just like "concert-going" and not the very lovely communal sardine megafan energy everyone else had had thusfar. Also it put us where we were at in the queue standing in a place that just had a really terrible smell of sewage, which persisted almost the entire time we were there only to suddenly be replaced by a very powerful smell of bleach, as if whatever it was was suddenly being cleaned/sanitized. ICKY!! Annika was enough further ahead of us in line that I thought it might have only been over where we were but she said no she was definitely getting it too. new york city babey

Bracelet distribution got a little silly here, too, since the queue was wrapping SO far back and was being policed a little more stringently, but I had kind of figured I may need some kind of additional plan, especially since I'd decided not to wear my fanny pack (bum bag--fanny pack, says Jonathan Higgs in a derisive American accent, even as he's telling me he likes mine a lot, skdjshgalkj smh) since my shorts under my shirt had really capacious pockets and that just made for one less thing to worry about--I snagged a sheet of paper at Allegra's place, along with a gallon-size ziploc bag, and I put all the bracelets in there with a note that said to just take one if you wanted one and pass it back through the queue while we waited. It was kind of a crapshoot how effective I thought this was going to be, especially since I had to kind of wait to deploy it once there was a substantial queue BUT by the time there was a big queue it meant that I couldn't see exactly HOW big from where I was near-ish enough to the front, so I didn't know how far the bag was going to make it, if someone was going to end up stuck with my whole big bag at the back of the line (esp since I had a fair number of extra Philly bracelets left over that I lumped in with the NYC ones just because I still Had them).... whew...! BUT by the time Marty was there, he was further enough back from me that I asked him to kind of check up on it when it made it to him and keep passing it; and, by the time we were going inside, I could see zero sign of the bag itself but I DID catch a lot of people milling around me wearing bracelets, and one or two of them did stop me to thank me (since I'd indicated on my note in the bag that I was the person with green hair hahaha), and then I never saw 'em again, so I guess it was a relative success!! Yayyyyy!! WAY less conducive to making New Line Friends than the DC/Philly setup had been, but incredibly effective at making sure that all my bracelets found new homes rather than me having to take a huge handful home with me again and them just sitting in my house forever LOL. success! :)

tl;dr about the bracelets. not important compared to concert and band. WE GO INSIDE!! They have such dumb security/bag check. a gender-split process where the men get patted down by a dude guard and the women get patted down by a lady guard? In TYOOL 2023? you hate to see it. She felt the Sharpie in my back pocket and made me take it out and surrender it???? MY METALLIC BRONZE SHARPIE ? ? no sharpies in the venue I guess. Talked to at least one other person who got sharpie-confiscated too, but also at least two people who fully didn't and still had markers just fine. Absolute shenanigans. Allegra and I didn't quite get barrier due in part to fastpass line nonsense but we did end up right exactly behind Annika &co. with perfect sightlines, once again stage-left/Jeremy-ward-of-center. we don't hate it! my Philly pals to my left with David, Becky et al in front of them. Me fully surrounded by redheads. LOL.

this was the laaaatest show of my whole run, a whole lot of standing around just waiting for Band, and also definitely the energy of "trying to politely vibe to pierre kwenders's set because he can clearly see me and look straight at me even though I would much rather just skip to the bit I actually came for and don't necessarily need to see his set" just slowly increasing every night RIP lol. BUT WE MADE IT! ohhhh new york. EXACT same set as Philly but I couldn't even be mad about it because I was still so grateful to get a Man Alive song that wasn't just MY KZ (not that I don't love my kz obviously, but it HAS been in the set literally all eight times that I have seen E E live as of this Irving Plaza gig, and something else from that album is fun fresh delicious) (OH, SWEET THREEP OF FRIDAY EVENING, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW) and to be getting COLD REACTOR again, especially becaussseee by this point I knew just enough of the lyrics that I felt confident singing/mouthing along conspicuously with the parts that I Did know, aka I See You Sir I'm Doing The Thing Just Watch Me, god I wish I knew how to be not so fucking extra but then again no I don't. we did get saddled with some Rather Annoying audience members in our near vicinity--a couple I'd spotted in the fastpass line earlier wedged themselves hard between me and my tall redhead/mask-wearing homie from Philly, all like "ummm we're short :)" because they. were, but that didn't give them a right to be pushy and rude, and their vibes were kind of shit because the sense I got was they were mostly there because the girl really loved the band and the dude didn't know much about them at all, and also they were already drunk so early on in the set, and they were talking loudly with some other fans they'd just met and getting Lore™ explained to them and it was just a lot of. loud talking and shoving. in my vicinity. when I would have preferred for there to. not be. BUT Also materializing behind me was someone who said "I saw your bracelets on twitter do you still have any!!" and I had to be like UHHHH FUCK, NO, I turned them loose into the queue, did they not make it as far as you..?? and she sadly said no, and I was like, well the only one I have left is this one I just left on for tradesies/advertising purposes, and it says "akon in the butterfly house" so that's kind of a deep cut, if you're familiar-- and she went WAIT REALLY and seemed SUPER jazzed to get a Dave Sardine-ass bracelet and I was like OKAY YOU KNOW WHAT, GOOD, ACTUALLY, because I'd made four of these and I knew they were going to be the deepest cut/hardest sell and I was really really hoping that whoever ended up with them would actually get and appreciate them. so thank you, andrea, for being that person, and for appearing exactly when the bracelet needed it most. so glad to have hung with you this night. sorry that you too found yourself among the ranks of the sharpie-confiscatees.

ANYWAY, OTHER THAN THAT, THIS AUDIENCE WAS FIRE AND THIS GIG SLAPPED. We were finally in a space and an environment that REALLY lent itself to the crowd actually full on bouncing/dancing instead of just kind of wobbling and vibing and everyone in my immediate zone was really going hard. I LOVE this fucking BAND. I love every song by this band. I love when Jon just points the mic at the crowd and the entire crowd sings the whole song word for word and note for note. I love that Jon was still desperately trying to cram the name of the host city into the start of My Kz, despite the fact that "Washington" subs for "Lucifer" perfectly (he has done this both times I've seen them in DC lol) but "Philadelphia" is WAY too stupid long and "New York City," while a syllable shorter, scans metrically in an extremely busted way and you could have just said EN WHY CEE or. y'know. lucifer. but okay man you do you. Jon was just as rowdy as the rest of us lmfao. he was like, climbing up and down off Mike's riser, he was finding people who were taking photos/videos and staring directly into their cameras (me fucking included--I'm sorry, Jon, you can't make eye contact with me while singing the "When I saw you, I fell in love" part of Leviathan, I am pretty sure that is illegal and a crime against my humanity), and basically all the tracks from Get To Heaven (plus like, Cough Cough and NOTLK) blew the fucking roof off the place. I think he donked some My Kz lyrics hehehe he just skipped to the alt lyrics of the chorus too early without completing the standard chorus first at the end, and a little flubbo in NOTLK and a tiny stutter in No Reptiles too, everyone was just TOO ROWDY and he's THROWN LOOPY and man did we not care. I said multiple times to people on this tour that pretty much the closest things I've ever experienced to true Religion are a) being in an E E audience for No Reptiles and b) being in a Hedwig audience for Midnight Radio. they're the same spiritually in my heart and also like do people who love Jesus feel this way and is this why. insane. the cult leader imagery was Not Wrong!!!!!

I wanna MERCH! I got in the line not too long after the show wrapped, but true to reports I'd heard about the pre-show merch line, it was moving verrryy slowly, with just one guy manning it who was not exactly quick and a card reader that seemed pretty chuggy too (but hey, at least NY was taking card). I'd known I wanted the poster--it's got my favorite neon orange on it, it really really slaps, and I wanted something to get signed--but I let myself talk myself into a t-shirt too, mostly because I was REALLY excited to buy E E merch apparel that wasn't black or white. Yellow!! a really freaking good yellow!! I wish the yellow ones had actually had the tour dates on them like the black and white ones did but the yellow branding has been pretty exclusive to this leg of tour (i.e. vs the red branding of the west coast one last year) and it looks soooo good with my hair that I don't especially mind. I also knew that Adrian wanted a copy of Caps Lock On, but that he also wanted a shirt, but I hadn't heard back from him about which shirt or what size so I just got the book and my stuff and then bounced. Communique from outside was that Alex had surfaced but no one else, but that Alex had promised appearances by the rest of them, but that also Alex was already gone and unlikely to return by the time I made it outside. I posted up with all my friends from inside, god this was SUCH a good sardine squad this night, and it took some waiting but eventually the promises came true! All the other boys surfaced and we had some REALLY great fan chats and mingling this tiimmmmee. oh my gosh. A guy came with a Modern Bison CD that Jon and Jeremy were really truly overjoyed to see and to sign and take pictures with; I talked to Jeremy about the bracelets some more because he'd been wearing the one I gave him the WHOLE GIG IN NEW YORK SO LIKE THAT'S GONNA BE IN ANY PHOTOS THAT WERE TAKEN PROFESSIONALLY SPEAKING, oh my gosshhh, he was so nice about it and enjoyed that his Arch Jeremy matched my Arch Emily, the vibes were impeccable; and then I got everyone to sign my poster, but of course Alex was gone already, so Jon offers to forge Alex's signature and goes "look it's like this" and draws some loopy scribble on there and I'm like, lmao, sure.

thing was... I had absolutely heard Jeremy signing something for someone else the night before talking about how he was getting really good at forging Alex's signature for him, since I guess it's normal for him to be the one that disappears the sneakiest (god he really is just the Justin Craig of this band, it's 1:1, huh), and so when I told Jeremy this, he was like "I'll do it" and I was like "no Jon did already do it" and he was going to just leave it then, like, oh, well, okay, but then he saw the mess Jon had made and he was like "--that's quite dreadful actually-- the trick is to not overthink it--" and so now my poster has two forged Alex Robertshaw signatures and zero authentic ones. l m f a o. (To be fair, I do have other things they've all four signed, and Jeremy's fake Alex is at least passable, and Jon's fake Alex is Absolute Dogshit Nothing. I am obsessed.) I even got Peter to sign! He was talking with another fan about a gift she'd given them in the past that had sadly been part of what they lost in their studio fire, it was really heartbreaking to hear. He also thanked me again for his bracelet and told me he planned to give it to his daughter and that she would love it. We took a pic together! Pete the GOAT.

While I was making the rounds with the other boys and other fans, Allegra mostly in tow, swapping sharpies among those of us who still had them, Becky was back with Jon, taking a couple videos for people who weren't there in NY to talk about stuff that they were curious about--I think in the context of Maria, Becky said something like, she thinks the hair is crazy, and Jon said into the camera something like, "If you think it's crazy Now, give it like two or three more weeks, and you're really gonna think it's crazy." SIR WHAT. If the blond is a precursor to something else happening I'm gonna be so the opposite of normal about it, and if the bleach is a stepping stone toward the boys dyeing their hair Other colors I am going to be PROFOUNDLY NOT NORMAL ABOUT IT, AND IF ANY MEMBER OF THE MANCUNIAN ROCK BAND EVERYTHING EVERYTHING HAS THEIR HAIR DYED GREEN ANY TIME IN THE NEAR FUTURE I AM GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY INSUFFERABLE. tyler the creator unfollow me right now etc. etc. etc. The more I've thought about it I don't THINK this is what's up--my sense is that any Cold Reactor music video is probably already filmed and ready to drop alongside the single pretty quick after the tour ends, rather than being something they're going to film/put together entirely post-tour, so they probably needed the bleachblond for some energy similar to how I felt about them when they first walked on stage in DC, but Oh man...... OH MAN............ I digress. anyway.

following up from that, Allegra (I think? Or maybe still Becky and allegra was just Present) addressed the notion of the hair being related to the Lore, and like, did that mean lore for the single/the upcoming album ? ? which was what we were assuming, and Jon said some demented and ominous and extremely exciting phrase like, "The lore for this one is.... b o t t o m l e s s" in his always-startling real deep Jon voice, and that was the fucking sound bite of the evening, folks. FOLKS. ALLEGRA AND I WENT ALL THE WAY BACK TO HER APARTMENT JUST CONTINUALLY SAYING "THE LORE IS BOTTOMLESS!" my body is so god damn ready.

We bid farewells to all our friends for whom NYC was their final stop on this tour!! SAD!!!!!! Going to miss all the homies T___T it's not fair that we're not just all going to every single stop on this tour I don't think? it should actually be illegal for us not to be present when the band is performing?? the hugest RIP. Hugs exchanged all around. Me trying to say bye to Jon but he's engaged with someone else so I think I just awkwardly said "See you tomorrow" twice and then we left. becky maaaybe trying to last minute scramble to also come to pgh now despite not really having accounted for it in her plans originally ? ? I was not certain what she intended here but I supported her. yes. me, annika and AG for sure being there at least. we ride. Back to allegra's where I did, unfortunately, sleep ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLY/BASICALLY NOT AT ALL due to being so hot and stuffy in my little nest on the floor that it was making me nauseated, I think I got maybe 2.5 hours tops, but I didn't really have a choice because if I wanted to be back home in time to do ANYTHING other than just rock straight over to the queue for Thunderbird then I knew I was going to have to leave so GOD DAMN early in the morning to haul ass back to where my car was and then drive the seven hours to pgh. But I did exactly that!!!! bitch!!!!! Other than some issues like, managing to make a timely pit stop for gas/potty/coffee, I endured the miserable long roadtrip despite myself, raging my way through the poconos, downing the largest cold brew Wawa would sell me, having a truly tragic car vs quesadilla incident, etc. My BFF Francis even got on the phone with me for the last hour or so and we chatted and I got to give them the whole update on the tour thus far, so fun! They MIGHT try to go to the Chicago stop next week!!! if they feel like they can swing it, and I was like ok no pressure but also it's been an extraordinary experience for me thusfar and I highly recommend. So if you see Francis at E E Chicago please holler at them kindly from me!!! :) But at the very least they said they did want a T-shirt and venmo'd me money to buy them one, since I was already still gonna have to get one for Adrian. woooooo

I got home with, yeah, basically exactly enough time to shower, get my outfit together, and regroup before heading to the venue !!! I JUST BARELY missed the bus that would've gotten me there the most promptly, largely due to not being able to find another fucking Sharpie since irving plaza took my first one lmfao, and it ended up being quicker to walk there than to wait the 36 minutes it would've been for another bus or whatever. I still had MEGA travel tummy so I just snagged an apple and scarfed it down on the walk over. Annika was already there queuing! so we hung out in line together and waited and drank the waters we had definitely brought in from outside the bar and just vibed lol. and she was like, I heard them checking two new songs that haven't been in the setlist yet, and I was like ha ha lol like what, and she said, kevin's car and leave the engine room.

and listen, I was optimistic. that my social media obnoxiousness and well-known, easily observable public desires might yet sway them, because come on it's my hometown and it's the last show i'm gonna see on this tour and I sent them donuts, and those were MEANT as a KINDNESS and an ENTHUSIASM FOR DONUTS and not as a bribe, but if anyone wanted to interpret them as a bribe anyway whomst was I to say no, but like. just because I want the band i like to do a thing absolutely does not mean that they have to fucking do it. I want to be crystal clear that i have never at any point EXPECTED them to do this. i just. hoped. yearned in my heart of hearts. and also had very sound rationale for how possible/likely it was. Here's How Engie Room Can Still Win. yfm. but the soundcheck all but confirmed it in my soul for me. and I was like... glad, that she'd been there and caught it and could tell me about it, because it gave me time to like, come to terms with the reality of it, emotionally. AAH. AAAAAHHH, OKAY. BITCH, PLIABLE HEAD, IT'S ALL HAPPENING.

we lingered and watched the queue form behind us-- I spotted a kid I'd seen at the Philly show, god bless. Everywhere we turn, repeat customers. I was telling my work friend today, I feel like the US fanbase for E E is significantly smaller than the UK audience, but we make up for it in that we go fucking hard. Every US fan is a superfan. there are no half-assed american sardines. and that has been so BEAUTIFUL and means the WORLD to me to be sharing it with the other ones of you. Bracelet sharing rocked at this gig!! I had exactly as many as I'd set aside for Pittsburgh and no more, since all my spares had evaporated up at Irving, A new person ALSO HAD BRACELETS!!! LIKE, for realsies Made For Trading At This Show Specifically bracelets, it was suuuuch a delight, so in addition to my eclectic collection from the previous gigs I now also have one that says RAW DATA FEEL with some truly choice glow in the dark bric-a-brac on there as well, and my heart was so warm aaaaaah. fwiendship :) Also spotted in the pre-doors queue were the Pizza Boy costumed guy and a woman I met at Foals in 2019?? who I guess automatically recognizes me because of the green hair, but just. omg. the community!!!! I'm dying!!!!!!

There was a slight will-call kerfuffle that nevertheless did not stop me from being dead center dead at the front right in front of where jonathan's mic was destined to be, and I was like. god. here we go. the home stretch. This was ABSOLUTELY the WORST place to be to be pretending to be interested in pierre's set, because he kept looking straight at me and dog I gotta admit four shows in I was feeling pretty tired. like, the energy of E E Itself was going to fully reinvigorate me, but nearly everything else on the planet was like totally disinteresting and I wasn't really up for it, especially when it's my semi-sex-repulsed ace-spectrum ass being just really put off by the suggestive gyrations of a performer that is not to my tastes. UM SORRY BYE HAHA. they didn't even play the one song I kind of liked. I managed to miss like two and a half songs of his set being still locked in the merch line at least lmao. literally WHILE I WAS STANDING IN THE MERCH LINE they sold out of the yellow shirt and I couldn't get me and francis matchies so I had to get them the black instead :( but thankfully they still had the one Adrian wanted because idk what I would have done if I had to scramble for a plan B with him on short notice haha. and I had EXACTLY enough cash for the two shirts left from the day before and I was paying Tour Manager Sam with it like oh my gosh I'm so sorry this is like my sweaty pocket cash from last night this is kinda gross and she was just like, No actually that's honestly exactly how I've been rolling as well and it is kind of gross so like agreed hahaha. She's the best. Idk how long she'll be tenured to them but I'd love to see her continue to exist in like their coterie moving forward. impeccable vibes.

also used merch waiting as a way to distribute more bracelets and get a drink of water! WOOHOO NOW I AM READY TO RECEIVE MY COMMUNION THANK YOU. they put the setlists down and there was a very small fraction of me that wanted to avert my eyes but like I. I had to know. and annika said yes there are new songs in the list. and I peered into the list and my song was there.

hey guys. hey guys? look, this was for me. I have to be honest with you. i manifested this. by being annoying on twitter. by being god's specialest costume-making donut-gifting bracelet-slinging weirdo. I'm owning it and it's mine. I was exactly EXACTLY right with "well, if they put Engine Room in they'll probably take Leviathan out, because they'd kind of fill the same role of slow moody song in the set, and then they'll probably swap in a different non-Man Alive song to compensate for Engine Room being there instead," and this is exactly what happened, and so then not only did I get Engine Room but I also got REGRET, WHICH IS ALSO AN EMILY THREEPWILLOW PLIABLE HEAD SONG, BECAUSE HERE THESE NERDLORD KINGSHIT BANDBOYS ARE IN MY GODDAMN BACK YARD, they're in my house and god it took me the whole fucking set up to then to just prepare, like I had to try not to think about it so I could enjoy what was right in front of me. God it was so fucking, fucking good. our position along the stage had Alex's stuff REALLY forward in the mix which was kind of new for me, but jon was just right there and every time I lifted my hands to dance and to yearn it was like, the only thing stopping me from touching you is my own sense of propriety and not any kind of physical barrier or distance, and the person immediately behind me was seeing the band for the first time and felt similarly about NOTLK as I did to Engine Room and those two songs were literally back to back in the set so we kind of screamed and cried and died together, I gave her a huge hug, and LOL SORRY NOT SORRY THAT I GOT MY KZ AND LEVIATHAN TAKEN OUT OF THE SETLIST FOR Y'ALL, PITTSBURGH, I DO FEEL KIND OF BAD BUT THIS WAS UMMM IMPORTANT TO ME, THANK YOU, goodbye. goodbye I left the planet. I thought I was going to cry and I nearly did but I didn't, but I did actually maybe start hyperventilating. like I'm glad I knew it was coming ahead of time because if it had been a full surprise I think whatever was happening to my lungs would have been exponentially worse and I may have even fainted.

(which, btw: jonathan. jon. when he came out on stage, he almost immediately got his mic cable caught on the edge of where his setlist was taped down, and in jerking it around, he whipped the setlist up off the floor and way upstage toward where Pete was; when he finally put it to rights and taped it back down, he just left it where it was at, far enough away from me that I definitely could not read it anymore; and like DID YOU DO THAT ON PURPOSE? TO MOVE IT OUT OF MY LINE OF SIGHT, TO MAYBE KEEP ME FROM READING IT? SURELY YOU HAVE TO KNOW THAT I'D ALREADY SEEN IT LIKE 15 MINUTES AGO. NICE TRY BUT IT'S TOO LATE I SAW EVERYTHING. i love him. i'm in physical pain.)

knowing this was my final one, I went so, so, incredibly hard, I let myself dance and mosh and scream and take way more pics and videos than I had before, I leaned on the lip of the stage, I had an absolute fucking blast. When the set was over a few other people who were more strategically positioned (i.e. people who had not had their most easily accessible setlists unceremoniously yoinked several feet away) snatched up the closest ones way quick; there was a general tension in the crowd at being able to see jon's, but it being further away out of reach, and one ballsy-ass kid (the "Kevin" person who'd accompanied the pizza boy person) actually clambored up onto the stage and ninja'd over and took it for himself, which inspired two copycats to do the same for some discarded guitar picks (and all of which definitely provoked a very loud, unimpressed, authoritative barking of "HEY!!!" from some security somewhere, like, they definitely shouldn't have done that!! yikes!!!!). I, instead, very patiently waited for an opportune moment to get the attention of their short king guitar tech as he was running around doing teardown, and someone else flagged him first and got pete's setlist, and in my final moments I got him to get me mike's. Gang, I'm gonna be real with you, I was not leaving my Pittsburgh hometown show in which they played Leave The fucking Engine Room without a setlist. there would've been blood or at the very least tears. so like. thank god lmao. Satisfied, we got some water and then headed out!!!

It was a long, chilly wait for the boys outside--god, the chilliness was REFRESHING, though, it's October for crying out loud, and DC and Philly and NY had all been muggy sweaty hot with no need for even long pants, much less a jacket, but I was glad I'd had the forethought to wear my flannel around my waist to cover up the YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT printed around the ass of my shorts on my walk over to deter questions, lmfao. We easily identified the spot on the side of the venue where we assumed the guys were coming out, it was all just a matter of time. (AG and I getting some confusing-to-parse messages from Becky? Idk my phone was SUPER dying so I was trying to leave it on airplane as much as possible, I didn't even make it to the end of the night, RIP needing to use my map all day in the car and even with it plugged in spending more than I was juicing of the battery. Listen i needed PICS and VIDEOS!!) I saw Jon first, and he almost looked past me before spotting me there because I was pretty close to the corner of the block, and I just stared at him, and said, May I hug you. and he said, of course! and I hugged him so long and so hard just like, thank you, I was extremely emotional then and I'm also getting extremely emotional now just typing about it, and he was like omg haha what for? Coming to your town? and I was like coming to my town and playing my SONG!!! And then he said something with the tone of a snarky teasy joke but that was like flusteringly truthful underneath about them legitimately rearranging the set quite a lot for me, and I have not stopped screaming internally since then, and Jeremy joked that I'd just seen the exact same set three times and they felt they ought to give me at least something new ha ha ha but like it wasn't entirely a joke, and I just don't even know how to process this. i am perishèd in the soil. anyhow.

I wanted both my setlist and my Supernormal EP vinyl signed by all the boys, and I managed this with relatively little doing ("A deep cut!" jeremy remarks of the supernormal, haha), but I didn't want to be crowding them and getting in the way of other people getting lad time, so I kind of took a backseat and just talked when the time was right, but Jon did kind of keep wanting to talk to me. We talked about the new song, and we talked about the donuts I sent over--oh my GOD, because I was like, they're from that place over there, you can see the big neon donut sign from here! haha, and he was like dyou know what, I knew that's where they were from, because I went over there earlier in the day and got one for myself, I got a huckleberry one and I came back with it and everyone was like, what's that, they were very jealous, and then not too long after that this box of loads of them just shows up-- And like I am a donut fairy psychic wizard. Also everyone who is ever in Pittsburgh should go to Oliver's donuts and eat their fabulously good products. I will shill for them literally any day of the week. This is the second band I have given Oliver's to this year. I cannot be stopped. ANYWAY. i honestly almost could have written that prediction on an envelope and sealed it, that they'd end up wandering in there on their own only for me to send them some too. i was so tickled that jon got the huckleberry one because it's their signature flavor and it's SO PINK and allegra and I had just decided the night before that jon higgs is hot pink coded. like, in the universe where they are dyeing their hair multicolors for the lore. anyhow. it's good shit.

i had SO much fun after this show, even though it was so chilly and dark and we were scrungling around on a literal street corner outside a wine and spirits store, I was like holding people's things so they could get pics and signatures, I was showing off my supernormal booty shorts, I was talking to Jon about lore----- ohhh, my god, I had exactly two bracelets left when the night was over, literally the end of my stash, and it was one Final Form FIRST BODY LAST BODY that I said, y'know, I'm going to save this for my bestie francis when I send them the shirt, because that's the lyric I wanna get a tattoo of, and it'll match with my PLIABLE HEAD bracelet, and it'll be another sort of besties matching thing; and my one lone AKON IN THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE bracelet that remained, where I'd kind of said, well, if this one doesn't find the right home tonight, then at the end of the night I'm going to give it to Jon too. So I dug in my bag and passed it off, and he was like "what does this one say.... kon... Akon... Akon in the house--what is--OH AND THERE'S A LITTLE BUTTERFLY ON THERE, God--" and he was GRINNING and he was SO TICKLED BY IT and Jez chimed in with just like "The attention to detail--" and Jon was like "this is my favorite one actually," he LOVED IT AND I WAS SO CHARMED AND EMOTIONAL ABOUT IT, and then he offered me up something like "you kno-ow, this, the song, of this, there's actually a reference to it in something, something you've never heard-- and--that you never will," doing his cryptic Jon troll grin, "the one thing that didn't make it," with the implied end of that sentence being "onto the album," and 'album' in this case being implied to be Raw Data Feel, which they have very publicly said that for once was an album where they just put everything on and didn't cull any songs or reserve any bonus tracks to release later or whatever. So I said, "Oh, from the one that we've been told had no cuts...?" also not explicitly saying RDF, and his answer to that was vague/nondescript enough but was probably an affirmative, but then he did follow that up with "that's lore that's SO far down the line, WAY WAY out there," and god, just, how deep does this man's brain and nonsense even fucking go. how far into the future is there LORE. BOTTOMLESS!!! I am obsessed with him. i cannot stress enough how blorbo he is to me.

The shorts came back up in conversation too ("Sorry, let me just look quite closely at your ass for a moment--" "It's okay, the shorts are designed that way--") and him saying, yeah, we do talk about some of the costumes still, and then segueing into asking if I had plans for this year and what I was doing, and I said, maybe, I'm not sure if I want to tell you, and he said, Is it to do with us, and I said, Neither confirm nor deny, and he said, Well if it's not, then, I want to know, with kind of a 'duh' tone ahahaha because like true there would be no reason to be coy if it was nothing to do with E E at all, and I explained that like I kind of have to have two costumes ("of course you do."), WELL because y'know the E E ones don't really play to or land with the general populace (a very cheeky "No!") so I have, just, one that's for going to parties, and one that's for fucking around on the internet. He seemed to find that acceptable hahaha.

Anyway what I REALLY wanted with wearing the Supernormal shorts was a group pic of all five of us normal frontways, and then a group pic of all five of us facing backward/ass to the camera a la the picture of them outside the White House, where you could see the goof of my shorts but also all of their butts, but this was an ABSOLUTE DISASTER TO DO when it was so dark that phone cameras were taking everything long-exposure, and also they'd all had just enough beer to not really be following on what the bit was. Absolute shit results on the backwards pic because I couldn't, y'know, see to coordinate it, because I had my back turned. (Me yelling, "Not just MY butt, EVERYONE'S butts, come on!!" into the streets of Lawrenceville.) Utter failure. Didn't care. I love these fucking guys. The vibe was finally kind of winding down, closing-time energy, the guys still had to get on the bus to Boston right away even with tomorrow being their day off, it was a Boston day off and not a Pittsburgh day off where I could offer them free ice cream sadly, so they all sort of bowed sweetly out. Jon gave me his like, I Am Part Of The Band clearance ID badge from the venue, kind of out of nowhere, he was like "sorry this is all I have to give you, it's the least I could do," and I was like WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU'VE ALREADY GIVEN ME SO M-- YOU COULD DO WAY LESS ??? but I guess now I have that, too. I tried to give him the King Of Oil sign from my fatberg costume, which I'd initially brought because I thought it would be a fun photo taking prop but the photo situation was the aforementioned disaster so that never really came to any fruition at all, so I was just going to gift it to them, and he said "My suitcase is already so full of so much random shit-- that you've given us--" and then right as he was leaving he just said "Thank you for being such a weirdo" with a voice full of all the kindness and affection in the world and I just yelled "ANY TIME!!" and then oh so tragically the night had to be over.

it's been nice, though, because I'm so used to driving the long drive home at the end of an adventure and having that signify the end, of getting to the end of the car ride and having nothing beyond that but the rest of my regular life; and this time, I drove all the way home, but when I got there, the adventure was still happening, right in my neighborhood, right down the street, and all I had to do was walk back home alone in the dark and climb into my own bed at the end of a long and beautiful night. i can already tell that this is going to be one of my most special memories basically forever, and now every time I drive or ride the bus to and from work each day I will be passing by the place where Everything Everything performed Leave The Engine Room for me, and that's so profoundly special that I don't even have words to describe it. I love this band, I love the people in it and I love the people its gravity pulls in to orbit around it, I'm just so goddamn happy. I don't even know what to say or how to end this.

[wayward-dreamer]

How do I get into screenwriting as a beginner

Hi anon, this is a great question! One that also has a bit of a long answer lol

There's honestly a lot of ways you get your start into screenwriting, there definitely isn't one traditional way. The first one is of course through formal study at film school. This is beneficial because you get the knowledge of how to start off writing, what the fundamentals of the craft are, basic genre conventions of whatever you plan to write, script structure etc. You also get industry knowledge from experts, i.e. what producers are looking for when they read a script and why that's important to know when you're writing. You also get to collaborate with your fellow students and really get inspiration from each other firsthand. Naturally, this option isn't always feasible, so you can try a few other things (that said, I'm sure there's great programs and scholarships or something, I'm not really sure how the US system works, assuming that's where you're from!)

YouTube is your best friend! You can definitely type in "how to become a screenwriter" and get a lot of videos on how to start, the basic structure of scripts e.g. film vs TV formatting. You even have a lot of YouTubers that discuss film and how genre conventions inform the writing.

There's also great resources on The Script Lab and Screencraft on how to start and how to keep momentum on what you're working on. There's also ScreenwritingU which does free Zoom classes every now and then, this however you do need to come to it with basic knowledge of scripts and genre before you do this, because these classes are really more about how to further yourself and capitalise on your craft. They do courses as well, like 10 week courses on a specific topic with modules, but these can be quite expensive. That said, they have payment plans if you feel you can do it down the road.

There's plenty of podcasts and books to read as well. I think definitely give The Anatomy of Story and The Anatomy of Genres by John Truby a read, it's good information to keep handy and check in with when you're unsure if you're on the right track. Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee is also pretty essential. You could give Save The Cat a flick through for the absolute basics, but it's not really a big deal like some people make it out to be.

ALSO - read as many scripts of movies and shows you love! There's plenty that are available after a quick google search!

So it really doesn't matter whether you go to film school or you're self taught, as long as you keep up with your writing and load yourself with the knowledge of the genres you want to write for.

Feel free to ask me any other questions you have!

Best of luck and happy writing! :)

[linzsaw]

75 HARD: day one

[x] read 10 pages - Atomic Habits

[x] 45 minute workout outside - AM outdoor walk

[x] 45 minute workout inside - PM arms + elipitical

[x] gallon of water

[x] followed diet - high protein: protein pancakes, Mexican veggie bowl for lunch, protein shake, banana, brownie and nuts for snacks, and tonight's dinner included Lemon Basil Turkey Meatballs & Creamy rice

[x] took progress photo - good thing I remembered to do this after a big meal :)

[x] no alcohol - nope, and in fact I was pretty ready to give it up and didn't even drink on NYE. I had my last drink on Christmas and not sure I'll ever go back.

Today was a huge success and I'm feeling accomplished! I honestly was in a bit of a rut for the month of December after coming back from Thailand and feeling quite broke and worn out. It felt really amazing to get back into a routine again. I set myself up pretty well for this challenge. They say that New Year’s resolutions are kind of out of place because goal setting should really begin in spring, and that this is a time for rest. I fully get that and support those who are participating in a relaxing period. For me, though, I’ve always done really well when I set my goals at the top of the year. I think monthly check-ins to make sure you’re following your set goals is crucial though! I think having a visual like a vision board or creating a Mind Movie works so well. The background on my phone is a vision board I made a while back and I’ve accomplished almost everything on it. This year, I plan to create a Mind Movie and I’m really excited! If you’re not familiar, these are short videos that you design yourself to get your mind in peak 'manifesting' mode, that you watch first thing in the morning and last thing at night. The idea is to see yourself as having whatever you want now, played out in the movie with hertz frequencies in the background. The goal is to get excited about your dreams, to stop focusing on what is and envision on how you want your life to be.

Preparation

This last week I spent some time collecting recipes, I wrote down all the things I'd like to do daily and weekly, made a workout schedule and plan, and organized a system for how to realistically accomplish these tasks/goals. I also did an intention setting ceremony last night with Yoga Girl's annual podcast which I absolutely love.

On NYE my love and I went out to eat at one of our favorite Italian restaurants and I drank a delicious mocktail that had blackberry, mint, agave, and soda water. I was definitely in bed before midnight (MST) but I did watch the balldrop on tiktok live and got my new years kiss lol. I think this was another way I set myself up for success, just knowing that I did not want to start off the new year hungover. It's not worth it to me and I've really outgrown that poison.

I wondered how well I would do with the outdoor workout with it being winter, but honestly it was really refreshing to jump out of bed and force myself to get outside. The cold woke me up and it was a great start to the day. I listening to a walking meditation. The last time I did this consistently, I very quickly quantum leaped into my dream career from a very depressing job, I passed the ASWB licensing exam by a landslide, and I started my UGC side gig career which has also been quite a success! I'm seriously so damn excited to see how life can get even better than it already is.

The self-development book I started reading is called Atomic Habits by James Clear, and I can already tell I'm gonna love it. I've heard such good things about it. It's about how to build good habits and break bad ones, noting that tiny changes in your day to day life can have a huge impact on your life long-term, whether good or bad. Here's a quote from the book that stood out to me today:

"The impact created by a change in your habits is similar to the effect of shifting the route of an airplane by just a few degrees. Imagine you are flying from Los Angeles to New York City. If a pilot leaving from LAX adjusts the heading just 3.5 degrees south, you will land in Washington D.C. instead of New York. Such a small change is barely noticeable at takeoff- the nose of the airplane moves just a few feet--but when magnified across the entire United States, you end up hundreds of miles apart."

Thanks for tuning into my journey! Can't wait to see the transformation both physically and mentally.

[starsunfirelight]

Ok so

I was too scared to post this before, but I think I'm going to do it now:

inspiration to finally post this:

a channel I watch all the time at the end of the year/when I remember/when it gets recommended to me lol

finally validated my opinions, when I thought I was alone

then someone in the comments mentioned a different channel so I thought i'd check it out:

and things started making a lot of sense. it's like this one person had the common sense that I could feel was missing from seemingly everyone I interacted with (watch videos) on the internet.

So I watch this:

after another video, and it's one I'd been meaning to watch a lot sooner, but it's been in my watch later for a long time and I guess it just got buried and I forgot about it lol

I never really check the watch later playlist unless I'm really bored and it's something I remember

(I am 100% a Spooky girl by the way (though for a different- I guess not directly but I have the vibes and those are things that I would do if it wasn't for the fact that I can't for some reason (yes I see the hypocrisy here but trust me on this)) and have been aware of it this whole time and it's also the exact type of person that I really hate and I think the word for it for the general public is "poser") (which is way more accurate to what I am imo)

(but like I get where they're all coming from and hope that they can all move on and get a more happier life where they can commit :> not sure what (face expression in the form of an emoticon/emoji) to put here but oh well )

but anyways, here we go!

(copy and pasted from my notes app) (wrote in the style of a YouTube video (at least at first) bc I am not original or creative but I just wanted to have fun lol) (more like have fun complaining and it was really bothering me and I just had to get it out there somehow) (I legit listened to this song for like 3 days straight until I had memorized all of the lyrics before the song would finally leave my head. :[ ) (again with the face thing, wanted to indicate mildly sad but frustrated not disappointed)

thoughts from today:

(the sentiment is totally taken straight from the comment section of the above videos and her performance with the cake being all messed up on SNL recently)

oliv (sic) is good and bad at the same time, but she’s getting better :)

I got target audience hit so hard like wow

olivia needs to learn to “kill” what she doesn’t like and go all in on being herself, :) it’s already happenin :)

still totally hate her producer by the way, if not specifically for these songs

like Blake put 90's(? idk I forget exactly it's been a while since I went obsessively looking for every single reaction video to her new song to see if anyone out there had the same opinion as me, but more as a way to see what opinon I "should" be having which sounds insane, I know, but I can't/ok couldn't help it and now I realize this is just high school glorified 😔 (ok real last edit so far (haha take that edits later) this was something I only begun to notice starting from Casually Explained's video (found via a hasanabi clip on my recommended who I clicked on bc of QT(he's a podcast host with her and his takes are so bad they're funny but I only know found out (have a better idea of now that I grew up more) they're bad because of other streamers but anyways-) https://youtu.be/MspHbnfEGno?si=KiiMRDYPIc9TK-TF) (here's a link to the original full video: https://youtu.be/l4Ioj4BA6N0?si=gUQ3ZeoyZ3DcGXLy) and then this one https://youtu.be/pII6mLdNawk?si=EWSF_g8Pl0fLOXHG and finally make the connection here myself lol)) but anyways put those drums on the track as a backing and it sounded SO MUCH BETTER than the original

so like yeah she definitely has the spirit, she just needs to talk to the right people, trust and learn from them, and have more people say "no" to her.

like seriously, and then she'll be really good!

like I mean it, her tracks are SO CLOSE to being really good, and I can see the idea behind them, that it makes me a little mad

all it needs is just a little creativity, or at least someone who really knows what they are doing and how to best implement it

like people think the production on the 1989 vault tracks left something to be desired and started making their own mixes, and I think that's what people should do with some of olivia rodrigo's music too! ok but like pretty isn't pretty was pretty much perfect so don't mess with that one lol

and also why I think the live performances sometimes sound so much better than the recorded version lol

y'know what? that could be a solution right there!

If you're bad at mixing, just do it live! Then it's all better anyways lol

haha ok time to let you guys see what I wrote when this song came out lol

like I really didn't want to be "that person" who complained about the thing that every teenager loves right now, but now I see that my complaints were valid because it's just a matter of opinion, and it's not the reason I was so mad lol (ok maybe like 0.01% but like I've been through this before and didn't hate the thing that was popular, maybe I was jealous? idk but still my complaints were mostly not for that reason, let's say lol (was looking for 😥 but couldn't find it lol - me from later, still editing this by only adding comments as I think the original should be preserved as much as possible bc it's interesting to look back at ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) 😓😢😭💀👍🙂🐛✨ (man your recently used emojis really tell you a lot about your personality huh))

ok but anyways

here we go lol

the time is from when it was last edited on the notes app

August 3, 2023 at 18:10

hi

hey guys! So, today we’re going to be talking about 4 time Grammy winning musician Olivia Rodrigo’s latest hit single, vampire. This song reached number #1 on the Billboard hot 100 last week, and that’s almost to be expected of an artist like her. It also took YouTube by storm, (since it was sponsored, in part, haha, though I doubt it wouldn’t have blown up anyways) and I’m pretty sure it’s really popular on TikTok as well. (though I wouldn’t know, because I spend all of my time on YouTube shorts instead, lol) Ok now, personally, I liked her last album Sour, so I was excited to see what new song she came up with next! So, curious to see what it was, I checked it out on the trending page and… suffice to say, I was a little disappointed. I mean, it had such good parts, and musically, it was nice and I could tell what she was trying to do, but I mean, lyrically, I just felt like it could be better. Like, I’ve heard Taylor Swift songs in the past, and even if you don’t like her style, you’ve gotta admit she’s really good at writing lyrics. Not only does she convey her thought with such vivid imagery and a poetic stricture, but the words sound really nice to listen to as well. I’m not an English major, so I can’t go into too much depth there, but I’m sure there’s a lot of videos out there that can explain what I mean here. And as a personal anecdote, my 7th grade class was given her lyrics to Red to analyze for an assignment lol. So I mean, there’s one frame of reference for you guys, haha. But getting back to Vampire, her lyrics on there just don’t feel the same. I know they aren’t supposed to, but in its place they should adopt her own style. But to me, it just feels a bit… idk childish? I know I’m not that much older than her, but still. (Turns out she was 19 when she wrote this, which makes so much sense now, and that’s basically still a kid lol.) Taylor and Demi Lovato have both written great lyrics when they were both around her age. But, Taylor is kind of a lyrical poet, and Demi probably had a lot of help, since I looked on the Genius page and it said the song I want to compare later was cowritten by Nikki Williams, who was 25 at the time. So it’s a bit unfair to compare, but we’ll see.

Musically, I maybe I just don’t get pop opera, but I think the transition from piano to full on pop song is cool, but feels a bit misplaced. Like, it sounds like a good idea in concept, but I don’t know if it translated well. (as maybe she or the producer might have hoped.) But aside from that, maybe it’s just me but I think she liked the bridge-like(? idk just guessing here based off of my own feeling) chorus a bit too much, that she ended up relying on it to make the song great. Don’t get me wrong— musically, it’s a great part, and she should definitely be proud of herself for coming up with it as she did, but do you really have to repeat it 3 times?? I can definitely say that that it’s the key defining highlight of the song, but when you repeat it so much, it sounds tiring and overused. Imo People don’t care if you repeat the chorus a lot, because the chorus is almost meant to be repeated, but I really think that it sounds a bit too same when it’s repeated in this context. The beginning too, now that I mention it. But hey, this part could just be my own personal preference, and that’s valid too, I guess, since it’s just my opinion lol. 

And also, I heard someone say that the instrumental at the end left them wanting more, and I agree that it felt like it ended abruptly, and either it should have ended sooner, or maybe padded out a bit more? idk, but the ending just felt abrupt.

But I do have to say, I really liked the bridge part, and the rest of the song after. I just wish the whole song was good! I mean, imo they should have gone harder on the dramatic angle of it all, like maybe have her in black and white with red lipstick at the piano or something. Extend the craziness of her mind, even if she wasn’t? I don’t know haha, I don’t relate to the song, so this again this is probably just a personal preference. (lol Otto)

Especially the “girls your age know better” part was fire!!!! :)

Also, it sounds kind of like her previous songs, but that’s not really anything to worry about imo, because all artists are a bit privy to that, she said that’s what she was going for, in which case she nailed the “same but kinda different” kind of thing, and it’s not a bad thing imo.

But, I guess, now it’s time to look at the ;lyrics. (warning, I think some of it is childish and a bit cringe. if not, just hoping it could be better :(. )

Now, I know that writing good lyrics really doesn’t have to do with age, but more about your own maturity, and your maturity as a writer. I know it’s a bit unfair to compare as I made those comparisons before, but if you look into the lyrics a bit, hopefully you’ll start to see what I mean.

without further ado, here we go…

I ʜᴀᴛᴇ ᴛᴏ ɢɪᴠᴇ ᴛʜᴇ sᴀᴛɪsғᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ Asᴋɪɴɢ, “Hᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ’ʀᴇ ᴅᴏɪɴɢ ɴᴏᴡ?” “Hᴏᴡ’s ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴀsᴛʟᴇ ʙᴜɪʟᴛ ᴏғғ ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴘʀᴇᴛᴇɴᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴄᴀʀᴇ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ?” Jᴜsᴛ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛᴇᴅ Lᴏᴏᴋ ᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ, ᴄᴏᴏʟ ɢᴜʏ, ʏᴏᴜ ɢᴏᴛ ɪᴛ

Ok, so this isn’t too bad, (now after listening about 100 times I like the first 4 lines! :D) but “Lᴏᴏᴋ ᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ, ᴄᴏᴏʟ ɢᴜʏ, ʏᴏᴜ ɢᴏᴛ ɪᴛ” sounds a bit playful, if not childish. If she’s taking on a childish tone on purpose because she’s still very “naive” as she mentions later, then I have to commend her for her genius. But also, it might show up unintentionally, as she mentioned that this song just came out of her head one day after a bad experience, so as a child, this might be just how she thinks, and on the spot, this is what she thought of. It makes me kind of miffed, and it’s a bit hard to listen to, but you can’t really blame her at the end of the day. Plus it sounds kind of cool! :D lkokolololol <- me on no sleep

I sᴇᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴀʀᴛɪᴇs ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅɪᴀᴍᴏɴᴅs sᴏᴍᴇᴛɪᴍᴇs ᴡʜᴇɴ I ᴄʟᴏsᴇ ᴍʏ ᴇʏᴇs Sɪx ᴍᴏɴᴛʜs ᴏғ ᴛᴏʀᴛᴜʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜ sᴏʟᴅ ᴀs sᴏᴍᴇ ғᴏʀʙɪᴅᴅᴇɴ ᴘᴀʀᴀᴅɪsᴇ I ʟᴏᴠᴇᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛʀᴜʟʏ Yᴏᴜ ɢᴏᴛᴛᴀ ʟᴀᴜɢʜ ᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ sᴛᴜᴘɪᴅɪᴛʏ

Yo, can we take some time to take in the scenery? No? Ok, I guess that’s ok, and I’lll be in my own corner doing that I guess, lol :D (also comes up later, but that point it’s slow and I think it’s— you’ll find out later :))

Again, it’s fine, maybe trying a bit too hard, but the one thing that makes me mad is “stupidity”. It sounds so childish compared to the rest of the lyrics there, and I can’t think of a better lyric off of the top of my head, but I just know I wouldn’t use that word there— it gives me the ick, if you know what I mean.

it has real “they ask you how you are, and you just have to say you're fine when you're not really fine, but you just can't get into it, because they would never understand.” vibes lol.

here’s the chorus!! (though it feels like a bridge imo until the last two lines, but maybe that’s just the genre haha)

<3 love it sm omg !!! heart heart heart!!! :)

‘Cᴀᴜsᴇ I’ᴠᴇ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ sᴏᴍᴇ ʀᴇᴀʟ ʙɪɢ ᴍɪsᴛᴀᴋᴇs Bᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀsᴛ ᴏɴᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋ ғɪɴᴇ I sʜᴏᴜʟᴅ’ᴠᴇ ᴋɴᴏᴡɴ ɪᴛ ᴡᴀs sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇ Yᴏᴜ ᴏɴʟʏ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴀᴛ ɴɪɢʜᴛ

I ᴜsᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ I ᴡᴀs sᴍᴀʀᴛ Bᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴍᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋ sᴏ ɴᴀɪ̈ᴠᴇ Tʜᴇ ᴡᴀʏ ʏᴏᴜ sᴏʟᴅ ᴍᴇ ғᴏʀ ᴘᴀʀᴛs As ʏᴏᴜ sᴜɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴛᴇᴇᴛʜ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ Oʜ, ʙʟᴏᴏᴅsᴜᴄᴋᴇʀ, ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ ᴄʀᴜsʜᴇʀ

Bʟᴇᴇᴅɪɴɢ ᴍᴇ ᴅʀʏ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀ … ᴠᴀᴍᴘɪʀᴇ

mentions the theme at the end, yay! lol like it wasn’t present before haha

and here comes my theory that the management wanted this part to take off on TikTok all along, because it’s really good (musically imo) but didn’t really put as much attention on the rest? Like girl, I thought we were on the same page about hating songs only made for TikTok! really short, and only having one good part, like you can tell! 

Like “If We Ever Broke Up” by Mae Stephens is the perfect _counter_ to this argument, because it got popular on TikTok and every part of that song is catchy and good, and I think the whole song is perfect. But then again, it’s also kind of short, but also I don’t think it needs to be longer, because then it’s overdone. 

But maybe the way Vampire was written was just because it was difficult to come up with! Idk, but I think it could really be due to anything, and I can’t say for sure, I know that. But anyways, I think lyrically, it’s a bit weak. and the ending made me want to listen to it more, which is a TikTok move, but also just because the song has some really good parts in it, which is just because the song is nice and not a TikTok move I don’t think haha :)

Honestly, “‘Cᴀᴜsᴇ I’ᴠᴇ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ sᴏᴍᴇ ʀᴇᴀʟ ʙɪɢ ᴍɪsᴛᴀᴋᴇs” has kind of the same energy as “For one day, one day / I was really, really, really, really sad” by One Whole Day by Dixie D’Amelio. And she didn’t even write that song!

and so every time I hear that lyric, I get kind of cringe, it’s a bit sad. :( lol

but now I don’t mind after listening to it for like the 100th time lol

Moving on…

“Bᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀsᴛ ᴏɴᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋ ғɪɴᴇ” this line is fine, and it would probably be fine among a sea of other lines that are better, but even still, it would be the weakest out of those lines, but satisfying nonetheless.

This song may be musically satisfying, but lyrically, it’s not. (edit, again, after listening to it about 100 times, I now don’t care about most of it but “dream crusher” still sounds cringe, but the go version probably isn’t.) I may not understand the pain, and I understand that in the middle of writing this song, she was probably thinking about her own emotional pain and not really caring about the lyrics, so I get why it’s like this, and I don’t mind one bit, because that’s her song. And, I mean, She probably wouldn’t have released it of she didn’t like it. haha, unless she was rushed? idk. probably not though!

But still, if you take that aspect away, it’s a bit hard to visualize, appearing weak at times, with a tell not show kind of approach, and at other times it feels like she’s trying too hard, giving the whole song an amateur kind of feel. But Sour wasn’t like this, and I just can’t get why. Like good 4 u had a lot of repetition too, but that was fine, because it felt like that part that was repeated was _meant_ to be repeated, and it was satisfying when it did. You knew what to expect, and it was a little predicable but that was fine. It was nice, even. But this song feels predictable in a kinda bad way, and I don’t really understand why. :(

Ok, back to looking at the lyrics, lol.

“I sʜᴏᴜʟᴅ’ᴠᴇ ᴋɴᴏᴡɴ ɪᴛ ᴡᴀs sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇ Yᴏᴜ ᴏɴʟʏ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴀᴛ ɴɪɢʜᴛ”

These lines are fire, and I like them. :) Not trying too hard, but not too weak either. It’s great :)

“I ᴜsᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ I ᴡᴀs sᴍᴀʀᴛ Bᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴍᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋ sᴏ ɴᴀɪ̈ᴠᴇ”

These lines make it sound like she still is very much naive, even if she didn’t mean it to sound that way. It’s also very her, especially in the way that she phrased it while singing, so I have to give her credit for that. Maybe this one is just a personal preference, for me lol Like maybe it rings true for her because it was and it’s just something that I’ve never thought about lol :)

Listening back, it sounds more like a facepalm than anything.

More lyrics…

“Tʜᴇ ᴡᴀʏ ʏᴏᴜ sᴏʟᴅ ᴍᴇ ғᴏʀ ᴘᴀʀᴛs As ʏᴏᴜ sᴜɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴛᴇᴇᴛʜ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ”

Ok, this part just sounds like she is trying too hard, which just makes me sad :(

Like I get imagery, for imagery’s sake, and like she really wanted to make this work, but still, I believe you’ll find the right balance someday as you mature as an artist and a person! :D I believe in you!!! <3

“Oʜ, ʙʟᴏᴏᴅsᴜᴄᴋᴇʀ, ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ ᴄʀᴜsʜᴇʀ”

“Bʟᴇᴇᴅɪɴɢ ᴍᴇ ᴅʀʏ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀ … ᴠᴀᴍᴘɪʀᴇ”

 I like this part, especially the rhythmic feel to it as the song speeds up later. I think the clean version is a bit silly though, and having the not clean version in the second line really delivers the impact. Though that same impact isn’t really felt for me in the first line, and “ʙʟᴏᴏᴅsᴜᴄᴋᴇʀ” had more impact than when she used the bad word I think trying to have an impact (but that could also be just because I don’t know the context of that word, or it just sounds weird coming from a child like her, not really understanding the power that that word holds, but still wants people to take her seriously and think of her as a person who uses that word like “I’m not the kid that you think I am”). Haha, at this point I think she has more impact when she writes from the heart and isn’t trying lol. But that could be totally untrue, but it would be funny lol.

“Aɴᴅ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏ ɢɪʀʟ I ᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴛᴀʟᴋᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ Tᴏʟᴅ ᴍᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ʙᴀᴅ, ʙᴀᴅ ɴᴇᴡs Yᴏᴜ ᴄᴀʟʟᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇᴍ ᴄʀᴀᴢʏ Gᴏᴅ, I ʜᴀᴛᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴀʏ I ᴄᴀʟʟᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇᴍ ᴄʀᴀᴢʏ ᴛᴏᴏ Yᴏᴜ’ʀᴇ sᴏ ᴄᴏɴᴠɪɴᴄɪɴɢ”

This sounds like classic high school drama from one perspective, but like her friends really care about her, from another. 

Musically, I wish it was more different than the opening, but I guess changing the beat kind of does that haha. It’s not bad, I guess. :0

“Hᴏᴡ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜᴏᴜᴛ ғʟɪɴᴄʜɪɴɢ?”

What does this mean? Is this just there for the rhyme?

Like, if you’re only going for rhyme, I found this in the BuzzFeed article I was reading earlier of of curiosity “"Maybe then we could pretend / There's no gravity in the words we write / Maybe you didn't mean it / Maybe "blonde" was the only rhyme."” -Skin by Sabrina Carpenter

which I thought was way better lyrics than most of Olivia Rodrigo’s entire song Vampire. Just looking at the lyrics, and has nothing to do with their personal relationship, as I don’t really know about that.

But then again, maybe I was just too harsh, and this is just a reference to something that I don’t understand. Like I wouldn’t personally think about “flinching” when it comes to lying unless it was under a very specific context, but maybe that’s what Olivia Rodrigo is hinting at here, without explaining the whole story.

“(Hᴏᴡ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴇ? Hᴏᴡ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴇ? Hᴏᴡ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴇ?)”

Initially I thought Again, trying a bit too hard here, or maybe it didn’t really come across, but I like the idea that they were going for. 

But after reanalyzing the line before this, it makes more sense in that context, and also explains why she would be really hurt here. Especially because she repeats the line a lot, maybe meaning that he lied multiple times and really hurt her to make her want to repeat that line that much.

“Oʜ, ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴀ ᴍᴇsᴍᴇʀɪᴢɪɴɢ, ᴘᴀʀᴀʟʏᴢɪɴɢ, ᴛʀᴀɢɪᴄ ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ᴛʜʀɪʟʟ Cᴀɴ’ᴛ ғɪɢᴜʀᴇ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴊᴜsᴛ ʜᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅᴏ ɪᴛ Aɴᴅ Gᴏᴅ ᴋɴᴏᴡs I ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴡɪʟʟ Wᴇɴᴛ ғᴏʀ ᴍᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ɴᴏᴛ ʜᴇʀ ‘Cᴀᴜsᴇ ɢɪʀʟs ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴀɢᴇ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ʙᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ”

This part is nice, “Oʜ, ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴀ ᴍᴇsᴍᴇʀɪᴢɪɴɢ, ᴘᴀʀᴀʟʏᴢɪɴɢ, ᴛʀᴀɢɪᴄ ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ᴛʜʀɪʟʟ” is kind of a lot to say at once, but I can respect it, it’s kind of like a emotion cake lol. “‘Cᴀᴜsᴇ ɢɪʀʟs ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴀɢᴇ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ʙᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ” :) those two last lines remind of her last album, and she does it so well here. :)

The bridge and chorus again sound epic with the increased tension from the instrumental :)

“Yᴏᴜ sᴀɪᴅ, “Iᴛ ᴡᴀs ᴛʀᴜᴇ ʟᴏᴠᴇ”, ʙᴜᴛ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅɴ’ᴛ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʙᴇ ʜᴀʀᴅ? Yᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴ’ᴛ ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴀɴʏᴏɴᴇ, ‘ᴄᴀᴜsᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴍᴇᴀɴ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴅ ᴀ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛ I ᴛʀɪᴇᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴇʟᴘ ʏᴏᴜ ᴏᴜᴛ, ɴᴏᴡ I ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴀᴛ I ᴄᴀɴ’ᴛ ‘Cᴀᴜsᴇ ʜᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ’s ᴛʜᴇ ᴋɪɴᴅ ᴏғ ᴛʜɪɴɢ I’ʟʟ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴜɴᴅᴇʀsᴛᴀɴᴅ”

Now this really feels like her old album, and I really like this part :)

It’s really good, maintains her style lol, and no notes from me here :)

this part emotion makes up for aaall of the lyrics haha :)

or maybe that’s the lyrics? rhythm? idk, I just like this part, haha :)

“Yᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴ’ᴛ ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴀɴʏᴏɴᴇ, ‘ᴄᴀᴜsᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴍᴇᴀɴ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴅ ᴀ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛ” especially goes hard, and she’s finally writing in a way that’s not only really good poetry but sounds good to hear! I’m so glad! But she doesn’t have to do this if she doesn’t have to, I just think it’s cool that she did it here, haha

At first I was like did you really have to repeat the iconic part a third time? or is it the chorus at this point? Or was it all along? (yes) :thinking: emoji, but after a while, it’s not that bad. It rocks! And only listening to the last part of the song is epic!!!!!! :D the leadup, however it was executed, was worth it, haha :)

Overall, this song is not bad, great at times, even, but I just wish it was better because I get frustrated at its potential, especially because it reminds me of other songs that are really great at times like Heart Attack by Demi Lovato, and I really love that song, and it makes me frustrated that this song isn’t that one :(. After the “‘Cᴀᴜsᴇ ʜᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ’s ᴛʜᴇ ᴋɪɴᴅ ᴏғ ᴛʜɪɴɢ I’ʟʟ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴜɴᴅᴇʀsᴛᴀɴᴅ” I’d often go into the chorus from Heart Attack lol :).

But seriously, Like, I get your range is limited, and it’s all about holding in that tension and not letting it go until the line drops (you know the one), but would it kill mainstream music to not hover around the same three notes every time? I’ve noticed it was a problem since Halsey’s “Without Me”, where I really felt that, (editor me from now stepping in to say that I didn't think of this, I just held it in my brain from another youtube video that I had watched years ago but then thought I should "agree" with it without really knowing about what I really thought (based on actually listening to the music) myself lol but then again I did notice it a bit more after I had it pointed out to me, mostly in Halsey - Without Me and Katy Perry - Never Really Over but that last one kinda I had the thought myself a bit at first but then I watched another youtube video and they really pointed to it there as the "death of pop music" but maybe not necessarily with the repeating/range I think idk it was a long time ago and I also liked Paramore - Hard Times a lot at this time but anyways) but maybe it’s just a stylistic choice that I got frustrated by lol, and in general all music isn’t like that. idk about this to say any more.

alright, I think that’s all of my thoughts about this song. ok bye! have a good night/day! :)

Oh wait one more thing. I want to address stan culture, the thing that I wanted to make this video about the most. You see, if you’ve noticed, on the comment section of this song, in most places that I looked, it was hard to find a single comment that was even sightly negative. Now, this could just mean that it’s a good song, but given the complaints I just had that I talked about earlier, it was hard for me to believe that was the case. In fact, that was what kind of started this whole thing, lol. But then, as I looked a bit further on the reviews for the iTunes store, I saw that there were a few people that had the same complaints as I did. There were very few “nope”/“bad song”’s. You don’t like the song? Maybe you’re just not a fan of the genre as a whole, and that’s ok. It’s always (I think) ok to have an opinion. It’s too “copy and paste”? Not original, but still good? Yeah ok, but still, they didn’t comment on whether it was bad or good, and the others admitted it was still good. idk if it’s good to copy and paste or not, but it might e subconscious, and imo who cares (besides the record labels) (as long as you give credit) because it can end up with some really fun music out of it! :) The other comments said it was rushed and it sounded like an amateur. This is something that I kind of talked about in the section before, and if it’s true then I really hope she gets better! :) And a few people were like “meh”, essentially, and still though admitted it was good in some way. So, I guess most of the internet agrees it’s good, just some of us hoping for better. 

Now, the really interesting part happened when I looked at another video by a different artist, for just another reason, not really related to this, just kind of happened to see it by chance. It was Taylor Swift’s Anti Hero lyric video, and in the comments, most of them were positive too. But, they were positive in a different way. Both positive, don’t worry :)

Taylor: I love the lyricism, even if you don’t like her you gotta admit it’s good, I relate heavily to this, and just generally pointing out a certain lyric that they like, with some fans just being a fan of the artist. But most people I think were there just () for the song.

Olivia: Kind of the same vibes, but more people liking “omg olivia you’re awesome I can’t believe you did this so proud of you!” which is great but also can lean towards stan behavior (:/), and also “I just love how she sings with emotion”. :) and occasionally “that one line hits really hard.” (hey, I said that too! glad we agree :)) (editor me here to say that I took those comments to heart and formed my own opinion after hearing theirs) But there were also people who were like “I really resonate with this song” “thank you for helping me get through a tough time” and feeling cathartic, which is really nice to see :’)

So, future fans, I advise you to be civil, and maybe not just blindly support your favorite artist because you like them as a person or like their past work. This is just a reminder, just because you like an artist, or even just one song by an artist, doesn’t mean you have to like every sing one of their songs, or go to great lengths to defend them of any wrong lol. You should personally not be responsible for the financial success of your favorite artist. Just tell your friends, but if they’re not into it, leave it alone, chill. If you like it, then you buy the song. If you like it, you listen to the song. that’s really it.

just be happy :)

just be you :)

it’s ok to have an opinion! even if it’s different from people that you love! (unless it’s a super serious important one that’s just mean or something, then hopefully you can try to respect others even if you don’t agree, and try to see other’s pov I hope again unless it’s really bad)

otherwise the world would be boring lol (I mean about having different opinions from one another)

also absolutely no hate to the teens and people that needed this song the most <3 hope you’re ok 😭👍

ohh maybe 

(I feel a disconnect with this song) bc teens relate to this song and I’m not a teen anymore. ok, yeah, that explains a lot haha. :0 :)

I’ve always wanted to let the world “let teens be teens”, and give them a lot of love as they grow up, and it looks like it’s finally happening :)))

this song is addictive fs, at least it definitely is/was for me

also it’s funny how she was a fake celeb and now she’s a real internet celeb, and that’s funny lol

I don’t have to like this song, nor do I have to force other people to like it too.

teens like it. let em be.

(ok editor me here, this is the part where I was jotting down random thoughts as I had them, kind of like a notebook lol)

y’know I like this song but I feel like it’s missing something…

I just feel like if she used jazz chords instead of the normal boring generic ones she’s already used before, it could be a much cooler song! Like driver’s license was meant to be generic, and the chords work well there, but this feels like it could use something more!!!!

Oh, ok, I see the Queen inspo now. (editor me, this was in response much later to reading a comment that said so lol, bc I didn't hear it at first lol)

Also explains why everyone likes it, haha xD

it’s like her own style combined with their’s

Like songs

Heart Attack

Some piano ballad - Queen, Taylor Swift

Senorita

Paramore

Avril Lavigne

Gothic/Victorian

Emo - the last two lines of the chorus

Birthday - Katy Perry

ABBA, duh!

Miley Cyrus

BTR (I think, probably just the vibes of the genre)\

Lewis Capaldi

used to ba a sad boy with (idk just lyrics) are jepson era

Without Me - Halsey ^

Pink

Linkin Park

it needs more 💖aesthetic 💓💝💘!!!! ❣️💝❤️‍🩹(couldn’t find the sparkles lol)

Piano Ballad/Queen

(editor me, this is where I pasted the original lyrics and jotted down some of my thoughts there lol, so it's kind of like a "behind the scenes" of the YouTube video lol)

(editor me, but also more of in the notebooks vein where it's what I "cut out" from the video lol to stay on topic/not make it too long winded but here I am writing about it here lol (gosh I really hated part of this song, and I still kinda do, and I'm not going to deny it/hide it anymore because that is what I feel is the right thing to do) (but like not going to bring it up when nobody asked lol, except I guess this could be different lol since _I_ asked and I can post whatever I want as long as I think it's ok and hopefully not being unfair/mean 😥))

(editor me here, also this was me desperately trying to find what this reminded me of, and I was struggling really hard here lol (still am kinda miffed about that, but I chose to accept it and move on after I calmed down caring about this song lol, who knows maybe I'll start looking again by listening to more songs about (I mean in!) that era, haha (*insert indescribable emotion here*) (by me rn at least, :/)))

(editor me from a little later, also went back and saw that I was trying to improve it, so I guess that these were my initial frustrations with the song, or might have been from either before or after or both from when I wrote the whole YouTube video

ok I definitely remember coming back and adding to the list OFTEN as I thought of more, plus I looked up the lyrics in the process of writing the YouTube video, so I guess it was after, after all :) (me being happy I figured it out, NOt being happy about the song >:( ok I'm not that mean (or am I? 🤨 sounds fun actually lol) but didn't want it to be the sad emoticon :( <- ok now I'm a bit sad about the situation, again not the song lol (I don't think? maybe? I mean I suppose since I did say I was a bit sad earlier and I think I still feel that way about the song plus it's a "sad" song so...) (ok stop writing now the sleepiness is really kicking in right about now) )

)

(editor me again, I know you said stop but this is the last one I think, yeah I definitely found the lyrics again and pasted them here _after_ I was done writing my whole video up there, just so I could analyze them in the way that I mentioned before lol)

(still editor me here yeah and I would re paste certain parts and they reminded me of things, as I saw fit) (mmhm yes I am aware I sound like a derange obsessed lunatic and that's because I kind of was) (editor me still, don't worry now I have a love hate kinda thinking towards her lol, and have grown up a bit and try really hard not to be like the fans here, y'know fandom rememberings and what not sheesh the name-shall-npt-be-mentioned fandom is like REally bad and is like this one but like is just BAD on a lot of levels, I think it's worse (than this) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a4yt5h5rRg like the problem is their behavior, not the content or I'd argue even the fans themselves, necessarily, the problem is when it goes too far 🙁 bit a bit more ^, like 😕 one side for both (the aforementioned side could be either, depends on the mood but both are ok ), slight frown :/)

(editior me, ok this is last now, please, yeah it's just me basically trying my best to improve the song, I think, or at least that's how the latest draft of all this reads to me anyways lol)

(still editor me, like at the time I didn't know if I wanted it this way because it was what I stereotypically "expected to hear", or just because it sounded cool (anyways it was still what _I_ expected to hear/would do, given the opportunity, I was really thinking of what would make me happy here, looking for outside influences on top of that + seeing if they match what I hear/the vibe I'm going for in my head like yes! no, maybe and all that))

I ʜᴀᴛᴇ ᴛᴏ ɢɪᴠᴇ ᴛʜᴇ sᴀᴛɪsғᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ Asᴋɪɴɢ, “Hᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ’ʀᴇ ᴅᴏɪɴɢ ɴᴏᴡ?” “Hᴏᴡ’s ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴀsᴛʟᴇ ʙᴜɪʟᴛ ᴏғғ ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴘʀᴇᴛᴇɴᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴄᴀʀᴇ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ?” Jᴜsᴛ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛᴇᴅ Lᴏᴏᴋ ᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ, ᴄᴏᴏʟ ɢᴜʏ, ʏᴏᴜ ɢᴏᴛ ɪᴛ

Same, bit of Taylor Swift, especially in the chords

I sᴇᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴀʀᴛɪᴇs ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅɪᴀᴍᴏɴᴅs sᴏᴍᴇᴛɪᴍᴇs ᴡʜᴇɴ I ᴄʟᴏsᴇ ᴍʏ ᴇʏᴇs Sɪx ᴍᴏɴᴛʜs ᴏғ ᴛᴏʀᴛᴜʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜ sᴏʟᴅ ᴀs sᴏᴍᴇ ғᴏʀʙɪᴅᴅᴇɴ ᴘᴀʀᴀᴅɪsᴇ I ʟᴏᴠᴇᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛʀᴜʟʏ Yᴏᴜ ɢᴏᴛᴛᴀ ʟᴀᴜɢʜ ᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ sᴛᴜᴘɪᴅɪᴛʏ

but also her own style I guess

Definitely her own style, or I just can’t tell what it’s copying (opera!!! :))

‘Cᴀᴜsᴇ I’ᴠᴇ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ sᴏᴍᴇ ʀᴇᴀʟ ʙɪɢ ᴍɪsᴛᴀᴋᴇs Bᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀsᴛ ᴏɴᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋ ғɪɴᴇ I sʜᴏᴜʟᴅ’ᴠᴇ ᴋɴᴏᴡɴ ɪᴛ ᴡᴀs sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇ Yᴏᴜ ᴏɴʟʏ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴀᴛ ɴɪɢʜᴛ

I ᴜsᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ I ᴡᴀs sᴍᴀʀᴛ Bᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴍᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋ sᴏ ɴᴀɪ̈ᴠᴇ Tʜᴇ ᴡᴀʏ ʏᴏᴜ sᴏʟᴅ ᴍᴇ ғᴏʀ ᴘᴀʀᴛs As ʏᴏᴜ sᴜɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴛᴇᴇᴛʜ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ

Paramore Oʜ, ʙʟᴏᴏᴅsᴜᴄᴋᴇʀ, ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ ᴄʀᴜsʜᴇʀ

Avril Lavigne

Bʟᴇᴇᴅɪɴɢ ᴍᴇ ᴅʀʏ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀ … ᴠᴀᴍᴘɪʀᴇ

Her style, more tension rising buildup in the instrumental, pop ->

“Aɴᴅ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏ ɢɪʀʟ I ᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴛᴀʟᴋᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ Tᴏʟᴅ ᴍᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ʙᴀᴅ, ʙᴀᴅ ɴᴇᴡs Yᴏᴜ ᴄᴀʟʟᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇᴍ ᴄʀᴀᴢʏ Gᴏᴅ, I ʜᴀᴛᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴀʏ I ᴄᴀʟʟᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇᴍ ᴄʀᴀᴢʏ ᴛᴏᴏ Yᴏᴜ’ʀᴇ sᴏ ᴄᴏɴᴠɪɴᴄɪɴɢ”

This is something but can’t figure out what it is

“(Hᴏᴡ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴇ? Hᴏᴡ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴇ? Hᴏᴡ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴇ?)”

More emo? idk leading up towards a genre change (makes sense from a theatre perspective) (editor me, I had just heard a comment/maybe it was a (reaction?) video or both say that this was inspired by theatre and was like ohhh, that makes a lot of sense actually)

“Oʜ, ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴀ ᴍᴇsᴍᴇʀɪᴢɪɴɢ, ᴘᴀʀᴀʟʏᴢɪɴɢ, ᴛʀᴀɢɪᴄ ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ᴛʜʀɪʟʟ Cᴀɴ’ᴛ ғɪɢᴜʀᴇ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴊᴜsᴛ ʜᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅᴏ ɪᴛ Aɴᴅ Gᴏᴅ ᴋɴᴏᴡs I ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴡɪʟʟ Wᴇɴᴛ ғᴏʀ ᴍᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ɴᴏᴛ ʜᴇʀ ‘Cᴀᴜsᴇ ɢɪʀʟs ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴀɢᴇ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ʙᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ” -add a sick drum line after this

Victorian/Gothic (imagine the background music and she’s running away) (or else if it’s positive it could pass as emo)

either way this part sounds cool, because of the way she sings it and builds the rising tension

‘Cᴀᴜsᴇ I’ᴠᴇ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ sᴏᴍᴇ ʀᴇᴀʟ ʙɪɢ ᴍɪsᴛᴀᴋᴇs Bᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀsᴛ ᴏɴᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋ ғɪɴᴇ -> hit the minor key or the 2nd or the 5th or the 7th or sustained or whatever that chord is, like I said, makes the song cool! I sʜᴏᴜʟᴅ’ᴠᴇ ᴋɴᴏᴡɴ ɪᴛ ᴡᴀs sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇ Yᴏᴜ ᴏɴʟʏ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴀᴛ ɴɪɢʜᴛ

I ᴜsᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ I ᴡᴀs sᴍᴀʀᴛ Bᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴍᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋ sᴏ ɴᴀɪ̈ᴠᴇ Tʜᴇ ᴡᴀʏ ʏᴏᴜ sᴏʟᴅ ᴍᴇ ғᴏʀ ᴘᴀʀᴛs As ʏᴏᴜ sᴜɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴛᴇᴇᴛʜ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ

Paramore Oʜ, ʙʟᴏᴏᴅsᴜᴄᴋᴇʀ, ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ ᴄʀᴜsʜᴇʀ

Avril Lavigne

Bʟᴇᴇᴅɪɴɢ ᴍᴇ ᴅʀʏ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀ … ᴠᴀᴍᴘɪʀᴇ -> country? for some reason? :)?

This is classic her style, I would say Taylor Swift but this is her style that’s inspired

“Yᴏᴜ sᴀɪᴅ, “Iᴛ ᴡᴀs ᴛʀᴜᴇ ʟᴏᴠᴇ”, ʙᴜᴛ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅɴ’ᴛ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʙᴇ ʜᴀʀᴅ? Yᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴ’ᴛ ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴀɴʏᴏɴᴇ, ‘ᴄᴀᴜsᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴍᴇᴀɴ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴅ ᴀ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛ <- expect a run here for some reason, but then it’s cool but not her style? I ᴛʀɪᴇᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴇʟᴘ ʏᴏᴜ ᴏᴜᴛ, ɴᴏᴡ I ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴀᴛ I ᴄᴀɴ’ᴛ <- a darker sound? ‘Cᴀᴜsᴇ ʜᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ’s ᴛʜᴇ ᴋɪɴᴅ ᴏғ ᴛʜɪɴɢ I’ʟʟ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴜɴᴅᴇʀsᴛᴀɴᴅ”

Now this is more pop/emo/her style, which is cool because it’s like the final act of the play, ABBA! :)

‘Cᴀᴜsᴇ I’ᴠᴇ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ sᴏᴍᴇ ʀᴇᴀʟ ʙɪɢ ᴍɪsᴛᴀᴋᴇs -> piano glissando, elton john, very dramatic Bᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀsᴛ ᴏɴᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋ ғɪɴᴇ -> twist a crystal ball that’s dark blue as the protagonist runs away in fear I sʜᴏᴜʟᴅ’ᴠᴇ ᴋɴᴏᴡɴ ɪᴛ ᴡᴀs sᴛʀᴀɴɢᴇ Yᴏᴜ ᴏɴʟʏ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴀᴛ ɴɪɢʜᴛ

I ᴜsᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ I ᴡᴀs sᴍᴀʀᴛ Bᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴍᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋ sᴏ ɴᴀɪ̈ᴠᴇ Tʜᴇ ᴡᴀʏ ʏᴏᴜ sᴏʟᴅ ᴍᴇ ғᴏʀ ᴘᴀʀᴛs -> sees shadow As ʏᴏᴜ sᴜɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴛᴇᴇᴛʜ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ -> shadow

Paramore Oʜ, ʙʟᴏᴏᴅsᴜᴄᴋᴇʀ, ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ ᴄʀᴜsʜᴇʀ

Avril Lavigne

Bʟᴇᴇᴅɪɴɢ ᴍᴇ ᴅʀʏ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴀ … ᴠᴀᴍᴘɪʀᴇ

end on cymbals + and a guitar

hmm “play”…. it sounds theatrical, I guess :)

Someone analyze this further please TT hands /\

https://youtu.be/PdTg-JT8FPM is pretty good :) but not complete, more could be said!!!

>hates song

>proceeds to listen to sing for 3 consecutive days

(now 4)

I appreciate the lyricism, it works wonderfully on the stage :) (red curtains emoji)

haha kool-aid is funny

“Lᴏᴏᴋ ᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ, ᴄᴏᴏʟ ɢᴜʏ, ʏᴏᴜ ɢᴏᴛ ɪᴛ”

“I ᴜsᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ I ᴡᴀs sᴍᴀʀᴛ Bᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴍᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋ sᴏ ɴᴀɪ̈ᴠᴇ”

most of the song is just her being helpless(not really), sad, and most of all confused, but this really proves her innocence, and that she’s a good person, (editor me, clear projection here, if it just wasn't _me_ being naïve, if that wasn't already obvious lol) because maybe they would say the second lines, but they would never say the first line even as a joke if they were not a good person 

mean TT

where’s the 2000’s drums at???

what on earth is rocky horror picture show

ok so the final genre is rock

it makes sense now, and is not in fact repetitive 

paid(editor me, this was an autocorrect of p!atd though I don't think I saw the autocorrect until now ) vibes apparently -reaction video from a video with two people (editor me, I think it was one where they were old white dudes with a purple background who listened to mainly metal, but I could be wrong on this)

playlist is 2000’s indie (editor me, I was researching olivia's inspiration and she said her playlist was this lol or at least the comments did, lol)

its in minor

all of this could have been summed down to “I don’t like the new drummer”.

the parts that aren’t her sound like Selena Gomez :) Like, they could collaborate and it would be neat :)

I guess I don’t like the vocal technique because even if it wasn’t billie’s style I thought it sounded more mellow? idk

Lorde??? I guess, but don’t really see it much beyond the opening/structure of things (editor me, yeah, this was definitely a reaction to a comment and I see it now haha)

Songs that belong on a playlist

Vampire

Better Than Revenge

good 4 u

paid or something paramore???? idk just what was on the radio 

oh, that one similar song, ok

enchanted to meet you

rolling in the deep? idk

mine tv

icona pop “i don’t care” 

taylor swift look what you made me do (on spot/hits the spot/pinpoint accuracy) 

tove lo

katy perry - teenage dream

needs more guitar

"the song was a tissue of threadbare clichés" -google for threadbare (editor me I think I miiiight have read this on a comment on apple iTunes reviews, because I definitely did not know that word before)

nice lol haha totally not this one amirite :) (ominous smile) (you should be concerned) (about me, not you) (thankfully) haha

:D

ok I made a playlist on spotify ✨nuf said ✨💐🪷

this is tearing my soul away :D (never thought this was possible, so this is cool lol)

—the centrol theme is people sobbing in their songs—

also teenagers being teenagers, or at least music targeted towards them

why hate?

-emo

-billie eilith

-teenagers

-almost sampled but not quite

-the way words are pronounced

-straight up the production

-“cool” = cringe? (to adults? lol haha)

-maybe that last point is really it :)

-“look at me I’m important”

-fire this drummer

-also consider help for the producer

-overused, cliche, generic, boring <— this is it for sure, I think

-not enough out of the ordinary/expected

-make it stop pls

-imo the last part is better bc she has more confidence :)

-Olivia Rodrigo Vampire - Creativity Don't Pay Reaction I agree it’s trying too hard and going nowhere

-also on the fact that it appears that she’s trying to be edgy - “The swearing to me seems forced and unnecessary and trying to be edgy.” also see “I'm ancient so not the demographic it's aimed at.” “ I maintain that it's not particularly inspired songwriting or production in my opinion.”? “ it's an unfair comparison,” also true

no hate

-but she’s got a good spirit :)

[kosherkept]

hey I'm converting right now and I just wanted to say that I had the exact same experience, I reached out to my Rabbi at the tail end of the intro to Judaism class and had to wait about a year for the next one to start, I'm not sure if you know but they might be hesitant to talk with you about conversion because it's custom to turn down potential converts 3 times before letting them even begin converting so if they seem like they aren't giving you a chance just keep trying and keep in mind that rabbis are really busy, I would recommend reading some Jewish books and listening to Jewish podcasts in the time between now and your intro to Judaism class starting, it's a great way to get more involved in Judaism and go ahead and start learning more about it formally while waiting, I'm a big fan of Living a Jewish life by Anita Diamont and her other book Choosing a Jewish life, but I'd be more than happy to send you the list of books from my Rabbi sponsoring my conversion if you want! It's definitely a frustrating wait while waiting for the class but it's absolutely worth it once you get here

hi! i'm definitley well aware of the 3x rejection tradition, but that wasn't what was going on. i didn't go into too much detail about the conversations i had with each of the rabbis so i dont blame you for assuming that might be it, but it was more of a dismissal than a rejection. especially since i kept going back to one of them after being "rejected"/dismissed and if anything it felt like he was actually bothered by me rather than like, paying attention to my persistence, like how i imagine he would have been had it been tradition. i'm not sure how to describe how we talked without trying to flat-out quote them directly which feels a little strange to me lol

several other people have also recommended reading books and doing research in my own time and trust me i have been!! i have seven or eight books that i own that i'm getting to one by one, and "choosing a jewish life" is actually my current read (although i do have Opinions about it that i'll share later once i'm finished with it). one of the shuls i visited when i was trying to meet with the rabbis also has a reading list and i've chosen several books off it it already, too, even if i don't end up converting there. i definitely thought that was a smart idea for them to have (you have to pick a certain number of both fiction and non-fiction books off their approved list in order to complete conversion)

i will say though (and i'm not sure if anyone else has had a similar experience), one of the rabbis actually advised me against doing my own research about judaism of any kind. he said he believed most of the things people discuss on the internet are false (although he didnt really specify what things, which is...annoying, to say the least), and that without the guidance of a rabbi i was wasting my time. which....felt a little unkind, almost? but he was the one i liked the least, so who knows.

but part of my post was also that it almost feels like half-assing it to read jewish literature and continue learning, but not actually do anything to begin the conversion process. that was why i said if the next rabbi i speak to does the same thing,* i'm going to consider fully putting *everything* on pause, including reading, until i can actually take the class. that way it won't feel like a constant reminder of what i could be doing instead, had things worked out differently. yknow?

-

*which he may not!! i checked his shul's website and they aren't affiliated with the same board of rabbis that the other ones were, so he may not even require the class to convert at all?? i do think the class would be beneficial and provide a sense of structure, but time-wise (also money and location-wise. as someone who relies on a shitty public transit system to get around, the class meetings changing location every week to a different shul on the complete other side of town is going to be absolutely horrendous), it's not "optimal" (not sure what other word to use). i definitely have both questions and concerns about it but i'll be able to ask the rabbi if everything goes well :)

[observers-journal]

Oh, I might need to check that. Maybe my location is preventing me from finding stuff lol. And yeah, I have already watched every shotfilm avaible on vimeo haha. But thanks for the recommendations 💖

Haha, yes, I think paradise lost is just one of those movies that jumped on the wandagon about whatever was popular.

I mean, it's understandable you thought that bc Rafa is insane. He's just amazing at playing him, even the accent. I can't believe you didn't regonize him in BP!! must've been the ears or maybe you were distracted by the shame shorts 😉 hahaha but seriously speaking, there's a huge difference between those characters and it shows his range.

Tbh, my guesses were Vive por mí, bc even if it's a meaningful movie and everything, something doesn't sit right with me about it ????? like the vibes aren't right lol... And the other one, for me, is probably Semana Santa bc if I'm remembering this correctly, the director was an asshole to him. If not, I'd throw dark forces there or even Las aparicio (I love juan but I felt like he was acting the hell out of it and the girlies were 🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️except ana de la reguera lol). And from what I remember (don't take this word by word bc I heard this podcast a few months ago) he said he was dissapointed bc he felt like the work ethic wasn't right, like no one was pouring themselves into the movie and it felt poor.

Wow you're at it then! I hope you find whatever you wanna see ❤️

Okay so, the first time I see Tenoch ever is as Rafa. And then I see him directly as Namor. Nothing in between. I didn't even know how the real life Tenoch looked like which might have been a reason. And the green shorts were VERY distracting 😂 but I think it was the fact that his expressions and face itself looked so different between the two roles to me.

You definitely know more than me about the context behind the movies! So idk about vive por mi- I remember he said he signed up for it because he felt for the organ transplant angle- because his corneal transplant was also possible due to a donor. But yeah, that movie was.. interesting..I may or may not have been watching it for the plot 👀🫣 (damn this man and his scenes in every single show/movie)

I am shocked to know Semana Santa was the movie where the director was an asshole to him 😭coz it was one of my favorites. Him, all the characters, the story was very touching for me. Now if I were to make a guess with you Nonnie, I would place my bets on Las Aparicio. The plot was well..what do I even say. And I feel like he was oversexualized and fetishized as a brown man, which made me uncomfortable. Like there's no depth to his character except for fulfilling the fantasies of those girls. I love Ana De La Reguera and him. They give very husband-wife kind of vibes. She has a sense of maturity and depth that matches him. Absolutely loved them in the Forever Purge together.

Him and Ana Brenda Contreras in Blue Demon were also a favorite pairing for me. Guess he pairs well with Anas. 🤭

[theidiotwhowritesthings]

Ok well now I NEED them to have that podcast; I mean she needs to be in her influencer era anyway so why not? lol. I can see Clint being the first (and most common) guest, though they all would want to be the first, cause he either won a bet or guilt tripped AJ for it (bc he still has no bracelet even when he’s the one to bring her into the family 😔✌🏽). Sidenote, Alex wanted Nat to be the first guest. Also, since you’re familiar with them, another clip that screams AJ and Alex is Joey saying how Frankie forced him to drink an Irish car bomb and him being appalled.

Since I’m already giving ideas for her online presence, this other guy on TikTok @bdylanhollis, recreates old recipes, and whenever he does ones from the 40s or before I think of AJ and Sam making them to bully Steve and Bucky for the bad taste of their time.

As for the shows I HIGHLY recommend Abbott Elementary. Definitely one of my favorite shows. And The Bear I thought was really good, and the acting was great, but I can see it not being for everyone. It’s very character driven imo and can be stressful as it’s about grief and being in the service industry. But it is short if you wanted to check it out.

Thanks for indulging my headcanons about your story lol 💜

Oh my God the absolute chaos that would ensure between having Alex and Clint on the same podcast. I feel like anytime Aj, Alex, and Clint hang out they all share one brain cell and whoever holds that brain cell has to be the "responsible adult" of the moment while the other two fall into nonsense. AJ would try to keep the podcast on track and moving forward while Alex and Clint just spiral into more and more ridiculous things😂

Hey, I love listening to your headcanons about my story!! It's so much fun to talk about it (and it's a good reminder that I need to get back to writing for it smh im so sorry im the worst i know)