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theghostpinesmusic · 10 months ago

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Seeing as how I haven't done a music-related write-up for a bit and how it's currently 4:30pm and therefore too late in the day to start on another work-related project of actual substance...I'm going to tell you about this version of "Bathtub Gin" that I like!

As I said (threatened?) in my last Goose post, I'm consciously branching out a little between now and whenever the hell the next Goose show will be. In my own personal listening, "branching out" means I've been listening to a lot of stuff I've never heard before, both stuff that's totally new to me and stuff that's been sitting ignored on my "Try this!" list for a long time. In my blog writing, "branching out" apparently means "writing about the band I've listened to the most by an entire order of magnitude for the last twenty-five years."

Hey, if I can't be perfect I'm sure as hell going to stop trying.

I am not going to start this post with a primer on Phish because a) if you're reading this you either already know them or you don't know them and don't care, and b) there are literal books about this out there because these guys have been playing for forty years and every little thing they do is steeped in weird mythology and inside jokes and as much as I love all of it, I don't love it enough to write a hundred thousand words about it.

If you're somehow entirely new to the band and also feel an obsessive need to learn/dive in, my super idiosyncratic recommendation is to listen to their album A Live One a few times, and then buy and read through this very short book by Walter Holland, who in my humble opinion is sort of like the Hunter S. Thompson of writing about Phish jams.

I will henceforth only be writing in the micro- and macro-cosms about this particular version of Phish's "Bathtub Gin" and my reactions to it, despite not being the Hunter S. Thompson of writing about Phish jams.

Biologically speaking, I almost certainly, technically have THC in my bloodstream right now if that somehow makes you feel better.

So, Phish was one of the first places I turned at the beginning of this little Goose hiatus. For a lot of reasons, despite being the band that most immediately jumps to my mind when the phrase "favorite ever" is used in a variety of contexts, I haven't listened to Phish much over the last few years. I wrote a little bit about why in this previous post, and to keep my promise of staying focused and save myself some time typing, I won't say any more for the moment: suffice to say that I overdid it a little bit with The Phish and The Phish's Internet Fandom, which soured me on the band's music and left me sitting on the sidelines for years, wondering if it was the band that had come, over time, to suck ass, or whether it was just me.

Well, I'm relieved to report that it was, in fact, me who was doing the ass-sucking.

I learned this, in large part, by diving into the band's recent New Year's Eve (NYE) run at Madison Square Garden (MSG). I actually started my Goose Interregnum concert-viewing here only because the run had just ended and I'd seen online that the band had played all the way through its storied, elusive, and utterly dorky "Gamehendge" saga on 12/31, for the first time since 1994 (or maybe 1995, kill me in the comments Phish fans, I'm ready to die).

I wanted to see this, even if after the fact and from my couch, because back in my early Phish fan-Hood (see what I did there?) Gamehendge had been a big part of what drew me to the band, and I was excited by the prospect of being a grown-ass, middle-aged man bawling his eyes out on his basement couch because in a video another old man was on a stage singing a song about a bulldog and a cat fighting to the death while a comet crashed into Earth, bringing about the end times.

When you're a straight, white kid growing up in suburbia, you either become an absolute monster or your brain finds really fucking weird things to care a lot about. I like to think I fit into the second category.

Anyway, with a more-than-usual amount of spare time on my hands, I decided to try watching the entire MSG NYE run, starting with 12/28 instead of jumping straight to 12/31. I thought, maybe, I'd have a decently fun time and get a good sense of where Phish was at musically (an important thing to know when all the band members are sixty-ish years in age and you haven't heard or seen them play since 2021). Then I watched 12/28 and it destroyed me. Like, this band of aging dork-rockers literally lit the entire arena on fire with their instruments and it burned down around them while they just kept jamming. I'm not sure how anyone escaped MSG alive, let alone how there were concerts there for the next three nights.

12/29 was just as good, if not better, and 12/30 was an incredible show that only paled in comparison to the previous two. My reaction surprised me, and so that's why I cranked up the ol' typing machine, shoveled some fresh coal into the boiler, and sat down to write about...wait, what was I actually writing about, again?

Oh, yeah. "Bathtub Gin."

I'm not gonna give you a lengthy history of this song, for all the same reasons I cited above for not giving you a long history of Phish as a band. I will tell you it's a "classic" Phish song in that it was played live for the first time in 1989 and has been played three hundred and four more times in the one thousand, seven-hundred and fifty-one shows the band has played since. There also a studio recording of it on Lawn Boy, which I always forget because who the fuck listens to Lawn Boy?! The song is used frequently, but not always, as a jam vehicle, and I tend to enjoy hearing it live due to its quintessentially Phish-y sound: Phish writes and plays songs that sound a lot like many of their influences, but they also have songs that sound only like Phish, and this is one of them. Well, it sounds like Phish and Gerswhin, I suppose. "Bathtub Gin" is also my wife's favorite Phish song, but I'm not entirely sure if that's because she likes it or because she knows that liking "Waste" or "Shade" or "Farmhouse" more would put her firmly in the "Stereotypical Phish Wife" realm.

This 12/28 version of the tune is a great one for jamming, but as usual I'll (mostly) refrain from commenting until the point in the video where the composed portion of the song leaves off and the improvisation begins.

I do want to start by saying I love the retro feel of this year's "Live Phish" intro/logo sequence. Also, yes, Page's opening keyboard banging is supposed to sound like that. It's how he lets you know he's having fun! Gershwin tease at 2:26 if you're keeping track. Otherwise, this is a pretty straightforward reading of the composed part of the song. I absolutely love the sound mix here, as you can hear all four members' contributions to the song more or less equally. It blows the old days of tapes essentially mixed to make Trey's guitar 80% of the band's sound out of the water. It also leads to me basically just listening to Mike Gordon play bass for the entire show because if you can, why wouldn't you?!

It often sounds like the band might be singing actual, English lyrics during the outro portion of the song, but I don't think they ever are.

The jam starts at 4:50, and basically immediately Fishman is playing stuff on the drums that my simple brain can barely comprehend. This is perhaps one significant difference between Phish and the Goose jams I've been covering previously: the rhythm section of Phish is much more directly involved in the direction of the band's improvisation, whereas it often feels like the drums and bass of Goose are just laying a foundation for the melody players to improvise over. One is not inherently better than the other, but I do often feel like there's a lot more to listen to with Phish, despite them having fewer members.

Anyway, this first chunk of the jam feels a lot to me like being lost in a fuzzy, pleasant labyrinth: the tempo is slow and the playing is soft, but there's an undercurrent of tension there. By 5:30, things have started to straighten out a little, though the lights have gotten absolutely weird. Fishman starts playing a more straightforward beat, and the rest of the band falls into a rock-sounding jam that makes me think of what Goose might sound like if their fingers were thirty years older.

Trey starts to sit back a little bit at 6:45, and the jam mellows out in response. It feels a little bit like he can't figure out where he wants to go next here, but Mike and Page take some turns adding ideas to the mix in the meantime. Eventually, Trey joins back in the fun, but still in a restrained way. For awhile here, everyone's just sort of playing together, with no particular standout or soloist, which is great.

Whatever keyboard tone Page switches to at 8:58 is fantastic. He follows it up pretty quickly with some weirder synthesizer stuff, and at 9:40 this pushes the jam in a more sinister direction. At 10:20, Trey switches over to a very Portal To Robot Hell guitar effect, and now we're in full-on latter-day Evil Phish jamming territory. Fishman is, of course, keeping a beat here, but it's odd and off-kilter (not a drummer, sorry to be imprecise) and makes the whole thing feel like it's just barely hanging together in the best way.

This kind of "almost-falling-apart" sound is, paradoxically, when Phish often hits their stride in jamming. I think it's what makes them sort of a love/hate proposition even among people who listen to a lot of improvisatory rock music. It's not particularly fun or comfortable, but I've never come across another group of musicians that can improvise with each other consistently in this way.

Trey's playing finally comes a bit to the fore starting at 13:00, but even here this doesn't feel like a rote jam "peak": instead, the backbeat that Fishman is playing keeps things feeling a little out of sorts and not entirely resolved. Trey and Page playing off of each other at 14:15 is nice. I'm not sure what's going on with the lights at 14:30, but I do know these guys consistently have my favorite light show in show business. There's some almost Allman Bros-sounding playing from Trey at 15:15 as we reaching peak craziness...

...then some initial teasing of the "Bathtub Gin" theme at 16:30 or so, teasing a return to the song proper to wrap things up!

The video fades out on a segue into what would turn out to be an excellent version of "Ghost," for those keeping score at home.

Anyway, thanks for reading my first (at least lately) Phish write-up. I'm going to try to do a few more of these from the run, including (I think) two new songs: "Oblivion" from 12/29 and "Life Saving Gun" from 12/30. Should have those up soon!

#phish #jams #jam bands #music #videos #writing #live music #Youtube

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 2 years ago

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reading update

hey gamers, happy Pride Month Eve. I don't have any more time to make small talk, I've read so many fucking books since the last time we did this and I need to get started immediately.

what the fuck have I been reading?

The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer (Janelle Monáe, 2022) - I don't know if you guys know this about me, but I am... obsessed with Janelle Monáe. Dirty Computer, the album, changed me as a person. I have a bisexual pride flag hanging in my room that I can never wash because she touched it one time. my living room contains more than one decorative cushion with their face on it. a couple of years ago I almost willingly went broke to bid on a pair of the vulva pants from the Pynk music video when Mx. Monáe raffled them off. I love Janelle Monáe in a way that I rarely let myself love artists, and going into this book I really only had one fear: what if Janelle Monáe's book is bad? well, fear not: the book is pretty good, probably because Janelle Monáe was smart enough to hire actual experienced science fiction writers to collaborate and help her build out her world from song and screen to literature. the result is stories that are still sitting heavy in my mind even though it's been approximately a very busy calendar month since I read them, with new meanings crystalizing and arriving all the time. I will freely admit that the collection feel a little uneven in places, but then I'll immediately follow that up by talking about how hard it rips that there's a story about [spoilers] an idyllic little queer refuge from the evil authoritarian government being betrayed by a cis woman because she doesn't trust the AFAB nonbinary member of the crew, and decided that selling out the whole commune to a violent attack would somehow make all the "real" women safer than just letting someone use they/them pronouns in peace. Janelle had some things to say, y'all.

Short Talks (Anne Carson, 1992) - this is going to seem so short after all the rambling I just did for Janelle Monáe but it feels right. literally all I have to say is that I wish all poetry read like this. devoured in one sitting, delighted in every single page of it. Anne Carson, you deserve the hype.

Complaint! (Sara Ahmed, 2021) - I was lucky enough to get to watch Ahmed give a virtual lecture about this book before reading it, and as always her principled feminist rage was a delight to behold. Complaint! details research conducted by Ahmed after leaving her university position due to mishandling of student complaints, talking to other people about their experiences making institutional complaints - about professors, about bosses, about students, about policies that furthered deeply entrenched biases and hierarchies. her results were often disheartening, but Ahmed never gives in to despair. her work affirms injustice's existence but also the validity of raging against it; as someone working in a university setting and frequently unhappy with it, I felt more reinvigorated reading Complaint! than I have in a long time.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Toshikazu Kawaguchi, trans. by Geoffrey Trousselot, 2020) - I was really looking forward to this book, which sounded like exactly the sort of cozy, low-stakes fantasy slice of life shit I love. there's a café in Japan where people can have conversations with people from their pasts, but they only have as long is takes for their coffee to cool down - isn't that fun? I was prepared to really love it, and also cry a lot. in the end, I didn't love Before the Coffee Gets Cold as much as I hoped I would - maybe because it was adapted into a novel from a play, and the transition doesn't feel especially smooth? as I've already said on this blog, I would really like an opportunity to see this performed as a stage show if anyone ever does it in English - especially the ghost woman who lives in the café, I want to see that.

Rethinking Sex: A Provocation (Christine Emba, 2022) - oh man you guys, this one was a DOOZY. a friend alerted me to this book's existence months before it was published, and the premise sounded intriguing enough: Emba posits that the simple model of "yes means yes, no means no" isn't a sufficient sexual ethic, and fails to provide a reliable framework for treating sexual partners respectfully beyond obtaining basic consent - and she's right about that! I do agree with Emba on that particular statement; I think current understandings of consent are a very rudimentary baseline and frequently fail to account for the many nuances of human interactions. that is pretty much where Emba and I stop agreeing on almost anything. this book takes some stunningly regressive stances on sexuality in the name of equity, gang. Emba insists that some sexual desires are inherently worse than others, although she conspicuously fails to elucidate on what these might be while suggesting that porn is to blame for normalizing such "risky" kinks as anal sex and polyamory, which hilariously (and sadly) seems to suggest that she isn't clear on the difference between polaymory and group sex. she states in her intro that the book is absolutely meant to be inclusive of gay and trans readers, then goes on to spend a chapter talking about how silly it is to pretend men and women are the same when their innate biological frailty and predisposition to pregnancy makes women inherently more imperiled by sex. she insists that it's unlikely anyone actually enjoys "casual sex," providing choice quotes from interviews that support this stance, and upon encountering a woman who maintains that she did enjoy a shallow sexual relationship pivots to question why a person would even want such a thing in the first place. this book is a hot ass mess, y'all, and while I did take a certain perverse pleasure in sending the yikes-iest segments to a friend to scream in mutual horror, I cannot say I'd actually recommend it.

The Halloween Moon (Joseph Fink, 2021) - hey, one of the Welcome to Night Vale guys wrote a middle readers book and it's really cute. The Halloween Moon has the same unhinged energy as Disney Channel Halloween movies from the nineties and early 2000s - you know, the ones where everything going on was really silly but also holy shit someone might kill that 11 year old for realsies? think Hocus Pocus, that's the right vibe. yeah that was my SHIT as a kid, and remains my shit as a weird adult. if you know a weird kid, I'd strongly recommend passing this along to them.

Batman: The Long Halloween (Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, 1996) - I didn't mean to read two back-to-back Halloween-ish books in May, it just happened. life is weird that way. anyway yes I DID read this because it was specifically cited as a heavy inspiration for The Batman (2022), no I regret nothing. I've been avoiding Big Two comics for years, but like... fuck. I missed this. this is so fun and dumb. every other page is Batman emotionally taking a deep drag on a cigarette and monologuing about how rancid Gotham City is followed by someone getting murdered on Saint Patrick's Day and having a leprechaun statuette left on their corpse. it's ridiculous it's noir out the ass I loved every second of it. it's perfectly self-contained and I cannot recommend it enough if you don't mind grisly murder. consider yourselves warned that I'm getting back into comics in a big way.

Hench (Natalie Zina Walschots, 2020) - you guys might recall Hench as the winner of my second-ever reading poll, beating out three other books on my TBR. and you know what? you guys were fucking right. Hench is the story of Anna, a temp who does data entry for supervillains - it's a living, you know? until she gets horrifically injured in a fight between her latest boss and a guy who's, uuuh, he's definitely not Superman. don't worry about it. Anna develops a metric to calculate how much property damage and loss of human life superheroes are actually causing - and a huge, HUGE grudge. she finds a new, cooler evil boss and gets to work ruining superheroes' lives, and oh MAN is she good at her job. I don't often pine for sequels, but if one happened to come along for this book I would NOT be disappointed. frankly Anna's boss Leviathan is the monster boyfriend that dreams are made of and I think she deserves a second book purely to try to kiss him on the mandibles. let a bitch live vicariously.

Time Is a Mother (Ocean Vuong, 2022) - one thing about Ocean Vuong is that he's going to reliably fuck me right the fuck up, emotionally, and there was approximately a 0% chance that a poetry collection meditating on the death of his mother wasn't going to be ruinous. what can I say, I was raised by a single mother who currently lives very far away and has complicated health problems that seem to get worse with each passing year! some things are going to set me off! I returned this book to the library before writing down the names of specific poems that got to me, like an idiot, but there's one that's very simple in its devastation: a collection of things Vuong's mother ordered from Amazon, detailed month by month, showing a woman's attempts to continue living a normal life even as her health worsens to the point of preparing for her own funeral. I love a poem that's just a list of shit given meaning, and it took me right out.

Nightmare Alley (William Lindsay Gresham, 1946) - "oh like the Guillermo Del Toro movie" yeah exactly like the Guillermo Del Toro movie, this is the book it was based on. this probably won't shock you if you've seen the movie, but oh my god this is fucked. like, significantly more than the movie, Mr. Del Toro was really sparing our delicate feelings with his adaptation. if you watched Nightmare Alley and said "I just don't think Stan was enough of a fucking freak bastard," oh boy do I have good news for you. also if you watched Nightmare Alley and thought "this is interesting but I wish we devoted a lot more time to Stan developing his career as a phony spiritualist and we got to see him spend several years running a full fucking church while claiming to commune with the dead" hey, we've got that too! Stan spends most of this book running around doing terrible things while Yakkety Sax plays behind him, all the while running an internal monologue about power and manipulation that's truly vile. if you like a book about a wretched guy having just a terrible time (one of my favorite genres, btw) you're gonna love this.

Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance (Jessamyn Stanley, 2021) - I'll freely admit that I was very hesitant going into this one. Jessamyn Stanley is a very cool yoga instructor who I first learned about in a way that was pretty much "check out this fat Black queer yoga icon!," and I've sort of passively admired her ever since. I was worried that reading her personal essays would be a bit of a case of "don't meet your heroes" - what if she has some stupid ass phony influencer opinions that leaves a sour taste in my mouth about her whole deal? SHOULD NOT HAVE WORRIED. first off, this bitch is a good personal essay writer and funny as hell. secondly, she devotes a good chunk of time to dissecting the burden of being The fat Black yoga icon, the difficulty in unlearning to urge to seek approval from white audiences, and how the necessity of viewership inherently taints and complicated her relationship too her craft. she also has some very real and gorgeous thoughts about the American yoga industry's problem with cultural appropriation, and where she fits into that as a Black instructor teaching a Indian practice. she's inspired me to take another crack at meditation (not easy!!) and has some thoughts on posture and breathing that have really shaken up my whole relationship with yoga for the better.

Cultish: The Language of Fanatacism (Amanda Montell, 2021) - definitely one of my favorite nonfic books I've read this year that isn't an essay collection/memoir. Montell (the daughter of a man raised in the Synanon cult, it bears mentioning) takes an engaging look at the way cults use appealing, exclusive language to bind people and ensnare them, making it difficult to leave. the approach to cults is sharply critical, but Montell looks at cult members with an empathetic eye, reminding readers many times that there's nothing to back up the idea that those who fall into cults are less intelligent or more ignorant than the general population. instead, she examines the ways in which charismatic leaders cleverly use words to present an image of something desirable - and then make it difficult to back out. to me the most interesting part of the book is way Montell draws comparisons between real, well-known cults to groups such as CrossFit, multilevel marketing schemes, and the followers of "wellness" influencers on Instagram. Montell makes clear that she's not accusing, say, Tupperware salespeople of being exactly as harmful as Jim Jones, but that she thinks there are similarities worth examining - and she's right! a smart, easy read; strongly recommend for anyone seeking something curious and fun.

Little Rabbit (Alyssa Songsiridej, 2022) - a book about a relationship, which Sonsiridej herself calls a coming of age story and one of my favorite writers Carmen Maria Machado calls a "horny love letter to bottoming." it is indeed both of those things, and it's very good at both of them! the novel follows a 30 year old writer in her pursuit of a 51 year old choreographer, and the struggle to make sense of their power dynamics once she gets him. what does it mean that he's so much older? that he's divorced from a rich wife and has resources she can't imagine? should she be flattered or affronted that he wants to help her advance her career? does dating an older cishet man mean she's turning her back on her queerness, as her roommate keeps insinuating? what does it mean that he feels uneducated compared to her and her literary friends? and what is our protagonist supposed to do about the fact that she's just discovered she's one hell of a sub? isn't it problematic to want an older man to hurt her? maybe so, but she's enjoying the hell out of it. this is a coming of age story like I've never seen before, but I hope to find a lot more like it because it was simply exquisite.

Portrait of a Thief (Grace D. Li, 2022) - the premise is simple: five Chinese-American college students get hired to heist stolen art out of five Western museums and return it to China. the reward? 10 million dollars each. the stakes? oh my god, astronomical. all of their lives could be absolutely ruined - and it's not a spoiler to say that absolutely nothing goes how they expect it to. a fun and fast-paced book, one that I would definitely recommend for, say, a day of reading on the beach or on an airplane.

#bookblr #reading updates

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storiesforallfandoms · 4 years ago

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pushing buttons ~ eminem

word count: 1912

request?: yes!

@thatonegirlthatlikesthings “Hi me again I literally love your writing so much omg I was wondering if you could once again indulge my Eminem obsession cuz my baby don’t get enough love🥺🥺 I was thinking like a angst/fluff where MGK tries to hit on the reader even though he’s with Meg Fox now and Em loses it and dr Dre and Paul try to call him down but it doesn’t really work and the reader has to chill him out. I love you I love your writing and I love you bye!🥰☺️❤️❤️”

description: in which his enemy tries to push his buttons by flirting with his girl

pairing: eminem x female!reader

warning: swearing

masterlist

“What the fuck is that prick doing here?”

Marshall glared at the tall blonde standing across the room with his arm around a familiar actress. It was the night of his launch party for his new album, and he thought it was just supposed to be personal friends of his as well as his friends from the industry. However, a few others from the industry had arrived as well, including the infamous Machine Gun Kelly.

“Paul invited him,” Marshall’s girlfriend, (Y/N) responded. “Said you two should try and squash the beef. Fans are getting tired of it.”

“Squashing the beef and becoming friends with the enemy are two totally different things,” Marshall hissed.

“You don’t have to be friends,” (Y/N) told him. “Just...shake his hand, look friendly for the pictures, end the beef.”

Marshall rolled his eyes as (Y/N) wrapped an arm around his waist and gave him a slight squeeze. “I know, I tried to tell Paul he should run this past you first. But him and MGK’s manager think it’s best for both of you to end the beef. He wants to move on with his new punk pop genre, you should move on too considering the fact that you absolutely destroyed him.”

She lowered her voice to a whisper for that last part, causing Marshall to smirk.

“This is gonna push me to drink,” he muttered as he noticed Kells approaching him.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” (Y/N) hissed. “If you break your sobriety, I will be your worst nightmare.”

Marshall smiled at her before dropping it to glare at Kells.

“Hey man,” Kells started. “Listen, thanks for the invitation. I know things have been rocky between us, but I hope you know I never meant any harm by my tweet about Hailie, and I still view you as a massive inspiration to me. I just thought...maybe I’d get more recognition with the diss, and it worked. It just sort of fucked up my rap career in the process.”

(Y/N) gave Marshall a quick look before sipping on the drink she had in her hand. They were both shocked by such a mature response from Kells, especially after the stuff Kells said about Marshall following the drop of Not Alike and Killshot.

She was watching her boyfriend expectantly as he processed what had been said to him. He glanced back at (Y/N) finally before saying, “No hard feelings, man. Tensions ran high, we both said some shit, I think it’s time we get past it.”

Kells smiled and offered a hand to Marshall. Although reluctant at first, Marshall took it and shook his hand. Kells soon left and went back to his girlfriend, knowing not to overstay his welcome.

“Was that so hard?” (Y/N) asked. “At least he’s being mature about it, too.”

“A little too mature,” Marshall said.

“Stop it, you just don’t like him. Let’s get a non-alcoholic beverage.”

~~~~~~

As the night continued, Marshall was pulled from (Y/N) as people kept coming and congratulating him on the album. She wasn’t too shocked, it was a normal occurrence. Luckily enough, she had come to know most of the people at the party through Marshall, so it wasn’t like she was awkwardly standing around for any amount of time.

She was at the snack table when a tall stature came to stand next to her.

“You lost your boyfriend, huh?’

(Y/N) looked up to see Kells stood next to her, a friendly smile on her face.

Despite the feud between the two, (Y/N) never had any sort of opinion on Kells. She hadn’t listened to his music - besides that one song with Camilla Cabello that blew up - and she didn’t want to form an opinion based on a beef she wasn’t even a part of. So, him standing next to her didn’t make her as angry as it had made Marshall earlier. Instead, she smiled back at him.

“Yeah,” she said. “Nothing new of course. Everyone congratulating him on the album and whatnot.”

“Seems like a lot of people just trying to kiss his ass.”

(Y/N) shrugged. “That may be true in some cases. Most of the people here who have already worked with him and known him for so long know better against that. Maybe it’s because they’ve already worked with him though, who knows. Where’s Megan?”

Kells gestured aimlessly into the crowd. “Also pulled away from me. Talking to...someone I guess.”

He didn’t sound too concerned over it, although maybe it was just the same situation (Y/N) was in. Megan was pretty popular as an actress, this was probably nothing new for Kells either.

“So, how did you and Em meet?” he asked, offering her one of the two red cups he had in his hand. (Y/N) didn’t think much of it at first. She figured he had probably gotten a drink for Megan then realized he had lost her in the crowd.

“We met through a mutual friend, actually. One from back in Detroit,” she explained. “I knew who Marshall was, obviously, but I was never really a hip hop fan. We got to talking and before I knew it, he was asking me out on a date. We were official within a month, and we’ve been together ever since. That was like...three years ago now, I think.”

She took a sip from the drink Kells had given her and cringed at the strong taste of alcohol in the cup. Noticing this, Kells asked, “Too strong?”

“Just not used to alcohol,” she explained. “I’ve mostly given it up in solidarity with Marshall. I’m proud of his sobriety, even if I’ve only been here for the tail end of it.”

“That’s lame,” Kells scoffed. “The old man shouldn’t hold you back from doing some fun shit.”

The tone of his voice plus the subtle diss caused a slight feeling of annoyance in her, but she pushed it down. Be the bigger person, she had been telling Marshall all night. She couldn’t go against that.

“He’s not holding me back from anything,” she responded. “I chose to do it. I just know it sucks to have to be sober when everyone around you is drunk or high. I want to be that one person he can confide in in those situations, you know?”

“You’re too good for him, man,” Kells said. “For real, you have a heart of gold and the body of a smoke show. You shouldn’t be wasting it all on that fucker. You should be getting with a real man.”

(Y/N) shuffled uncomfortably, now putting her cup down on the snack table. “I’m perfectly happy with Marshall, thank you. Besides, you have a girlfriend. One who is literally at this very party right now.”

He waved off the comment, as if it weren’t a real concern. (Y/N) looked around the room, desperate to find someone she knew who could save her from that situation.

Across the room, Marshall was glaring daggers into the back of Kells’ head. He could see the uncomfortable look on (Y/N)’s face, and saw the drink she had just discarded on the table. He knew something was happening, something he didn’t like.

“Why the fuck did you invite him?” he asked Paul. “Why didn’t you warn me first?”

“It needed to be an authentic meet up to end the beef,” Paul responded. “After tonight you won’t see or hear from him ever again.”

“You bet I won’t, because I’ll have him six feet under the fucking ground if he doesn’t get away from (Y/N).”

Paul looked over at the two. His face grew concerned upon seeing (Y/N)’s. “It can’t be anything too serious. He’s here with Megan, remember?”

“Do you see Megan anywhere around here, Paul?” Marshall asked.

He was so furious you could almost see the cartoon smoke coming from his ears. He was clutching his plastic cup so hard that it would’ve shattered into a million pieces if it was glass. It dropped from his hand suddenly when he saw Kells grab (Y/N)’s waist, trying to pull her closer to him. Both Paul and Dre had to grab him to stop him from going over and beating the shit out of Kells right then and there.

“Calm down, man,” Dre told him.

“He’s fucking touching her, Dre!” Marshall snapped. “She’s obviously uncomfortable, let me go over there and beat the shit out of him!”

“Not here,” Paul said. “Not in front of all these people. Go over and get her - peacefully - then you guys can just leave. This was a stupid idea from me.”

“Really fucking stupid,” Marshall hissed as he pulled away from the two. He tried to keep his anger at bay as he went over and wrapped an arm around (Y/N), effectively pulling her from Kells’ grasp. “Come on, babe, let’s go home.”

“What’s wrong, Marshall? Don’t like another man talking to your girl?” Kells challenged.

“I don’t like other men grabbing my girl when she’s obviously uncomfortable, no,” Marshall responded.

“Sounds a little insecure to me. Maybe you should work on that, man. You’ll be able to keep up with this absolute bombshell when you’re not so over jealous of her.”

Marshall’s grip on (Y/N)’s waist tightened. She tried to calm him down, but it was obvious he was past the point of no return.

“Fuck you,” he snapped. “Man, I don’t know what your fucking problem is, but you’re the one who started all of this shit. Now you’re coming here, to my launch party, trying to flirt with my girl, and now you’re insulting me?! Must be a sad existence you live, Kelly, when you can’t even be happy with your own success. You have to keep trashing on someone else who’s doing much better than you.”

Kells’ cheeks were tinted pink with anger as he glared at the two of them.

“I suggest going to find your girlfriend while you still have one,” (Y/N) told him. “Because I will be telling her about this whole...incident between us.”

Before any other words could be said, Marshall took (Y/N) and guided her out of the building. When they got to the car, he sat in the driver’s seat for just a second, trying to make himself calm down.

“I should go back in there and fucking kill him,” he said, more to himself than to (Y/N).

“No you shouldn’t,” she told him. “He was just trying to push your buttons. He seems very happy with Megan, and there were so many other girls at that party he could’ve flirted with if he just wanted to be a scumbag. He only chose me because he knew it would get to you.”

She reached over and put a hand over one of Marshall’s that was clutching the steering wheel. On contact, he loosened his grip and realized how much his hands hurt from holding the wheel too tightly.

“Whatever his intentions were, they don’t matter,” she assured him. “I love you, Marshall, and only you. No other asshole will ever come in and swoop me away from you.”

He chuckled at her slight insult, their own way of flirting with one another. He leaned across and kissed her gently on the lips before finally starting the car.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

#eminem #eminem imagine #eminem x reader #marshall mathers #marshall mathers imagine #marshall mathers x reader #imagine #one shot #request #fanfiction #fanfic #fandom

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theonewiththefanfics · 4 years ago

Text

Would You Be My Little Quarantine (one-shot)

Synopsis: As the mandatory quarantine hits, the Reader is stuck in a cabin in Utah with the boys from 5 Seconds of Summer. Turns out another person is stuck in a hotel nearby. Hijinx ensue as does romance.

Pairing: Harry Styles x f!Reader

Genre: fluff pretty much just pure, teeth-rotting fluff.

Warnings: it’s my first time writing for Harry as I was never really part of the fandom, but damn does Watermelon Sugar do things to a person, so please be kind. This is defo not my best work, but I’m slowly getting back into the groove of things, so bare with me :D

Word count: 6061

TikTok had become Y/N’s new obsession. She’d stayed away from it as long as she could, being a true Vine generation child, she felt loyalty to the deceased app. But one night, after a long recording session, she caved. And then stayed giggling on it until the early morning when the birds started to chirp… or until Calum had taken her phone and threatened to throw it in the jacuzzi if she didn’t go to bed.

The girl and the four guys from 5 Seconds of Summer had been renting a cabin in the middle of the Utah woods to help them escape the distractions of the city as they recorded their respective albums, and given how they were good friends, they decided to collaborate on a few songs, and it made sense to just chill together as well.

Which had started off Y/N’s own TikTok series, having ‘borrowed’ the idea from the Irishman living with two girls.

“Alright, gentlemen.” She slid inside her bathroom pulling the focus of her camera on the reflection in the mirror. “I live with four guys, and I have some things to say. Why do you always, and I mean ALWAYS, leave your socks around the house? The dirty ones. You know you could just throw them in the wash… there’s an idea.”

“We do!” Calum yelled

Y/N turned her face to the door and hollered, “Only after I’ve asked you to!”

“Do not!” he countered.

“Do too!” she exited the bathroom and into the hallway only to be met with the man standing there with his hands on his hips. “Then how.” Y/N pointed the camera towards the living area you could see from where the hallways overlooked the room. “Do you explain that?” And when she zoomed in, there, in a small pile laid two brown socks, all crumpled up and almost pushed underneath one of the three couches, as if someone was trying to hide them from sight.

Calum stammered for a bit. “Those are NOT mine.”

Y/N flipped the camera and looked at it like they do in the Office. “Help me,” she mouthed and finished the TikTok, pointing with her hand at him. “Ya disgustin’!”

Just as maturely as she had reacted, so did Calum by crossing his arms and sticking his tongue out, but their little bickering about whose socks they were and whose job was it to put them in the dirty wash (they were Ashton’s, and it was his job), Luke poked Y/N’s side as he came out from his room.

“I know might seem weird, but is there any chance another person could join our quarantine group?”

Y/N’s eyebrows rose. Sure, the house was giant, mostly because whatever production she was a part of on Broadway, after a successful season, she invited all of them there to get away from the bustle of New York and just chill. It was in the middle of the forest, encased by gorgeous mountains and at the side of a lake where they’d go jet skiing and cliff diving.

“I thought people can’t visit one another?”

“They can’t,” Luke confirmed. “That’s the point. The unfortunate soul just got stuck at a hotel not too far from here, and all the flights are cancelled. Two weeks of quarantine without symptoms have been concluded, but, knowing how impossible it’d be to get to London, when you know, as I said, there are no flights, I offered a place to stay.”

“So,” Y/N dramatically rolled her head. “You already offered to stay before asking me?”

“Well, I knew you’d say ‘yes’ because you’re a kind, generous, amazing, smart, talented, compassionate person and wouldn’t leave someone on the streets when you know you could help.”

“Mhm, keep talking.” Y/N squinted her eyes and put her hands on her hips.

“Incredible, best musician I’ve ever met, how you haven’t won all of Tony’s I’ve got no idea. Your acting skills are impeccable and the movie industry is missing out on a once in a lifetime kind of a talent by not castin-“

“Alright stop.” Y/N busted out laughing. “As long as you promise I won’t wake up with an axe in my head, ‘s fine.”

“Promise.”

“Good. Also, could you please get me three bottles of that wine I like?” Y/N hollered before skipping downstairs and to the kitchen where Ashton was brewing the tenth cup of coffee. “I have a deadline in two weeks and have literally no idea where to go with the story.” She referred to the second book of her series she was writing, and now with the lockdown going on, her literary agent was breathing down her neck, and it didn’t help she hadn’t written anything in like a month and didn’t remember half of the already exiting story.

Luke lifted a brow and hissed through his teeth. “That bad?”

“You have no idea,” she sighed and left for the living-room where she could harass the boys for their fries and procrastinate some more.

***

The few hours, while Luke was away, were quite uneventful. All of them sat around on the couch pit, wrote some music, lil bit of lyrics and Y/N almost cried seeing as her characters had decided to live their own life and not obey to her story.

“Why do you have to be such an idiot,” she mumbled under her breath and furrowed her brows as she wrote herself into a new plot hole.

Right as Y/N was about to delete the whole chapter, the door slammed open and she heard grunting. “We’re here!” Luke hollered, and the thought of wine made her giddy, making her leap over the edge of the couch, and rush to the front door only to stop dead in her tracks.

Y/N’s mouth hung open, not because of who the person joining their quarantine group was, but because of what the person was. “A fifth GUY?! You didn’t tell me it’d be a guy!”

“I didn’t think it’d matter!” Luke yelled back.

“There’s already four of you!” She pointed back to the living room hearing loads of ‘hey!’ being shouted back.

“Would you leave him on the streets if you’d known he was a dude?”

“No, of course not!”

“Why are we yelling?”

“I don’t know!”

“I mean, I can leave.” Harry Styles said pointing at the door, not really knowing what to do. He certainly hadn’t expected that sort of greeting. “But I do come bearing gifts.” He lifted a black bag where a clinking of glass could be heard.

“No,” she sighed. “It’s fine... I just… I just miss the company of vaginas.”

He raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “Vaginas?”

“People I can rant to. Honestly, it doesn’t even matter if you have a vagina, as long as we can have a good rant. Especially about the gross things like having all of your dirty socks thrown around the house.” She threw Luke a look that screamed ‘I know you pushed all of them under your bed, and it’s stinking up the whole place.’

Harry shook his head. “Ya not gonna find me leaving my clothes like that. Besides, ‘s disgusting.”

“No,” Luke whined, “come on, man! You’re supposed to be on our side!”

“It’s two against four,” Harry snickered, throwing his hand around Y/N’s shoulder, who gave Luke a smug grin, and it made her mimic the same expression.

“It’s evening out. Maybe you should actually invite some other people to quarantine with us. Say, Harry, is maybe Niall in need of a place to stay?”

Luke rolled his eyes, and shook his head, going into the kitchen and placing the food bags he’d been holding. “I hate you so much.”

Y/N’s smile just widened.

***

“Yes, I’m still stealing your series Irishman.” Y/N zoomed in on her face. “Because now…” she looked up at the ceiling in a manner ‘someone please save me’, “I’m living with FIVE dudes. Yes, FIVE. We have an addition. And if someone doesn’t come and kill me, I will kill them.”

“We’re not that bad!” Michael hollered form out of frame, to which Y/N yelled back, “Yes the fuck you are! Boys are gross. You do realize you’re allowed to have more than one towel. Like you DON’T have to wipe your face with a towel that’s soaked up your ball juice.”

“It’s economy.”

“It’s disgusting! Also.” Y/N turned the camera to Harry who was climbing up the stairs with a cup of coffee in hand. “Say ‘Hi’ to gremlin number five. He’s stolen all of my nail polish.”

He gave a cute wave with an adorable smile, muttering an unintelligible ‘Hello’ as his mouth was stuffed with a piece of bread and a very muffled ‘You don’t even use them.’

“Yes, but that’s not the point. Anyway,” Y/N pointed the camera at herself. “Tune in for an update whenever, as long as I haven’t strangled anyone, and pray to the heavens you don’t see my face in the papers cause the next time you do, it’ll be my mugshot for a quintuple homicide.”

“Is that a threat Y/L/N?” Harry smirked, as Y/N walked past him and took away his cup of coffee.

“No, it’s a promise.” She threw him a wink, leaving the Brit with his mouth open at the woman’s audacity, as she stopped the recording of the TikTok.

“That was my coffee!”

“Not anymore!”

He shook his head, turning back around and going to the kitchen, seeing Y/N perched on one of the stools, neck stretching over to where Ashton was watching a video on his phone, the black liquid in his cup now a creamy beige. Harry smiled. Maybe quarantine wasn’t going to be so bad.

***

Y/N’s head popped from the side of the door, bringing all of their attention to her. “You guys need to record anything right now?”

Luke shook his head, signifying the band was alright before turning to Harry who mimicked him, the tapping of his pen stopping. “Why?”

“Just got a call from Laurence, he said something’s wrong with the ‘Candy Store’ audio from yesterday. Need to rerecord it and send it over. Something about a faulty export or whatever.”

“ ‘S all yours.” Ashton motioned to the recording booth. “Oh, but can I be Heather Duke?”

“And can I be Heather McNamara then?” Luke piped in.

Y/N chuckled. “Not to burst your bubbles, but you do know you won’t be in the final version?”

“No, but we could be in THIS version. It’d be for our private files. And it’d help you.”

“That sounds so wrong.” She grimaced. “How would that help me?” Y/N plopped next to Harry on the floor. “You’re the biggest distractions I’ve ever met.”

Luke scoffed. “How dare you! We offer you our services of being backup singers, and you… you’re such a meanie. You’re such a Heather Chandler!”

“It’s 2020! If Leslie Odom Jr. can play Aaron Burr, then I can play one of the Heathers! Don’t be sexist, Y/N!”

“I never said a dude can’t play a Heather, don’t put words in my mouth. I just said last time we tried to record anything together we ended up playing SIMS for like seven hours, but… come on you two divas, get your asses inside then. But I swear if Laurence or Kevin call because one of you whispered something dirty in the background of MY parts, I will strangle you in your sleep.”

“How little trust do you have in us?”

“Very,” Y/N deadpanned, showing the two men inside, leaving Calum, Harry and Michael to man the production table. “If you mess with anything, your asses will be grass.” She pointed at the three and all of them put their hands up in surrender. “ ‘S bad enough you ruined my single.”

“It’s called giving it flavour,” Calum said through the microphone.

Y/N just responded by sticking her tongue out.

Michael lifted his fingers, counting down from five to one, giving her the cue to start.

“Are we gonna have a problem?” Y/N cocked her head to the side, already immersed in the character of Heather Chandler. “You’ve got a bone to pick? You’ve come so far, why now are you pulling on my dick?”

Harry swallowed hard.

“I’d normally slap your face off, and everyone here could watch,” she slightly motioned with her head to the audience behind the screen, a mockingly sweet smile on her lips. “But I’m feeling nice, here’s some advice, listen up biatch.”

When her hips started moving from side to side to the rhythm of the song, Harry swore he’d never found someone being mean (even though it was mock mean) so hot.

“I like,” Y/N raised her voice before dropping it. “Looking hot, buying stuff they cannot.”

There was no sight of the sweet and bubbly girl Harry had met. This was Queen-B of Westerberg High in flesh. He was transfixed.

“I like drinking hard, maxing dad’s credit card.”

She didn’t need anyone’s credit card to pay for her things, given how she was one of the top paid Broadway singers of their generation, and something in Harry skipped a beat at how confident she looked.

“I like skipping gym, scaring her, screwing him,” Y/N rolled the ‘r’ deeply in her throat, and he had to collect himself before his thoughts went to an unsavoury place.

“I like, killer clothes, kicking nerds in the nose!” With a smile, Y/N pointed at Luke who only rolled his eyes. “If you lack the balls, you can go play dolls, let yer mammy fix you a snack,” she emphasised the ‘K’ after having mockingly sung the bit before. “Or you could come smoke, pound some rum and coke, in ma Porche with the quarterback.”

As weird as it was to have the two boys be her fellow Heathers, Y/N hated to admit it did help her. It reminded her more of what it was like to be on stage before the pandemic had started and the production had to be shut down. And she missed them. All her fellow actors just as much as she missed the rush of getting on stage and losing herself in the role and atmosphere.

“You can join the team –“

“Or you can bitch and moan,” Y/N’s ‘Heathers’ sang in a nasally voice

“You can live the dream.”

“Or you can die alone.”

Harry snuck inside the recording booth, picking up a pair of headphones by the drum set.

“You can fly with eagles,”

“Or if you’d prefer,”

“Keep on testing me,”

“And end up like her!”

And that’s when Harry joined in, reciting the lines of both Veronica and Martha, and when he saw Y/N keeping a palm over her mouth as she tried to keep a mean face while inevitably hiding a smile. The whole of the song, despite how Ashton, Luke and Harry had tried to make Y/N break character (she came close a couple of times), the woman stayed on the line, not missing a beat, and especially enjoying the moment where she looked at Luke, who was about to hit the high note and screaming ‘shut up, Heather!’

Harry couldn’t help the smile splitting apart his face. When Luke had first picked up his call, having known he and the gang were somewhere in the Utah region, he had thought he’d be living with just the guys, and when he found out it was actually Y/N Y/L/N renting the cabin, the girl he’d admired for so long for how brave and utterly unapologetic she was of being herself, Harry had just thought he’d gain a new friend, not have romantic feelings spring up.

And all of it had happened in the span of two days, not even that much. He’d arrived the evening before, had met the woman, and now it was three PM on day two and was already in love.

It was an exhilarating and terrifying feeling all at once. Some studies said it takes men eight seconds to fall in love, which Harry now could pretty much confirm, while it takes women generally fifteen days to fall in love. And he could only hope Y/N might have some feelings for him as well, otherwise, he’d have to scold his heart for falling quickly once again.

***

It was the middle of the night, wind slamming against the windows when Harry got awoken by people talking behind his door. At first, he was ready to fight, thinking immediately that intruders had come into the house, but when he heard a ‘fuck off Michael’ and a ‘you fuck off, you’re gonna ruin this’, he understood everything was fine. And he was just about to lay back down on the soft pillows, but as the saying went – curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back, so he threw off the covers and lightly went to the door, where a bleary Harry appeared on the stairs making Y/N and Michael whip their heads towards him and freeze on the spot.

“What are you two do-“ but he didn’t get to finish the question as the two co-conspirators shushed him.

“You’re either in,” Y/N whispered harshly, “or out. Choose Styles.”

A beat. “What kind of trouble’re we getting’ into?”

The smile which spread on her face was nothing short of wicked. “Revenge,” Y/N hissed.

“Be quieter than a mouse,” she whispered to him, and now the trio moved downstairs.

“Who are we getting revenge on?” Harry spoke as quietly as he could, as they rounded the corner and exited the cabin through the back door. It was colder than he thought, seeing how the wind wasn’t warm at all, and he was grateful he’d fallen asleep in his favourite rainbow cardigan. How Y/N and Michael didn’t even shiver in their barely-there pyjamas he didn’t understand.

“See, Luke here thought it was a good idea to not heed my warning about not messing with my recording.”

Harry’s eyebrows scrunched up. “He didn’t.” He knew Luke hadn’t, he was there the whole time and listened back to what they’d sung with everyone together.

“No, but he did rename a different file with the same name I had for the 'Heathers'' recording, on MY computer, mind you. And well, let’s just say, it was not what anyone wanted to hear.”

Harry had to swallow, as his mind went to unsavoury places, and as Y/N shimmied open the lock of the window to the studio bathroom part of the house, she looked over her shoulder to see his expression. It would seem, despite him being in ‘Dunkirk’ and having been confirmed to play Eric in the live-action ‘The Little Mermaid’ he wasn’t as good of an actor as he thought.

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” she snickered and pulled herself inside the house through the window, Michael handing her a black duffle bag Harry hadn’t first noticed. “It was a conversation I had with my friends while we were all drunk. Some tea, some very personal tea was spilt, and so.” She unzipped the bag slowly and took out a whipped cream can. “I’m going to spill something else.”

Canned cheese was one of the most disgusting things ever created by a human in Y/N’s opinion. So, squeezing nine cans worth of the stuff inside all of Luke’s socks, jean pockets and everywhere else possible was good enough revenge for her.

“Why are we in the studio though?” Harry asked as the trio crept towards the bathroom door and peeked through the open sliver. It was pitch black.

“Because Luke teds to forget his favourite things here,” Michael explained and motioned for them to follow as he checked that the hallway was clear. It was go-time.

Together they all snuck back inside the recording studio, and much like Michael had said – Luke’s favourite jean jacket, a woollen jumper, three pairs of boots and shoes were all scattered around the place. He hadn’t even noticed it while they’d hung out there, but now Harry understood what Y/N was talking about while whining about the boys being messy.

She uncapped the can and squeezed, the artificial smell of cheese wafting through the air, making her almost gag. “That’s for being a bad friend,” she muttered while filling up one shoe. “That’s for making bad jokes.” She filled up another. “And that’s for saying ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ is an overrated song.’

It was hard for Harry to contain the giggles, as he uncapped his own can and started filling up wherever Y/N pointed to. Did he feel bad? Sure. But was it fun to feel like a teenager in a university dorm during a prank war? Abso-fucking-lutely. And it didn’t help that he was desperately falling in love with Y/N with every second they spent together. Like she could’ve asked him to hide Luke’s corpse, and he’d say he’d take the blame for the murder if it came to it.

“Why did we have to sneak around the place like that?” he suddenly asked, brows furrowing in concentration as he squeezed the smelly contents inside the inside pocket of the jacket. “Why couldn’t we have just walked through the house?”

“Because Luke always and I mean always comes to the studio at 3 AM,” Y/N stated.

Harry looked at the clock. It was 2:45 AM already.

“But before that, he goes into the kitchen, makes himself a double espresso, a sandwich and eats it before going into the storage where we keep all of the instruments, which is where he is in right now. Had we snuck through the normal way, he would’ve seen us and stopped this. And that just wouldn’t fly.”

However, it was like Luke had a sixth sense as right at that moment the light flipped on, and like deer in headlights, the trio’s heads shot up and eyes widened.

“What the fuck!” he whispered hand extended in the direction of the already six empty cans on the floor.

Y/N snapped out of the adrenaline induced frozen state and shrugged. “I told you not to mess with the recording.” She put her finger back on the squeezable part. “And you. Didn’t. Listen.”

The cheese squirted out with a splutter, and all of them stood still as the final bits dropped into Luke’s black boot. “And that’s payback.”

With a sway in her hips, Y/N exited the room, leaving the three men to gawk after her.

God was she a hurricane, Harry thought to himself. And he’d never been as happy to be caught right in the eye of it all.

***

The next few days all of them spent lounging around the house, recording a few songs, most of them by Harry seeing as a huge wave of inspiration had hit him, making him write more than one love song. He even asked Y/N somewhat shyly if she could do some of the backing vocals, and he swore the song went from a 3 to a 100 the second he heard her voice weave his lyrics into a symphony.

By that point, they’d been quarantining for a week and a half together, and a heatwave was coming up. The cabin had both an inside and outside pool which they’d all had to learn how to maintain, seeing as no one could come and do it for them, and a jacuzzi tub on the terrace. As much as the boys tried to prove they knew how to keep the places clean, ultimately it was Y/N who saved all of them from chlorine poisoning and algae overgrowth.

So, it was right when she pulled out the pH indicator and said it was good for use when with a scream, Luke rushed forward Y/N, rugby tackling her by the waist and plunged both of them down to the water below.

“You asshole!” She splashed at him, laughing and choking out a bit of water as they resurfaced. “What the fuck is wrong with you!”

“That’s payback for the cheese.”

She went silent for a second, but then shrugged. “Can’t say I didn’t deserve it. But you did deserve the cheese.”

“So,” Luke extended his hand for a shake. “Do we call this even?”

Harry exited the cabin right as both of them completely soaked to the bone jumped out onto the wood floor. He stopped mid-walk if only to control where his eyes went seeing as Y/N’s white shirt clung to her body and well… didn’t leave much for the imagination anymore.

“Do I wanna know what happened here?” He raised a brow.

“Retribution.”

“Though I do gotta say, you have a funny way of getting revenge.” Y/N smirked at Luke, making him squint down at the girl.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she drawled out, a mischievous smile on her lips, “that when I filled your clothes with the cheese, my stuff didn’t get stinky. And yet, from your end… I’m not the only one wet.”

A beat passed.

“God fucking damn it.”

“Hey!” She pointed a finger at him. “We called a truce!”

Luke waved her off. “Yeah yeah, whatever,” but Y/N grabbed Luke’s hand right before he went inside and squeezed it.

“We good?”

He sighed and smiled. “We good, sweetheart.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, gave Harry a quick ‘see ya later’ as well and disappeared through the glass doors.

Harry didn’t know what’d happened to him. He’d always been a helpless romantic, falling in love, and maybe a bit too hard at that, but this time, even without Y/N knowing about his feelings, his heart felt safe.

Sure, the side of her he’d seen was a complete headcase, and she had more energy than a bull with a red flag in front of it, but the utter love exuding from the woman, even while she complained about her four, well five counting him, housemates was palpable in the air. The way she hugged and made sure everyone had whatever they needed, the way she let them know if anyone needed to have a chat, she’d be there to listen, and the small little things of how she always knew what preferences they’d have for their pancakes or breakfast in general, made his heart melt.

“Luke’s a lucky guy.” Harry swallowed before saying that. As much as seeing Y/N be affectionate with everyone, him included, made him feel all fuzzy, a little jealousy monster did bubble up in his stomach when he saw her snuggled next to the lead vocalist of the band. He didn’t have any right to, but no matter how much he tried to repress the green beast, it still lurked somewhere deep in his heart.

“Hm?” Y/N lifted her head where she’d been looking at the water as she squeezed it out of her shirt and up at Harry.

He motioned with his chin to where Luke had disappeared. “He’s a lucky guy to have someone like you.”

“Oh, we’re not together if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I –“ he stammered. “I didn’t mean to offend y-“

But Y/N waved him off. “You’re not the first nor probably the last person to say that. I get it. They asked me one time to surprise their fans at a concert in Connecticut, I think, and when their photographer sent over the pictures, I kinda saw what everyone kept saying, but I’ve never looked at any of them as more than a friend. Best friends, brothers maybe, but nothing more.”

“How’d ya get so close?” Harry enquired, his chest feeling a bit lighter.

Y/N huffed and plopped down to the ground, patting the place beside her which Harry took. “When I first went solo, right after being on ‘Beetlejuice’ I was fucking terrified. Didn’t really know anyone in the music industry like that. Being on Broadway’s different.” She shrugged. “And the award shows are different as well. Like with ‘Tony’s’ or ‘Oliver’ awards it’s you know – musical and theatre geeks. My people. But the first time I went to VMAs I almost shat myself.” She chuckled, and Harry did the same. “Didn’t know anyone at all, was petrified to even find my seat because someone told me I’d have to sit between Lady Gaga and Rihanna, and my heart was not ready for that. Ashton saw me at the edge of the carpet, creeping around the entrance and kinda…” Y/N bit her lip looking for the right words. “I dunno. They kinda took me under their wing, in a sense – if you need a friend in the industry, we’re here, that sort of thing. And ever since then, we’ve been best friends. Luke and I just got the closest because we got stuck in an elevator once for like eight hours once, and well, boredom and thinking you’re gonna die in a four by four-foot box brings people closer.”

Harry almost choked. “Eight hours?”

“Yep.” Y/N popped the ‘p’ and gave him a sarcastic smile. “It was like soooo much fun,” she said sarcastically. “I totally didn’t think the elevator was about to drop from where we were up on like the sixtieth floor, and both of us were gonna get our bones smashed to pieces, and I only had two protein bars, and you know how I get without food,” she stated. He nodded.

“Cranky.”

“Exactly. But.” Y/N chuckled. “We didn’t die. Which’s great, not complaining, and I gained one of my all-time best friends.”

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t die.” Harry gave her a warm smile and nudged her foot with his. “Wouldn’t have gotten the chance to meet you otherwise.”

She nudged his foot back. “ ‘M glad I didn’t die either. And I gotta say – you’ve made this whole quarantine bearable. Sometimes it’s like fighting with four toddlers, and that’s always a futile battle. Happy to have another wrangler with me. Also an accessory to my crimes.”

He inched his hand towards hers, and when Y/N didn’t pull away instead liked her pinkie with his, a warm feeling rushed through him.

“Happy to be of help.”

***

It was two nights later or full two weeks since the six of them had been together when things took a turn.

Y/N’d always been a light sleeper, especially when her life was mainly placed in New York, but now, living in the middle of nowhere, she’d been able to catch up on some sleep. That was when the sound of her door being opened made Y/N shot up in her bed, sheets clutched at her chest in a panic. “What? What’s wrong? What did Calum set on fire?”

“Nothing.” Harry’s eyebrows scrunched up, but he decided not to ask. There was the morning for that. “This might seem weird, but could I uh could I possibly sleep in your room?”

She blinked a couple of times, because her brain was still processing his words and if they were even English, but once they registered, Y/N nodded, pulling back her blanket and scooting over. “C’mere.”

“Again, I’m sorr-“

Y/N shushed him, as Harry climbed in the bed, placing the duvet underneath his arm and twisting to see her, as she mumbled, “less talk, more sleep.”

He hummed in agreement. His eyes were heavy, in fact, they’d become heavy the instant his head had hit Y/N’s pillow, but it was like his heart, the same poor heart that’d had to deal with the newfound emotions for the whole time he’d been there, the same poor heart that didn’t know better and always gave itself away to the person it deemed to be worthy, no matter if in the end it ended up broken, took over the control of his eyes and mouth, and while slamming against Harry’s ribcage, he whispered his confession.

“I really like you… As more than a friend.”

A second passed. He felt Y/N stir as she turned towards him, brow furrowed. “Sorry?”

“I said…” He let out a shaky exhale. “I like you. I fell for you pretty much the second I entered the house and you threatened to throw me out because I was a guy. And then I fell for you when I saw you let loose in the studio. And then once more when I witnessed what your wrath entails.”

Y/N chuckled. “Cheese.”

“Yeah…” He let out a little laugh. “Cheese.”

A gentle palm went to brush away the hair stuck to Y/N’s face and he swore he could just melt as she leaned into his touch. “And then I fell for you when you said yes to singing my song… when you sang the lyrics, I dedicated to you… and every second I fall for you even more… I just… I thought you should know…”

“Well, I can only hope that you’ll take this as a compliment then, when I say I kinda like you too, Styles,” she mumbled snuggling deeper into her pillow. “Though I didn’t think I was your type.”

“What’s my type then?” he mumbled back, letting his arms wrap around Y/N’s waist when she shuffled closer. Not only was he now fully in heaven because he was covered by the softest duvet in the world, head resting against a literal cloud, but also because his nostrils were invaded by the gentlest of smells, and the body against his was the warmest of comforts.

“Well, not girls like me.”

“You mean talented, beyond funny and absolutely breath-taking?”

“Introverted, house hermits who don’t wash their hair unless they have to go somewhere with a perchance of self-destructive behaviour. Unintentional that is.”

Harry’s eyebrows lifted. “Would’ve never taken you for an introvert.”

“Mmmh,” Y/N sighed, feeling his fingers skim her skin. “That’s because I’ve known those guys for years, and they’re like my brothers. Couldn’t be uncomfortable even if I tried with them. We’ve seen too much of each other. But I’m definitely an introvert. Almost had a panic attack the first time I had to make my own doctor’s appointment.”

“You didn’t seem shy with me.”

“That’s because for some weird reason I… I didn’t feel awkward around you. And I mean, you did bring wine.”

She could feel Harry’s chest rumble as he laughed. “Well, I hope it helped with inspiration.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” she huffed, but opened her bleary eyes and were met by Harry’s green already staring back. She couldn’t contain the giggle, and it only grew in power as he chuckled himself, making her bury her head in his chest.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she shook her head. “Just never thought I’d date someone from 1D.”

“Are we below you or something?” There was no trace of malice and hurt in his voice. He knew Y/N wasn’t like that.

“No, ‘s just my boy band phase was ‘Good Charlotte’, ‘Panic at the D!sco,’ ‘My Chem’ and the sort.”

“So, you weren’t fainting while listening to ‘You Don’t Know You’re Beautiful’?” Harry mumbled in Y/N’s hair, sleep slowly overtaking him.

She shook her head. “Sorry, no. Panties definitely weren’t dropping then.”

“Are they now?”

“According to ‘Watermelon Sugar’ you’re the one pulling all of ‘em off.”

“Damn. Guess it’ll have to be my new challenge.”

Y/N’s eyebrows scrunched up as she looked at him before promptly falling asleep. “Making my panties drop?”

“Yep. But this time because of me, not Gerard Way.”

“Bold of you to assume it was just Gerard Way. I’m a slut for all of those wizard dads.”

By the time she slurred out the last sentence both of them had drifted off into a peaceful slumber.

***

“They were right!” Harry shouted jumping up in the bed, startling Y/N awake once more as if something was breaking down on their heads with how urgently he jolted. “It does take women two weeks to fall in love and men 8 seconds.”

A pillow met his face. “Fall back asleep.”

He leaned over her still horizontal form, a smug smile on his face. “Are you gonna make a TikTok about it?”

“Probably ‘bout how I murdered the boyfriend I was with for three hours if he doesn’t let me sleep.”

He didn’t argue. With a smile on his face, Harry drifted off once more. Who knew that getting stuck in a hotel somewhere in Utah would lead him to the love of his life?

Tags (crossed out wouldn’t take):

Forever tags: @lumelgy @palaiasaurus64 @supernaturalbaesduh @breezy1415 @crazy--me @thatawkwardlittlefangirl @sea040561 @staryeyedgirl @deathbyarabbit @s-c-a-r-e-d-po-t-t-e-r @reblogger-not-a-blogger @m-a-t-91 @dalilx @i-need-a-hero-i-need-a-loki @maladaptive-ninja-returns @averyrogers83 @in-the-end-im-still-trash @gallifreyansass @dewy-biitch @avxgers @unlikelygalaxygiver @magicwithaknife @ollyoxenfrees @bnhvrdy @tvwhoresblog @celebsimagines @thatkindofgurl @sj-thefan @teenwolflover28 @lestersglitterglue @im-squished

A/N: So... I know I’ve been gone for quite a while, but that’s because I have a job now (I’m trying to get a different one that actually would involve my degree, because this one is absolutely killing me), so please be understanding with the spare posting. I still love writing fics, and as evident, I’m kina branching out into other fandoms :D

There’s a lot of things going on in my life, so if you wanna follow me you can do that on Instagram @dinnusa or @read_with_dee or on my blog dinnusa.wordpress.com :) I also have a TikTok @dinmasters

P.S. feedback is always appreciated :)

P.S.S. If you wanna be tagged please drop a message :) or if you want to be removed/ changed to a different tag list please also message me :)

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euronymous-files · 4 years ago

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translated from Norwegian

"He came into my life at a time when I had just started listening to extreme and loud music. I sat at home in Råde and listened to local radio from Oslo. [...]

Frode Øien had a program where he invited the then unknown band Mayhem to visit because they had recorded a new demo tape. They were just incredibly mysterious and used pseudonyms and stuff, and I mean remember they took over the whole radio broadcast. To me, it sounded like Frode was set aside as host and the band took over for a couple of hours. It was absolutely magical. They played their own music, but not least they played lots of other things that were completely unknown, Hellhammer, Bathory, lots of early black metal and other extreme things. They obviously had great insight into what was going on and were by definition the only Norwegian band that existed in all these genres at once. They were the starting point for everything you could call extreme metal. It all starts with Mayhem."

Anders tells of how he became "insanely fascinated". [...] “The following week, a guy who was a competition winner appeared and said he was the brother of someone in the band. His name was Aarseth, and that led to me simply browsing the telephone directory, and I found only one Aarseth family in Ski. I took the chance and called and hit right on Øystein. That conversation must have lasted an hour or two. He met someone who was open to the same things as him, and then he was like a wandering library and very enthusiastic. His fervent commitment was something you felt right away, something he literally lived for. He gave my whole musical approach a kind of passion I had never experienced before.” To the young Anders, four years older Øystein Aarseth appeared as a kind of natural messenger of all the new things that were about to happen, and he swallowed everything he was told. He took in all the tips Øystein shared and received a lot of music that engulfed him, first from Øystein, then also from other bands.

"In the 80's it was not so common to have contact with people in other countries. If it were not unknown, getting to know people abroad was much more difficult than it is today. The only method was letter writing, and this whole underground scene was very much based on that. We wrote to each other and attached leaflets and fanzines and other things. You picked up the things you had on tape and changed the recording. Øystein introduced all this to me. I also went to practice with Mayhem. Back then I was 13 and a half years old, and got a first-hand impression of how the music sounded in your face in the rehearsal room. It made me completely obsessed that I should also start such a band. I had finally found my thing. This was very early in the development of black metal. We who came in right away make up a small but significant group of people. Among those I became acquainted with at that time are or were virtually all members of the most famous and prominent bands. Øystein had an incredibly central role as a source of inspiration and door opener for how to engage with music on the side of the industry, to be independent, in your own world."

Were there other aspects of him than the purely musical that inspired you? The energy, the courage, the talent? "What I took to myself very early was to sacrifice everything for this here. If you wanted to get somewhere with the music, you had to choose it over all other possible leisure activities and side tracks you could end up on, to only care about this music and abandon absolutely everything else. This was something he introduced as an opportunity. Many people did sports and had boyfriend projects and all sorts of things, social things that take a lot of time and resources, but here it was an alternative race to unfold in which I really took to. I had lived in a block and terraced house environment until I was ten years old and moved to a farm. I went from a life where people rang the doorbell all the time to being socially isolated. Now I got a platform that made it possible to break out."

Were you and Øystein friends or is there another way to describe their relationship? "I was a fanboy in the beginning. He got really mad when I copied everything he did. Then he was clear that this is not the way to do it. He was very careful about it. I was very young, and I was looking for band members myself in Fredrikstad and Østfold. When I started Cadaver, there was more mutual respect and a more collegial friendship. Things slipped a bit for him in '92 -'93. In the summer of '93, a few months before he died, he was very much looking for old friends. It was clear that he had been going through a period with a lot of focus on other things, but now he was looking up old friends to play the new Mayhem things that he had been working on for so long. I was with him several times during this time and felt that we had a friendship that was more mature. I had my band, had released an album and been on tour, and now Øystein was finally facing a breakthrough with the album he had talked about releasing for six or seven years. That he was killed became even more sad because of it. He knew he had made something very significant and very good, but never saw it come out."

[...]

"I was in a way close to the events", Anders says. "I also knew Pelle and was several times in the house where they lived in Kråkstad. When such things happen, you are shocked and think about what you could have done differently. But that Øystein did as he did was probably most related to his penchant for myth-making and image-building. He took it too far of course, but his way of thinking about things was that everything could be used for what it is worth in a PR context. I think it would have been perfectly fine if not everything that happened, it would not have made any difference. I remember hearing about him doing it, but not thinking much about it. He probably had an idea that this was so extreme that he had to do something about it. That might say something about how he liked to see things from above. He did not consider himself a direct part of it and did not see that there was anything wrong with it. I think he saw it in a kind of bird's eye view, but it's very difficult to say."

Where do you think Øystein would have been today if he had not been killed? "It's an exciting thing. We who knew him wonder if he had not grown tired of having to move closer to the regular music industry. In a way, he was a bit about to do it himself with his label, and also realized he could not run distribution on his own. I was part of his distribution. It worked so that he sent ten copies of a record to everyone he knew and trusted. All sold nine and sent money to him, and were allowed to keep one themselves. Those records are probably worth 10,000 kroner today. He signed several bands at the end, and the same day he died, Enslaved signed a contract with him. He had other things going on too, so I'm not sure where he ended up." "However, there was a lot going on around him that could have had an unfortunate effect", Anders believes. If he had not been killed by Varg Vikernes, or "The Count", it would probably have been rolled up that he was nearby when Holmenkollen chapel burned. "I do not know if he had been able to sit in jail. He was probably tougher in words than in reality. But what is mainly wrong with the myth of black metal and Øystein was that he created something with knowledge and will to succeed, as it was afterwards. It was rather the opposite. His ideas were to have this as a non-commercial business. You should deserve to hear this music. Being a listener in itself required a number of criteria. If it was up to him, as he told it, the whole scene would be a kind of lodge, and if you were first inside you would hear what others did not hear. But it was going to go away anyway, because it got too big." "Then he did not experience the internet, but it would have been something for him. Because he had so many extreme political ideas, the internet as it has been very much appealed to him. For example, he would be amazed at how widespread conspiracy theories have become. He was interested in extreme political directions, in Pol Pot and communism. I think he too had ended up in a more experimental musical direction. He was an extremist in everything he did and did it full on, and he probably still wanted to hunt for more and more extreme expressions."

[...] What is the best thing Øystein did? " "Freezing Moon". What I find very musically exciting is that it contains so few notes. The atonal and asymmetrical in the arrangement gives an introduction to something completely different than rock. It's the atmospheric, and the movements as we call it, and the riffs that are there. Øystein was concerned with throwing everything away and starting all over again, and it was such a song. It will always be a pillar in the Mayhem catalog and in the development of black metal."

read the full interview (in Norwegian) here

#euronymous #oystein aarseth #mayhem #black metal #files #archive #interview #anders odden #cadaver #satyricon

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passionate-reply · 4 years ago

Video

youtube

This week on Great Albums: a deeper dive into one of the most underrated early synth-pop acts. You’ve heard “Fade to Grey” by now, I’m sure, but this record is weirder and wilder than you might imagine! Find out more by watching the video or reading the transcript below the break.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be discussing one of the first opening salvos of the New Romantic movement: the 1980 self-titled debut album by Visage. You could be forgiven for assuming that Visage was the alias of a single person, presumably the dapper fellow all over their brand, but Visage were, indeed, a group!

That “face of the band” figure was Steve Strange, who was less of a musician and more of a tastemaker and aesthete, and the club promoter for London’s famous nightclub, The Blitz. The Blitz’s DJ, Rusty Egan, was also a percussionist, and had previously played in the punk band Rich Kids, where he became acquainted with Midge Ure. Famous for his many connections and skill at leveraging them, Egan put together a sort of dream team out of the many musicians he knew at the time: Ure, who’d been orphaned by the dissolution of Rich Kids, Billy Currie, one-time synthesist of Ultravox before their group split apart, and several members of Buzzcocks alumnus Howard Devoto’s band Magazine. A bit of a motley crew, for sure...but one can’t argue with the success Visage would achieve.

Music: “Fade to Grey”

“Fade to Grey” is surely one of the most iconic songs of early 80s synth-pop, and its music video pushed forth a bold new aesthetic for the new decade: sophisticated, futuristic, androgynous. While Steve Strange would consistently reject the “New Romantic” label for his own work, his influence on the scene was undeniable. “Fade to Grey” strikes a balance between being debonair and mysterious, with its ghostly vocal reverb, and being a straight-up club classic, with an absolutely massive synth riff. The inclusion of a French-language translation of the main lyrics gives it a lot of European panache, and may well have been one of the main factors propelling it to international success--“Fade to Grey” was actually an even bigger hit in markets like France and Germany than in Visage’s native UK. That aside, though, as is so often the case with these famous 80s songs, the rest of this album is not to be missed! If you’re looking for another song with a bit of a similar vibe to their famous hit, I think you can’t go wrong with its opening track and final single, also titled “Visage.”

Music: “Visage”

There’s something really satisfying about a track, artist, AND album all having the same name--the triple threat! Still, I think this album’s title track stands well enough on its own, with a soaring refrain that’s quite easy to sing along to. While this album doesn’t get quite as “baroque” as Ultravox would, on tracks like their famous hit “Vienna,” the dry piano used throughout this track really classes the place up. Thematically, the title track seems to assert the importance of fashion and style, as well as the importance of innovating in those fields--“New styles, new shapes, new modes.” While lots of electronic acts were fixated on the future, Visage were one of the first to center aesthetics to such a dramatic degree. Plenty of people, both at the time and more recently, would criticize New Romantic acts of the MTV era for being “style over substance,” as though their embrace of the parallel art form of fashion inherently made their music worse. I’ve never understood that criticism myself, since it’s perfectly possible to care about, or excel at, more than one creative pursuit at once. At any rate, the title track’s focus on novelty contrasts quite strikingly with the preceding single, “Mind of a Toy.”

Music: “Mind of a Toy”

“Mind of a Toy” is a surprisingly high-concept song in comparison to the album’s other singles, narrating the thoughts of a plaything that’s lost its lustre, and has been discarded in favour of newer and better diversions. It feels like a pointed criticism of the consumerist obsession with novelty, and a counterpoint to the apparent thesis of the title track. It’s perhaps also a sort of critique of the way popular music disposes of so many of its once-loved idols--who, like puppets, are often controlled by unseen outside forces. You’ll also find several tracks that push into more experimental territory on the album, to a degree that may be surprising if you’re only familiar with the big hit. The eerie, cinematic instrumental “The Steps” is perhaps the most striking example, and closing the album on this note is certainly a bold decision!

Music: “The Steps”

The album’s cover features Steve Strange dancing with a woman, in a starkly lit, greyscale composition that recalls early photography. In the background, we can see the shadows of several instrumental musicians--perhaps a nod to the composition of the band itself, in which the composers and instrumentalists happily hid behind the facade of Strange’s attention-grabbing persona. What’s perhaps most interesting about it is the fact that despite having a dance partner, Strange’s attention seems to be focused entirely on us, the viewers. He seems to meet our gaze, with a vigour and intensity that borders on confrontational.

Before “New Romantic” took such a strong hold as the term for this movement, one of the contenders for its name was “peacock punk.” I’ve always liked the way that alternative phrase communicates the brash, almost macho nature of its seemingly fey male frontmen, whose gender-bending style was often rooted in self-confidence that bordered on bravado. I think Steve Strange’s fixed gaze on the cover of this album embodies this principle of “peacocking,” and lavishing attention on one’s personal aesthetic in a daring, perhaps even aggressively counter-cultural manner. While a lot of this music, and its associated visual culture, has been dismissed as some sort of yuppie frippery, it takes some serious balls to transgress ideas about gender as much as the New Romantics did, and I’d say it’s pretty damn punk.

This album is, of course, self-titled, which I suppose could be seen as a sort of throwaway non-decision. But I think the use of “Visage” for the title calls attention to the idea their name represents. A “visage” is, literally, a face, but the connotation of the word is certainly a bit loftier and more refined than that. A visage is less likely to be an everyday face, and more likely to be a metaphorical or symbolic “face”--a front for something, a representation of some greater idea. While Strange and company couldn’t see the future, they of course ended up being the representative front for the coming wave of stylish, synthesiser-driven pop, even if they weren’t at the crest of it for too long.

After their debut, Visage would go on to release one more LP with their original line-up, 1982’s The Anvil. Less experimental, and more indebted to disco and dance music, The Anvil would produce two more charting singles, “Night Train” and “The Damned Don’t Cry,” though neither of them would reach the same heights of international success as “Fade to Grey.”

Music: “Night Train”

Later in the 1980s, Billy Currie and Midge Ure would become increasingly committed to their work with the re-formed Ultravox, and they left Steve Strange and Rusty Egan to continue the Visage project on their own. The two of them released one more album under the Visage name in 1984, but when that was panned, they went back to running the Blitz Club together.

In 2013, Steve Strange decided to return to making music, and revive the “Visage” name. While his untimely death in 2015 would cut this era short, Strange released one full album, and recorded enough material for a followup that it could be released posthumously. Though Strange is no longer with us, Rusty Egan has become quite keen on the idea of a Visage reunion of some sort in the past year or two, possibly involving Midge Ure, Billy Currie, and/or fellow New Romantic heartthrob Zaine Griff, who I think could fill Strange’s shoes better than just about anybody. It sounds quite promising, so we’ll have to stay tuned.

My favourite track from this album is “Tar,” which was actually released ahead of the album, in 1979, but failed to attract much notice. It was love at first listen for me, though--I love the way the chorus rises so triumphantly, only to fall back down into its screwy, glitchy synth hook. Besides that abrasive touch, the theme of the song is also a bit out there: it’s a somewhat patronizing number all about the repulsiveness of cigarette smoking. Perhaps now that fewer people are smokers, this premise will come across as less alienating than it did at the time! That’s all I’ve got for today, thanks for listening.

Outro: “Tar”

#music #visage #steve strange #album review #album reviews #great albums

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neo-shitty · 3 years ago

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toffee!

ah yeah, i think quarentine has given people some opportunity to actually just sit with the person they are, rather than be rushing around for the person they want to become. its good you got smth good out of isolation! ah thats great! hope you had fun and ur partner in crime speeds back home so you can get out more hehe.

ah yeah ty, good suggestions.

hmm good point, i was sort of putting it separate to the whole not-sexualising thing, but yeah. mmm yeah i totally agree, some of the enhypen fics/imagines *shudder* and even reading innie stuff is just a bit *icky* cos everyone still thinks of him as our agi ppang. yeah def would be good but sadly this just seems to be the world we live in. :(

ah yes the holy masterlist (not sarc) i have actually read in the rain and gladius maximus before, but ill go look for in class! oooh thats good! character development lol. hmmmm yes champagne problems was the angst to end all angst, that shit hurt. it was actually one of the first of your fics i read and i recall almost crying over the whole thing, it was so heartbreaking, i can see how it almost made you want to drop angst. good that youve allowed yourself some lee-way tho :)

hehe thats so cool. okay here we go, ill try not to be mortally offended (/hj)

cheese - yes same, i liked it but that was all there was, it wasnt a super standout track. it was rlly underwhelming for me but some of the hook is super catchy so there is Redemption (tm) in store for cheese maybe

thunderous - mmm, yeah at first i totally agreed, i think they suffer from too much good music syndrome, that all their other tracks are such fucking bops its hard to stay at that level of perfection. the choreo was beautiful tho and tbh, the track has grown on me since ive been watching all the vids abt it. its my brothers favourite track

domino - YES GODAMMIT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE TITLE TRACK. the raps, the vocals, the vibes, the fucking domino sound in the back? i would have streamed that shit on repeat. but tbh, as good as it is, it doesnt have that sort of grandness/oomph that skz seems to like in their title tracks so i can see why they chose thunderous (tho domino would have been so good) *sigh*

ssick - yeah same, not my fave track by a long mile, the crowd cheering was a ?strange? choice and the chorus was a bit bare/empty, plus like i mentioned earlier, it was kinda funny to me for some reason but ill still play it if im playing thru the whole album

the view - ahh one of those not like other girls (/j) i honestly think its just a good party song, just a bop to play in the background when nobodys rlly paying much attention. its pretty generic pop music but catchy

sorry, i love you - hehe yeah i thought it was going to be sadder as well, but i rlly loved the fact that they all just got to sing, which almost never happens, i dont think ive heard felix sing for a long time, so i enjoyed it. wasnt rlly a standout track but i just casually like it. looking forward to the fic haha

silent cry - this song i swear, some bits are rlly good and then others are just? why?? it does sound like a dance song tho idk. definitely not one of my faves either

secret secret - YES its so good! its such a chill song and i love their vocals in it. the combination of lo-fi/fake strings backup stuff and their heavenly vocals just makes it *chefs kiss* im listening to it rn and just... its so beautiful. it gives me pumped up another day vibes ya know? like my pace is edgy get cool, this one is energetic another day i feel like. overall i love it

STAR LOST - ah thats so cool! i didnt know that! on first listen this song had a similar vibe to secret secret but then the beat came in and ahh its such a good song. i can totally imagine them putting this song to a concert footage vid, this song is so sweet.

red lights - LMAO YES ITS SO AWKWARD WHY DOES IT GO ON FOR SO LONG ah thats good! yeah good point, its quite intense hehe. but that is my fave trope and this is lowkey my favourite track on the album so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ just the combination of hyunjins and chans voices, the backing music, the lyrics ahh red lights my beloved

surfin’ - yes lmao its always a shock, i feel like they should have put gone away in between them, but its such a fun cute song, i cant get rlly mad. yeah, as an aussie i think im contractually obligated to like beaches lol. sand im not such a fan of, but my familys rlly into fishing and my brother loves bodyboarding so we stay at a beach house at least twice a year and we live like 5 mins from 3 different beaches (hehe all aussie cities are on the coast lol) so thats cool. do you like beaches?

gone away - ah gone away my beloved, i love this song sm, its just so pure and showcases their vocals and lyrics so well. yes the pitch change is very out of the blue, i feel liek they went directly from seungmins soft vocals to hans powerful ones which was an interesting choice, but hey, im not complaining

wolfgang - YES IKR ah im so happy he got to be included in that era and song. yeah its such a full on song i cant rlly listen to it if im in a quiet mood but its very motivating :)

hehe mood, i hope they do! ahhh no rest, but at least you wont have to pull a blink and wait a year for any word from the group lol. im not rlly into nct but im excited for them! ah hopefully youll be able to sneak some rest into that chaotic schedule, with enhypen (idk if u stan but yeah) squeezed into it haha

<3 w.a. 🐺

i wheezed at partner in crime, it reminded me of smth. i have a lee know fic in the drafts that i wrote 'in honor' of him (and his departure-ish). i'll tag you when i finish it, if you want. it's a rather hilarious one.

oh my god. based on my experience on the collabs i've joined before, writing explicit shit for '01 & '02 is not accepted (nct's maknaes) but with enha's hyung line '01 & '02 somehow it's okay? i do a double take every time i see fics like those i mean, technically, it's legal but still what the fuck. maybe it's just not for me at the moment. not at us venting our frustration about this. it's just something that's so accepted here that i am (in all honesty) slightly uncomfortable about. but oh well. that's kpop writerblr for you.

man i could've linked all the fics in the ask instead so you wouldn't have to go looking for them! i think i saw you like in class the other day (the fic i renamed into sharp-tongued, god it took me a while to remember the new title). describing champagne problems as an angst to end all angst is one way to put what i was feeling back in december. it just hurt to write and admit?? if that ever happened to me i would prolly cry :d

okay back to the album talk! i love how you answered with more thoughts. i love exchanges like these! i am a victim of the cheese hook and it's now one of my favorite tracks in the album. PLS, TOO MUCH GOOD MUSIC SYNDROME. that's on our self-producing kings 😌💅 also, your brother has taste! as i am typing this, domino's currently playing in my head and i realized that too, that it doesn't have that 'vibe' of a skz title track. honestly, this could be a title track of another group. ssick is starting to grown on me because i found the beats cool kdjsk not the not like other girls 😭 the view is the generic pop that i don't like but i get why a lot of people enjoy it. sorry i love you scratches a certain itch that i find myself singing the first few lines every time i remember it. i too would want to hear felix sing more!

> a mini junction on the album talk bc i got side tracked. on that topic, i want skz to switch positions at some point like i know those allrounders are capable of doing so. specifically, i want to hear seungmin rap!!!! (yk in the recent weekly idol he talked faster than changbin in a challenge and changbin is like the fastest rapper in kpop that's active atm if im not mistaken. my dandy boy has some potential and i want it UNLEASHED.)

back to album talk. silent cry is basically sad music to twerk to. secret secret is definitely one of my favorite tracks :( i loved how you compared the tracks HAJSAH i burst out laughing bc yk what, you're right! i want to make a star lost edit of skz but i simply do not have the time i want to cry. i love the song so much. ok, my dreaded track, red lights. idt i have played the track since we last talked. my friend sent me the lyrics tho and i'm itching to write a twisted au out of it. idk if you're comfortable with yandere but somewhere along those themes. the obsessive type of love that's sweet at first but turns rotten. IMAGINE IF THEY PUT GONE AWAY BETWEEN ASHJA it's like going from 50 shades to the notebook.

i was about to ask if you lived near the coast and you literally mentions it here god im so stupid. yes i LOOOOOOOOOVE beaches so much. living in an archipelago is fun :( i live in a part of the country that's more island than city so every time i want some vitamin sea it's accessible. i heard the waves in australia are great :( anYWHOOO gone away :(( every time it plays im compelled to skip it because it makes me sAD AND NOWADAYS I DONT HAVE THE TIME TO BE SAD. contrary to you, i dislike my quiet moods because i tend to overthink a lot.

i have this little analogy about how there are stays that enjoy songs the generic pop + mellow songs and then there are other stays that enjoy the noisy tracks. in my mind, it's like a perfect balance that makes me feel like all the tracks are loved in the end. just by different people.

PULL A BLINK. bro i fucking hate yg entertainment. they have the biggest kpop girl group LOCKED in their basement when they could be (and i mean this in the most business-like way not morally) milking money of the quad. they're yg's biggest hope at not being bankrupt atm so it's a damn fucking mystery to me as to how they aren't doing anything. (jk i just realized lisa solo album soon, but i still need a ot4 cb hELLO)

i stopped looking forward to the teasers. rest > kpop boys. i don't want to sound like a cult member but have you tried checking out nct? are they just not your thing? (i get it tho, that's one hard group to get into). and yes i do stan enhypen!

wow i love how long these asks are! they're like online penpals. but i also want to ask about you! how have you been lately? are you feeling okay both mentally and physically? how's the weather there? do you have anything that you want to talk about? maybe an interesting book you read? feel free to bring up anything you want to share! i'm getting conscious about talking about myself HAJHSJ

and yet another long answer B) i am sooo sorry T___T should these ask exchanges feel draining to you, feel free to stop sending them in AAAA

#toff.asks #wild anon 🐺

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dustedmagazine · 4 years ago

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Ian Mathers’ 2020: We’re stuck inside our own machines

I’ve had a song I loved in high school and haven’t thought much about since stuck in my head. The song “Apparitions” by the Matthew Good Band is a fine example of the alt rock of the late 90s; if you grew up then but somewhere down in the states (or elsewhere) instead of my southern Ontario you may well have your regional equivalents, and like this one they may not resonate terribly strongly outside of their time and place. It popped back into my head after a long time recently and of course 2020 has changed it a little. A song that as a teen I felt keenly as about loneliness (albeit also about how technology can feed into that) of course now plays on my nerves as another small piece of art about the way that most of us (those scared and/or responsible anyway) have only that relatively narrow, technologically mediated connection to the people we love. All of us, artists and listeners alike, are trying to fit our feelings and art and selves down these little connections, with some success.

On a personal level, 2020 wound up being stressful in ways we couldn’t have predicted even after the pandemic hit. In circumstances that could have seen governments on this continent support those unable to work (and those who shouldn’t have to), support those workers who are truly essential, support workers and renters and even landlords and small businesses, instead we got a near-total abeyance of those governments using the resources we provide them with to save any of us. On a personal level my wife and I were lucky enough to be able to work from home (not that it didn’t come with its own forms of stress, and now that I’m off until January I have several work/stress-related illnesses to recover from) but still saw friends and loved ones lose good, used-to-be-sustainable livings overnight, saw family businesses succumb to a near-total absence of effective government support after months of trying to keep above water, etc.

It is probably no surprise that this is not a situation conducive to listening to music, let alone writing about it; I have deliberately and happily kept busy on behind the scenes stuff at Dusted that I could still manage but looking, at the end of the year, at the amount I managed to actually create is demoralizing if not at all shocking. I’m not sure I think next year will be ‘better’ in many important ways, although at our job there is a growing feeling among coworkers that next year has to have some work/life balance because 2020 was, maybe more than anything else, unsustainable.

That’s not to say I didn’t spend a lot of time and emotion on music this year, and if nothing else constant sleep deprivation, stress, and panic meant I was probably open to being deeply moved by all sorts of art even more than normally (it’s gotten to the point where I can’t even read a sad or moving twitter thread out loud to my wife without getting teary, which is kind of… nice?). Funnily enough the band that did the most to keep me sane didn’t really put out anything in 2020. Personal favorite, Low, instead started, in early April, getting on Instagram with something they called on whim “It’s Friday I’m in Low.” With one brief break they have now done by my count at least 35 shows (catalogued here, by the way), every Friday at about 4 my time.

Admittedly it’s easier for Low to pull this off than some bands, since the 2/3 of the trio that sing are a married couple (they’ve had a couple of socially-distanced backyard shows with bassist Steve Garrington, but he’s mostly been isolating elsewhere). These shows have seen the band’s Alan Sparhawk take a mid-set break to do follow-up phone interviews with the acts featured in the COVID-curtailed touring bands series Vansplainingthat they started on YouTube, or just to give a tour round their vegetable garden and talk tips. It’s seen Alan and Mimi Parker draw on their impressive, 25+ year body of work (averaging 4-5 songs a set, I don’t think they’ve repeated themselves yet) and talk a bit between songs about pandemics, politics, song choices, and whether Alan should grab his bike helmet this time.

They’re not the only musicians out there speaking love and sanity (and playing music) into the strange digital interzone filled with hate and disinformation where we’ve all been forced to gather while locked down, but they were and the most consistent and steady signal being emitted each week. No matter how tired I was from work or what new symptoms I’d developed or what horrific thing I read into the news, even if I had to take an emergency nap while it was actually airing, every Friday the show was there. Once things do return to something more like normal, it’s one of the few things I’ll unambiguously miss about this weird-ass year.

So if that makes an argument for Low as my band of the year (admittedly again… it’s not like Double Negative has aged poorly, either), that does a disservice to those 2020 records I did connect with; even if there are still literally dozens I have to go through, many of which I expect to love, my top picks this year (if as unrankable by me as always) hit me as hard as any top pick in recent years did. So here I present a quick and informal top 5, which the rest of my top 20 following in alphabetical order. Here’s hoping for more time and space in 2021 for music, and even more than that, for more support for those who need it from those who could have been providing it all this time. (The Matthew Good Band, incidentally, always did best with their ballads. “Strange Days” is another I’ve had in my head these days; the image of moving “backwards, into a wall of fire” has stuck with me since the 90s and it’s never felt more grimly appropriate.)

Greet Death — New Hell

New Hell by Greet Death

This one is, in some sense, cheating; it came out November 2019. But that just means it’s the latest winner of my personal Torres Prize for Ian Being Late to the Party (so named because becoming slightly obsessed with Torres’ Sprinter just after I sent in my 2015 list was the first time I noticed that one of my favorite records of each year tends to get picked up by me just after I call it quits on the year, no matter how long I try to wait). This very doom and gloom slowcore/metal/(whatever, just know it’s heavy) trio at first felt very much like my beloved Cloakroom (whose Time Well has also won a Torres Prize) but sure enough nuances revealed themselves. Back in February it felt almost a little too negative, but then the rest of 2020 happened. And the extended burns of “You’re Gonna Hate What You’ve Done” and the title track remain searing.

Holy Fuck — Deleter

youtube

Probably the record I’ve been trying to write about the longest in 2020, and the one I’m most disappointed in myself that I just couldn’t get the requisite paragraphs together. It’s a wonderful effort from the consistently great Toronto resolutely human-created (and —mediated) dance music quartet, one that both feels like a summation of everything they do well, and with the addition of some outside voices (including strong turns from the singers of both Hot Chip and Liars) a step forward at the same time.

Spanish Love Songs — Brave Faces Everyone

Brave Faces Everyone by Spanish Love Songs

As the year got worse, this roar of defiance only got more crucial for me to hear every so often; I was a big enough fan of it, even after writing it up for Dusted, that when they solicited fan footage for a subsequent music video you may just be able to get a glimpse of me in it. (I’m the one in a “No Tories” t-shirt.) My punk rock-loving twin brother was the one who introduced me to Spanish Love Songs and we were supposed to spend an evening in June screaming along to them live in a packed, sweaty room. I need that in my life again.

Julianna Barwick — Healing Is a Miracle

Healing Is A Miracle by Julianna Barwick

It’s a sign of what 2020 has been like here that even just this album title leaves bruises, and while I privately worried Barwick would have a hard time following up 2016’s sublime Will (probably my favorite record that year), it seems that continuing to take whatever downtime she needs to keep focusing and refining her particular muse has once again yielded amazing results. Anyone who thinks they know what a Barwick track sounds like should really check out, say, “Flowers”, but much of this record absolutely sounds like Barwick, just even better than before. She also boasted my wife and I's favorite streaming concert of 2020, an absolutely gorgeous rendition of this album with Mary Lattimore showing up.

Phoebe Bridgers — Punisher

Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers

I joked on Twitter recently that I have far too nice a dad (and far too good a relationship with him) to be as obsessed as I am with Phoebe Bridgers’ “Kyoto”, but here we are. Like most of her generation, Bridgers’ social media presence ranges from shit-posting to inscrutable, but even though things are often just as hard to figure out in her beautiful songs (as they often are in life), there’s an emotional clarity to them that can just grab you deep down. Couple that with seriously impressive songcraft and the progress from her already astounding debut Stranger in the Alps and more than anyone else in 2020 I’m excited to see just where the hell Phoebe Bridgers is going to go, because it feels like she’s talented and hardworking enough to go just about anywhere and drag a lot of our hearts with her.

Other Favorites

Aidan Baker & Gareth Davis — Invisible Cities II

Anastasia Minster — Father

Deftones — Ohms

Hum — Inlet

Kelly Lee Owens — Inner Song

Mesarthim — The Degenerate Era

Perfume Genius — Set My Heart On Fire Immediately

Protomartyr — Ultimate Success Today

Rachel Kiel — Dream Logic

The Ridiculous Trio — The Ridiculous Trio Plays the Stooges

Sam Amidon — Sam Amidon

Shabason, Krgovich & Harris — Philadelphia

Stars Like Fleas — DWARS Session: Live on Radio VPRO

Well Yells — We Mirror the Dead

Yves Tumour — Heaven to a Tortured Mind

Five Reissues/Compilations/etc.

Aix Em Klemm — Aix Em Klemm

Bardo Pond — Adrop/Circuit VIII

Charles Curtis — Performances & Recordings 1998-2018

Coil — Musick to Play in the Dark

Hot Chip — LateNightTales

Ian Mathers

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radioprune · 3 years ago

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6, 36, 59, 60! <3

thanks gia!!

6. which genres of music do you tend to like the best? definitely rock n roll which i imagine is obvious by now lol but i also think i'm pretty amenable to anything. i like modern rock too, indie/alt, some punk if it's not too intense bc i am something of a wimp when it comes to like. screaming in music. i like r&b and hip hop and country if it's good, you know, but i guess rock is the genre where i need less discernment to like something

36. what are some songs whose lyrics you relate to? when i get in a mood like i have been lately it seems like every song is about my life lmao - speaking of, i listened to rubber soul yesterday and "in my life" stuck out to me. i've always been a very nostalgic person but i also love to meet new people and make new friends who always feel like the most special people i'll ever meet (hawk coded much? lol) so i'll go with that. literally though i know i'll never lose affection for people and things that went before / i know i'll often stop and think about them / in my life i love you more. so

59. what do you think the best "era" for music was? WELL. my personal favorite decade is 1965-1975 because you're bookended by help! and rubber soul on the one end and rumours and a night at the opera on the other. while i LOVE 50's and early 60s rock as well and obviously plenty of brilliant albums come from the back half of the 70s i think that gives you the best of both worlds. more generally of course it's 60s-70s in my book but also in general i would say that's my favorite as opposite to the best. (that being said the fact that it's my favorite also means that i think it's the best. so)

60. how has music affected you as a person? i mean. deeply and inexorably. it's maybe trite or whatever but i literally love music. when i found out that some of my friends don't listen to music when they're just going about their day to day activities, commuting and running errands i was blown away. i mean, i've had a deep and genuine obsession with the beatles since i was about five years old which led me and my best friend to sort of organically discover the rest of the british invasion through going to buy cds and trusting ourselves to the pandora algorithm and the whims of our local classic rock stations and i love to play music and talk about it and i think it's fucking crazy how if i'm in a mood or whatever almost no matter what i'm listening to if it's something i love will give me the emotional catharsis i need and leave me in an infinitely better place. i don't know hardly anything about any bands besides a choice few but my spotify is filled with thousands of songs that i think are perfect and then know literally nothing about or no other songs by whoever wrote them bc i just fuckin love the way it sounds. it sounds good! music! what more could you ask for

#not sure i articulated myself that well there but like. music is SUCH a large part of my personality #we keep the radio on in our house and i'll definitely have multiple conversations a day about whatever's playing #it's basically the main thing i'm interested in and though i have my stuff i like i do actually try to make my listening as broad as #possible which maybe doesnt come across when i'm beatlesposting but it's true #like i love books and i love comedy almost as much as i love music but i think it's my first love and will always be the deepest so #but also it's not like that all makes me unique lmao. i'm pretty sure everybody would say music has affected them deeply and inexorably #so idk #anyway! sorry for intensely rambling lmao #<3 #ask #giaucherie

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shanethvarosa · 4 years ago

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Music Review: 2020

My blog has been a lot of things over the years, but it did originate as something I used to publicly review music; especially in the Visual Kei scene. Since I began the blog so many years ago, I had actually been hired to review Visual Kei and J-Rock music for an actual website: VKH-Press.com, work I am very, very proud of to this day. However, with not much news to comment on or work to critique, I haven’t been as active. Plus, personal issues always seem to stand in my way. However, I always take the time to discuss my passions at the end of the year. There were so many incredible releases, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, and so I wanted to take the time time to discuss my favorite releases and, maybe, the not-so-favorites as well. Quick shout out to Bastille’s Goosebumps EP and Megan Thee Stallion’s Good News LP as I did not get to listen to them before I wrote up my lists, but were still excellent releases. See my thoughts below!

Overall, there were about 75 albums or groupings of albums I listened to this year and split them between various tiers. Starting with the bad tier, there were actually only ten albums listed here and mostly just because they were seemingly unnecessary collection albums. For example, another Satsuki collection? Rides in ReVellion releasing two greatest hits LPs after only five years of work? Beyonce releasing The Lion King: The Gift again? None of those felt like necessary releases. There weren’t many albums that really screamed bad to me this year, but I really could not stand Vanessa Carlton’s “Love is an Art” or Justin Bieber’s “Changes.” The only other albums on this tier were just underwhelming compared to what I know the artist is capable of, but the “best bad tier album,” in my view, was The 1975′s “Notes on a Conditional Form.”

The mid-tier albums had all sorts of reasons for being only mid-tier. They weren’t quite bad or outright unnecessary, but are mostly by artists who put out work that was nowhere near the caliber of their usual work or were re-releases or other collection albums. For example, Tove Lo’s “Sunshine Kitty: Pawprint Edition” or Man With A Mission’s remixes/b-sides/covers albums. Nice to have with good quality music, but I wish we’d just have had brand new EPs or LPs.

The good-tier albums were all really excellent releases, but didn’t hit home the way anything on the “God-Tier” list did. Here, I’d like to share a quick top ten:

10. Taeyeon’s “Purpose: Repackage” & Japanese EP, “#GirlsSpkOut” 9. Charli XCX’s “How I’m Feeling Now” 8. Miyavi’s “Holy Nights” & “Holy Nights: 2020 Lockdown” 7. TK’s “Sainou” 6. PVRIS’s “Use Me” 5. Buck-Tick’s “Abracadabra” 4. Katy Perry’s “Smile” 3. Alicia Keys’ “Alicia” 2. Dua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia” & “Club Future Nostalgia” 1. Ava Max’s “Heaven & Hell

Without furhter ado, though, the God Tier Top 25:

25. Acme’s We Are Visual Kei: Essentially a collection album of several songs that were b-sides that never made a full-blown album. This LP was loaded with some of Acme’s best work and shows that they are going to be here for a long time, despite Div not quite working out. Recommended tracks: Mononoke Requiem, Gekiyama Celluloid, Houkago no Shiiku

24. Alanis Morisette’s Such Pretty Forks in the Road: Admittedly, a huge fan in the 90′s and loved her cover of Seal’s Crazy. However, before this album I didn’t really listen to much of her body of work and I can see why today’s youth might not listen to this album. It is very “adult” insofar as it deals with her struggles in marriage, parenting, religion, etc. Her vocal performance is exceptional and her song writing remains some of the best in the business. Recommended tracks: Smiling, Nemesis, Reasons I Drink.

23. Niall Horan’s Heartbreak Weather: Not my usual cup of tea, but for some reason Niall’s music makes me feel softer than normal. He’s very cute and charming and his words are always so romantic. It feels more genuine than the music made by other members of One Direction and kind-of reminds me of earlier Taylor Swift writing, but from a male perspective. Recommended Tracks: Put A Little Love On Me, Arms of a Stranger, Still.

22. K/DA’s All Out: I don’t even really understand what this is, but I love it. There’s something to do with League of Legends? Cartoons? International pop stars? Whatever it is, I’m totally obsessed. These songs just completely slap. Recommended Tracks: The Baddest, More, Drum Go Dum.

21. Darrell’s Brilliant Death: This might even “officially” be a single, but there’s enough content to market it as an album. Darrell is a band formed from the ashes of Deathgaze and Ai’s solo project. Who knows why Ai didn’t just continue after his solo album, Confusion, but he decided to go back to the band-format with confusingly-named Darrell. This album is then, incidentally, mostly Deathgaze covers. It brings the production into the new era and gives you a lot of nostalgic love for old hits. Recommended Tracks: Brilliant Death, Evoke the World, Abyss.

20. Alice Nine’s Fuyajou Eden & Kuro to Wonderland: Neither album was particularly long, in fact these were glorified EPs that could’ve been merged to one two-sided LP, but in either case... Both albums had something really special to offer and felt like a true comeback after years of name changes and finally going back to their original, kanji-styled name. Recommended Tracks: Kakumei Kaika -Revolutionary Blooming-, Testament, Replica, Glow.

19. Mucc’s Aku: This album felt very long in the making after a series of weird singles that didn’t feel like they were going anywhere. Ultimately, a lot of those singles did not make the album including my favorite one: Taboo. The resulting album, though, did feel very cohesive and thematic and even featured one of this year’s heavy hitters: Hazuki. Recommended Tracks: Aku -Justice-, Memai, Ameria.

18. Miley Cyrus’s Plastic Hearts: This person is absolutely one of my favorite people in music. I’m pretty sure they have comeout as genderfluid/non-binary, so I want to stick with safe pronouns, just in case. However, they’ve always been a favorite and as they’ve come out as such a champion for the LGBT, I love them even more. The album though gave me a lot of hype for something very 80′s rock, but didn’t quite give me what I expected. All in all, the music was fantastic, just a little off-beat from expectations. Recommended Tracks: Gimme What I Want, Angels Like You, WTF Do I Know.

17. Rina Sawayama’s Sawayama: I didn’t expect to fall in love with this girl the way I did. My boyfriend recommended “STFU” to me as kind of a joke because the song discusses a lot of Asian racism that I’m always criticizing people in my life for falling into, but then the song was so bad ass I checked out the album. There were so many different types of music on it and she really did a good job with all of them. Then, with the deluxe edition coming out and the hardcore club banger “Lucid” being involved... Just really brought it all home. Recommended Tracks: Tokyo Love Hotel, Lucid, Fuck This World.

16. Amber Liu’s X: This was just an EP, but every song on it was great. Amber Liu was from f(x), a K-Pop Icon Group, but she always seemed like the odd one out. She was such a tomboy, so silly and funny all the time, and didn’t really behave like other Korean idols. I mean, really, she isn’t actually even Korean. I believe she’s Chinese American. In either case, the EP really noted some of her own personal strugles in the business and also remaining pretty fun at parts too. I saw her live in Philly before COVID-19 and she was truly excellent. Recommended Tracks: Numb, Stay Calm, Other People.

15. Blackpink’s The Album: Not much of an album at only 8 tracks, but that’s K-Pop for you. I bet next year I’ll be putting “Blackpink’s The Album: Repackage” on my top 25 list. The quality of the music was pretty dope though, all things considered. It was a very solid debut effort with all of their previous songs being somewhere in the same lane as this one. I still kind of believe they are a reminder of what 2NE1 could have been, but they’re doing well enough on their own. Recommended Tracks: Ice Cream, Lovesick Girls, Pretty Savage.

14. Hazuki’s Year Over All: Kind of a weird way to word it, but Hazuki basically released two albums this year in different formats. His work with his band, Lynch., was pretty magnificent. I’m not one to usually dwell on a Lynch. album. Their singles or featured tracks are what I usually get into, but the actual album (Ultima) really did a good job of showing how versatile Hazuki can be. His solo album, Souen -Funeral-, was an entirely stripped down, gothic orchestral album of Lynch. covers and other J-Hard Rock artists. Hearing it done like this was almost transcendental. Recommended Tracks: Xero, Idol, Ray, D.A.R.K.

13. Sam Smith’s Love Goes: They had me scared that their album wasn’t coming this year once they pushed it back, back in May. Then again, at the time, an album called “To Die For” was probably super tone deaf. In any case, literally every single released for this album had me in love. So, when they all got included in the final version, I was thrilled. Sam gave us a bonus song after the album as well, but I can see why that one didn’t get on. In any case, this is a huge step up from “The Thrill of it All,” which I didn’t really care for. Recommended Tracks: Another One, Dance (’Til You Love Someone Else), Forgive Myself.

12. Troye Sivan’s In A Dream: I love this kid. He’s so gay and so not shy about it and it really makes me smile. The EP comes after his last LP, Bloom, where the title track basically talks about bottoming for the first time and this new EP deals with a few other queer issues over weirdly produced beats that just... make sense. Recommended tracks: Stud, In A Dream, Easy.

11. Matenrou Opera’s Chronos: Unfortunately, this band just lost their guitarist again. Their original, Anzi, was basically the most consummate guitarist in the visual kei scene that wasn’t Hizaki and he left them. Their sound wasn’t quite right since and they seemed to just get it back with Chronos when Jay left them. I guess we’ll see what they do next, but I think Chronos could be their last great release. Recommended Tracks: Chronos, Silence, Reminiscence.

10. BoA’s Better: A very recent release that hasn’t had much time for me to digest. This is strange for me to put it so high on my list for that reason, but BoA is one of my all time favorites. She never disappoints me. This album was no different. It wasn’t exactly up to par with “Woman” or “Watashi Kono Mama de Ii no Kana,” but it definitely gave us some new and very iconic Queen BoA bangers. Recommended Tracks: Cut Me Off, Start Over, Temptations.

9. Kesha’s High Road: A semi-step down from Rainbow, only because a lot of the same melodic elements and, sometimes, even beats were used on this album too. However, her vocal performance was outstanding and she even gave us a new dirty-pop song with some interesting indie-pop tracks to go with it. Plus, who doesn’t love a Big Freedia feature? Recommended Tracks: Resentment, Raising Hell, Tonight.

8. Lady Gaga’s Chromatica: Anyone who knows me knows I don’t really love Gaga anymore. After all the drama with Madonna and her experimentation with “Joanne” I didn’t think I’d ever like her music again. However, she definitely won back big points for me on Chromatica. It was finally fun, weird, dancey, and then simultaneously emotional and I was really able to get back into it. She’s always had the voice, but on this one it also showed us that she still has what made us love her. Recommended Tracks: Rain On Me, Plastic Doll, Enigma.

7. Koda Kumi’s My Name Is... Angel + Monster: She is, very likely, my Japanese Pop Queen. She always makes these absolutely outlandish bangers of dance tracks that have such a great attitude and beat and when she released re(CORD)... last year? 2018? Who can remember... I thought she could never outdo herself. Then she released “Lucky Star” and I was floored. I was a bit disappointed when they were only to promote a “My Name Is...” collection album, but then, to my surprise, a full set of new tracks came out just after that just blew me entirely away. Guess the last 6 albums must be pretty great, huh? Recommended tracks: Killer Monster, Work It!, Alarm.

6. Grimes’ Miss Anthropocene: I’ve never been a big fan of Grimes, but when Violence came out I was really looking forward to whatever album this was going to end up promoting. The song is actual fire, but then the LP ended up being some kind of experimental Gothic Pop with Asian Pop influences I never expected. I doubt I’ll ever find something she does this good ever again, but it was really a musical light in the darkness of this year. Recommended tracks: Darkseid, Delete Forever, Violence.

5. Kylie Minogue’s Disco: Admittedly, my draw to Kylie has always been that she is like some kind of Australian Madonna. Madonna being one of my all time favorite artists... In fact, number 2 for all women I listen to, Kylie has some big shoes to fill with her sometimes generic pop that she puts out. However, I haven’t really truly loved a Kylie song since “Get Outta My Way” and then this album comes out filled with tracks to love for the rest of time. Recommended Tracks: Miss A Thing, Till You Love Somebody, Magic.

4. Chanmina’s Notebook/Angel: I don’t have really any way of knowing how popular Chanmina is in Japan or if she is as popular in the Japanese Queer Scene as she should be, but god damn does she know what she’s doing. Her music is raunchy, bitchy, and condescending at it’s highest and deeply personal at it’s most mellow. There is no “lowest.” “Notebook” was a two-sided album and “Angel” a strong follow up EP, but all the recommended tracks are from “Notebook.” If you have not listened to “Picky”.... go do it now, I’ll wait. Recommended tracks: Picky, Baby, Lucy.

3. The Weeknd’s After Hours: Incidentally, I got into The Weeknd after someone said something shitty about him here on Tumblr! I took their likely-valid criticism and went to check him out for myself and I gotta say, I love his work. The beats are literally always on point and his voice is like silk. This album provided more than a few iconic songs and I always can’t wait to see what he does next. Recommended Tracks: Alone Again, Heartless, Blinding Lights.

2. Halsey’s Manic: The singles and features she did between Hopeless Fountain Kingdom and Manic gave me such insanely high hopes and I was not disappointed. HFK was a strong album of course, but this was near perfection for me. I think the production of this alt-pop album was the star of the show because it wasn’t all one way, there were heavy-bass songs, interesting piano riffs, striaght up punk rock, all of it. She really made an album quite like it’s namesake. Recommended Tracks: Ashley, Killing Boys, Still Learning.

1. Dexcore’s Metempsychosis: A newcomer to the visual kei and death metal scene, they’ve been putting out single after single for years in preparation for their extemeley long and multidaceted debut album. With a total of about 33 songs, the entire second disc was rerecorded singles from their early days and some even got new lyrical treatment. The main series of songs were, of course, also totally flooring and all of the recommended tracks are the new ones. If you haven’t checked them out by now, you have to! Recommended tracks: Cibus, Scribble, Period.

#personal #music #2020 #visual kei #k-pop #dexcore #halsey #the weeknd #chanmina #kylie minogue #grimes #koda kumi #lady gaga #kesha #BoA

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drifttosleep · 4 years ago

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[ My Jonas Brothers : Chasing Happiness Experience ]

introduction: if you know me, you know how much if a Jonas Brothers fan i am. yes, the first band i ever REALLY got into was The Beatles. but the Jonas Brothers was a boyband i really did fall in love with. we all had that one band from our childhood that switched everything up. mine were the Jonas Brothers. the way the directioners loved One Direction was my love for the Jonas Brothers. when i say “the boys,” i mean Nick, Kevin, and Joe. they’re my “the boys.” if that makes sense.

history: i remember the day i got into them. i was 10 years old and it was during the summertime. i had just finished watching ‘taking 5.’ a movie about the click five. the girls in the movie had posters and cut outs of the click five on their wall from posters and magazines. at that age, i was already collecting TigerBeat, Popstar!, J-14 magazines. i was too plugged in to the pop culture and the teeny bopper life. my dad was supportive. i was somewhat, inspired, when i watched that movie and checked out my magazines. i found the jonas brothers. i knew OF them and the song SOS and When You Look Me In The Eyes but nothing else. i had a personal computer in my room back then and newly plugged in internet connection. it started with music videos, and then the stupid videos they had on their yt channel, and i just couldn’t stop watching their videos. i watched all their live chats and interviews. i fell in love LIKE THAT. it was the first i ever obsessed about a boyband like this. a boyband in MY LEAGUE, you know what i mean? i obsessed over hannah montana and lizzie mcguire. but it wasn’t LIKE THIS. i grabbed my magazines and starting taping the Jonas posters on the walls. my routine was to watch all their videos everyday. i even went as far as reading fanfiction on youtube. YES. fanfiction USED to be on YOUTUBE. and that’s when crushes began. my bias was joe, at first, of course. then i slowly crept onto liking nick more. until he was my ACTUAL favorite. nick was my first love, i’m claiming it. the boy had me feeling ALL SORTS OF THINGS. the boy had me WRITING AT 11.

influence: they were a huge influence on me. other than taylor swift and my dad getting me to pick up a guitar and learning how to play it, the Jonas Brothers wanted me to fulfill the dream. their influence on me was HUGE. it was so big that they were my first fashion icons. i broke gender stereotypes (at least in my circle) at the age of 11, you guys. i wore skinny jeans, converse, collared shirts and neckties all the time. they had me wearing denim and corduroy and my parents were so into me being into fashion at that age cause they were all about that in their youth. i mastered dressing like a guy at the age of 11. it just became a thing growing up. cause that’s where i’m most comfortable. i remember when the JONAS show came out on disney channel and the first episode was of nick having a love interest, i cried.

other facts:

i collected all kinds of jonas brothers paraphernelia as a child.

other than the magazines, i had merch. i remember begging my mom to get me jonas brothers merch from their actual website. when she finally gave in, i was ecstatic.

i had a jonas brothers t shirt and a necklace (it was a guitar pick with their logo on it)

i also had a jonas brothers mp3 player that i bought when i was in tampa.

i’ve been to their first concert in the philippines. I REMEMBER HOW I TOLD MY PARENTS. i ran to them and said “THE JONAS BROTHERS ARE COMING HERE” and i didn’t even have to ask cause they already knew.

my bedroom walls were FILLED with their posters. i had over 150 posters on my walls.

i cut out their photos from magazines and covered my notebooks and pens with them. i sold a couple at school, too.

you caNT BELIEVE HOW MUCH I FREAKED OUT WHEN I FOUND OUT ABOUT CAMP ROCK. when it came out in the states, my dad bought a copy of the dvd and i was SO SO SO EXCITED. that’s why i love home made spaghetti so much because it was the meal i was eating when i watched camp rock in my old bedroom for the first time. i squealed half the time.

them being christian played such a big part in my life because my mom was a strict-ass hardcore christian. and since they wore purity rings, my mom got me a purity ring, too. at 11. which now, seems rather stupid. for me, at least.

nick jonas & the administration is still one of my favorite albums. HE REALLY DO BE MAKIN ME FEEL SOME TYPE OF WAY. for real though.

i really watched Married To Jonas, Kevin and Danielle’s reality show. it was NOT great but i watched it.

i even watched some of nick’s movies and i didn’t like any of them really but i enJOYED NICK’S SCREEN TIME

i did not really stray away from loving them. but i did turn into a teenager. i got into other things and gained a different circle of friends. it was different, okay? i couldn’t just be in love with a rock star anymore. HAHAHA. there were real life boys i kissed now. but still, i did not obsess over anything like that ever again.

the break up: i was in high school when they broke up. and even if i had not been keeping tabs on them and watching their every release, i cried really really fucking hard when they announced their break up. i cried so hard that i missed school that day. i was heart broken. and it might not make sense because they are brothers and they’ll really ~never~ break up, it still hurt.

when i found out about Chasing Happiness, i was stoked. of course, i already knew they had returned back together as the Jonas Brothers. after all the experimenting with other things, they really did return to their roots.

reaction about chasing happiness:

oh my GOD

BABY JONAS BROTHERS :(

FUCK. 6 MINUTES INTRO PLAYING

baby nick in les mis :(

okAY SO IM NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH A BAD EXPERIENCE WITH THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY

okay so the purity rings were a fucking joke i dont feel so guilty about it anymore

niley :( lowkey cried to niley at a young age but whatever

fuCK EVERYONE WHO MADE FUN OF KEVIN. HE’S AMAZING

please be mine :(

crying

joe and nick making fun of kevin on the phone with danielle

joe calling danielle “kevin’s future wife” :(

JUST FRIENDS :(

THE NICK J SHOW

camp rock :(

more crying really

YEAR 3000 :(

okay so basically, it was a ride of emotions.

it really was though. i also felt like i time travelled. LITERALLY. it felt like i was in my old room again watching the Jonas Brothers on old YouTube. you know. before google bought the damn thing. but for real, it felt that way. it felt like i was reconnecting with my old self, too. the 10 year old me.

no, wait. even better. it felt like i was reuniting with old friends. the scene when the 3 of them were just drinking and reminiscing and confessing about the old times was so intimate that i felt like i was there. everything they talked about (except for hating each other and how they ACTUALLY broke up), i knew about. they were my whole life back then, really. it really felt like a reunion. like them getting back together meant we were getting back together. the love for the Jonas Brothers. my fangirling over them. god, it sounds so cheesy when i say it out loud. but it really does feel like that.

it was so familiar and so foreign to me at the same time. they talked about everything they used to never talk about back then. they just let it out in the open, really. and i saw how much they’ve grown. and i saw how much i’ve grown. how i am far from who i was at 10 years old.

but when they sang ‘please be mine’ along with the old video of them singing it, i felt myself reconnecting with my younger self. i felt her smile at me and hold my hand telling me that the good will always resurface. and fuck yeah, i got that out of the Jonas Brothers. they’re the part of me that remains innocent. they’re a part of me that remains untouched and untampered with. because my heart was whole when i loved them first. and i think it’ll remain that way.

it hit me harder than i thought it would. and i knew it would hit me. the documentary, i mean. it was beautiful. downright, beautiful. they’re a huge part of who i am today. and i am so so so proud of that.

#honey

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drawlfoy · 5 years ago

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Mirror, Mirror P.2

masterlist

request guidelines

requests are open!

read part 1 here

pairing: draco x ravenclaw!reader

request: no! i feel bad about neglecting my requests but this popped into my head and i really wanted to write it

summary: reader is paired with draco to do prefect rounds. she’s had a mad crush on him for years despite him hardly knowing who she is. what will happen?? oooh read on to find out

warnings: language

a/n: i came up w this story after reading hbp and now i want to do what i can to make the most in character draco imagine i can imagine, which means this might be a little long. think of this as my “vacation” fic or whatever. also i figured out my tag problem! if you’re having an issue like that...apparently if you link something to send your readers directly to a screen that’ll send you a request, it won’t show up in tags. so don’t do that haha

music recs: i’m falling in love so hard with vampire weekend’s vampire weekend album. literally the entire thing please listen to it and tell me that it doesn’t make you feel like a young tourist in italy in the summertime

word count: 1,658

tags! @accio-rogers @geeksareunique

“He kissed you?”

“No, no, his reflection did!” exclaimed Y/N as loudly as she could on their walk to the breakfast table. “And he was holding my hand and pressed up against me. It was so strange. He would never do that.”

Rena shook her head in disbelief, ducking to avoid a wailing Peeves on the move. “That’s...some strange magic. What did you say the mirror said on it?”

“Erise? Erised? I can’t recall exactly,” Y/N admitted. “It happened so quickly that I wasn’t really thinking all that hard about the name.”

They entered the dining hall and made their way to the Ravenclaw table. Y/N made a point to never look in the direction of the Slytherin table, even though her habits tried to convince her to steal a glance.

“And the worst part of it all,” said Y/N after they had sat down, “Was that he knew something I definitely didn’t. He was smirking to himself for the rest of our rounds. I just know he’s up to something, and I can’t give up my pride and ask him.”

“You really should’ve been a Gryffindor,” Rena teased, spreading jam on her toast. “But I totally get it. It’s Malfoy we’re talking about. He would ridicule you if you asked.”

“I wasn’t even holding his hand,” Y/N said to no one in particular, looking at the table with a vague expression. “I mean, I was for one second, but then I grabbed his cloak sleeve instead. The reflection showed me holding his hand.”

Her roommate shrugged. “Anyone know anything about cool mirrors?”

“Shhh, keep it down!” hissed Y/N. “I don’t want anyone else hearing about this!”

Thankfully, only a few Ravenclaws seemed to take notice, granting them a confused glance.

“Nevermind,” Y/N told them, offering a forced smile before turning to Rena and leaning in close to whisper. “We need to find this out. Maybe meet me in the library after class today?”

“I’m sorry, I have a Potions essay to finish, and I know for a fact that you do too,” Rena reminded her. “And you have your rounds again tonight, so you need to finish it up directly after class so you have time to eat dinner and go to bed at a reasonable hour. You can care about this tomorrow, when you have more time.”

“Thanks, mum,” she grumbled, rolling her eyes and spearing a piece of fruit with her fork. “I wanted to figure it out before I saw him again. That’s all.”

Rena seemed to ponder this for a moment.

“Maybe try and get him to admit something? Or go see the mirror yourself again and see if he’s still there with you.”

“Good idea,” Y/N agreed. “I think that I’ll do that.”

oOo

Y/N was having trouble deciding whether she wanted to deck Snape for giving her the essay or herself for choosing the most mundane of topics. It had taken her over twice the amount of time to write her essay than usual, leading her to have no time before dinner.

She recounted her plight to Rena as they ate together.

“Now what am I supposed to do?” she wailed, carefully trying to keep her voice down as to not draw too much attention to herself. “I’m going to show up looking a fool because he knows something that I don’t--”

Y/N had been so invested in her complaints that she didn’t even notice Rena giving her wide eyes and motioning with her eyebrows until she felt the tap on her shoulder.

Draco Malfoy was standing behind her. He had changed out of his Slytherin robes, opting for an effortlessly flattering silk lined suit and an infuriating smirk.

He looked very attractive.

“What is it, Malfoy?” Y/N tried to hide her embarrassment with her bitter tone.

“No proper greeting?” He frowned, a painfully fake gesture. “I thought that you’d at least try to be polite to me.”

“And why would that be?” countered Y/N.

“I think you know what I’m talking about,” he drawled, dragging an eyebrow up with his statement. Y/N didn’t quite know what to make of it.

“Can I help you, or are you just set on standing here and harrassing me?” asked Y/N, refusing to drop eye contact with him.

“You can most certainly help me,” Malfoy told her, bending over and leaning closer to her face. “You can start by not looking like your mum just died whenever you come to meals. The view is getting old.”

He sneered one last night before turning back to walk to the Slytherin table and leaving Y/N to stay frozen in shock.

“What the hell was that?” Rena asked.

“I have no idea.”

oOo

Y/N arrived at their meeting spot at exactly 10:02, relishing in the fact that she was making her partner wait like she had. But that wasn’t the only reason she was late; to be completely truthful, after the stunt he pulled in the dining room, she was even more afraid of seeing him again.

She had racked her brain for any memory of a special mirror that might’ve come up in her History of Magic classes, but was completely unable to recall anything.What little time she did have after dinner was dedicated to a frantic search of her notes from her 1st year classes to present, which unfortunately failed to yield anything.

In the opposite of her Ravenclaw nature, she was going into their meeting completely and utterly unprepared.

“You’re late,” was all Malfoy said as she rounded the corner. His pale hair dipped in a nod of acknowledgement as he shifted his weight off the wall and began walking down the hall, looking back over his shoulder once.

“Sorry about that,” said Y/N nonchalantly. “I was occupied.”

Malfoy scoffed, but didn’t press the issue. The two walked in silence for a few blissful moments.

“I hate to say this, Y/L/N, but I’ll try to let you down easy. I’m not into Ravenclaws.” He casually stated this like one would recite a grocery list or tell you their name.

“Excuse me?” Y/N’s head whipped around to face him as they walked.

“In the future, I suggest that you take rejections a little more politely,” said Malfoy evenly. “Maybe then you can at least be friends with the person who doesn’t want you.”

Y/N’s cheeks grew hot as she sorted through her panicked thoughts, How had he known that she liked him? There was no way that he knew. The only person who even had a sneaking suspicion was Rena, and she would never say anything to put her best friend on the line.

“You seem mighty confident in the assertion that I would even want you,” Y/N said after she had been quiet for far too long.

Malfoy smirked. “Come on, I see the way you look at me. It’s adorable, really, how you can be nearly of age yet still have an obsession with a boy you hardly know.”

“I don’t!”

“And here’s the beautiful thing, darling,” he said, his tone suddenly growing darker as he stopped walking. Y/N held her breath as he leaned over to whisper in her ear. “I know you’re lying.”

His breath on her ear made her visibly shiver, earning her another satisfied smirk from Malfoy.

“You’re completely mad,” she hissed, shoving him away from her. He grabbed the hand poised on his chest and pulled her along with him, leading her to stumble into his chest.

“Merlin, no need to be so forward,” Malfoy said, his tone dripping with insincerity. “I said no the first time.”

Y/N gritted her teeth and thrashed against him. “Let go of me!”

Surprisingly, Malfoy obeyed, dropping his hands to his sides and stepping away from her, looking irritatingly passive.

“I don’t know why you think I’m interested, Malfoy,” she spat. “At this point I could write a book full of all the reasons that I hate you.”

“Please, you hardly know me,” Draco fired back, his own cheeks looking slightly flushed as well.

“You hardly know me either, but you still believe you can read my mind!” Y/N sputtered.

“It’s not my fault that you’re painfully obvious.”

“How on earth could I like a prat like you?!”

Malfoy blinked, hard. “No clue. But you do, so why don’t you care to enlighten me?”

Every insult in existence rushed to her tongue, begging to be spat at the Slytherin. In her frustration, none of them made it out, leaving Y/N to open and close her mouth like an idiot.

“Aw, do I have you tongue-tied?”

Y/N whacked his shoulder, snapping out of her speechless state. “I don’t know what to say. Is that a crime?”

He shrugged.

“Is this because of that weird mirror we saw last night?”

Malfoy continued to walk silently, refusing to acknowledge her question apart from a slightly cocked eyebrow.

“Because if it is, I have no idea what you’re on about. It’s just a regular mirror!”

Y/N gasped as Malfoy spun to her, grabbing her arms and pressing her back up to the wall.

“Did you really just see our reflection, Y/N?” he asked, leaning in dangerously.

“Of course! Was I supposed to see something else?”

“I can explain better when you’re not lying through your teeth.” Malfoy lazily raked his eyes across her face. Y/N fought back a tremble.

“You’ve gone completely mental,” said Y/N, pushing him off of her. “I’m requesting a different partner. I’m sure Professor Flitwick will understand.”

“Are you sure that’s what you want, though?” he quipped, cocking her head to the side.

“Why else would I do it?”

Y/N curled her hands into fists, glaring at him with every ounce of contempt she could manage and daring him to challenge her.

Malfoy stared at her for a few moments before turning and walking away.

“Playing hard to get, I see,” he teased, shooting her one more conniving glance over his shoulder.

final a/n: i swear that this is gonna go somewhere soon but i don’t know how to do it yet haha. if you guys want to message me with ideas, let me know! we can brainstorm together and all that jazz. i apologize for any spelling/grammar mistakes that may be present in this fic as i have not even attempted to proof read.

#draco #draco malfoy #draco x reader #draco malfoy x reader #draco x oc #draco malfoy x oc #draco imagine #draco malfoy imagine #draco x y/n #draco malfoy x y/n #harry potter #harry potter imagine #slytherin

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