#never heard of this before in my life

[la-pheacienne]

I'm generally not a gatekeeper in fandom but if you say "Bilbon Sacquet" or "Serpentard' to me I'm going to commit a crime

[beebfreeb]

[5ummit]

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

[icantalk710]

Brb gonna go torch a Saab like a pile of leaves 🎶

[saturncoyote]

Every day i see people on the internet complaining about shit i've never even heard of in my life which causes me to immediatelly picture a image in my head, so i made it real:

[hibiroseart]

Amy that I drew while watching Sonic X

[toddtakefive]

thinking about todd and his resolve toward… not quite isolation, but being alone in a room full of people again. he goes along to the study room to sit on his own and do his homework, he sits at the poets table and follows along with what’s being said while keeping quiet, he goes to the meetings at all but doesn’t necessarily contribute (in fact, if you watch him when cameron is telling the story ‘from camp in sixth grade’, you can see that he recognizes it before any of the other poets but doesn’t voice it until they all have). he’s not alone, necessarily, if you want to get technical about it, he’s just lonely, and he’s generally okay with that. he doesn’t have friends and that’s fine, he doesn’t participate in class and that’s fine, he doesn’t have a relationship with his family and that’s fine—he could live without any real connection and he’d have been, more or less, fine.

the thing about when he says “i can take care of myself just fine!” is that he isn’t really wrong, you can infer that he’s been doing it his entire life anyway, it’s that ‘taking care of yourself’ isn’t the same thing as really living or being happy. todd’s an introvert, certainly, and even as he gets closer to the group he defaults to sitting quietly in the background, but he’s also denying himself community out of fear not introversion. todd isn’t friendless because he’s an introvert, although that definitely plays a part, he’s friendless because he pushes anyone that might want his company away. if anyone has every wanted for his attention in the first place. (neil’s unwavering interest in him is unique (even when it comes to the rest of the poets, who are fine with todd coming along and joining the group, but aren’t really hellbent on him being there in the beginning) and his refusal to accept it is a direct result of being so lonely growing up.)

there’s obviously something to be said about the implications of his parents neglect, and the more than likely fact that he grew up friendless, and how those both play a part in in him being so skilled at dodging social interaction/being so avoidant of it, but by the time we see him in the movie he’s all but accepted his fate as being alone his entire life. he’s already accepted being the family disappointment, and he’s already accepted he’ll never amount to anything, and he obviously doesn’t like it, but he’d have managed living with that knowledge without the confirmation that it was all wrong. would he have been miserable? almost certainly. but he’d have managed. he’d done it for that long already, anyhow.

[starmoondany]

Sirius has an explosive laugh

That one that when he laughs the ENTIRE CASTLE can hear him

And its funny at first but then it turns macabre and its a little scary- 😭😭😭

[animebdubs]

I had a dream where the wild card of the session involved pulling a giant godzilla out of the biggest body of water on the server and just trying to survive it’s destruction

[seaofreverie]

Sparkstember Day 18: Balls (Bullet Train)

Sometimes (oftentimes) it's true that all you need are Balls. I personally absolutely love Balls. I'm a big fan! Ekhem. Today I'm using the help of (I mean, copying most of the passages from it) my earlier Balls rant that I have written down after my first listen of it back in January. I really love this album and I don't want to completely skip over saying a couple words on it at least but I really don't think I have the headspace to write anything very good for it today. I'll still try though!

So yeah, Balls. It's a great album, fun and chill (in my sense of what I call and consider chill anyway), consistent, as Sparks albums tend to be, and as I suspected / hoped it does fit this specific vibe of driving around at night somewhere city-like and illuminated. Or being on a train deep at night and looking at the world zooming by (if you'd even see much of it on a train at night anyway.....). And I do think that it's not so dissimilar to Gratsax (I'd say now that it's definitely darker and moodier than its predecessor...). So it's interesting to think about how it's considered to be one of the "weak" ones (by music reviewers at least) while Gratsax is so beloved in comparision.

I will admit, I don't really know what the big problem with this album could be. As I said, it's fun, it has the melodies, it has the energy, it has the theatricality (I like seeing how more and more orchestral instruments such as strings are being incorporated into the music, in a way the jump into Lil' Beethoven two years later doesn't come of as THAT much of a shock because of this. The evolution of sound here is fascinating!) I really like the intense beats, just as much as the more laid-back and moodier pieces. And there's lots of gold to be found in the lyrics department as always.

One more thing I wanna say is that at some point I wondered if this music sounds older than it is. Maybe it does? But then I remembered that this was 2000 and honestly when I think about it, there just IS something about this album that fits so well with the Y2K image and vibe and all. Sparks 2000 and all that.

Favourite songs (and other highlights):

Balls: I mean. It's Balls.

Scheherazade: absolutely LOVE this one and I had the strangest impression of it sounding very familiar when I first heard it. Months later I found out that it was just briefly featured in TSB so I think that explains it (I will talk more about my TSB viewings on TSB day. EVERYTHING has to be explained in excruciating detail, lmao)

The Calm Before The Storm: bugsonas 4ever. Song itself is amazing too

How To Get Your Ass Kicked: how can a song about getting your ass kicked be so pleasant and relaxing, it always keeps cracking me up, how perfect that is actually

Bullet Train: I love it how introducing the topic of the song with a "It's the [topic of the song]" is a reoccurring theme on this album. Thank you Sparks for this ode to technology and art (these lyrics always have me giggling). And also it just goes hard as heck

It's Educational: a perfect fusion of / sequel to I Thought I Told You To Wait In The Car and Progress (it's mostly the vocal delivery that reminds me of the latter)

The Angels: such an odd one here but I still like it a lot, I apparently said that it sounds "surprisingly mainstream for Sparks but somehow in a positive way". It's very sweet and I absolutely love how Russell sings here, it's so different from what we're used to but that only makes it hit you even more in the feels, lol. And I actually prefer the alternative version of this song that's featured as a bonus track, and I do think that's in big part because you can hear Russell better on it (or that was my first impression of it at least and it kind of stuck)

[lesbx]

I get no fucking peace here

[thehumanwiki]

The ✨Ultimate Life Form✨ in different video games:

Sonic: a dark clone of the protagonist who’s basically an angsty teenager. He’ll be fine he’s just going through some stuff.

Pokémon: a genetic clone of an ancient god made to be weaponized by the mafia. It escaped and then just went to cry in a nearby cave for a while. It’s chill.

Kirby: A LITERAL RAT BASTARD ALIEN FROM THE STARS WHO MASSACRES ENTIRE PLANETS HAS BEEN TRAPPED IN A LAB AND IS NOW USED AS A BATTERY FOR TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS. NOW THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD HAVE LEFT AND WHILE THE GOOD HALF OF THIS CREATURE LITERALLY LEAVES BECAUSE IT’S SO EVIL, THE MAIN HALF BRAINWASHES THE ANIMALS AND ENSLAVES ANOTHER ALIEN RACE

What do they have in common?

✨being kept in test tubes✨

[prontaentrega]

no but since when do they play tswift in gay bars/clubs i swear this didnt happen before. invasive species get that shit out

[universal-verringbebe]

He did not just say that, I'm so 🫠🫠🫠

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Your deep dive of ttpd was amazing💕 I just have one question. First off I despise MH and second I don't hate JA but I think he is a very depressing man who doesn't know what he wants out of life. Question is when TS performed at the 1975 concert with anti hero, were they involved then ? I am terrible at time lines not that it really makes a difference when he started to play her but he is so despicable I just wondered if they were together then.

Hi anon,

This is delicate and I'd also like to caveat that I am not privy to Taylor's personal life, nor is anyone else on the internet, so I can't speak in absolutes.

But going from the story she's laid out in TTPD: it's not necessarily likely they were physically involved at the time of that concert, but there were at the very least complicated emotional entanglements by then. IIRC in some article at the time of their relationship, someone (maybe Jack? idk) confirmed that they reconnected as friends (after years of not speaking) through Jack when he and Taylor were finishing Midnights in 2022 (and Jack was producing The 1975's album, hence the connection). I can't remember where I read this, but someone pointed out that Taylor and Matty were rarely if ever actually on the same continent until he showed up for Eras because of his band's touring schedule. But also don't take my word for it because I pride myself on knowing as little about him and his band as possible lol.

So like, the story we "know" is that they got involved for real when he showed up at Eras in Nashville in May, because he'd been on tour most of the year before then. As far as we know, Taylor and Joe broke up sometime between Arlington and Vegas tour stops in March of 2023. So there's at the very least murkiness re: the emotional affair, which she all but outlines in Guilty As Sin? and How Did It End?, but beyond that, what we know is what we she's shared in TTPD and what we saw play out.

TL;DR: there was probably risky (and ill-advised) flirtation happening at the time of that concert and an emotionally intimate relationship, but beyond that, we don't know, so I'm taking Taylor's word for it unless she offers other information in the future.

(Frankly, I also think if they'd been physically intimate at the time, Matty would have had no problem bragging about being "the other man" after the shitstorm in 2023 because he is the type and the fact that he hasn't leads me to believe they weren't, but I digress.)