#literally no idea why i even gave these lyrics i was just listening to the song

[pocketkiss]

through the glass of a bottle, all is green and bent…

[brucewaynehater101]

i'm gonna be real idk if your the right person to go for young justice core four headcanons but you give the best replies by far so heres my own idea idea

I was listening to the Roblox Soundfont remix and now the og Gone Angels and now I'm thinking . . .

Tim became Robin to prevent Batman from ceasing to be the symbol of heroism and good he started off as

The symbol that spiraled into destruction of even the self with Jason Todd's death

imagine a world where Red Robin becomes the very thing he swore to destroy with his own death

he dies along with Bart and Kon. Cassie due to this and maybe other factors fucking looses it, Batman post-Jason's death but pre-Tim becoming Robin style

or maybe instead he dies but the rest of the core four lives. either way Cassie still looses it, by herself or with her other teammates

And maybe, just maybe, they get nobody to be the Third Robin to their Batman, no Third Robin to Tim's Second Robin

likely improbably in canon but the idea of Cassie and maybe even Bart and Kon having a villain arc (maybe Black Silence style) is too good of an idea not to share

(Side note; imagine a Gone Angels cover where the survivor(s) sing and for the itallian lyrics in the midway point the deceased sing)

((extra side note: imagine this is what gets Batman and maybe the other Bats to reflect on the time before and after Tim become robin, post Jason's death; seeing their history repeat with Young Justice))

((hell maybe the Justice League realizes as wells))

"you give the best replies by far." Thank you. Sometimes, it takes a bit to reply to asks cause I'm taking a few hours to really answer the prompts/ideas/questions people pose. I also sleep at random times, so apologizes in advance to any asks that take a while!

My image of YJ is a codependent platonic polycule. They are Young Just Us because they didn't receive proper support from their mentors. This is part of why Cassie and Tim fell apart after Kon and Bart died. This is why, in their own weird ways, both of them tried to get a form of Kon back. Tim tried the scientist cloning avenue, and Cassie tried the cult.

If you want Tim's death to inspire Cassie and YJ to go evil, might I suggest Tim sending proof of Bruce being alive in the timestream and then succumbing to his spleen injury (perhaps an infection)? This would create a delicious amount of angst, anger, and mental breakdowns.

Cassie, the only nonretired YJ member alive at the time, didn't believe Tim about Bruce being alive. This was in part due to the cloning stuff but also in part to trusting Nightwing (or Batman at the time). If Tim didn't make it out of that alive, Cassie may be desperate to find anyone to blame but herself for that. She was a kid, she was lost in her own grief, and Tim should have had the support of literally any other hero.

The entire hero community turned against a teenager in his time of need that he resorted to conspiring with the LoA and ended up losing his life. Whether she chooses to be mad about nobody believing him (Tim's possibly a better detective than Bruce and people have revived before, but his evidence at the time was flimsy), she can be very pissed that not a single hero offered to help him. They didn't even need to trust in Tim's decision. They could have just accompanied Tim until the teen gave up or proved himself right. They could have treated it as a grief road trip while Tim found himself.

Anyways, losing the last nonretired YJ member that way may cause her to just snap. The JL was already on thin ice with the YJ for their lack of support to her generation of heroes. Them failing YJ enough that two children died in the field and one died as a direct result of their actions? She would, rightfully, loathe the JL. On top of that, she does already not trust the government for what they did to Secret. If she can't prosecute the JL, she'll become their enemy.

Cassie lost all of her main polycule. She wants revenge.

After Bart and Kon come back, they see how JL left Cassie and what they did to Tim. Cassie is part of their ride or die, and she has been treated so horribly. Tim has died. They obviously join her.

Now, with Bart there to give evil ideas (Bart is the scariest member of YJ and you can't convince me otherwise), YJ is a force to be reckoned with. Maybe some of the other members come out of retirement, maybe not. They would be unstoppable with Tim helping them, but that's the problem. They don't have Tim. Tim isn't there to help them nor hold them back. That's why they became "evil" anyway.

I like to imagine someone, probably Nightwing, screaming at them from across the battlefield. "This isn't what he would have wanted! He became Robin to stop Batman from destroying everything. This is the antithesis of why he became a hero!"

For a split second, YJ would pause. There's merit in those words, after all. Cassie would recover first as she shakes her head. "He became a hero to be the leash to Batman's rage. He's not here now. He's not here to temper our rage, and you did that. You abandoned a child." She plants her feet more firmly and points her sword at Nightwing. "We won't let you do that again."

It's dealers choice on whether YJ win the battle or not. Also, I do believe YJ would be obsessed with trying to bring Tim back. Perhaps some of their evil deeds truly stem from them trying to find ways to bring back Tim. They are incomplete without him just as they were incomplete without Kon or Bart and would be without Cassie.

Now, is Tim actually alive or does he stay dead? Did Ra's revive him using the Pit? Did Ra's lie or misguide the Bats while keeping Tim hostage? Will Tim come back, either after being brainwashed by Ra's or escaping, to find his platonic polycule has officially lost it and turned evil?

[remlionheart]

* ˚ ✦ MDNI ✦ ˚ *

Marinade

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ when i first decided that i wanted to write some yuuji angst, i had a v vague idea in my head of what it might look like, but when i tell you that this fic took me for a ride, i mean it. angel boy yuuji itadori finds himself mourning his 22nd birthday rather than celebrating it. sitting alone at a bar, overwhelmed by grief when he's suddenly greeted by the one part of his past that doesn't hurt to look at. 4.9k words. hurt/comfort, angst, smut, fluff, slice of life, shonen, literally everything and anything going on here. i was crying and smiling and rooting for these characters and i'm not sure that i'll ever emotionally recover from writing this, but i'm really happy w the outcome so lemme know whatcha think, luv you ♡ (also shoutout to my girl @bratbby333 for always being my biggest hype-woman and proofreading for me when i've looked at a fic for too long and start to hate it) *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ

now playing: marinade by dope lemon

Yuuji hadn't seen you since middle school.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

He remembered you as the girl who had pretty handwriting and a serious affinity for the color blue. The girl who would leave pastel origami hearts on his desk without ever saying why. The girl who'd hide away in the library during lunch instead of eating with the rest of the class. The girl who he'd watch on the bus ride home with a sinking feeling in his stomach, catching the way your eyes glossed over each time the driver stopped in front of your house.

He learned how much you loved to read and write that year. Glancing at you from across the study hall room, secretly jotting down what number was printed along the spine of your book so that he could get you the next one in the series. He'd leave it on your desk before class started, the same way you did with his origami hearts. Never saying a word about it.

He watched you fill countless journals, your face always so concentrated as you poured your thoughts into them. He’d stop by the shopping plaza near his house after school every time he noticed that you’d reached the last page, spending his allowance to make sure there was a new one waiting for you the next morning. Each one he gave you, a different shade of blue.

But it wasn’t until the last day of eighth grade that he finally mustered up the courage to break the not-so-silent-silence the two of you had been sharing for the last 6 months. He sat down next to you, introducing himself even though it went without saying. His eyebrows furrowed a bit when you wordlessly slipped out an earbud and handed it to him. A rare, but visible smile tugging at the corner of your mouth. He held it in his palm for a moment, his eyes drifting along your face as he brought it to his ear, letting the tangled white cord tether the two of you together.

He’d never heard the song before, but he still remembered thinking how fitting it was. Dreamy and melodic - just like you. The singer's voice was full of raw sincerity, adding another layer of atmospheric haze to the already heady beat while the chorus gradually filled the space between you.

He didn't have the right words to explain it at the time, but he felt lucky as he watched you stare out the window that day. Lucky to know how pretty you looked when the sunlight caught the side of your face. Lucky to know which fantasy novels you liked to spend hours losing yourself in. Lucky to know what type of music you listened to when you were deep in thought. Lucky, just to be sitting next to you.

His heart jumped around in his chest when your eyes met his again. Both of you exchanging the same somber smile as you realized what road you were on.

He handed his half of the headphones back to you, secretly relieved at how calm you still seemed despite the fact that your stop was next.

“That song,” he hesitated, the lyrics still swirling through his mind. “what was it –”

But his question came to an abrupt end as the bus began to brake, a new and overwhelming warmth dancing through his veins when he noticed how close you suddenly were to him.

His pupils doubled in size, his breath catching in his throat while you leaned in carefully, pressing the softest kiss against his boyish cheek.

"Have a good summer, Yuuji." you whispered, grabbing your backpack off the floor.

His hand rested where your lips had been, his gaze following you off of the bus. You made it about halfway up your driveway before pausing to look back at him over your shoulder, two lingering smiles blurring past one another as the driver hurried on with her route.

The next two months were filled with sunshine and soccer practice for him. Bike rides and camping trips and basketball courts. His days were usually full, but no matter what he was doing or where he was going, there was one song that was always on the tip of his tongue:

♫⋆｡ ♪ ₊ ﾟ“Do you want me? Just how I am? Do you need me and where I stand?”

One song that would forever remind him of you:

"Let's go steady, let's make a plan. Marinade on that for a little while." ⋆｡ ♪ ₊♬ ﾟ。

And he did.

He marinaded on the infatuation he felt for you the rest of that entire summer.

When August arrived that year and brought everyone back for high school, he was ready.

There were stories he wanted to tell you, questions he wanted to ask you. Playlists he wanted to make with you. Books he'd found while thrifting that he wanted to give to you. Daydreams he had of roaming the halls and laughing with you. Visions of bringing his lunch into the library so he could eat with you. He couldn't wait to hear about your summer. Couldn't wait to catch up with you. Couldn't wait to see you.

Unfortunately for you both though, life had other, much darker plans in store for the pink-haired boy who just wanted to carry around your books for you and hold your hand during passing period.

He was called out of class early on the first day. Forced to leave the building before he even had the chance to see you as he frantically tracked down the nearest shuttle and rushed across town to get to the hospital. His grandpa’s health had been on a slow decline, but after his most recent fall, it had suddenly started to plummet.

Yuuji missed the majority of that week, dedicating all of his time to the man who had essentially raised him. He would bring him food and sit with him for hours even though he was mostly incoherent. He’d tell him about his day and leave flowers by his bedside. He'd watch reruns of old game shows with him that they used to watch when Yuuji was little, completely ignoring the nurses who would say things like, "You need to give yourself a break.”

The hospital staff tried their best to get him to take a day off. To go back to school and live his own life, but Yuuji just couldn’t. His grandpa was the only family he'd ever really had. There was no way he was going to leave him. He ditched the comfort of his bedroom and began sleeping on the cramped hospital futon next to the grey-haired man, teaching himself what each machine hooked up to him was responsible for and what vitals they monitored. He’d sometimes leave throughout the day, but it was only for a couple of hours at most. He'd return with more flowers and books to read to him. By the third week of school, he'd missed almost every single one of his classes, but he didn’t care. His priorities were firm.

Yuuji stayed by his side - day in and day out, until the very end.

When he woke up to the sound of erratic beeping and codes that he didn't understand being called out by nurses, he knew. He knew in his heart that this was it. Amongst the chaos were two sets of shaking hands reaching for each other, his grandpa's last words hanging heavily in the space between them,

“Yuuji... You're a strong kid, try your best to help others, okay?”

He remembered thinking at that moment that there couldn’t be a worse feeling. That he couldn’t possibly have anything else left to lose. He was only 15 and he was now officially all on his own as he watched the only parental figure he had let out his last breath of air.

He had no family, no future, no chance.

Fate was a cruel and calculating thing though. A few days after the funeral, Yuuji discovered that he did have a future. One that was irreversibly sealed the minute he stepped foot into Jujutsu High. He had to let go of everything he'd known in exchange for the damning task of becoming a vessel for Ryomen Sukuna. He had to trade in his mundane role of being a high school freshman for the daunting responsibility of becoming a first-year sorcerer. And arguably the hardest thing of all, he had to give up the simple pleasure of sharing a set of tangled headphones with you to try and save a world that didn't truly care about him.

There was no room for normalcy anymore. This was his new life and it was ending, one day at a time.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

He sat at a nearly vacant bar by himself, staring down the empty glass in front of him, watching the ice melt as he ran a shaky hand along the back of his neck.

It was 4 o'clock and he was only one of two people here this early. The lights and music were still being adjusted by the workers. Cups being stocked and coolers being filled for the inevitable Saturday-night rush that would come in the next few hours. His goal was to be absolutely obliterated by then - to already be on his way back home before the swarm of college students took over.

He paused, noticing the calendar hanging by the craft beer list in front of him. His heart stuttered a bit as he blinked back at the date. No wonder he'd been feeling so reminiscent lately.

He leaned over the counter hoping to find the bartender who'd poured his first drink, but to no avail.

He grabbed his glass, sucking down the very last drop of whiskey it had to offer, trying desperately to drown out the realization that today was his 22nd birthday and the people who should be here with him weren't.

Almost every friend he'd made over the last ten years had been ripped away from him. They were scattered memories. Familiar voices that he did his best to hold onto. Faces, names, deaths that followed him everywhere he went.

Middle school and the innocence of just wanting to hold a pretty girl's hand while she walked down the hallway were long gone. He was an adult now. A very tired and traumatized adult.

He peered around the corner again, half-tempted to jump over the bar and pour himself another drink when the stereo kicked on, an overwhelming wave of pure, deep blue nostalgia flooding over him without warning.

His back straightened, his eyes suddenly darting towards the speaker as the lyrics drifted across his skin, causing every hair on his body to stand up at once.

"She wanted to die by a river. She wanted the tide to come up and drag her away, so that when she's dreamin', she can watch the tree line fall away." ⋆｡ ♪

It was the same hazy melody that he'd spent an entire summer listening to on repeat. He still knew every word, every beat. It was muscle memory the way his fingertips began to drum along the counter when a bartender finally emerged from the back.

"Sorry, do you need a –"

Time stilled, the glass nearly slipping from his hand as your gaze caught his.

"Yuuji?"

Despite how much you'd changed since the last time he saw you, your voice was somehow just as soft as he remembered it being.

He stared back at you in quiet disbelief, guilt quickly settling in the pit of his stomach as he thought about how fucking strange and unexpected this all must feel for you too.

From your perspective, he'd spent all of 8th grade trying to befriend you only to up and leave without even saying goodbye. And now, 7 years later - he was at your work, looking back at you like you were an actual angel, and forgetting every word he knew.

Your eyes stayed locked on his for another moment, both of you studying the person in front of you before you finally let out a shaky breath and smiled at him.

"Here," You offered, suddenly feeling the need to soothe your own nerves too. "On the house."

He tried to tell you that he could pay for it, but it was too late. You were already pouring two shots and motioning for him to put his wallet away.

"Okay, fine. But..." There was a glimmer in his eye as he pulled his glass away from yours. "What are we toasting to?"

The smile he gave you felt like a warm hug. One that you didn't realize you needed until you had it again. "Oh," You stammered, trying to ignore the blood that was rushing to your cheeks. "What about... To old friends?"

He nodded, still wearing the same expression as your drinks lightly knocked together. "To old friends."

He couldn't help but grin again at the little shiver that swept across your body as you finished yours.

Your hair was longer, your features a bit more mature, but your mannerisms were all the same. You were still the girl that was made up of mid-day sunlight, handbound books, and shades of blue that were too pretty to exist in this world.

You grabbed a beer out of the cooler and slid it to him, once again ignoring the credit card he tried to hand you. "Yuuji, relax." you leaned against the counter, resting your head in your hands so that you were eye-level with him. "They're not gonna go bankrupt over a $2 IPA, I promise."

"If you say so."  

You both exchanged the same small smile, his finger lightly running along the counter. "So," he cleared his throat, completely unsure of where to start. "How've you been?"

It was a loaded question, maybe even a dumb question considering how much time had passed, but he didn't care. He really did want to know how you'd been. What you'd been up to. What type of things you'd been writing about. What your Spotifty playlists looked like. What you did on your days off. He wanted to know everything. All of it.

"Well," you exhaled, trying to find an easy way to condense the last seven years of your life. "My parents..." your eyebrows furrowed, realizing that you'd never gotten the chance to tell him why you used to dread your old bus route so much. "My parents finally got divorced..."

“Oh shit, I’m sorry -"

“No,” You said swiftly, not wanting him to feel bad for asking. "It was more of a relief than anything. They used to fight, a lot. My mom wasn't always the nicest when she drank... It probably should've happened way sooner to be honest."

His breathing slowed as memories of you with tears in your eyes walking up your driveway smashed through his mind. He'd promised himself that he would ask you about it one day, but he had no idea it'd be this much later on. He'd wanted to talk to you about it as kids. Wanted to know what scared you so much about going home, but he didn't know how. It was the reason why he left journals on your desk. The reason why he never let you go without the next book in your series.

For everything he couldn't say, he tried to show. But he'd failed you on both accounts the day he disappeared.

"My parents separated my -" you paused, eyes dragging to his as you corrected yourself. "our graduation year."

He nodded, doing his best to digest the thought of you walking down the aisle in a cap and gown with the weight of your parents' downfall on your shoulders.

"But, after that," you smiled slightly. “I applied to college and got accepted. Started working here. Got my own apartment. And I don't know...” you shrugged, "I think in a weird way, things happened the way they were supposed to. It was like everything needed to fall apart before it got better, you know?"

He smiled back at you, your last sentence lingering in the space between you as he reached for your hand. He probably wouldn't have understood that sentiment a year ago, but watching your eyes widen while your fingers slowly tangled into his, he knew exactly what you meant now.

"I'm really sorry I wasn't there..." His thumb brushed against the side of your hand, steadying himself as he let 15-year-old him and 22-year-old him come together to say what they had both been holding onto for so long. "I didn't want to leave. I just -"

Your heart swelled in your chest, watching him blink back tears he wasn't prepared to shed. "Life got really hard for a really long time for me too. But, whenever I felt myself drifting... I thought of you. Thought of the way you'd glance at me from over your book during class. Thought of the way you smiled when you thought no one was watching. I thought of you... all the time. And it was like, no matter how dark things got, it reminded me that life could be good, because it was at one point. So..."

Your hand tightened around his, two sets of glossy eyes now staring back at each other as he forced himself to say what he should've years ago. "I'm sorry that I wasn't there, but... I'm here now and I'm not going anywhere."

You were dizzy with emotion. Swimming through feelings that you'd kept buried for nearly the last decade. The thoughts you'd only been brave enough to write down. The overwhelming urge to kiss him again and again and again until neither one of you had any air left in your lungs.

Your mouth opened and then closed, your body saying more than you were capable of with how desperately you were holding onto him.

You weren't sure what you were doing. Didn't have time to think or care about the repercussions of your impulsiveness.

"Hey Mai," You called out, "I'm really not feeling well. Think I'm gonna go home."

Yuuji's head was shaking no, but the surprised smile tugging at the corner of his mouth was saying otherwise. "What're you doing?" he whisper-shouted, watching you run around the bar to grab his hand again.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Mai yelled from the back, but it was too late.

You and Yuuji were already gone, practically sprinting alongside each other, laughing as you booked it across the parking lot.

"First the free beer and now this?"

"They won't go bankrupt over me missing one day." You winked. "C'mon, I wanna show you something."

You may have been leading the way, but he was still the athlete between the two of you, purposefully slowing himself down to not be right on your heels. But when he noticed you starting to pant as the road curved into an upward slope, he reached out for you, gently spinning you around to face him.

"Come here." he knelt down, positioning himself so that you could easily wrap your legs around his waist and your arms around his neck.

He carried you piggy-back style up the hill, the sun fading into an array of pink and orange as you pointed out every bookstore around campus, explaining which ones were your favorites and why. Promising to get matcha with him tomorrow at a local coffee shop you passed. Asking him about his time at Jujutsu High and trying to wrap your mind around what little he was able to tell you as he swore that he'd fill you in on the full story when the time was right. You caught him up on what he'd missed the last three years of high school and how your college classes had been going. You talked about libraries and ghosts and laughed about how in 7th grade he'd joined the occult club just because he thought it'd be an easy after-school credit.

By the time you'd finally reached the spot you'd wanted to show him, the moon had almost completely replaced the sun. Your cheeks hurt from smiling and your hands were full of a mixture of different flowers that he'd picked for you along the way.

"This is..." he trailed off, watching the sky shift into a deep blend of blue and silver. "Beautiful. How'd you even find this place?"

It was an abandoned park surrounded by overgrown trees that overlooked the city, only one rusted swing set left to its name. The hike you had to endure just to find it had more than likely been the cause of its demise, trekking up here with a backpack was hard enough, let alone a stroller.

"I kinda found it by accident." You shrugged. "I was working on an art project and needed a good view of the skyline. I looked up a bunch of different places online, but then I saw this spot and just knew."

Yuuji pulled off his hoodie, sweat trickling down his neck from the late-summer heat as the two of you sat in the grass, his arm gently wrapping around your waist.

There had been so many times you'd sat in this exact same spot by yourself, wondering what the odds were that you were both somehow looking up at the same star.

Your head rested on his shoulder, a warm gust of air swirling around you as you both looked out into the distance, watching the way the stars faded into the Tokyo lights.

"Hey, Yuuji?" You twirled a blade of grass between your fingers, not wanting to ruin the moment, but still needing to be sure.

"Yeah?"

"You promise, right?"

"Hm?" He could hear the concern in your voice, his grip tightening as he pulled you closer.

"You promise that... you're not leaving again?"

"I swear, I'm not going anywhere. And if I do," His eyes returned to yours, his free hand attentively resting under your chin. "I'm taking you with me."

You nodded, warmth washing over you as he traced along your jawline, tucking a piece of hair behind your ear.

Your fears were lost to his touch. Your worries dissolving into the sincerity of his voice. Your need for reassurance wholeheartedly met when his hand cupped your cheek and his lips finally caught yours. Seven years' worth of pent-up feelings pouring out between the two of you, hands roaming and little moans slipping out between breaths while you tugged on the collar of his shirt to bring him closer. He was gentle but eager. Soft but secure. Perfect, in every way.

He hovered over you, easing you onto the grass as he made a makeshift pillow out of his hoodie for you to rest your head on.

You smiled as his lips drifted from your mouth to your neck, his palm delicately traveling up your shirt, pulling your bra to the side while he helped slide your tank-top up over your head. He kissed your collarbones, whispering sweet little praises into your skin. "You're gorgeous, you know that?"

He rested a hand under your back, steadying you as his tongue flickered across your chest. He took his time, making sure to give each nipple the same amount of attention, still humming things like, "the prettiest girl I've ever seen" while his hand traced over your hip.

He tugged at the waistline of your shorts, looking up at you through his lashes as he began to leave featherlight kisses along the inside of your thigh, his blood racing at the sounds you were suddenly making.

"Does that feel good, baby?"

You whimpered out a broken "yes", practically dripping when his fingers spread you apart. He watched you writhe beneath him, drawing slow but firm circles around you. Trying not to lose himself to the way your legs were already shaking for him.

"Yuuji," you whined. "I -" his mouth was ghosting your center, his fingers still playing with your clit while he held you in place. "I n - need you." your voice was heady, lost somewhere in the clouds the faster he went. "I wanna f - feel you, so bad."

"Yeah?" He smiled, his breath still fanning across your core as his digits prodded carefully at your entrance. He groaned at how beautifully your walls swallowed him. "I wanna feel you too."

Your head lulled back, eyes pointed at the sky while your hand tangled into his pink hair. His mouth was warm and heavenly, his tongue running uppp and dowwnnn your center, saliva mixing with slick while his fingers plunged into you.

"Oh, fuck."

He only went deeper the louder you got, flattening his tongue against you with just the right pressure to keep you saying his name. His ring and middle finger hitting spots you'd never been able to reach yourself. You were clenching around him, your thighs locking around his head as you rocked against his tongue.

"Yuuji - you're gonna make me -" he thought it was adorable the way you struggled to get more than two words out at a time. "Fuck, I -"

"Mhmm, just like that."

He was in the same daze you were, sliding in and out of you feverishly until he finally felt the blissful release of your walls spasming around him. Your body suddenly unable to hold it in any longer as you gave him the privilege of really tasing you.

"Oh my god," he moaned, faithfully lapping up every bit of you he could get, only pulling away when you started begging for him.

"Yuuji -" It was needy and light-headed. "Come here, come here. Please."

The way he lifted his head up, smiling at you with your cum dripping down his chin made something inside you ache.

You pulled him towards you, desperately wrapping your legs around his waist as he began undoing the buttons on his pants. He kissed you, again and again and again, using it as a pleasant distraction while he wriggled himself free.

He took a breath, both of you watching in blitzed out awe as he lined himself up with you. "I love you." he whispered, your eyes widening from the blend of his words and the feeling of his tip slowly entering you. "Always have."

His hair brushed against your forehead as he parted your lips with his tongue, your nails digging into his neck with his first full thrust. You were so tight and warm around him.

He tried to ease into you, encouraging you while also making sure you were comfortable. His voice sweet as honey as he asked you things like, "Is that okay, baby?" and "Aw, you like when I go deep like that, huh?"

Your gaze locked with his, your eyebrows knitting together the faster his rhythm became.

You'd thought about this moment before. Thought about what it might feel like, but nothing could've prepared you for the way your heart would race at the sound of him moaning, "You're doing so good for me." The way he'd hold you, looking back at you with stars in his eyes as he filled every inch of you.

"Yuuji -"

"Let it out, baby. S'okay." He whispered, his hand reaching for yours. "I've got you."

Your vision was blurred by the feeling of his tip meeting your cervix, warm summer air brushing against your skin as you reached your breaking point.

"I love you." The words left your mouth so fast you barely had time to register them, but then... they wouldn't stop. It was the only phrase you remembered how to say. The only emotion you remembered how to feel. "I love you." you whimpered again, feeling yourself tighten around him as your confession became more frantic. "Oh - mygod, Yuuji. I love you. I love you. I love - you."

His movements were suddenly beyond his control, his body completely succumbing to the grip of yours. "Fuck, baby - I -" He didn't know if he should pull out. Didn't know if he could pull out. His head was everywhere, his mouth dropping open the longer he watched you.

Your legs locked around him in heady reassurance. "Mm'mm, d - don't stop." You panted. "Cum with me."

It was a sentence he'd only ever thought he'd be lucky enough to hear you say in his dreams.

His hips stilled after one more thrust, your walls holding him tight as he began to twitch inside you. His forehead pressed against yours, his arms struggling to keep him propped up.

You exchanged the same exhausted smirk, leaning up to kiss him while he carefully pulled out of you. A blend of fluids spilling out onto the grass beneath you as he laid by your side with his forearm over his face, trying to regain his composure.

There was a calm silence that settled between you, the both of you looking up at the stars before you rolled over to reach for your shorts, letting him catch his breath while you dug something out of the back pocket.

"Here." You said, unraveling a tangled pair of headphones and handing him one.

His eyes widened with the same curiosity they had 7 years ago as he held it to his ear, your head resting on his chest while a song he knew all too well flowed through the small speakers connecting you. A smile splitting across his face as he held you closer.

"You know, I think you were right." he exhaled, running light fingertips along your arm. "Everything did have to fall apart before it got better."

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

[chelleztjs18]

We Don't Talk Anymore (W.M)

Wanda Maximoff x Fem!Reader (Modern AU)

Summary: When words are no longer there between you and Wanda.

Warning: Angst, swearing words and a little some more angst :D

A/n: Hello! This is a spontaneous short angsty fic idea that was inspired by a song. I have been wanting to write angst so when i listened to this song again, i knew i gotta write it. haha. Some lines in this fic are from the lyric of the song. Surprisingly i got it done. I tried to write it a little different, with no dialogues at all. Let me know what you think! Enjoy the angst! Reblog and comments are highly appreciated!

Here is the song behind this fic:

Main Masterlist

Wanda Maximoff, yes, that’s her name. To you, it’s a powerful name for one hell of an amazing woman. That name sticks to your mind and of course your heart. With just a mention of it, your heart would skip a beat and your lung forgot how to breathe.

You would do anything for her, literally. Why? Because she has your heart in her grip. You think about her all the time. A smile automatically shows up on your face everytime you think about how her voice sounds when she tells you that she loves you, or the sounds of her laughs.

You love Wanda. Yes, actually you overdose with everything about her. Her silky brown hair, her smile, even her pouty face. Not to mention her touches and her scents. 

You fell for her hard and it was the best thing ever happened to you. Well, at least that was what you thought at that time before you both broke up and it's such a shame that it was a messy break up in the beginning but both of you decided to stay civil and keep the friendship.

Well, the break up was a little over a year ago. In the beginning of the first few months after that, you and Wanda tried to keep in touch. Unfortunately, the efforts from both ends didn’t last long. It slowly died. Two of you don’t talk anymore.

You keep telling yourself that it was just all a game for Wanda and you think it would help you to get her out of your mind. Do you ever wonder how she is doing? Yes, of course you do but you are not proud of it. Not at all, especially after you heard from Tony that Wanda has found someone else. You know that person, it’s Vision, Tony's assistant.

You wish you would’ve known that you weren’t the love Wanda was looking for. Even after all this time you still wonder why you can’t move on just the way she did easily. Your mind is all over the place right now as you sip the whiskey you have at Yelena and Kate's wedding party.

When you heard that Wanda is coming too, part of you regretted that you came here. Your brain reminds you that you don’t want to know what kind of dress she is wearing or how she does her hair tonight. You wish that you could just leave but it’s your best friend’s wedding so you know that you wouldn’t get away with this. It’s a big party anyway, so you have less chances to bump into each other.

Well, turns out you were wrong. Half an hour after you mingled and talked with Kate, Yelena and Melina, you caught Wanda in the corner of your eyes. Of course, she comes with her new lover.

You stole a glance at her, so did she at you. She is wearing the red dress you gave her on the first valentine's day together. You always know that red is her color. You loved how the dress shows her curves. You can still feel the ghost of her lips when she kisses you a thank you after you gave her the dress. Oh her flawless hair. You remember exactly the smell of her shampoo.

Her soft green eyes warm your heart yet could stab it the same way cupid’s arrow strikes it when you fell for her for the first time.all over again every time she looks at you 

All these thoughts stop abruptly when you see Vision’s hand run down from her back to the curves of her waist. No, no, no. You don’t want to know if he holds onto her so tight the way you did before.

Wanda’s stomach did somersault and her heart flinched when gazes were locked for a few seconds. Her mouth falls slowly open a little. It’s the first time you two see each other again after the break up.

She sees how you smile to everybody else but her and she can’t complain, it’s the same to her. No matter how much her heart smiles, her face refuses to show it. Just like you, as much as she wants to know how you have been, but she tries to keep herself in place.

How everyone laughs around you, it reminds her how goofy you were and you always made her laugh with your antics and jokes. All of that leads to more and more memories. How romantic you were, how you would do anything for her.

Every now and then, Wanda thought you might want her to show up at your door but she was too afraid that she was wrong.

Then Natasha comes into her sight. Seeing the red hair excitedly come to you and kiss you on the lips while your hand touches her hips, proves to her that she was wrong. You wouldn't want her to show up out of the blue. In her mind, you are over her and all the sweet things you two had.

Being ex-girlfriends to each other when being in the same circle of friends is not that easy. Everybody knows how messy the break up was and they are all aware that you two are not talking anymore but nobody wants to bring anything up about it. Wanda also has her own little bird that told her about you. She heard from Pietro that you and Natasha are seeing each other now.

Oh it wasn’t easy for the brunette to hear when Pietro told her about you and Natasha.

Wanda doesn't want to know if you look into Natasha's eyes or if she holds onto you so tight the way Wanda did before but she knows all she can do now is just hoping that Natasha knows how to love you like she does or kisses you the way you like it.

Just like you, she overdoses everything about you and now she can't get you out of her mind.

You thought that one stolen glance that got caught with hers was the only thing you have to handle tonight and you were proud to yourself that you are doing well fighting it subconsciously but boy oh boy, you were wrong again. So damn wrong.

Your eyes refuse to let go of Wanda from your sight. You are slowly sinking into a quicksand of memories and feelings. The more you fight, the more you lose. All the words around you from Yelena, Kate, Natasha and somebody else gradually turn into a muffled sound. Good thing nobody noticed that you are out of it now.

Your body tenses up to ward off shaking, your legs weaken. Questions and thoughts start to bounce around in your mind. Why did Wanda choose to wear that dress and do the hair the way you like it? Was it on purpose? She still looks beautiful as always, just like on that first Valentine’s day night.

Does she still have feelings for you? Fuck, no. no. no. You don’t want to know that. Wanda moved on and stopped talking to you so easily. She dates Vision a few months after the breakup. Even though there’s no rule for how long exactly after a breakup that you can date again, to you it was too early but who cares? Apparently Wanda didn’t, so why should you? And that's a good enough reason for you to move on too.

You are with Natasha now. You look at the red-haired girl next to you and smile.

Your heart wrenched when you take another quick look at Wanda only to find that she is looking at you with those warm loveable jade eyes. She is standing alone while Vision is busy talking with Tony and Steve. Embarrassment stirred in you because she caught you staring at her. Is it even staring when you only look at her for a few seconds?

Wanda is as conflicted as you are right now. She feels tightness in her chest. She mindlessly tightens her grips around her cocktail glass when she sees Natasha hold your hand and her other hand rubs your inner lower arm as if she is showing everybody that you are hers.

She sees you smile at Natasha again. Her mood plummeted.

Both of you let out a gaze that ping-pongs and avoids direct eye contact every now and then yet keep wanting to look at each other. It feels awkward but it still feels like a drop of rain on the desert.

Her fingers get colder, not from her cocktails but from all of the rush of feelings that she can’t even describe. Wanda knows she was at fault in the past that made the last piece of strings that kept your relationship all together for a while finally broken.

She tried to keep in touch with you but she thought that you didn’t want to and you were just doing it for your friendship with Pietro. Little did she know, you wanted her to stay in your life but you felt the same misunderstanding Wanda thought.

You swallow the lump of sadness and Wanda sees your jaw clenched. She knows that you do that whenever you are feeling upset or discomfort. You feel like time has stopped. Your heartbeat seems to slow down momentarily. Her thoughts spin. Your mind is focusing inward.

Wanda’s thought is a hundred miles an hour right now, dredging up everything that happened in the past. Her lungs constrict for a few seconds, making it hard for her to breathe.

She misses you. Do you? Without a doubt, you are in denial for that matter. Her feet mindlessly start walking towards you and to her surprise, she sees you take your steps to her. Her heartbeat tripled in speed, she could’ve sworn she could hear it.

You are a nervous wreck right now. You are going to be closer and closer to your ex-girlfriend in a few more steps after this long time. You don’t even know what you feel? Excited? Hurt? Angry? Are you going to be defeated by your own feelings? Do you really want to go to her? Should you ask if she is happy with Vision? No, definitely not that. Are you kidding? You are strong enough not to ask her that, you gotta be strong.

Words scatter around in her head. She is thinking what to say to you. Just a simple Hi? I miss you? I’m sorry?

Gosh, everything happens so fast yet feels like slow motions. The short distance between you and Wanda seems like hundreds of miles away.

This is it, she is a step away from you but you don’t cease your steps. You walk past her, continue your steps to the bar. Wanda didn't stop either. The fact that you keep walking, it felt like a knife to her heart and it plunged her to despair.

Both of you are internally broken and falling apart. A soft long shaky sigh comes out of your lips.

Disappointment sagged through both of you. Wanda’s and your feet feel heavy as you two walk. Pain claws onto your heart. Wanda puts a fake smile at the brides to cover how she really feels right now. At the same time, you are trying your best putting on a poker face and averting your eyes from her because you know how bad you are to hide your emotion.

Deep down, you and Wanda wish that you still talked but things happened and now you both regret that you stopped talking.

A/n: Welp, that's it for today! Let me know what you think. I'm gonna work on the requests i got now. Follow me for more!

Cheerio!

Taglist: @madamevirgo @musicinourlips @unstable-sapphic-hoe @fanboy7794 @chloe7076 @b0mbdotc0m @trikruismybitch @ichala @californianwhiterabbit @honey-sweet-hiraeth @stonemags @imfuckinggenius @sxfwap @chaekhan @daenerys713 @luvmcgrath @stupidsapphicsstuff @pattypavo @xxxtwilightaxelxxx @frvny @franfineashell @heyyoweveryone @ygtft-chen @yaaskasey @sweeet-likeeee-cinnamonn @paumxmff @dopeyouth @beaniejennie @ineedafinghug @idkwhatimwriting @lucydiibi @mainly-rebloging-fics-i-like @gloriousfoxruins @grxvitye @mcubreakdown101 @aos22 @wandanatstan @paulawand @yeeterthekeeper @marvelwoman-sugarbaby @imdoingsortagay @femalehomosexual666 @snowdrop1026 @modernmonalisa @nothingisrealanyway @idamaemann @sweeterlust @royalityofmultifandom @playboysaleen @peabrain112 @gwhaley127 @harleyswanda @bodhi-j @darth-rainbow @cristin-rjd , 

[mrsnancywheeler]

Finnicks sweet girl is “Me and my husband” by Mitski (not the intended meaning by Mitski but on a purely lyrical stand point)

~~~

“I steal a few breaths

From the world for a minute”

kinda the feeling she has around being worthless or like…how she wasn’t supposed to win the games. You need air to breath but saying “I steal a few breaths from the world” it’s like saying you don’t belong, you’re taking life away from someone more deserving

~~~

“It’s always been just him and me

Together”

Finnicks sweet girls thoughts on her and Finnick. By the time the games are around she’s been hung up on him for 3 years. The only way she’s happy, truly happy, is being with him. It’s always been him. It will always be him.

~~~

“So I bet all I have on that furrowed brow”

so this one is kinda sad but if you think about it….i mean she did bet all she had on Finnick, especially for the games. Conway was a huge part of her life, Conways family was like her own. She kinda gave it all up for him

~~~

“At least in this life time

we’re sticking together

me and my husband

we’re sticking together”

the co-dependent nature of their relationship. they stay together through thick and thin.

~~~

“And I am the idiot with the painted face

In the corner, taking up space

But when he walks in, I am loved, I am loved”

I feel like she views herself as “hard to love” and we know she views herself as hard to trust. She has a “painted face” which can allude to, the makeup she’s forced to wear, but also the disguise she had during her own games.

And then again the idea of “taking up space” like she doesn’t deserve to have lived, to be the one standing. Finnick is the only person who can make her feel loved, make her feel safe.

~~~

So yeah. I have a ton of songs that I think represent her (including “my love, mine all mine” and “runaway”. Maybe I’ll send more lyric stuff with those songs. Who knows!)

-🌾anon

I agree like I listen to those lyrics and I'm like chef's kiss 💋

yes, reader is not a self-worth having girlie. even the small things like breathing feel like things worth feeling guilty for being able to do. why does she get to do it when she's killed people? why does she get to do it when she's hurt people?

since she was 15 she's known it'll be no one else, and he's known that since he saw her. and all that time between her games and the quarter quell, who do they have except each other?

yes yes yes she did, her best friend, his family that cared for her in a way her actual family didn't, she gave it all up on a chance to live and be with finnick. she put her trust in the idea that he might be able to save her and so they could be together. even if it was at the detriment of everything else.

they're literally my co-depedent pookies, they don't function without one another, if one is gone, the other stops like clockwork.

also like being truly loved, she has public Capitol adoration but like in the quarter quell interviews when finnick walks onto the stage and kisses her, she's gone from a moment of being uncomfortably dolled up and trying to perform to being really loved.

they're just so very mitski, if you want to pookie 💋 it'll literally never annoy me

happy valentine's day 💕

[letters-adressed-to-the-fire]

part 2 of the albatross essay i couldn't stop myself from writing

In the first part, I talked about the narrative of the song, how taylor takes us through different perspectives to finally give the albatross its own voice. But in case you didn't notice, i carefully left out my own personal interpretation of the song. Why? I wanted to dive into that with this second part. This song is very personal to me in more than one way, but there's one specific idea I want to approach right now.

Obviously, like with every Taylor song, there are a million and one ways to interpret this version of the story of the albatross. If you think about it with Taylor in mind, it is clear that she and the albatross are one, and she's drawing inspiration from her own experiences in the public eye. More than once, she was blamed for things she claimed she didn’t do (the edited call with K*nye West) or for things a man would’ve never been condemned for (dating a lot). And every single time, she wasn't allowed to react, and her word was immediately disregarded.

The moral of the fable is pretty clear once you understand the lyrics: people are perceived as guilty or responsible for negative situations without taking into account their own experience or intention because it’s what’s easier. But my own very personal interpretation of the song is a little broader. Without even realizing it, I immediately gave the albatross a feminine presence, I mean of course it had to do with Taylor being the performer, but after a few listens I began to grasp why this perspective resonated so strongly.

Women are still being judged way harder in too many aspects of life. Like I’m being so serious when I tell you that less than a week ago some guy was shamelessly slut-shaming a girl while justifying himself for doing the exact same thing (without noticing the hypocrisy I might add). I mean, some people are at least aware of the internalized misogyny behind this kind of mentality, but there are still far too many who remain oblivious. And this just gets worse when one constantly endures public scrutiny.

This type of behavior can be traced back to historical figures such as Cleopatra, who has been the subject of much criticism and stigmatization throughout history for her relationship with Roman leaders such as Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Although Julius Caesar and Mark Antony also had extramarital affairs and allied themselves with Cleopatra for political reasons, it is Cleopatra who has been portrayed as a manipulative seductress and a threat to Roman power, meanwhile the men were largely seen as statesmen and military leaders, and their relationships with Cleopatra were not portrayed with the same negativity or criticism.  

So yeah, the albatross IS about Taylor, but it's also about you and me. It's about Taylor's own experience in the public eye, but it's also about that time you realized society was never gonna be fair when it came to women. It's about being the prey when you're being labeled as the archer*. It's the perfect metaphor for how women are often held to different standards compared to men, both historically and in contemporary society, and how we've been finding ways to retrieve our narrative even when no one wanted to believe us.

*thank you to one of my bestest friends in the world (cath!!) for making me realize the connection between the archer and the albatross, i literally haven't been able to think about anything else since*

[uramilf]

hi! I love your writing sm. can I req this it's based on a tiktok I saw and thought it'd be cute. so basically y/n singing taylor's new song you're losing me esp the bridge! and matty is concerned like "we're okay right? you've been singing that song with much passion" or something like that! I just really thought it would be cute thank u so much

Ok I decided to turn this one into a proper imagine where the reader is a popular solo artist who misses her rockstar boyfriend and literally sat up until 3am working on it because i loved the idea so fucking much, thank you anon <3

Warnings: Angst and sadness but happy ending I promise

You're Losing Me

Y/n Y/l/n was sitting alone in her dressing room cross legged on a battered sofa. She had just received a message from her friend George to inform her that The 1975 had performed their last show of their tour and were flying back to London the very next morning. He also dropped in that Matty was excited to see her again and couldn't wait to get home. She hadn't bothered to respond. Why couldn't Matty have told her that himself? Her heart sank on remembering that although Matty was finishing his tour, she was just beginning hers. She would spend one night with him in their shared house before flying to the USA and wouldn't return for several weeks. Y/n felt empty, as she had since Matty left. She looked up to realise that she wasn't alone at all; in fact the dressing room was full of people refilling her water bottles, fixing the order of her costumes for quick changes, ensuring the setlist was right. But still, the crushing loneliness got to her. She doubted that it would be remedied in twenty minutes when the crowd of 15,000 people were screaming her name. She was right.

--------------------

Exactly 24 hours later, Y/n lay in her boyfriend's arms, thrilled to have him home but heart not feeling any lighter. She could feel them pulling apart from each other, the demanding schedules their careers presented them with tearing apart the best relationship either of them had ever been in. Even as Matty stroked her hair and pressed soft kisses to her forehead, she was fighting to keep a smile on her face. She wanted to burst into tears and tell him she needed him. She needed to be with him all the time, not just sometimes. She needed to fall into his arms the second she came offstage. She needed to feel as though their relationship wasn't a liability. When Y/n left Matty in bed to use the bathroom, he started to scroll Twitter and look for videos of his girl's first show of her tour. He came across one that already had thousands upon thousands of views. It was captioned "Y/n Y/l/n cover Taylor Swift's "You're Losing Me" at her London show last night". He clicked and started watching. His girlfriend sounded angelic as usual, but he didn't feel like he was watching a video of her usual happy, performance-loving self. The girl on his screen was breaking from the inside out. The passion she was singing with was gave her the image of someone who undeniably related to what she was singing. She wasn't just covering a popular song. He could tell she meant it. He listened closely to the lyrics; "And I wouldn't marry me either, a pathological people pleaser", "Do something babe, say something." Matty's heart was in his throat as he realised that there was a reason she had chosen the song. Did she think he didn't love her anymore? Had she been hoping for the next step in their relationship? Was he really losing her?

Y/n re-entered the room to see Matty, phone in hand, with a tear slipping down his cheek. "What's wrong, baby? Aren't you happy to be home?" "Are we ok, Y/n?" Matty whispered. "What? Of course we are. What's brought this on, love?" "The song. Last night. I know you didn't write it but you just sang it with so much passion, I couldn't help but feel like there's something you're not telling me." Y/n looked at his phone and was overcome with guilt. He understood that she had been singing to him. She took Matty's face in her hands and swiped away a tear gently with her thumb. "I'm sorry, Matty. But I just felt like I related to the song so much. I couldn't help but feel like we drifted apart while you were on tour. We were barely speaking by the last few weeks of it. I just needed you here, and honestly I did feel like you were losing me." Matty's sobs didn't stop. "Are you saying you want to break up with me because I'm away too much?" "No! Of course not baby, I couldn't imagine breaking up with you for the world. You are all I want in life. I promise. But I just don't know how to do this long distance thing anymore. I need us to be together." "Y/n, darling, I know. I'm dreading tomorrow. In all honestly, I understand why you sang the song. I was drifting away from you. I just couldn't bear to talk to you over the phone. I couldn't even answer a text from you without crying about how much I missed you."

Y/n was crying now too, feeling terrible that she hadn't seen how miserable Matty had been on tour. She stroked his hair as he buried his head in her chest. "It's ok baby, we're gonna be ok." Matty lifted his head to kiss away her tears. "Listen, darling. I'm going to speak to the boys and let them know that I'm not gonna be in the studio for a while. Give me a few days to recover from tour and then I'm gonna fly out and meet you. We'll only be away from each other for another week tops." Y/n tackled him into a hug. "You're really coming on tour with me?" "Yes, darling, really. I'm sorry I even considered going back to the studio instead of coming with you. I've just felt so pressured into releasing new music recently. But everyone else can just wait for me and my girl."

Y/n and Matty lay in each other's embrace once more, and as she was drifting off to sleep, she heard him whisper, "I promise I'll never let you feel like you're losing me again."

-----------------

A/N: Soz guys that got way deeper than I wanted it to. Got carried away ig but oh well

[theaologieslibrary]

Okay, some acftl opinions under the cut, since I was asked. By no means all of them and they’re… a bit critical. Not here to ruin anyone’s day, please love it if you loved it, but I’m feeling kind of weird about this one

Obviously the HEAVIEST of SPOILERS FOR A CURSE FOR TRUE LOVE

Nothing was tied up except EvaJacks being together. Like! Good for them! But even that wasn’t even… satisfying. Luc? Done. Marisol? Gone. Castor out just MASSACRING PEOPLE. LaLa, neutral toward Dane. The Valors? Just out and about now after like a thousand years of everyone just knowing they were dead for sure. ALL of House Fortuna massacred and basically no one blinked an eye. Jacks apples? Who gives a shit.

Is Jacks mortal now? In theory yes but it was never… really remarked upon? He shouldn’t have his powers anymore, he shouldn’t be a Fate, he shouldn’t be immortal… but not a word of this was mentioned.

What… was the point in mentioned Lysander having the ability to mess with memories if he had nothing to do with any of this? Did Aurora like… distill his powers? Unlikely, as it feels truly unrelated. This is something Jacks, Castor, and LaLa knew- why did none of them bring this up in an effort to restore Eva’s memories? Lysander’s ability, if I’m not mistaken, was not mentioned at ALL in this book, despite it revolving around Eva not being able to remember anything

You want backstory on Jacks? NO. Was Jacks from a Great House? Literally any information on who he was pre Fate besides trying to help people? No. Nothing.

LaLa deserves her revenge against Aurora. No joke. Aurora not being punished whatsoever besides still not getting to be with Jacks (called everything about Aurora no joke). Aurora’s actions were UH kind of the worst by far. Especially when it’s turned around that Aurora didn’t even love Lyric? Y’all.

I know a lot of this ties into the happy for now idea but it was just TOO much. Stephanie Garber has talked about this being the last book in the world for the foreseeable future which drives me NUTS after the ending. The whole book felt so rushed and so weirdly all over the place? With a handful of awkward walk backs chalked up to “well the story curse” and clumsy dropped plots?

“Where do we go now?” “Wherever you want” uh, no, 1) what. What kind of ending is that? After all this? 2) I mean. So long as that doesn’t include the Meridian Empire, I guess?

Idk, I’ve got more, but being left with FAAAARRRR more questions than answers bothers the hell out of me. I’m in the process of listening to the audiobook post reading it and I’ll probably physically read it again when my standard edition from faecrate comes in but for now. Hm. Gonna let this stew for awhile. I will say though it gave me the drive to write the fairytale book I’ve been wanting to lol

[astrangetorpedo]

Catching Up with Lucy Dacus and Fenne Lily

by Lucy Dacus | 11/13/20

Lucy Dacus is a Richmond, Virginia-based singer-songwriter and one-third of the folk supergroup boygenius; Fenne Lily is Bristol, UK-based singer-songwriter whose album BREACH was released in September by Dead Oceans. For this phone call, the two friends set out to dive deep on their recent dreams, and ended up taking in much, much more.

— Annie Fell, Talkhouse Senior Editor

Fenne: Before this call, I was just looking you up. Is that weird?

Lucy: You were listening to my music?

Fenne: Yeah!

Lucy: That’s so funny, I was listening to your music. “I, Nietzsche.”

Fenne: [Laughs.] You actually were one of the many reasons why I broke up with the guy that that song is about.

Lucy: Oh, my god, I didn’t like him at all.

Fenne: Do you remember? It was literally the first time I met you, pretty much, or maybe the second time. I was with him and he tried to pull me out of the conversation because he wanted to go home or something — probably to read Nietzsche. And you were like, “Don’t touch my girl like that.” And I was like, Lucy Dacus just called me her girl, and I need to leave this boy. [Laughs.]

Lucy: I felt quickly defensive of you. We had hardly met, but he was just acting so brutish. It was like, Damn, who is this guy? It was so brutish that I thought maybe you didn’t even know him, but then you were like, “No, I’m actually with him.”

Fenne: Yeah, he’s been inside me. [Laughs.] I mean, you’re someone who makes good decisions, so you’re probably not going to answer this with a yes, but have you ever been with someone that you’re like, “I can’t believe that I gave them my body, and my heart.”

Lucy: Yeah, I am easily disgusted by the idea of some of the people that I used to really have tenderness for. But then I realize, that was not a bad quality, to be able to find good things about a bad person. Even that’s tough, to call someone just a straight up bad person, but someone that I really don’t like now, I try not to be like, I’m such an idiot. That was just a part of growing, realizing that just because they have a couple good qualities doesn’t mean that they have to be my life partner.

Fenne: Yeah, I mean, I like to think of the really bad relationships I’ve been in as, like, an exercise in compassion, to an extent where now retrospectively I can see that they were manipulating me. But at the time, I was so ready to be like, You’re just an injured soul and you need a safe place, and I can be that place. But that should only be for a time. And I think I’ve definitely seen people in those relationships for a long time and it starts wearing away at them, and the way that you see yourself like personally. So as much it’s a practice in being able to see past someone’s bad qualities, I know that there’s a cutoff point for that. But yeah, thanks for protecting me. [Laughs.]

Lucy: Yeah, I think that was actually after I went through my long, drawn out, like, worst relationship. And I think that since then, I’ve been overly defensive probably. Or I just love my friends so much that I feel like nobody deserves them, and I’m just like, and I’m just like, “Go away!” to most people that my friends date. That’s not totally true, but it’s like a recurring feeling. But yeah, I hardly knew you so I was probably overstepping a bound by trying to defend you.

Fenne: It made my heart soar, and I honestly felt safe. But you have that lyric that goes, “You don’t deserve what you don’t respect,” and I always kind of thought that you were singing about yourself, but maybe you’re singing generally about people that you love also.

Lucy: Yeah, I definitely thought it about other people first, because it’s easier to defend other people than yourself. And then I realize, I should take my own advice, but I’m still not so good at that. But I think I’m better at it.

Fenne: Do you ever find yourself writing yourself as a character so that you can make clearer judgments on your own shit? Like, do you ever make yourself the third person so you can be like, “Lucy should do this.”

Lucy: A lot of people I know great as a character, but I have no such self-control. I definitely wish that I could write it as an exercise, but writing often just feels sort of like throwing up. You know what I mean? All of a sudden it’s just there, and you don’t necessarily want it to be there, an inconvenience. And I don’t really know what I’m saying until the song is written. Like, I would really love to be able to say, like, Oh, I’d like to process this event in my life, or this thought, — I will make art about it. But that has never been a skill. I feel like all my songs start as subconscious vomit.

Fenne: I agree. I thought you were going to go the opposite direction, because as a person, you seem like someone who thinks before they speak and considers the weight and the repercussions of what they’re saying. So it’s interesting that your process doesn’t reflect what I see in your character, in that sense.

Lucy: I think it’s easier to talk to other people than to myself. I think that I carry a weight of, like, you know, say-what-you-mean when I’m talking to other people, but I don’t have a practice of talking like that to myself. So it’s just kind of forced upon me sometimes, that I end up talking to myself through writing a song. Is that how you write? Do you actually sit down and say, “I’m going to write about this,” and then you write a song about what you intend to write about?

Fenne: No, I have very little foresight or planning or structure to any part of my life, and it is definitely affecting the way I work. I literally get to the point where I haven’t written in so long that I’m furious at myself for not doing anything. And I sit down, and it is like word vomit. I’m like, Something’s coming out, I’m just going to let it happen, because if I don’t, it might never happen again. And often, I’m writing and I don’t know why I’m writing from the perspective I’m writing from.

At the moment I am in a relationship that I am really comfortable in, and he makes me feel brilliant most of the time, I still feel these inexplicable periods of sadness that almost make me feel guilty, because he obviously sees me going through this and maybe thinks it’s a reflection on him. And often those are the feelings that come out when I’m writing. I think it’s a hangover from being a kid and being unable to talk about how I feel to my family, despite the fact that they’re really emotionally intelligent people and completely up fo talking about feelings, I was almost rebelling against that. So I started writing at that time because I literally couldn’t get out my feelings in any other way. I feel like I still do that, where I’m subconsciously storing up fuel to then speak to myself about songs, rather than having to vocalize it in words. So it’s never a case of being like, I’m gonna write a song about global warming — although now that I’ve said that, maybe I should do that. [Laughs.]

Lucy: I feel like it’s really rare to write about topical things and have it actually be good. I have some family members who are just like, “You should really write a song about everything that’s going on in these uncertain times!” And I’m just like, no. I just feel like my perspective isn’t necessary — just, like, as a white person, I simply don’t need to be taking up space. I’m grateful I have a platform that I can put other voices onto, with the literal easiest thing ever of resharing things.

But yeah, I think it could be useful for you to do a song about global warming, I hope you end up writing one. That’d be awesome. But don’t be tacky — it’s weird to be like, Oh, this is topical. It just it ends up feeling really tacky, I think, as a listener.

Fenne: I think to an extent, everything that I’ve written during this pandemic situation… I haven’t written a lot, I’ve feeling really unconnected to myself, and the world, and feeling really weird. But in a sense, everything that you’re writing is about the fucked up stuff that’s going on, even if it’s not directly preaching. I feel like the way you and I write is naturally diaristic, and doesn’t feel completely separate from the stuff that’s going on. You’re quite a permeable person emotionally, I think, and I definitely am. It’s inescapable that outside stuff is inevitably going to become part of the material, even if you if you don’t say, “Trump” and “Brexit” and the whole thing.

But you’re right. I mean, I’m dreading next year when all these quarantine albums come out, where all the songs are going to be called like, “Masked and Alone,” and “My Wifi’s Too Slow.” Have you been writing a lot during this period, or have you been feeling a bit dead?

Lucy: I actually have been writing a lot because, I think I end up writing to escape the present and to not think about the future. I feel like most of my creative life comes from the past. Thinking about the future is scary and living in the present is scary, and the past is certain, it can’t be changed. It’s static. I journal, so I’ve been rereading my journals and kind of remembering some emotional things that I haven’t really put to rest yet, and so that’s just kind of ending up being what I’m writing about right now. And then I might write about what’s happening in the year 2020 in, like, 2025. Do you ever have a dialogue about where you’re writing about something like many years after?

Fenne: Yeah, 100 percent. This record that I just released, when I first started writing for it, it [was] really important for me to reflect the growth that I feel I’ve experienced since the first album came out. That was kind of my first thing — I was like, I need to almost prove that I changed, if not just to myself, to people that are listening to the music.

And then as I started writing, there was a lot of stuff coming up. I was having these conversations with my mum about why I always feel angry rather than sad as my go-to feeling, and how I always feel panicky very fast. And she was telling me that when I was born, I didn’t have that big intake of breath that normal births provide — I was a cesarean, I just got cut out — and she was like, “For the first year of the life, you were crying if you weren’t held and you were always in pain and your spine was all weird and you just were not comfortable in your skin.” That was so interesting to hear that, because I genuinely feel like I haven’t really changed that much from how I came into the world. I definitely think there’s something to be said for your entrance into the world influencing how you exist in that world. So as much as I’m like, I really want to write about being 21, I feel like I also want to talk about being two again. It wasn’t a conscious thing, but it happened.

But you’re right about the past, it isn’t going to change, and thinking about the future is really scary, especially when — I don’t know how the rules are changing in the states, but especially here, it’s like we’re being run by children. It’s like “You can do what you want! Oh, no, those people died. Well, that’s a shit. Maybe we should stay inside again. Oh, no, that hasn’t worked.” No one knows what’s going on and to even try and get your head around what it’s going to be like in a week or year is impossible. And that makes you feel powerless, and then that makes

Lucy: Have you been having any of weird dreams during lockdown?

Fenne: The first couple of weeks I didn’t have any dreams. I think I was still in a state of shock, where I was like, This doesn’t feel normal. I almost [felt] like when you smoke too much weed, and your waking mind is going crazy, and then when you go to sleep, your body’s like, I literally can’t do it any more crazy anymore.

That was my brain for a while, but then come week three or four, I started having terrifying — like, not even apocalyptic dreams, just dreams when nothing was right. I had those, like. “running on the spot trying to get away from something but I couldn’t,” just really visceral, realistic horror dreams. I don’t know when they stopped, but it was dark for a bit. What about you?

Lucy: I think similarly in the beginning, I wasn’t having a lot of dreams. I did have this one dream about me and a lot of friends touring this big, kind of mansion-like house that was furnished. And they were like, “Oh, look, there’s a room over here, I found a new room!” And we were all just running around, like, laughing and loving this huge house. So I woke up and I was like, You know what, I’m just going to get on Zillow and see if there’s a big place that I could just fit my fantasy into. And there was this place that was listed, like, three days prior, and it looked so similar to the house of my dream. So I called my friends that were in the dream and I was like, “Hey, do you want to move in together? I just had this dream and I found this house and we were all in it together.” And that actually happened in July, like I live in the house with the people that were in the dream

Fenne: Oh, my god, that’s amazing.

Lucy: Did you feel you were psychic ever?

Fenne: Stupid stuff, like I predicted my brother’s birth. I was sitting with my mom on the stairs of old house, and I was, like, one and a half or two. I was like, “It’s going to be a brother, I think,” or something like that. And she was like, “What are you talking about?” And I put my hand on her tummy and said, “It’s going to be a brother, but it’s a sister I had in mind.” And she was like, “That was weird,” and then she went to get a pregnancy test and she was a month pregnant.

Lucy: Oh, wow. I thought you were saying like, “My mom was pregnant, so I predicted that she would have a baby.”

Fenne: No, like straight up, she had no idea.

Lucy: That’s much more impressive.

Fenne: She didn’t tell me for a long time — maybe until I was 15 I didn’t know, because she was like, “I don’t want to give her false power, I don’t want her to think that everything she has a feeling about is going to happen.”

But I think I go through certain areas where I get a bad feeling and try and squash it if I don’t know anything about it, and then it’s proven to me that I was right. I moved into this really spooky house… when I first moved to Bristol I was in shared houses, and then I was like, I really want a place to live with a couple of friends. We were looking somewhere and we, in the process, got kicked out of our existing houses, so we had to rush finding a place. We settled on this house that was enormous and really cheap, and we didn’t know why it was so cheap but we didn’t really think about it.

When we first went to view it, I was like, This feels wrong. Something about the energy of this house is not nice. It doesn’t feel like we’re welcome here. And I told my friend, and he was like, “Well, we don’t really have the chance to be picky right now, and we don’t have any money.” So we moved in, and then a couple of weeks after we moved in I was sitting outside — we signed on for a year, so we couldn’t get out even if we wanted to. I was sitting outside the house and the next door neighbor talking to me, and we were chatting and she was like, “Do you know the story behind the house you just moved into?” I was like, “No, but please tell me because I don’t like it.” And basically, about 10 years ago, maybe less, this family next door, who still lives next door, the dad in the family shot some guy because they were in warring gangs — I live in a really rough bit of Bristol. He shot this guy and tried to hide the body in the basement of the house that we live in now, and then he tried to escape to the States, and his wife bought him the ticket — they both went down for a long time, and the kids were in care. Now the woman’s out of jail and she’s living next door with the kids. So I was like, “There’s been a dead body in my house.” And I feel like I knew that something was wrong and I ignored it, and then ever since that point, I had to live there for another 11 months. And I had all my practice equipment in the basement, I’d made it into a room where we could record, and then it just didn’t feel good from that point on. I didn’t want to go downstairs.

Lucy: If you felt good, I’d be really concerned. [Laughs.] I do feel like people like haunted houses sometimes, like some people really get into that. I don’t understand it. I feel like you can only be into it if you haven’t truly been affected by the haunting of the house.

Fenne: It’s the kind of thing that you want to go into for a trip, but t you don’t want to really live there. I don’t know about you, and I will ask you, but I didn’t really think I was that much of a believer in ghosts for a pretty long time, and then I was listening to this podcast where people tell real stories from their lives — it’s not scripted at all, at least that’s what they say. There’s so many stories of people moving into a house, getting a weird feeling, and then their kid start talking to ghosts. Some of the stories are so visceral and so complicated and so obviously made me see that there is another world that I haven’t personally come into contact with, but why would we not? Have you had ghost experiences?

Lucy: Oh, yeah, more recently. I feel like I’ve heard from friends that the more you open yourself up to it, the more that it comes to you. I feel like I was just kind of closed off for a really long time. Even that podcast, I’d have been like, “Oh, good stories,” like whether that’s true or not, it doesn’t really matter. But having had your own experiences and having friends tell you stories — it’s really hard to refute someone you care about saying like, “This happened,” or something happening in your life. I’ve seen and heard things that I can’t explain, and I don’t know if it’s ghosts, but certainly something has happened that is completely unreasonable and inexplicable.

I do feel like they have sort of an architectural tone — you know, like haunting, need a place for it, and I do feel like there are some places that I’ve had, like, weird experiences that feel kind of supernatural. I think that once I realized, like, Oh, this is real, life is just kind of… The possibility has been there, so more of it has just come into my life. Not really as much right now — like the house we moved into should absolutely be haunted, but I don’t think that it is. There is sort of a weird energy — and anybody should laugh at me for talking about it this way, probably — but like, the energy is benevolent. If this is a haunted house, it’s a chill ghost.

Fenne: I think there’s no reason to not think that the energy of the previous people in a place affect it. Even if you don’t think a ghost is like an actual vision of a person, an exact replica of that exact person, I definitely think some places have bad vibes, some places have good vibes. But you can’t change the feeling in a place. When I moved into my current place, it was trash — the people that lived here before that burned the carpets up and left all their furniture here, and there were scrapes on the walls and stuff, and, like, everything was painted black. It was so weird. And again, I was poor and didn’t have much choice. So I moved in by myself and made it really nice with my best friend, and actually hung a picture of your face on the wall — that’s one of the first things I did, and I think that really helped.

But then I was broken into when I was on tour, and they stole all my merch money, which was a huge blow, and my laptop which had all my demos on it. So I went back to the house and the whole feeling had completely changed. And I worked very hard to not let this be a negative place for me, and I feel like that’s just been completely invaded and disrupted. And I obviously was scared as well, so I just got three of my best friends to live with me for a month, just to reset the feeling. And it worked.

I mean, you know as well as anyone that music isn’t particularly lucrative when you’re in the beginning stages of it, and a grand in cash will see you through two months. And that was not possible because… I don’t know, I hope that it was someone that needed it a lot, because I don’t like thinking it was just some guy that was like, “You know what, I’m pissed and I want stuff.” But I think as a person, I generally kind of revert to running away from stuff that is bad. So I think if I hadn’t really thought about it and wanted to stay in this place, I would have just moved.

Lucy: I don’t know if I told you, but I was robbed in May of this year, during quarantine. So, yeah, I’m really sorry that happened to you. I have a whole new, you know, knowing what it feels like. I was actually in the house, and I woke up at 5AM and heard — but I have such a creative mind, to put it lightly, where often I’ll hear things and be like, Oh, that’s the absolute worst thing that could possibly be. And I think like that all the time, so I know not to let it take hold over my thoughts.

So I woke up at 5 and was like, Oh, it sounds like people are in the kitchen opening the window, and well, they’re probably gone if they are, and probably they aren’t even there in the first place. I’m gonna go back to sleep. But then I went downstairs and someone had taken my wallet and a laptop and all of the booze in the house, and some other trinkets. Luckily nothing so bad — we had guitars around, and the guitars weren’t taken. One time I was robbed and someone stole my journals of three years, like all my journals of my whole college experience before I dropped out, and that’s the worst. That still hurts so much, not having those years documented.

But yeah, I did move. That dream I had about a new house, it was the old house that got broken into, and then we moved to this house. I feel a lot safer, but I definitely felt like, on top of feeling isolated and not leaving the house — like literally not even going onto the porch for a long time — I just dissociated for like a month and a half, basically June and the beginning of July.

I don’t know, I think a lot of people are going through things like that, and the general state of life is so fragile that when negative events come into life, it just feels kind of harder to recover. But I definitely I feel a lot better now. Do you feel any better in your house?

Fenne: I do, although it was a while ago. But yeah, just imagining that feeling — I wasn’t in. I was abroad, so I had to wait like a week to get back. But I can’t imagine knowing. You knew something was up, but you convinced your brain that it was just doing that thing that it does, and being in and being invaded in that way. That’s fucked.

It just hurt me so deeply that you had your journals stolen — that’s like taking a chunk of someone’s whole brain. And they don’t have any use for that stuff. Like the way that I was trying to frame the break in when it happened was like, OK, that’s cash, that’s a laptop. If they need them, those will provide for them in some way. But I was almost like, Why couldn’t they have left my memory stick with my demos on it? Because that wouldn’t benefit them. They took a packet of photographs, which was, like old family photos.

But there is so much bad, life ruining stuff happening at the moment anyway. And granted, it happens always, and I do think that the BLM protests in Bristol came right at the perfect point where everybody was angry about how we are being governed as a country, generally, through the corona stuff. And then the BLM stuff came at a time where everyone was so ready to be unhappy with the way that the world is run.

It was almost like, I’m aware that racism hasn’t just arrived overnight, and everyone was just like, “Oh, no, racism exists.” But it happened at a time when everyone was really open to the possibility that stuff is bad still, and we really need to make an effort as a community to change that.

I mean, this is completely unrelated to the health stuff, but there are so much bad, bad shit going on, and it’s a conscious decision to, daily, allow it to come in in a way that you can process in a positive way. It’s just so easy to doomscroll and be like, Fuck, this is really bad. You need to kind of police yourself as to when you let that stuff in, because it’s so easy to just constantly be tapped into this modern hellscape.

I recently got locked out of Instagram for no real reason, and initially I was like, Damn, that’s where I get all my stuff from. And then I was like, Actually, this is great for me because I can focus on the closest things to me and how to change the things that I can change. And not just think that the big picture is unattainable and so badly ruined that I don’t feel like I have the power to change anything.

Lucy: So maybe just to close, we can each tell a recent dream that we had.

Fenne: Weirdly, when you said that we should talk about dreams for our theme, I just typed in “dreams” in my notes on my phone, and I screenshotted a bunch of them, but two of them are so, so similar that it freaked me out, firstly, and then I realized that they’re exactly a year apart.

Lucy: Woah, that it so weird.

Fenne: The second one was when I was in Chicago recording, and the first one was a year before that.

So the first one, all I’ve written is, “Dream: Breastfeeding on a beach thinking, This would make a beautiful photo. Shiny sticker, little Game Boy, tiny nipples, holding hands while a wave rolls over.” And then the second bit is, “Nana is hosting a Halloween party. Me getting skateboard advice from a kind, kind man.”

I would like to pay the main attention to the breastfeeding part and the Halloween part, because exactly a year later in Chicago — I think around the time I was seeing a guy over there from Tinder, who was a skateboarder, so that’s kind of cool too. So the Chicago dream is, “Mum pregnant, me also pregnant. Letter writing to get better in school. Buying Halloween costumes with tall people and a beautiful woman on a minimum wage budget. Didn’t go for the white outfit.” And then the last line is,”Pour whiskey in my ear to unblock me, please.” [Laughs.]

Lucy: [Laughs.] Do you type these as soon as you wake up?

Fenne: Yeah, so they’re literally just key bits. I like to think I’m quite a stable person who’s got q handle on how they deal with their feelings, but it seems that there’s a lot of breastfeeding, pregnancy, weird kind of mom-daughter problem stuff that maybe I need to work through. And Halloween seems to be something I hold close to my heart, strangely.

What’s your most recent weird one?

Lucy: I almost never have any sort of, like, motherhood type of dreams. I mean, I’m also adopted and have pretty much no desire to ever be pregnant, so I guess I my subconscious just doesn’t complain. Like, Yes, that is true.

I’ve been having a lot of dreams set in Russia, which is a complicated setting because, as I said, I’m adopted, and my parents told me I was Russian when I was growing up. Actually when I turned 18, I got my file and found out that I’m genetically Uzbek, like from Uzbekistan, so not Russia. I took two years of Russian in high school to get connected to that part of myself, and then it’s like, I’m not even Russian.

So I’ve been having all these dreams set in Russia, and I had one a few days ago where the entire staff of Matador was swimming up an icy river and Rennie [Jaffe], who is both of our managers, and everyone that works at Matador was swimming up an icy river — freezing, and like chunks of ice floating by — because we were on our way to a show. We really wanted to see this girl sing.

Only four of us survived: Me, [Matador founder] Chris Lombardi, and Rian Fossett, and Malcolm Donaldson, who all work at Matador. We get to the shore and the promoters are there and they’re like, “Hey, we have blankets for you, thanks for making the trip, we know it’s such a hassle getting here. We have vodka and we have tea and blankets and heaters in this trailer, and we’re so happy you can make it.” And they have this little trailer set up next to this sports stadium where the show is going to be. They bring in the girl who they’re scouting, I guess to sign, and she’s so nervous. I’m trying to talk to her an be like, OK, it’s gonna be OK, you know, I was happy when Matador reached out to me, I think it’ll be fine, you seem really sweet.” We listened to her record, and the first song was the most beautiful song I’d ever heard. You know in a dream where you wake up and can’t remember what it was, but you know in the dream the supreme beauty was apparent to you? We all cried and were like, “We’re just honored to be here with you, you’re going to be a star,” everyone was so emotional. And then a couple of songs in, we were still liking it, but towards the end of the record, everyone got really bored and tired. So in, like, 20 minutes, it was just this beautiful, elated feeling to everyone sort of unspokenly getting really tired of her voice, the most beautiful voice in the world. And she noticed, and I noticed, and it was clear that everyone kind of just wanted to go. like when a party has gone on too long. She just started crying, and I just wanted to say, “I don’t know how to explain it, the feeling just left.”

And that was the dream, where I just had to console the best musician in the entire world that everyone just labeled not engaging enough.

Fenne: At the beginning of this dream, I thought the main part of it was — because this is way more detailed than I remember anything, like even real life — when you said that only only a few of you made it, I was like, Is this icy river a metaphor for the long road to being able to do shows again? And that a lot of people that we work with will just die after the market being ruined? But that’s so, so sad!

Lucy: I felt grief when I woke up. I have this problem where I wake up from dreams and I feel so deeply for everyone that I met in the dream. I thought about her the rest of the day, where I really felt bad for her even though she was a figment of my imagination. Like I had such sympathy for her position, and I really couldn’t understand and wanted to understand why we didn’t keep loving her music. I don’t know, it felt like something dark and sad going on there.

Fenne: Oof. I want to meet her. I want to climb in your brain and meet her.

Lucy: I could draw her. I wake up from dreams and I could tell you all of the architecture, I could tell you the fabric on the furniture and what makeup people are wearing, and shoes people are wearing. A lot of info.

Fenne: For a split second when I wake up, it’s like that, but yeah. There’s an artist called [Zdzisław] Beksiński — he trained as an architect and then he became a photographer, and then eventually he became this incredible painter, and his paintings inspired, like, black metal artwork. It’s like a lot of huge, imposing buildings draped in flesh, spiderwebs, and they’re beautiful because of how intricate they are, and they kind of glow. But he said that often he’d have the idea that — it’s not a theme, but it’s actually the picture itself, and then he replicated from this picture in his brain. So maybe you should go into Russian hellscape painting. [Laughs.]

(x)

[aizenat]

So like I’m trying to get an idea out about how fandoms are ruining music. One aspect of the many issues in music rn, but this is important because it’s about the artists who get blown up these days. Chappel is literally going to be like ice spice is now by this time next year because yall are fucking not paying attention to MUSIC and ARTISTRY, and you’re falling for gimmicks.

Light skint girl with curly red hair and a fat ass with goofy, stupid rhymes? You blow her up and get her working with the biggest artists in the industry despite not being anywhere near talented enough to be in the same room as those women, and then surprised her debut album was a short hot mess. She NEVER gave anything in the last year and a half to indicate she was capable of ANYTHING more than calling herself miss poopy butt, and you’re surprised she did it like five times on her album? What were you expecting?

But ice didn’t blow up for her music or talent. Be forreal in why she blew up. Be real fucking honest? She blew up because niggas wanted to fuck her. Simple. She was basic, had no real personality you’d have to worry about, no real vision or sound or creativity, just doing dr seuss rhymes to justify a music video of her shaking her ass like a stripper (not even in a bouncy, having fun way like Meg or Glo). And niggas was jerking off to it and wanted more and black girls are so male identified that they fuck with those type of girls in hopes that being cool with them will make niggas wanna fuck with them. Like they can get male approval through osmosis.

I’ve heard more about chappel and her image (gimmick), her supposed attraction to women (again, not new, and funny how much that matters when someone who doesn’t identify as a lesbian does it but yall sleep on lesbians doing that. Again—), how she’s going to “save pop” music (yall said they about Billie, Olivia, Sabrina—); literally everything other than her music. I haven’t heard anything about her lyrics (is she direct, emotional, or more sarcastic and snarky????), what style her music is (pop means nothing in this day and age because trends move so fast that this decade had yet to develop a sound and identity), and what outside of her “drag” performance I should care about (i personally don’t like or enjoy drag, so what else? Is she dancing? Being carried around in an egg a la lady gaga circa 2011? What’s she doing on stage that I should be impressed with?); NOTHING. Instead I hear she’s “intense,” and apparently so amazing that she’s going to single-handedly save the entire industry.

Yeah I can’t trust that. Because that’s the fandom talking. See what I mean? This age of music listeners, which I really learned watching the convos around the Kendrick vs Drake beef, listen to people simply because they’re popping. Now don’t get me wrong, depending on what is being said, I’ll check someone out if I see a certain type of attention. I may even like Chanel’s music if yall could be normal about it. I like seeing what’s trending to see if I can understand the hype. It’s why I listen to Taylor’s albums even though I’m ambivalent about her (though folklore and evermore were amazing and her at her peak imo; confirming to me she does have great strengths in songwriting and potential when she’s not doing whatever midnights and ttpd were). I lowkey love when artists I don’t expect to impress me do. Like okay go ahead. Part of the reason I’m being so silly about Conan Gray’s album is because how much it impressed me! Unpopular conehead opinion, but I didn’t really like Superache, and so I wasn’t sure I’d like this album either but it blew me away! Love that! Solidified me as a fan after his strong debut album! I’m in it now! I’m locked in let’s go! I’m watching bro’s entire career now.

Hell, Fletcher was only good to me for like two songs before this recent album. Like okay white girl, yes I’m buying a ticket to see you perform this shit live the fuck?! The vocals and movement in the arrangements and the lyrics? Killing me softly with this whole album rude!!!!!!

But I’m always going to stand by what I like. If an artist I like drops a project I don’t like, I just pass and patiently wait for the next one (see: lady gagas art pop, Beyonce’s renaissance, most everything Miyavi’s dropped since the others lol, etc). I am a huge Cardi fan and did not listen to her album lol (I was a fan of hers before she needed a plot line to justify her being on love and hip hop). She drop a song I don’t like, I don’t care. I hate WOP to this day despite loving both her and Megan; that’s probably why I was all over Bongos when y’all slept on it because that was a much better collab imo than wop.

But my point is I don’t like an artist and then just like anything and everything they drop because I’m a fan. If they release something I think is trash, I’m calling it trash. But fandom rules dictate that the fandom comes before the project. If you call yourself a fan, you must love everything they do. And you must pretend it is the best thing ever even if objectively YOU know it wasn’t great (like swifties gaslighting themselves into thinking reputation was a good album). Like, it’s okay to not love something your favorites do. You don’t have to love everything.

But these kids don’t get into artists because they like the music; they get into them because they’re famous. Because they’re big. Like, so many Drake fans were his fans not because they thought his music was truly transcendent or some shit: he was popular and so they listened to him. Same with ice spice and whatever other rapper trending rn. Just like Olivia. Just like Sabrina rn. Just like Channelle (I’m doing this on purpose btw; ignore it).

Because, and this is the part no one is talking about or admitting, chappell is popular rn because she’s the perfect zoomer. They want to like her because she’s vaguely “queer,” says she likes women and will never date a man again (not in a I’ve learned I’m not attracted to them at all I’m a lesbian way, but in that modern “queer” fuck boys I’ll kiss girls instead uwu #teamsapphic way), pretends she’s subverting gender like they do by being a female in heavy makeup going by they/them/he/him pronouns (the identity doesn’t make the expectation to perform in that way any less lol), and has no real talent vocally so anyone can sing along poorly to her songs (a la Taylor).

Basically chalel is who the gaylor weirdos wish Taylor swift actually was. That’s why they love her. Not because her music is that good, but because she’s the queerio they can easily project on. They can’t project onto a Fletcher or Hayley, who are exclusively same sex attracted and tend to lean tomboyish in their appearance (in that cali way; though Fletcher isn’t from California so idk what that is about with her lol). They’re “normal” looking, instead of “queer”’ in that “dramatic theater kid adult who refuses to acknowledge they’re not a theater kid anymore” way. She’s the perfect representation of the modern “queer” movement: all queer with none of the homosexuality. All about looks and aesthetics than eating another girl out.

It’s very I Kissed a Girl esque with how performative it is.

That’s why they like her. Because of what she represents. That’s also why I keep comparing her Taylor, because especially after the VMAS, Taylor became a stand-in for any suburban white girl who was mediocre but always imagined making it some day. Taylor isn’t big because of her music; I think her recent album really showed that. Taylor has potential, but she always succumbs to the spectacle she’s become, playing into that when she’s left without a proper creative muse. But Taylor is big because mediocre white girls, who are a PLENTY in the west, want her to succeed to prove they’re, idk, valuable? Capable. Talented and worth being stars? Or so they hope. Or so they dream.

Chapel in the “queer” version of that. Her music itself isn’t good. Or at least not THAT great. You genuinely relate to it, then fine. Not everyone is going to cry listening to Conan Gray’s Heather like I did because not everyone went through that. But she’s the queer “icon” they can project onto. Her sexuality is vague like theirs, she makes goofy sayings and phrases that you can put on tshirts easily, she’s hyper feminine so youre not put off by her sexuality the way you are with actual lesbian artists who often aren’t, but she calls her hyperfemininity drag which conservatives are attacking so yay drag!

And so because you want to be fans, you push her music and say it’s good. And you keep repeating it again and again, until the world buys the lie. And she’s big and her success can speak to you little queerio! You too can be successful as your queer as in weirdo self. You too can wear crazy clothes and dye your hair whatever colors and be a super star in your own world too! Because if she’s there, why not you!

And that’s also why the fandom is obsessed and entitled towards her to the point they’re mad when she says to be more normal. Because they know the truth. The “we made you” thing doesn’t work if you’re famous for your art and talent. Look at Chris brown and Drake and how those bitch asses won’t get canceled and go away. When people are here for your work, your personal shit isn’t a deterrent. You can’t say YOU made them: their music being deemed “good” and enjoyable made them. You were one part, but they were going to win regardless. I’ve been a day one Drake hater but that didn’t stop him from being labeled the biggest artist in the 2010s. My personal hate didn’t make or break Drake. It sucks realizing how powerless you are in that way (WHO YOU TELLING????), that all you can do is sit around and pray for moments like Kendrick straight bodying Drake and finally getting people to talk about all the shit I been complaining about with drake since day one. But there was no guarantee that was going to happen. Chris brown is still (unfortunately) going strong.

But the reason why fans think challenge owes them something is because they KNOW her music isn’t good enough to stand on her own. That the only reason she’s blowing up is BECAUSE they want her to. Not the music but because of what she represents. So they force themselves to stream her music again and again until they “like it,” and yet realistically, they could drop it at any time and not miss it. In their minds, they made her because of who she was and what she represented: not because of her music. They were fans of HER so they made her music relevant. And so if she doesn’t accept their weird behavior, then they can take that support back and her music would stop trending. The hype would die down. And she’ll be forgotten about aside from a few real fans like Lorde.

They’re not fans of her music, they’re fans of HER. And just like ice spice, and all the other acts getting dropped right now because everyone is realizing how untalented and boring their music is, she’ll be gone if she loses their favor. Because music fans aren’t here for the music anymore, they’re just here for the fandom. And when the fandom moves on, the artists “fall off.”

[thelittlepalmtree]

Okay so I watched Days of Girlhood and I can kind of see why people are mad.

1) Dylan does not sing it well. The high pitched parts sound different. I would not have given her a song with that chorus.

2) Whoever styled Dylan could've done better. She looked incredibly pasty the whole time and every outfit she wore made her look super skinny her head look gigantic. The blonde wig did not help. If there had been more a-line dresses or just more of a flare to any of her outfits she would've looked a lot better.

The effect of these two things made the video seem very off. I also think the 50s aesthetic was trying to be barbie-esque but it came off more like edward scissorhands. The whole thing kind of assaulted my senses and honestly put me in an annoyed mood. And then when you actually listen to the lyrics, it's a lot easier to feel annoyed or take offense.

Are the lyrics bad or inappropriate? No, not really. But they aren't good. Most of the song is about drinking, shopping, or romantic contact but then the chorus says "these are the days of girlhood" which, I know is how Dylan describes her transition, but for like 99% of the population girlhood=childhood or even being an adolescent. It's a nostalgic time and I don't think the idea of girlhood being about the adult activities she describes was the best creative choice.

The other thing is she chose the wrong genre. If this had been more of a club song like songs put out by Paris Hilton and Ke$ha it would've made more sense. But it's rare these days to see this kind of bubblegum pop to be just about shopping, drinking, etc. Bubblegum pop in general isn't really in vogue. I feel like this song would've fit right in with Call Me Maybe, California Girls, or Shake it Off. And honestly, as a person who loved that time, I've also moved past it. It doesn't have an edge of authenticity. And those songs didn't really claim womanhood the way this one does. I think a lot of women have the experience of "types." A "California Girl" is a type. Those artists sold themselves as certain "types." I feel like Marina and the diamonds played into this aa lot with Bubblegum Bitch and How To Be A Heart Breaker. Songs made by women for women present men as a monolith and songs made by men for men present women as a monolith. This song was presumably one made by women for women but it presents women as a monolith.

And honestly, it's just not good. Like it isn't saying anything. There's not a single metaphor or anything. It really is just a list of activities and a chorus. And they're not even relatable. Retail therapy? In this economy? It is reductive and just boring.

Is the backlash fair? No, of course not. At the end of the day, it's just not a good song. It kind of gave me a headache watching the video. But that's not a crime. At the same time though, I feel like anyone would've gotten ripped apart for this song. Dylan is trans and it is a very dangerous environment for trans women. I know that definitely play a big part in this. The thing is, it absolutely shocks me that she didn't see this coming to some extent. Like...did she watch the video? Personally, I wouldn't have put that out if I were at the same risk she was. Especially because she has just gotten out of a huge transphobic controversy. Like the crazy people are watching you and waiting for you to fuck up and you put out a video that is sonically challenging, lyrically inane, and a complete visual assault and think "wow, no one's going to have any strong opinions on this at all."

Again being threatened, attacked, or experiencing transphobia is not okay. It's not. And I am sure Dylan and her team thought it was great when they put it out. I do think, that if you put your hand in a hornet's nest, you will probably get stung. Especially if you look like a haunted mannequin while doing it. And, to be honest, literally anyone would probably get the same amount of vitriol for that video. Do we not all remember lambasting Sabrina Carpenter and Joshua Basset for daring to respond to Driver's License? Do we not remember Rebecca Black? Do we not remember Tramp Stamps? This is the environment people are bringing new music into, this is the risk artists have to take on. And yes, Dylan is trans so she's getting transphobic responses, but all of those other artists were torn apart for their identities too. And everyone chastising the general public for being annoyed at bad music should have that same energy for all bad music.

[gleeksfreaksandwannabes]

I’ve watched the Nerdy Prudes proshot twice now since it came out, so here is:

A completely unhinged list of all the things that are on rotation in my head because I lack the ability to be normal about anything ever, but they get progressively more unhinged each time:

(Spoilers under the cut)

The classic, “high school, is killing me! I’m so fucking dead!” also “it’s not cool, it’s a fallacy, it’s a cruel and unusual brutality” even though that’s not the order of the words

‘I got left behind this morning, bus driver’s a fuckin’ asshole,’ - dude Joey as Pete is a damn gem!

‘Oh god, BUTT OUT CHASITY!’

“He’s got the hallway on lock, his fists are always half cocked, he’s got me hiding in ma locker!” - something about the way Joey says ‘my locker’ satisfies the little gremlins in my brain

“He’s a literal monster!” - also Max’s dance when he sings it cracks me up

‘I learned that in anti bullying assembly last month - FUCK NUGGET!’ - have I mentioned I love Max?

“What if all my thoughts were stronger? What if my beliefs were taller? What if I were king of the hill? Captain of the team!” - this one is on serious repeat for no damn reason except I love Joey

Just all of Bully the Bully and Bury the Bully - especially “I just cut off his nips”

‘Oh my god, it’s a skele’on!’ - I cannot with that fucking line oh my god

“I never thought I could walk into a bathroom, without the fear of a swirly, but now I can pee all by myself!”

Also the boys just going “NIGHT HAWKS! NIGHT HAWKS!” in the background cracks me up

The entirety of Nerdy Prudes Must Die but also:

“Does the math club comfort you? Should’ve joined the SMOKE CLUB YOU NERDY PRUDE!” - I sing this at least 5 times a day even though I am legit a nerdy prude

Also “Will you pray for me? When I’m gone? Or until another Ritchie comes along?”

ALL of Hatchet Town, but particularly “someone’s got their hands on the hatchet handle, swinging on the youth it’s a hatchet scandal” - I swear Jeff put literal crack into all of these songs oh my gosh

“Oh how was it?” “Fuckin transcendent!” - dude I don’t know why this line cracks me up but I literally can’t stop saying it

“If i loved you, you would know it, if I loved you, I would show it, if I loved you like you should be loved, loved you like I’m capable of!” Again… Joey and Mariah, I have no other explanation other than singing up high on the ‘you’ is pretty fun

Literally just… the way they sing each of the Lords in Black’s names in The Summoning. I just… I have no idea, it’s just addictive

“You summon us once, you summon us twice, you gamble it on the roll of a dice! La la la la la!” Again, no reason… just vibes

“Stephanie has got a g*n it’s time to have some fun! Stephanie has got a g*n she knows what must be done!” - The whole Summoning scene is so good oh my god!

“It’s like you knew me, before you knew me, it’s like you saw me, before you saw me,” - I keep getting the words to this one mixed up so I just throw in random ass lyrics

And that’s it! Long story short, this musical gave me severe brainrot, but I loved every second of it, and now I’m going to go listen to the soundtrack every day until the proshot is on YouTube, thank you for coming to my Ted talk!

[innervoiceart]

INXS - Original Sin (Official Music Video) - 1983

"Original Sin", originally titled "Brand New Day", is the first single from "The Swing" album. This was the band's first #1 Single in Australia. During 1984, it was #1 in Australia (for two weeks in January) as well as in Argentina and France.

‘Original Sin' is one of INXS' most enduring hits. It was their first Australian number one and helped them make inroads into markets around the world they would soon dominate.

The legendary Daryl Hall appears on the song's chorus, though Hall has since said he has no idea why.

“Nile Rodgers is a friend of mine. He was working on the record and he asked me to come down to the studio because they wanted me to sing on it for some reason,” he told Donnie Sutherland on Sounds in 1984. “I don't know why, they're good singers. They didn't need me. But I did it anyway.”

What the artist said:

“INXS just about lost their minds when they saw that Nile Rodgers was backstage at one of their shows in Canada. The band were fans of Chic and his productions and had tried to get the word out that they were keen to work with him on their next album.

“We gave him a copy of the ‘Original Sin' demo, and the next minute we found ourselves rehearsing in Florida, then going into The Power Station in New York City, literally just after David Bowie and his band had left the studio,” Andrew Farriss told FasterLouder in 2014.

“We walked straight in and the best part was the engineer who had worked on a lot of those albums with Nile, Jason Casaro, was there too.

“When I listen to ‘Original Sin' and compare it to other recordings, geez that sounds good. At the time there was this cutting edge of people who were really good at what they were doing, and two of them were sitting in that room.”

What Nile Rodgers said:

Rodgers not only affected the music, but he had a big say in the lyrics for the song's iconic chorus too.

“The original lyrics were, 'Dream on white boy, dream on white girl,' Rodgers told AdelaideNow in 2012. “I said, 'Why not make it 'black boy, white girl?' I come from an inter-racial couple. Psychologically that makes it a bigger statement.'

“Even when I rang up Daryl Hall from Hall and Oates to sing on it, his manager thought it was too controversial. I think the record would have been bigger had I not talked them into changing the lyrics.”

What the press said:

In a glowing review of the song for AllMusic, Ned Raggett particularly outlined the influence of Rodgers' production as a high point of the record.

“It's the monstrous groove and punch of the song that counts first and foremost,” he wrote. “With its stuttering drum breaks, the dark chime of the lead synth line matched by droning guitar, Kirk Pengilly's brisk sax, and the relentless, straight-up rhythm driving everything along.”

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/doublej/music-reads/features/nile-rodgers-beginner-s-guide/102675826?sf269838049=1&fbclid=IwAR0kRdgTHVUlzcLlRpD5cSpZNcuOvr-gOGOluaH495gl3T7aHSRMVI-rNC0

[cato-of-blamesociety]

32weeksMixtape Tracklist/Song Picks All Parts (Links to each blog part) **

How/Why did I choose/chose to use the songs I did

*Full breakdown, was updated in real time (weekly) so you go through the process/journey with me!*

32. Day Dreaming x NxWorries (Anderson .Paak + Knxwledge)

Man, first off, thank you for those of you who are truly seeking out all the aspects of this project. I don't know how long the internet will last, but for those seeing this 5, 10, 15....(or even 30!?) years into the future, thank you! If my wife or my children are seeing this, I love you and appreciate you for putting up with my madness during this period. See, 32weeks was all about pushing myself to my creative limits. I took a simple concept and turned into an artform. Think about it, right now, TikTok is bursting with the green screen idea: reacting to a video, or sharing controversial info, or wholesome content, with the person in front of/on the side of/stitched in, etc and the green screen is an element blending the two visuals together. Mixtapes have been around for well, probably since the conception of Hip hop. I took both entities and came out with this. A visual mixtape, set up as a presentation, with 32 tracks, released on a weekly basis...and staying on schedule. HAHAAHAHAHA!!! That is bizarre! I was able to (almost) share how these images appear in my mind, and how I relate them to the music. I used all true stories from my life. Pieces of my childhood and adulthood that I have never really shared with others...like real talk, #20, that was something I never knew I would ever be able to talk about. And as you know, this portion of the 32weeks era is over, but there still more writing to do.

Ok, so I came across this instrumental after writing, I think the 29th(possibly) verse. I heard it and knew this would be number 32. NxWorries is the collaboration of Anderson .Paak and Knxwledge. Their "Yes Lawd!" album is soooo fire. Like real talk, I knew Anderson .Paak has some dope instrumentals. Oxnard, Malibu, Ventura, are filled with wonderful productions. Knxwledge's beats just hit different. Like, Suede, or Lyk Dis, or Livvin, or omg....H.A.N.(if you are unfamiliar...go hear that right now lol). These instrumentals have that smooth old school but modern feel. But then, Daydreaming drops. 💥Like I said, I knew this was the one. I needed to find the instrumental immediately. All I kept hearing was 🎶32 weeks...🎶This verse pretty much wrote itself. It's literally the closer. I wanted listeners to feel that excitement, the raw feeling, of a burden being lifted. We know the feeling of saying you are going to do something, and then actually following through. During the live period of 32 weeks, whenever it all felt overwhelming, I would play this song as a reminder that it is going to feel amazing to finish this. That gave me more fuel to continue on.

As a songwriter, I learned in this process that I can truly write a song about anything. Overall, I can take a feeling and put it in sound for a listener to digest. I faced the fear of my art not being good enough. I faced the fear that I may have to do somethings, hard things, on my own. I faced the fear that I will overlooked, and ignored. I faced the fear that I was no longer relative to my community (in regards to making music that matters). I faced the fear that I can't learn skills. I faced the fear of showing more darker sides of myself in my lyrics. I faced the fear of opening up to my listeners. I faced the fear of acknowledging death (still uncomfortable, but less anxiety). I faced the fear of my endurance, that I wouldn't be able to actually complete a feat a large as this. I faced the fear of comparison...that the real competition is with myself. I had to learn that I can't watch what other artists are doing and judge them or myself. That practice is dangerous to my mental wellbeing. I killed that distorted thought(and I continue to battle that distorted thought) with these truths:

1. The internet(specifically social media) can make anyone seem like they are super successful, happy, and etc. 2. Everyone's path is different and is autonomous to each individual 3. I work a full time job and found joy in creating and just want to share it with others 4. "It just doesn't matter", straight from Mac Miller's Faces/Bill Murray's monologue from "MeatBalls". I learned that whether something good or bad comes from this project, whether people hear my music or not, whether I live or die, Whether I change the world or not, it just doesn't matter. Once I remember those ideas, I kill the intrusive enemy of most humans - comparison.

Again, I appreciate you spending this time with me. I hope you enjoyed the experience. I encourage you to share the mixtape/blog/videos with people you think would love this. Or with the people that the songs remind you of. I am honored and grateful that you chose to experience this with me.💙💙💙

33. Cross The Globe x Lil Durk ft. Juice Wrld

I'm not sure what exactly to add to this post....let's start with the instrumental. As aforementioned in the blog post for week 23: Stand By Me x Lil Durkft. Morgan Wallen I go into my first encounters of Lil Durk and his Album "Almost Healed". I state in the post that I would tell you more about my feelings about "Cross The Globe". First off I want to say R.I.P. to Juice Wrld. I was never a huge fan, but....dude slaughtered a track on the "Into The Spider-Verse" Soundtrack. I love most of the songs on the soundtrack but Juice Wrld and Seezyn's "Hide" is f*cking catchy and has high replay value. Also, they play this song in the movie at a very vulnerable moment. Miles feels discouraged and with the song in the background.... just gives me the chills. I learned pretty quickly that Juice Wrld is really good with creating those singy/catchy hooks because he definitely killed it on Cross The Globe. So when I came across this song during my re-listening to the album, that beat swooped me up. I think, that was when I knew that this song would be the one I explain myself and the reason for the mixtape. This is also around the time I knew that there would be 33 verses instead of 32. I have mentioned Dante Alighieri's "Dante's Inferno"/The Divine Comedy throughout the project. During the writing the phase I had just picked up the inferno, or was wrapping up the inferno. Trying to incorporate some of wonderful messaging that I received. The Podcast, "Dante's Divine Comedy" by Mark Vernon was/is a major asset to understanding what the hell (hell...hahaha, get it?) you're reading. Also, I was 32 years of age approaching 33, add in the literature references and you have a few metaphors/entendres. I was very inspired by Alighieri with the whole "Cantos" ideas as chapters and seeing that each verse is a chapter of my life, whether past, present or future. I think the first lines I wrote were:

"documenting life just a novel, it is written/approaching chapter 33, 33 degrees. That's a third of the perfect work, Divine Comedy. Watch the Divine work through me..."

I really wanted to highlight the fact that this project contained a lot of honesty, alot of vulnerable moments, and shame. There are many situations that I had locked in my pen, due to fear of the judgement. As an adult I was able to knock down that barrier. I know how much I have worked on myself over the years. I know that I made a lot of mistakes, and being able to share them with others will ultimately release that shame/guilt possibly helping the listener. I struggled for years wondering what to write (due to what I just stated). I don't want to be the cheesy holier than thou emcee, I don't live street life, I don't have money to ball, and I am happily married and have two kids. Limiting myself in this way really slowed my mode of creativity. I am so grateful that I finally got to the point that I can just express my cringy past, talk about the work I do on myself, and find joy in my craft! I don't know what else to say so I am going to hop off of here. If you are reading this I want to say thank you! I appreciate your time, and attention. I hope something I say/write intrigues you, motivates you, or moves you. If no one has told you today that they love you, just know that I do, and I always will.

💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙���💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙

Weeks 1-8

Weeks 9-16

Weeks 17-24

Weeks 25- 31

[astorinx-writes]

Tame Impala’s song “Elephant” Is About Tenma

Tame Impala’s second album, Lonerism, is considered by many (including myself) to be the artist’s magnum opus. But one song that became a huge breakout hit was certainly “Elephant.” A song about the various bands that existed around the time of Tame’s creation in their city of Perth, Australia- It tells the story of one person, who is likened to an Elephant, and is quite arrogant. Many people, both real (and fictional) may come to mind when you yourself try to imagine who the “Elephant” could be. For me, I’m most reminded of Tenma, and I’m here to explain why.

First, It would help if you gave the song a listen, so I will be linking it down below, give it a shot! Secondly, of course, I don’t actually think Kevin Parker wrote “Elephant” to be about Tenma, that would be foolish to think beyond measure. I do, however, think that the lyrics and themes contained within the song remind me of him, which again is what we’ll be discussing today.

To start, let’s go over the first half of the first verse’s lyrics. As stated on Genius.com, they are:

Well, he feels like an elephant Shaking his big grey trunk for the hell of it He knows that you're dreamin' about being loved by him Too bad your chances are slim And it's not like Mr. Shuck To get shy when they ask him who is on top

From what we can gather about Tenma’s portrayal in the 2003 series, we can see that at times he tends to give off quite an air of hubris. He’s never not upfront about his place in the world, and the people in his puzzle that he’s so desperately trying to put together. Likening him to an elephant, we get the impression that he’s large and in charge, “shaking his big gray trunk for the hell of it” implies that he’ll flaunt and make a big show about whatever, whenever, just to remind everyone of his importance. I’m always reminded of Astro/Tobio when it comes to the next 2 lines, “He knows that you’re dreaming about being loved by him / too bad your chances are slim” because quite literally we all know that at times they’ve both pinned after Tenma giving them the time of day. Even though, always like clockwork, he never delivers. Also likening him to the character in Art Garfunkel’s “Mr. Shuck ‘n’ Jive,” we’re reinforcing what was mentioned earlier about being pretentious. This time, though, we’re referring more to an event, so to speak. In this, he is being asked “who is on top,” and without hesitation, he is saying himself. Even if you considered the numerous times he’s brought up robot domination, you can’t deny he wouldn’t turn around and act like he was the glue that put everything together.

Next, we’ll discuss the second half of the first verse, which is as follows:

There must be something deep down in the dark down there But he's not too easily scared He's got friends but they got the fear Wouldn't care too much if he just disappeared Oh look, hey, there he is now coming down the stairs (Here he comes)

Now, we are getting deeper into our understanding of the “Elephant” (who again in this case would be Tenma). We begin with the notion that Tenma is quite fearless, though I would argue there are some caveats to that interpretation. My idea here is that instead of being fearless, he is actually scared shitless at many points, but to maintain appearances (either from others or even himself), he pretends not to be scared, thus further emphasizing his cockiness. The people he surrounds himself with, like Drake, are portrayed as only associating with Tenma because of what he brings to them. In many episodes, he is seen giving either money, or insider information to things no one else of his caliber would have. Which is great for them, but it ultimately means there probably isn’t anything genuine in their relationships. Rather, they are all purely transactional. The lyrics, “Wouldn't care too much if he just disappeared” do a fantastic job at emphasizing that point. The final 2 lines give way to the song becoming a bit more plot like, which leads us into the next part: the instrumental.

The instrumental part of this song has got to be my favorite part of the song, second to only the opening lines of the second verse. It’s a rock odyssey anthem that goes through many phases, that in my eyes are telling the story of Tenma showing up and the chaos that ensues. I mean, the first part before “(Here he comes)” in the first verse sounds exactly like walking down the stairs, and the roaring synth that comes in afterward is just so on brand.

What we’re left with now, is only the final verse, which, again, is below:

He pulled the mirrors off his Cadillac (Yeah) 'Cause he doesn't like it looking like he looks back He talks like his opinion is a simple fact Somebody grabbed his collar He cried the whole way home No one remembered a thing when they saw him again That's how it is 'til the end (Yeah)

In what has to be my top 3 Tame Impala lyrics of all time, the alliteration in “He pulled the mirrors off his Cadillac (Yeah) / 'Cause he doesn't like it looking like he looks back” is simply impeccable. What it does is continue where we left off before the instrumental break, where the “Elephant” was being described to us. Now, we are being told that Tenma, does not look back. So much so, that he pulled his rearview mirrors off to ensure of it. Obviously, there’s no way of knowing if he actually drives a Cadillac, or if he literally has pulled his rearview mirrors off, but what I can say is based on those lines, we’re solidifying that he views himself in a high regard, and will keep trotting forward, no matter what. The next few lines detail an event where things have gone awry, and we’re made to believe that nobody did or said anything after the fact. Though (obviously) I cannot say exactly what event this could be referring to, as it may be just hypothetical, there is no doubt in my mind, that anything that happens to Tenma just gets swept under the rug. Not even O’shay seems to say or do much regarding getting Tenma off Astro’s back, so clearly there is some forgetfulness going on here.

Overall, this was a pretty silly post to make. However, I will concede to the fact that not all things need to be serious, and sometimes you want to combine your special interests like gay barbie dolls you’ve forced to kiss. I hope, however, though, you at least left this post with a new bop to jam out to!

Here's the link to give it a listen!

[winterrhayle]

RANK 1989 AND FEARLESS RIGHT TF NOWW

i cant even complain anymore bc i brought this onto myself ahaha

1989

this love - the bridge of this song actually KILLSLSSSSS me everytime it makes me FEEL THINGS OMG LIKE. the production is like a wave just HIT ME IN THE FACE,, and the added echos onto taylors version????? PUT ME LITERALLY 6 FEET UNDERGROUND ITS SO GOOD,,,, im so glad that people are finally starting to give it attention bc of it being one of the 2 tvs on 1989 bc this song really is THAT GIRL

you are in love - this song is literally all i want to experience in life,,, its another underrated gem and its sosososo cute and i love how she wrote this about jack antonoff thats peak friendship tbh

wildest dreams - so iconic how she put her actual heartbeat into this song,, also have u heard the music video version of this???? basically, towards the end theres added instruments and it sounds more orchestral and ASIGDUSDGLHFASTFGYUASGDJHAIISUFGHJKAFDSGH

style - THEEEEEEEE STRUT SONG. CATCH ME ON A WEDNESDAY NIGHT IN MY ONESIE PRETENDING LIKE IM ON A CATWALK IN MY BEDROOM. im not a haylor stan BUT thank u harry styles for making this song happen (same goes for out of the woods which brings me to my next ranking,,,,....)

out of the woods - THE PRODUCTION. PUT THE SONG ON AND PROPERLY L I S T E N. jack antonoff and taylor put their whole soul into that bridge bc....,..,, the build up to that big moment and the layering of sounds and then the pull back of the production on 'you were lookin at me' to show that all of the anxiety from outside of the relationship fades when she looks at HIM AND OAFIUAGFHLSVHDG (im so normal about this)

i know places - ok 1989 has the best production ever tbh,, bc the click of the recorder thingy at the start and end of the song to show that shes constantly being watched by the public????? *CHEFS KISS* its always super interesting to see insights like this into what its like to be famous, and this song with all of the themes of being anxious in a relationship bc of people watching is soo reminiscent of out of the woods (and u already know how i feel about that song hahaha)

blank space - this song is reputation (lyrically) before rep even existed,, the whole thing with her leaning into the untrue persona people gave her is very rep coded + this song is probably the most iconic thing to come out of 2014, and its also so funny bc when it came out i didnt know it was satire, so 8 year old me was yell-singing 'boys only want love if its torture' with my WHOLE BODY LMAOOOO and i turned out to be a lesbian so maybe i was onto something there

wonderland (gotta preface this by saying that im NOT a gaylor,, im just gonna say how i interprate this song for myself ) - i listen to this song in a very lesbian way. the idea of a relationship being doomed bc of peoples thoughts but being in ur own bubble in the magic of it all anyway??????? lesbian. 'too in love to think straight'???? lesbian. also the b

shake it off - i unironically think this is such a bop. idc what yall say,, if ur a shake it off hater u just dont know how to have fun,, haters gonna hate i guess

new romantics - this song is soooooo 1989 tour. whenever i think about it i mourn the fact that i didnt go and experience it

welcome to new york - ICONICCCC ALBUM OPENER. the progression from 'some day i'll be livin in a big old city' to 'welcome to new york it's been waiting for you' makes me want to sob. also her going 'the lights are so bright but they never blind me' to 'the lights and boys are blinding' ON THE SAME ALBUM is so funny like girl why are u lying😭

all you had to do was stay - this song is so funny bc didnt she say that she heard the high pitched 'STAY' in her dreams and then put it in the song😭, also i love the genre of taylor song that is actually lyrically so sad but is paired with really upbeat happy production😭 for example august and forever winter

clean - i have a confession, i didnt like this song for yearrrrsss but now ive matured and im sane and i understand that this is such a perfect album closer, i love how its a lot calmer than the rest of the album and i really love the secret message for this song in the album cd booklet 'she lost him, but she found herself, and somehow that was everything'

how you get the girl - iconic of her to have a literal instruction manual for men with no communication skills. and its a bop so there really is something for everyone here

i wish you would - this song kinda reminds me of i almost do (aka one of my faves off red)

bad blood - iconic music video, iconic feature with kendrick lamar BUT. the lyrics arent up to her usual level,, however the bridge is still rly good,, i just think that reputation executed this songs vibe a lot better

fearless (im already dreading this omg,, why is it SO LONG) also just for fun im gonna put this emoji ☔️ on every song that mentions the rain or a storm bc theres sososo many

come in with the rain ☔️- shout out to me for bring the only person who appreciates this song,, like.....,.,.,.,,,,,, 'hoping that someone will come back and just watching the 'and i, ive got you down / i know you by heart / and you dont even know where i start' HELLO? this is such a comfort song and it is very relatable 13/10

the other side of the door ☔️- another underrated bop BURIED by the sheer number of songs on this album😭 the outro alone should make this song more popular bc LISTEN TO ITTTTT

the way i loved you☔️ - shes so silly for this bc this mindset is exactly what she was taking about growing from in daylight😭 anyways,, iconic bridge,, so fun to sing, another 13/10

you belong with me - PICK ME ANTHEM🗣🔊💥💥💥💥 also i saw someone post that its rly funny how the song says 'i remember you drivin to my house in the middle of the night' but in the music video taylor and the love interests are next door neighbours😭 like why are u driving 10 meters king !?

breathe - ANOTHER COMFORT SONG (the lyrical content is actually very sad but whatever) its about a friendship breakup and to me it also is very reminiscent of a wlw breakup and iahdouslahgdhfgsadfhjgshjadf also i love the outro sm (the im sorry repeat part) anddd idk why but i find the way she sings 'and we know its never simple never easy' soo satisfying

fearless☔️ - THIS SONG IS SO FUN IM SO GLAD SHES PLAYING IT ON THE ERAS TOUR BC IT SO PERFECTLY REPRESENTS THIS ALBUM AS A WHOLE WITH THE FREENESS OF THIS LOVE AND THE RAIN LYRICS AND THE BANJO AND EAHHASAGDFHGLSDAHFSDGF

white horse - i love this song sm bc in all her old albums (including this one) she really emphasises the whole perfect fairytale romance thing but in this song she flips the whole thing and shes like nvm ive been delusional bc this isnt a fairytale, i deserve better, and and ur actually not allathat. byee

youre not sorry - THE MELODRAMA HAHAHAHHAH I LOVE THIS SONG, also im obsessed with the speak now mashup where she did back to december/apologise/youre not sorry bc thats probably my favourite ever live recording of her

bye bye baby ☔️- the first line is so good bc she says 'it wasnt just like a movie / the rain didnt soak through my clothes (❌☔️)/ down to my skin' bc this whole album shes talking about fairytale romance and kissing in the rain and here shes like nah i lied i was over romanticising this bc this didnt actually happen lolz (similar to white horse)

fifteen - this song is so relatable bc this exact thing happened with me when i was 15☠️ also why are her songs about abigail always the saddest things ever bc we have this one AND HAPPINESS???????? abigail was going thru it fr..,. oh and production wise i love the brief pause and the drums at 3:48 (this is very specific but whateverrr lol)

love story - what can i say...,.,,, its literally love story..,,,,,.,,,,.. the song of the century tbh, its not my personal favourite but i still adore it sm and i love the romeo juliet aesthetic and i love how shes wearing romeos shirt in the fearless taylors version cover (also apparently taylor wrote this song in 20 minutes???? thats crazy talent)

dont you - im obsessed with the vocal layering on 'my heart knows what the truth is' in contrast to the rest of this fairly simple song. also i love the parallel between 'sometimes, i really wish that i could hate you / i've tried, but that's just somethin' i can't do' and 'i can’t make it go away by making you a villain'

we were happy - to make this even more depressing i like to imagine this song sung by the person from mary's song,, where before they were these childhood friends-lovers who thought they were gonna be together forever. 'and our daddies used to joke about the two of us / they never believed we'd really fall in love' to 'talking 'bout your daddy's farm / and you were gonna marry me'

forever & always☔️- she ENDED joe jonas in this one LMAOOOOOOO 'was i out of line? / did i say something way too honest / made you run and hide / like a scared little boy' kills me hahhahahha

tell me why - i cant relate to this song but it is so fun to pretend to be angry and sing

thats when☔️ - most of the fearless vaults are super underrated and that makes me so sad actually, bc this song is so nicely produced it feels so light and airy

you all over me☔️ - 'once the last drop of rain / had dried of the pavement' is a very iconic lyric for such a rainy album. its good closure only...,,.,,,, THE ALBUM IS NOT FINISHED BC ITS 26 TRACKS LONG

mr perfectly fine - ok im gonna say it, this song is overrated. im SORRY,,, i love the song (especially the key change bc omg) but i feel like forever & always said everything this song did but in a better way???? but i do appreciate the sarcastic nature of this track

the best day - GOD BLESS ANDREA SWIFT

today was a fairytale - ok from this song ranking down i feel like the songs could have been cut out of the album,, bc honestly these songs are the reason why fearless drags on and is my least favourite ts album :(((( if these werent on it fearless would be higher on my album ranking,, anyway i think that today was a fairytale is super cute and nice but its very generic lyrically (also i like to imagine this song to be about the too perfect bf she talks about in the way i loved you)

untouchable - when i found out this song is a cover i was actually shook to my core bc the og is rock and it sounds so different😭 props to taylor bc she rly did make the song her own

change - the hallelujahs in this song are funny bc its literally christian country girl cosplay😭 go off i guess??????? one time my dad gave me the aux at church (hes a priest) and he told me to put on some christian songs and i played this one LMAOOOOOO

superstar - this ones cute, its like those one direction fanfics where a member would fall in love with a fangirl

jump then fall - this song is nice ! thats all i can say tbh

hey stephen☔️- whyyyy is this on the album,, stephen i do NOT care about u and this song is boring sorryyyyyyyyy,, the only good part is the mmm mm mm m m mmm m m OHH AND THE 'all those other girlssss yeah theyre beautiful / but would they write a song for you?? HA'

im not putting if this was a movie on here bc that is NOT A FEARLESS SONG. ITS A SPEAK NOW GIRLIE IDC. TAYLOR CANT GASLIGHT ME