#the background vocals........demolishing me

[ilostyou]

OH I WOOONDER WHOOOO I'M LOOKING FOR. CAUSE YOU DOOOON'T GO TO PAAARTIESS AAANYMOORRREEEEEE

[meliora-box]

Yeah I’m back again the Ghoap band Au (ft the band ghost) AGAIN because it’s 1am and I’m bored.

But you CANT TELL ME Johnny wouldn’t absolutely demolish the Respite of the spitalfields or any of his part’s solos because bro is THAT good, and maybe he does a little backup vocals for a few songs because bro just likes to flex, and the rest of 141 (especially Ghost) is just FLOORED.

But idk what he would sound like personally?? He has a deep voice but I personally think his vocals aren’t as deep as his speaking voice, maybe like the OG three days grace singer?? I’m not sure but I might figure it out.

And of course the 141 guys got barricade spots in the pit from on the stage, and I can just imagine Johnny going up to their spot in the pit and interact with them, with his silly little Ghoul helmet on his head with only his mouth visible (think the background Ghouls helmet styles like Swiss and Cumulus)

Also LOOK UP THE ENDING OF THE CONCERTS WHERE GHOST (the band duh) PLAYS RESPITE OF THE SPITALFIELDS LIVE THE GUITAR AND BACKUP SINGERS SOLOS THATS WHAT I THINK SOAP WOULD DO BRO DOES BOTH TO FLEX ON EVERYONE

[binniesoob]

the plan was to write a fun and light-hearted review but i guess that's not in the cards for me today ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ here's a bunch of feelings instead!

(no lore, literally just a lil rambling. feel free to ignore ofc - i'll probably post some unhinged reviewy thoughts later anyway :)

soooo... since this morning I've been trying to write a fangirling review full of memes for the name chapter: freefall like i've done before for other albums or their previews. you know, to have fun and scream about how good they sound or that line that made me go feral! and i do have something for a couple songs that i'll probably post later, but overall i kept failing because honestly that's not what feels right right now.

apart from back for more and do it like that (that are like an ass shaking break from dehydrating yay), i honestly sobbed my ass out with this album and i'm on the verge of doing it again as i'm writing this and listening to it.

the aspect that affected me the most was the lyrics and the way they delivered them. you can hear and tell how much txt grew musically. their vocals are really really great in every track, their styles more defined, and their overall group color too. they got back to the genres that fits them best (i think) - rock and disco -, experimented new ones - 80's new wave -, and something in between - rnb with dreamer that literally devastated destroyed demolished me btw, in more ways than one. when txt said in interviews and at the comeback showcase too that they keep trying to deliver relatable lyrics about their own struggles and feelings as well as their peers and the young, they weren't joking or overestimating themselves, they really are.

this album feels very personal to me. txt's songs always did, but with this i think we reached a new peak. i connected to it heart and soul.

personally, probably the one thing i love most about txt is how we share being in our twenties at the same time and how, despite different ethnicities, backgrounds, experiences etc, we are connected by our feelings and are able to sympathise with eachother and help eachother out, like, ahh... it just warms my heart. their music feels so close to me and that's honestly what any musician needs for them to become my favourite. once i connect on a deep level with their music that's literally all it takes.

I haven't opened up about this on tumblr before, but i've been pretty depressed this year. that's also part of the reason why i haven't been that active, together with being busy with uni stuff. i did had good days, i've been hanging in there, trying to focus on the good things in my life, but overall it's been hard, and i'm trying my best to get better soon because it's been tiring. i get so angry at myself because i have so many things in my life to be happy and grateful for, but i still get anxious and i'm still unsatisfied. i've been so frustrated about where i am in life, all the things i expected to be different by now, that i want to change but still can't, i've grown beyond impatient.

so, today, this album felt like the kind of understanding hug i've been looking for this year. growing pains is probably going to become what can't you see me was for me during the pandemic - an outlet to vent my anger and frustrations. chasing that feeling is going to be what take me home by ateez also is for me - my reminder to keep chasing what feels like home despite the hardships. dreamer is literally me condensed into a song (!?). deep down is there to remind me that even if my peculiarities can feel like a burden they're part of my identity and they shouldn't feel like it. happily ever after says it's okay even if things didn't go as i planned them, to embrace my failures and keep going even if life it's not a fairytale and it's unpredictable. i'll find my way. skipping stones feels like reading one of my journal entries where i write to my past and future self. and blue spring, a promise, has been here for me everyday since i heard it at the concert. with this album i didn't feel alone anymore, i felt that company and reassurance in a way i struggled to find until now, and i'm deeply grateful to txt for that 🤍

[m00nlitknight]

wherever i may roam. ( 1 of 2 )

fandom: IT (2017) pairing:  patrick hockstetter / female reader word count:   2.1k+ warnings:  underage drinking. loud scenes. men being creepy. patrick being patrick. extra: based heavily off one of these prompts.  part two in the works!  i hope you all enjoy this, and have a fantastic day c:

Having parties wasn’t a known rarity within the ranks of Derry, but they weren’t a known phenomenon on a superficial level, either.  Within the ranks of upper class high schoolers, they were typically done in the fashion of a small circle of friends rather than anything colossal.  Those instances and occasions of plenty were saved for the rare event of a musical guest.  While the quality of the music wasn't considered a static variable, the fun and energy that ensued from the crowd - teens and college students, usually - was.  For that, many found themselves grateful for the bands, even if they were bad metal covers of pop songs, cover bands for hot acts that didn’t make tour stops in Maine, or just song-writers who were trying to make it in the world of music.

You couldn’t complain -- you shouldn’t, really.  Being the daughter of a well-off lawyer whose business was usually taken out of town, and a girl with a reputation to upkeep; these events didn’t just fly under your radar, they were on a completely different radar altogether.  It sucked, really, to be thrust into expectations you didn’t care to uphold, but not having the might to fight back.  So, you did what you could and lived with it.

However, living with it meant blatantly going against the rule of social rules, society, and your father all the while being directly under their nose.  It was a needle-thin line to walk, but one you felt you walked with confidence and care.

Which, is how you managed to sneak out of the house undetected and attend the concert that had been whispered within the school the previous week.  Spoken from under the bleachers, overheard from the bathroom by those who smoked and considered themselves too cool for the joint; who knew your keen sense of hearing would become so useful?

From the moment your father bid you a sterile adieu, composed of a hollow embrace and chaste kiss to the head, you had begun putting your plans in motion.  Wherever he went, likely to a hotel for whatever trial was taking place early the next morning, or whatever, you couldn’t find it in yourself to particularly care.

Looking the part of a ‘typical’ metalhead wasn’t something you were truly infatuated with to any degree.  Sure, putting on the guise of torn jeans, fishnets, boots, and whatever decimated t-shirt you could find was a great bound of comfort compared to the typical stuffy outfits you had, but it felt tiring to have not just one, but two kinds of social guises to keep up.  Polar opposites, at that.  Surely, you deserve an award for it.

You ease the vehicle into park, a full street away from the actual event, to ensure the protection of the metallic body of your car.  Next, you lean to look yourself in the eye -- eyes rimmed with a sharp black, smudged with burgundy eyeshadow, and lips done with a simple gloss.  Had you any actual lip colors, you would’ve reached for them instead.  You stare for a moment longer, admiring the well-pointed wing extending your likely bored resting face.

Stud earrings and a lazily done ponytail completed your look, the rest of your outfit accented with bits of silver jewelry you couldn’t find it in yourself to truly care about.  Several rings were on your fingers, simple silver bands you had bought from thrift stores recently.  In the frosty, night air you wore a black cardigan over a simple black tank top.  Nondescript, you hope, and would allow you to simply blend into the background.  A simple, forgettable face in the crowd.  Exhaling, you prepare yourself for the night to come and push the car open.

The music, likely booming from the basement, lilts through the air with jagged electricity, and it manages to translate into your veins with a faint tingle in your fingers.  You grin to yourself, already feeling the exhilaration to come.  Around the premises of the home a multitude of cars appear parked, which has you thanking your mind for avoiding the mess of it.  Multiple parked on the curbside, in the driveway, and also on the lawn.  The image of the destroyed grass and streaky soil has you cringing internally, for the remembrance of the hard work that likely went into the landscaping.  

The open, and partially wrecked, door frame is but a glance into the chaos that took place shortly after the sun laid itself to daily rest.  Broken electronics, a lamp, a shattered glass coffee table, and a bloody and unconscious stranger lying all in view.  Suddenly, you felt thankful for the thick and hard soles of your boots, and preyed your balance wouldn’t be giving out on you anytime soon.

As you draw closer you hear the music increase in volume, and can only imagine the ear-shattering havoc occurring just down the stairs.  A sudden shriek to your left rips you from your foot hitting the entryway of the door, instead whipping to a sudden figure being body slammed through what you assumed was the living room window.  You felt a wave of relief wash over you at the fact that this wasn’t your home, but a resounding ripple of pity for whoever actually owned the place.

You quickly stepped past and shuffled through the living room, leaving the unnamed duo to brawl, the more coherent shouting briefly as a greeting.  Quickly you found the kitchen, from the trail of empty and shredded beer cans, to the demolished and alarming amount of disposable cups, you snickered to yourself quietly.  The volume increased as you moved more into the building, most of the partygoers sticking to their own groups and remaining calm.  Wherever the violent action was, it was bound to be nearer to the actual band.

In the corner do you find one of the kegs, swiftly making yourself a drink and turning back to the face of a stranger.  Ebony hair, gel-slicked to perfection, deep brown eyes, and a teetering stance; he eyes you with curiosity and an underlying sense of something else.  You shift uncomfortably when he registers your attention on him.

“Y’from here?” he slurs, prodding your shoulder aggressively.

“Nope,” a bold-faced lie, coupled with nonchalant disinterest.  “You?”

“Nah, from, uh...Place a’ways from here,”  he gestures with both hands, drink-filled cup sloshing with the movement and liquid threatening to spill from the open top.  He leans down to your level.   “Where y’from, doll?”

“Don’t quite think I’ll share where I’m from with a guy who won’t even tell me his name before getting my address,” you cringe at the stench of beer heavy on his breath and lean back.

“Oh, uhhh...Name’s, fuckin’...Michael, y’can call me Mike, though,” a grin overtakes his features while your frown deepens.

“Alright, Mike, I’ll see’ya around,”  you attempt to shift around him, to shuffle out from the keg-corner only to be blocked.

“N’awww, c’mon?  I was polite, or whatever, ain’t’cha gonna tell me your name, dollface?”

“No, now let me through.”

“Or what, kitten?”

Outwardly you groan at the intrusion of your space, and also the blatant annoyance of him.  His turns nearly primal while the music gets louder, a crescendo you knew you would likely have trouble yelling over.

A thin, pale finger with several rings taps itself on his shoulder, from a form you were unable to see.  Michael turns around, aggravation apparent while he begins, “Can’t’cha see we’re busy h--”

He’s cut off by a jarring and strength-filled punch, falling awkward and stone-cold out on your shoulder and kegs.  You watch him fall, as though it happens in slow motion, eyes wide and nearly dropping your drink.  Upon turning your head you come eye-to-eye with someone who could put you in an even worse position and you feel a faint sliver of fear scurry up your spine.  Patrick Hockstetter.

“Kitten,” he starts, with a deadly vocal tone which could only be described as velvet draped over gravel.  You want to cringe.  “That your boyfriend or somethin’?”

“Ew, no,”  No gentle care is taken into shoving the unconscious boy’s body from yours and onto the matted, once shaggy carpeting.  “Just a fuckin’ creep who didn’t know where or when to stop.”

Recognition flashes in his eyes, momentary, and he grins to himself while grabbing something to drink.  It makes you uneasy, to see someone who knows everyone at your school.  Your arms cross as you move to leave, until his voice speaks over the music once again.

“What brings a girl like you to a place like this?”  It makes you realize just how close he’s managed to get to you, lips near your ear as though his presence engulfs you.  “Careful, princess, or you just might get devoured.”

“I--”  a short-lived stammer as he turns and throws an arm over your shoulders, causing you to tense.

“S’okay!  I’ll be but a chaperone so you aren’t found dead by sunrise.”

“Wait,” just barely croaked out, and obviously no hindrance as he begins dragging you from the corner and into the rest of the party.

He takes you down the stairs, a bouncy lack of care going into his lengthened strides and whether or not you were able to keep up.  You hold onto him, sliding an arm around his waist to try and keep balance while staring down at the floor to make sure you weren’t about to fall over.

At the bottom level is what managed to always ignite a feeling of excitement in you, set ablaze the adrenaline and flames of hardy teenage violence.  A mosh pit had formed and the destruction stopped just shy of the stairs.  In the air is the heavy scent of leather, sweat, and iron; all of which attacking with the force of animalistic glee.  The air feels heavy, like it’s weighing down on your shoulders.  Timidly, you steal a glance up at Patrick, who’s managed to get a lit cigarette betwixt his fingers and discard his drink in the time you’d been adhered to his side.  He takes a long drag and licks his lips, smoke emulating the carnage of a dragon, if you could compare him to such a beast.

He looks down at you and says something you’re unable to hear over the music, and had it not been for the sheer volume, you’d likely find it to be one of the more enjoyable acts to grace Derry with its presence.  His arm unwinds from around your shoulder and he plants a kiss on your forehead, to which has you reeling, before stepping into the pit and leaving you alone.

It feels unnerving, to suddenly be rid of the boy who’d claimed himself the role of your ‘evening security blanket,’ but to suddenly fear the repercussions.  Eyes you know are locked on opponents or the evening’s stand feel locked on you, and you feel socially naked at the foot of the basement’s stairs with both hands wrapped around a red solo cup.

You gulp after losing sight of him among the dim room and other black-haired aggressors, taking to maneuvering yourself to a couch sat beside a grandfather clock on the outskirts of the fighting and staring into the lukewarm cup.  Sips are taken from it, carefully, while a couple does what you can only describe as practically eating one another’s faces.

As time passes you begin to feel more cramped, not so much that eyes are on you any longer, but more so that the time to leave is rapidly approaching.  A brief glance at the clock registers it as 11:50 p.m., and you feel a slight pang in your gut that the time to move is now.  

You set the plastic cup on the coffee table in front of you and start off, without much of a care for who would be the poor soul to clean it up.  The stairs are ascended quickly, and alarms in your mind begin to go off fervently.  Wherever your evening’s chaperone had gone, he wasn’t worth getting potentially arrested for.  The kitchen and living room are passed briskly, and while the quick removal of such loud noises is nothing short of disorienting, the sound of approaching sirens is enough to sober you completely.

The yard is left in the dust as you take to a full-sprint down the street, mentally cursing yourself for even coming in the first place.  Wherever the authorities were, you knew that potentially crossing paths with them would be a death wish.

You only slow down and exhale when you’re in your car seat, key jammed in the ignition and letting the engine roar to life.  Speeding home probably wouldn’t be the best course of action, but you can’t help the lead foot and lady luck allowing you to swing into the driveway with no detection.

Is this true nirvana, you wonder, narrowly escaping the law after a gut feeling in a place you weren’t even meant to be?  Whatever the case, you knew sleep would either be impossible to grasp, or come the moment it hit your pillow.

[ghostbustersregen]

Preview Extract

Five chapters of the story are now live on Wattpad. Here’s a little teaser of what’s to come in a future chapter.

'What the hell?' Melissa uttered to herself in surprise.

She stopped the car alongside the security booth, unable to leave the lot due to a lowered barrier. Scanning her card at the necessary point would automatically raise the barrier, but she was supposed to be leaving that with an attendant or someone else from building security.

She powered down the car and stepped out of it, peering in the direction that the attendant had run to see if there was any sign of him coming back. There did not seem to be anyone else around the sprawling parking lot either, but that was not out of the ordinary for 11am on a work day.

She closed her car door and stood for a few moments, hoping that someone would emerge to both let her out of the lot and assure her that something terrible had not just happened. There were still no signs of life.

She turned her head to look into the booth. The small windowed room had a counter that ran around the interior walls, a couple of desk chairs, and a raised control panel on the counter. Seeing the booth door still hanging open from the attendant's hasty exit, Melissa considered going inside and figuring out which of the panel's buttons raised the barriers. If she could manage to do this and leave her card behind, there would be no need to awkwardly explain why she was handing it in. Security staff were likely the only people permitted to go inside the booth, however.

What're they gonna to do, fire me? She thought to herself.

Melissa looked around one last time to make sure no one was nearby, then stepped towards the open door. Moving through the doorway with her eyes on the buttons, she noticed that there was an empty upturned doughnut box to one side of the panel. A smattering of crumbs of various shapes and sizes surrounded the box, though both these and the container itself seemed to be caked in a thin layer of jelly. Melissa was not aware of the type of doughnut that had a green, syrupy filling. It made her wonder just how slobby these parking attendants must be to get this viscous gunk everywhere.

Shifting her gaze from the doughnut box disaster zone, she began to closely study the buttons and the text on the control panel. Just as she thought she had found the correct button to raise the barrier, she suddenly became aware of a confluence of strange noises emanating from behind her. Baby-like vocal grunts could be heard mixed together with the sounds of rustling, chewing, and squelching.

She began to turn her head to look over her left shoulder. What she glimpsed out of the corner of her eye forced her to turn around and jolt back against the counter in fright. A moving green mass was positioned low to the ground, in front of an open mini-fridge that was situated under the opposite counter. This translucent potato-like shape was hovering unnaturally a few centimetres off the floor, using its comparatively spindly arms to stuff its large mouth with the contents of the fridge.

Melissa's instinctual reaction to flee quickly faded as she realised what this glowing blob was.

It's a ghost! An actual, freaking ghost!

The lifeform looked like the very same type that the Ghostbusters had caught on their famous first job at the Sedgewick Hotel. Ray Stantz had nicknamed the original one Slimer, mainly due to this type's penchant for leaving copious amounts of ectoplasm on anything it came into contact with, people included. This sort, a Class VI if Melissa remembered her paranormal classifications correctly, normally posed little direct danger to humans, presenting a threat only to edible objects that happened to be nearby. This Slimer sub-species was usually documented as having an obsession with food, perhaps reflecting what its primary drive had been when it had been alive.

Melissa slowly crouched low to the ground, not in a protective manner but to get a better look at the glowing green spirit. The messy little beast was either yet to notice her or too involved in what it was doing to care about her presence. It was quickly demolishing what looked to be the packed lunches of several security staff, leaving copious amounts of food shards and ectoplasmic pools in the aftermath.

As Melissa observed the entity begin to messily demolish a foot-long sub, she felt tears beginning to well in her eyes. She had dreamed of seeing a real supernatural occurrence for as long as she could remember. Now she was finally witnessing one she could not help but be overwhelmed with emotion. She found herself filled not just with awe but also a deep sense of validation, as if this was the moment her entire life had been building to.

She chuckled softly to herself as she wiped some moisture from her eyes. She realised how strange she would seem to a casual observer, getting emotional at the sight over an undead blob monster. Hiroko was the only person she knew who would understand such a reaction. She wished her friend could be here right now to witness this with her.

Melissa had to wonder why this disgusting yet wonderful beast was here. It had been well over a decade since the last confirmed sighting of a paranormal entity in New York. Did she really just happen to be in the right place at the right time to see something this incredibly rare? Could this even be the famous Slimer himself? She wished her smartphone was with her so she could capture this moment on video, to prove both to the world and to herself that this was not some sort of trick or hallucination.

Just as she was giving serious consideration to sneakily retrieving her phone, she was distracted by a sudden and loud set of sounds. From outside in the street, she heard what sounded like the screeching of heavy tires followed by a few blasts of car horns. Almost as quickly as they had begun, the sounds ceased, leaving only the background level of city noises once again. Melissa stood and looked out of the front of the booth's window, noticing that multiple cars had slowed to a stop on the road. By all indications, it seemed like there had just been some sort of traffic accident.

What else could possibly happen today?

[bishiglomper]

I've been needing another pair of earphones since Cinderbelle has been on an earphone hunting spree. She's demolished 3 pairs between the niece and I in the last week alone.

I was just going to get a few at the dollar store. Because I'm not blowing a lot of cash on something that might be demolished.

We went to 5 Below yesterday where mom told me pick some out. I was dubious. I still didnt want to blow $5 on something I can get for $1.

But then I saw the wireless ear buds.

Honestly? That would solve the cat problem. Can't chew the wire to bits if there's no wire!

I'm worried I'm going to lose them before the week is up though 😂 But they have a case. I'll just make sure to keep it by me and not let them touch any other surface..

The worst thing about these cheap airpods. Is that the charge only lasts 2.5 hours.

The best thing is the fact that I only need one. Because I only have one working ear. So when one dies, I pop it in the case to charge and take out the other one. Voila! Endless charge.

Neither pod feels comfortable... They dont sit snugly. They're big and awkward. But that still works for me because I don't notice a difference when I switch.

The left one sounds better because it focuses on the forefront/vocals. The other one sounds shitty to me because it focuses more on the background and music. Volume sounds lower. Which is how all stereo works, but my good ear is the right one. It's so frustrating.

Functioning in mono sucks ass.

[justsomeuselessvoid]

Halsey- Manic (review and analysis)

Ashley- I’m really loving the instrumentals on this song. It reminds me of an idea floating through space and time. Perhaps the idea is to let go of a relationship that isn’t there anymore but is still floating around for reminiscent purposes. I also think the movie quote is a great way to end such a beautiful, strongly vocalized piece and it goes without saying that it’s the perfect transition into the next song.

Clementine- so while I was going further research on this album, I came across the initial intent behind this song. There are two meanings being voiced in this song. When she sings “I don’t need anyone,” one voice is calm while the other voice is happy. The shouting suggests a state of mania while the normal singing voice is while she is experiencing a depressive state. I like how this is incorporated into the whole idea of the album. It also seems like one of those songs where the fans would appreciate shouting.

I’m also coming across some meanings of my own. The theory that artists are depressed is represented in this song strongly. So when she sings this live, I’d imagine she would maybe sing the chorus instead of shouting it (I’ve never seen her live but trust me it’s on my bucket list.) So artists are constantly involved in making their fans happy. The fans would be screaming this song at the top of their lungs while she sings it.

I am also noticing some parallels which I am a huge fan of. She starts the song off by saying “I'd like to tell you that my sky's not blue, it's violent rain,” while in the song Hurricane off of Badlands, she says “I’m the violence in the pouring rain,” and I absolutely love that reference.

Graveyard- I enjoy this song A LOT. I feel like she went in the right direction choosing this song and the single “Without Me,” to promote her album. I have to say that it sums up the album perfectly. This song discusses the turmoil within a harmful relationship and how she would have stayed had she ignored red flags.

You should be sad- I might get some backlash for this but this song isn’t for me. I love how she is experimenting with different genres of music on this album but I have never been a fan of country style music. I would just find it more enjoyable if I liked country. However, it is not a bad song at all, it just isn’t for me. It lowkey gives me a Carrie Underwood ``Before He Cheats” vibe though, which I am totally on board with.

Forever...(is a long time)- THIS IS WHAT IM FUCKING TALKING ABOUT.  This song is seriously a certified banger. It starts off with a somewhat happy melody and slowly transitions into a somber piano melody which is beautifully written. Then she belts it out with the lyrics “Build love, build God, build provinces. Build calluses, break promises ‘Cause I could never hold a perfect thing and not demolish it.” I also love how distortion is added on her voice mixed in with a haunting organ in the background. She ends the song with, “talk to your man, tell him he’s got bad news coming,” which I think is absolutely iconic, and yet another great transition into the next song.

Dominic’s Interlude- This song is definitely influenced by music in a different era. I like whatever effect they used on his voice in this song. This would advocate that another person sees the toxicity within her relationship within their perspective, as the lyrics suggest.

I HATE EVERYBODY- I feel like a lot of people can relate to this song and I think hearing it live would be such a cool thing to experience. This was definitely written for fans to scream at the top of their lungs.

3am- The rock influences are without a doubt prominent in this song, and it would be so cool to experience live. She often talks about her rock influences and I'm happy she decided to make it known within her music. I think it works really well for her various influences intervened throughout the album. The song talks about how different relationships affect her and the people she surrounds herself with. These relationships are, however, temporary to avoid loneliness and wishes they were more than just physical.

Without Me- At the end of the previous song, she incorporated a voicemail that praises the fact that this is her best song. I think she is absolutely proud of this song (trust me I listened to it a million fucking times when it came out) and that’s why she put it in the song. Anyway, I think this is a very delicate way of saying “fuck you, I don’t need you.” It’s a great single and I don’t have much to say other than it is absolutely perfect.

Finally // beautiful stranger - She talks about how she comes across a stranger who she is interested in pursuing a relationship with. However, she is afraid to continue in fear that this person is going to take advantage of her because of previous relationships. In light of this conflict, she is hoping that this person stays because she likes this person. I like the guitar progression in this song and the strongly vocalised pieces throughout.

Alanis’ Interlude - It wouldn't be a Halsey album without her pride in being bisexual, and this song does a perfect job in doing so. It starts off with Alanis’ famous strong vocals and delves into pumping drum beats. The lyrics suggest sexual innuendos referring to her physical relationship with the same sex. It established how she feels the same about women as she does men and it does not make a difference to her. She feels strongly about the idea that labels mean nothing and how she longs for acceptance. She also wanted Alanis to feature in the song because of how she impacted her musical endeavors. I love her feature in this song and the harmonies between Halsey and Alanis are ON POINT.

Killing boys- topping things off with another great revenge song. I noticed how she includes “you don’t need me anymore” in the beginning of a song and she ends the song with “I don't need you anymore,” which symbolizes the progress of getting over someone. I would have to say this is my favorite song off the album besides Alanis’ Interlude.

SUGA’s Interlude- I didn’t like this song at first, mainly because I never got into Kpop. But it’s not necessarily a kpop song, which is what kept me entertained. It’s starting to grow on me recently. This song indicates the struggle of wanting to keep going forward and giving up at the same time, which I had been struggling to find a song with this concept until this one came along. I think it is also just the struggle of being an artist and coming to a common ground of making people happy but also keeping yourself happy simultaneously.

More- I was reading up on this song, and she states how it is a song written about a person who does not exist yet. She is referring to her unborn child, which she has also stated having reproductive issues insinuating her struggle to have children. I was so unaware that this was the meaning behind the song and I am happy that she confirmed this because I’m certain that it would help a lot of people going through the same problem.

Still Learning- One of the main themes throughout this album are also condensed into this particular song. This one is heavy on the idea of learning to love yourself, which she is relying on other people in order to obtain that benefit as suggested by other songs off of this album. This song, however, is learning to love yourself without the help of others. It also suggests the downsides of being a well known artist and how it’s difficult to maintain good self-esteem in such a career.

929- This song is just absolutely beautiful. It seems as if she summarized her entire life and somehow condensed it down into 3 minutes. The instrumentals are so simple, yet her lyrics are just rambling one intense subject onto the next. Everything she talks about in this song is powerful. It talks about moving, love, acceptance, growth, and so on. However, I wanted to talk about something worth noting. Before this album came out, Halsey was doing a Q&A on Twitter and a fan pointed out how she stated this is going to be a very personal album. A fan has said, “I feel like you’ve said that about the last two albums,” and she responded with, “Nah. There’s two types of honesty. Answering a question with the truth and offering the truth without being asked. This is the latter.” This is a perfect ending to such a beautifully written album.

I'm giving this album a strong 9 out of 10.  Let me just say that it is INSANELY hard for me to say anything bad about this album if i'm being completely honest. I’ve been listening to it constantly and keep discovering things that I would have never guessed. She hit the nail on the head with the themes and the overall state of mania in this album. An emotional roller coaster for sure.

[stargirlrchive]

16 52 54 with james please!

Skinny Love (James Potter)

disclaimer: uhhh none? gif isn’t mine

a/n: this request is so old, im sorry it took so long :( i hope you enjoy it though

word count: 1305

masterlist : prompts (request open)

James had always been very vocal about his feelings for you. It had been very clear to everyone that you were strictly off limits, it was never because you and James were together; just no one ever crossed the well-known prankster and now Quidditch captain in slight fear of what would happen if they did. So because of that, boys never really approached you, which was fine up until dating became appealing to you and no one approached you.

So when a 7th year Ravenclaw approached you, asking if you were free Saturday and up for a butterbeer, after agreeing, you were extremely excited.

The girls probing you and teasing all the way into the common room, ignoring the fact that the marauders were seated a few feet from where you were all talking, listening to just what you were all talking about.

“Finally! What are you going to wear?”

“It’s still a few days from now, I certainly don’t have to begin thinking of these things yet do i?”

“Seeing as it’s your first date ever, I would say so.”

You looked at Lily, seeing as she was the one who normally was much more rational, “Better prepared than not.”

The nerves began bubbling inside of you, your hands becoming clammy as you realized that Saturday was only 3 days away.

“I think I heard wrong.” Sirius had piped in from behind, “Did you say (Y/N) had a date?”

“Is that so hard to believe?” You could feel yourself becoming defensive with the grey-eyed boy, who in fact was not looking at you, but his best friend. James hazel eyes were taking you in, his finger on his lip as his leg bounced up and down. “Whoever it was is quite ballsy-is all.”

You couldn’t bring yourself to remove your gaze from James, but were ultimately forced to when the girls hauled you out of the common room and towards your dormitory.

-

Saturday approached much faster than you thought it would, only realizing now that you’d miss a Gryffindor versus Hufflepuff quidditch match. The fleeting thought quickly left your mind as a younger Gryffindor notified you that someone was waiting for you outside.

You had to calm the rapid beating in your chest because you felt as if your heart was going to burst. Not necessarily because you’d be accompanied by Sebastian on this date, but simply because it was your first date ever. Although the Ravenclaw was extremely attractive, you just had a thing for untamed curly hair and glasses.

-

The whole day was spent with Sebastian, and as fun as it had been, it certainly felt as if you were hanging out with just a friend, and you were certain he felt the same way. He walked you towards your common room door, the room insanely quiet which led you to believe that they had casted a silencing charm to celebrate, whether they had won or lost, you were yet to find out. “Today was fun.”

A small smile ever present on his face, he had leaned forward to give you a hug, which you gave back, once you pulled away he began walking away.

The slight guilt tugging at your stomach that maybe it was just obvious to you that this was fun as friends but nothing more so you just knew you had to make that point clear. You wouldn’t want him to have a false pretense that you could see this happening again as a date. “Sebastian, wait!”

He turned towards you, his hands in the pocket of his trousers as he walked towards you again, “This was fun, so much-but as-”

“Friends?”

You nodded and his face broke out into a small smile, “Yeah, I felt a bit weird and didn’t know how to bring it up. However I wanted you to know and not be led on, I guess.”

“We should do this again, as friends.”

A small laugh emitted from your throat, “I’d like that.”

After goodbyes were once again distributed between the two of you, you made your way into your common room. Which was in fact filled to the brim with Gryffindor’s and a few people from other houses, all of them drunkenly cheering as you walked in.

The first friend you saw was Alice, equally drunk as everyone else, “I take it we won?”

She giggled happily and threw herself onto you in a hug, “We demolished them! 470 to 40.”

Although Gryffindor’s team was really good you didn’t seem to understand just how the Puff’s had let themselves lose so bad.

“James was so aggressive on the field! He was a right beast this game.”

Alice was still drunkenly swaying the two of you around, your eyes scanning the room to find James.

“Have you seen my boyfriend? I miss him.”

Your attention was drawn back to Alice as she laid her head on your shoulder. You caught sight of Frank in the same predicament, however his drunken partner was the one you had been looking for only seconds ago. You pulled Alice along, smiling softly at Frank as he grew flustered as Alice plopped herself on his lap, letting her head nuzzle into his neck.

You took in James drunken state, swaying softly as he tried keeping himself up right. His eyes landed on your and his tongue darted out softly, letting his eyes rake over you, then they glossed over and he looked angry, turning away from you.

You sighed and made your way to him, turning him towards you as he pouted like a four year old. “You are such a child.”

He refused to meet your stare, which was quite easy as he was a lot taller than you. “James please, look at me.”

He let his gaze fall on you, “(Y/N), I can’t run from my feelings anymore.”

You held his stare, “I think I’m in love with you and I know you have feelings for me, or at least I think you do. I keep holding back on telling you because it scares me, but I feel fuzzy and warm all over when you speak, smile, laugh but I waited to long and now you fancy that bloody eagle.”

You stifled a laugh as he began pouting again, you sat him on the armrest of the couch, taking his hands in yours and wrapping them around your waist.  You let your hands rest on his shoulders, wrapping them around his neck. “I don’t fancy him, I fancy someone else.”

He rolled his eyes, he was still in his drunken state swaying gently, “He has these insanely untamable curls and these big glasses that I know he hates but he can’t see without them but I absolutely love them on him.”

He seemed to perk up slightly, looking at you through his lashes as the thumbed at the waistband of your jeans. You leant in a pressed a quick kiss to his lips, the tips of your ears heating up as he stared at you for a few moments.

In a quick second his lips were on yours once again, the hands on your hips pulling you closer as his tongue softly pried your lips open, letting them move together to the beat of the music playing in the background. A quiet groan emitted from his throat as you pressed yourself closer to him. Your chest against his; only pulling away when his fingers traced circles on your hips.

Your lips felt slightly swollen and you found yourself unable to meet his eyes. “I lied when I said I thought I was, I know that I am. Just let me show you how much I love you.”

You could feel yourself nodding, letting your lips press to his once more quickly, “I love you too.”

taglist : @siriusoricns @moonlitdiggory @siriusement @snufflesblack @snarledblack @dyngflwrs @writingblot @blackslotus @moonynprongs @siriuslyimmoony @madformoony @finnofamerica @acutelittlehufflepuff @flowercrownchic @swellwriting @starlitfawkes @theboywhocriedlupin @geeksareunique @bluemadcnna (lmk if you want to be added)

[mthvn]

Truth and simulacrum: whose timeline is it? — Maja Bogojević on Possessed

Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world (Hannah Arendt)

Possessed, the latest film made by Metahaven—the collective name of artists and designers Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden—in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Rob Schröder, takes their radical aesthetics and progressive politics a step further from their previous film The Sprawl: Propaganda about Propaganda. Their new hybrid artwork revisits the themes of contradictions and paradoxes of multiple realities, geopolitical landscapes, new technologies, power discourse and ensuing alienation in the age of “post-truth.” Similarly to The Sprawl, this film is not easy to categorise, as it explores the notions of consumer discourse, privacy, secrecy, transparency, surveillance, veiling and unveiling, the impact of social media networks and anarchic utopianism of the internet architecture on our individual and collective lives. Through a documented collage, blending a series of drawings, photographs, animated graphics, documentary footage and fictional reconstruction, it refers to various socio-historical narratives and their processes of subordination, power and inequality, commented upon by a single but multi-fold voice-over in a non-linear narrative, which breaks and fragments in order to not only reflect the fragmentation of multi-layered realities we live in, but also to challenge them.

Possessed begins with the images of burning smart phones, war-devastated cities and landscapes, and a water spring flowing over large dark stones, overlapping with the opening narrated question:

“Would you believe?”

These first spoken words trigger a series of questions relating to the search not of the ultimate truth, but of potential truths amidst fakeness and a fixed set of beliefs regardless of the information overload diversity. The answer is, inevitably, “no”. 

But the answer to the question “Would you believe in angels?” is, in the age of cynicism and hypocrisy, a surprising “yes”. This abruptly shifts the initial dystopian tone, foreshadowing the underlying final humanistic message of the film, although “there is no hope” (“what for?”) and there is no answer to the question “would you love?”, followed by the sound of a human breathing next to a smartphone. In this prologue, before the opening credits unfold, Possessed suggests in medias res that the centre of the human universe is a smartphone. The next image shows more clearly a girl lying on a bare mattressed bed, in a ruined house devoid of any furniture, with the presence of only one object—a smartphone. She greets the viewers with the words—both vocal and written—“welcome to the modern age”, followed by:

“You may think that this is a house. But there is no house. You may think that this is a girl. But there is no girl. Don’t ask me who I am.” 

Examining the complex mutual relationship between the socio-political context and the work of art which documents the historic period it emerged in, the words are intercut with film negatives of houses, a helicopter, the ‘invisible’ humans (“you never noticed me, I wouldn’t be missed”), a footage of Pope Francis, all accompanied with smartphone selfies made with a raised arm in front of the masses of people and monuments.

 “When I was young, I was quiet, I didn’t talk with the others, we never talk, we message… All tenderness is radical in a broken world”… “I want to know, what is a devil today? Do you want to hear the truth? Let the suffering speak. I am a breathing fragment of nothingness. Who lives or dies to care for me.”

This verbal segment is intercut with the images of the cross and a drawing of a hand collaged with the real human arm holding a smartphone, as the new disease to be cured of (by exorcism) seems to be—the reality. The raised arm holding a smartphone becomes the pervasive film symbol—it is present in Vatican, over the heads of a faceless mass, in restaurants, in shopping centres, in our empty homes, in the streets, it is everywhere—questioning the beliefs of people. Religion becomes a kind of superstition, because no matter what people ‘know’ in the information age, they still interpret the world and the reality according to their pre-existing fixed set of beliefs.

As Hannah Arendt puts it (in The origins of totalitarianism): “The true goal of totalitarian propaganda is not persuasion, but organization of the polity. ... What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part of”.

Reconstructing artefacts of the recent and not-so-distant past, the film combines images, videos, TV, satellite/drone footage and an original narration into a seemingly incoherent and fragmented filmic reality, with many (meta)textual/discourse references, including videos of: Pope Francis in Rome, ruined Vukovar, Cologne, Aleppo, US soldiers’ flash mob dance in Afghanistan, Dubai fire and sandstorms, hurricane Katrina, migrant lines in Slovenia, queues of people in urban centres, glacier bridge collapse, statue of Liberty etc. Images of war-torn countries show demolished buildings, torn books, deserted homes with personal belongings left behind, posters hanging on the walls, newspapers, religious symbols etc. 

The multiplication of simultaneously run narratives and realities and fragmentation of both the individual and the collective are reflected in the film along the axis of mainstream media/state/corporate structures vs. people/media users/consumers, conveying the notion that our agency in the information process is taking less and less responsibility. The more fake news we are served, the more the ‘truth’ becomes important: the mainstream media (and political leaders) have never been more obsessed with it, insisting in their marketing slots that they are all “telling the truth”, echoing Hannah Arendt’s visionary words: “Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.”

And:

“The danger is not actual despotic control but fragmentation—that is, a people increasingly less capable of forming a common purpose and carrying it out. Fragmentation arises when people come to see themselves more and more atomistically, otherwise put, as less and less bound to their fellow citizens in common projects and allegiances.” (The origins of totalitarianism)

But because of the new media interface, there is a new level of complex fragmentation along the axes privacy/secrecy/transparency/surveillance and control/enslavement, causing a ‘mental implosion’, in Baudrillard’s terms—“simulacrum has been brought to perfection in the 21st century thanks to media interface.” The collaged images of face recognition software, smart phone pervasiveness, the statue of Liberty, war-devastated buildings, torn books, “god land” with a Vodafone tower in the background suggest that mainstream media and dominant consumer discourses tailor their surveillance methods according to the selling/consuming axis or what they perceive as fit for their consumers’ needs. What the overload of information has brought is the illusory display of capitalist consumers’ choices (various kinds of coffee, carrot cakes, brownies, smoothies), but there are no nuances in interpretation of cultural texts, and this precisely helps to sustain the capitalist order. As corporate profit dictates consumers’ privacy, Baudrillard’s “mental involution” (a phone is melting like a brain could be melting) is bound to materialise, leading to the loss of the autonomy of the agency, the collapse of subjectivity. The imaginary enemy is ‘identified’, the crisis is created, and innocents die as a result. 

“The truth?”, the narrator asks and answers: “Let the suffering speak”.

Metahaven’s concept of black transparency is reminiscent of Baudrillard’s concept of simulacrum “Simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth, but the truth conceals that it’s not there. Simulacrum is true.” One fact can arise from many models simultaneously and this anticipation and confusion between the fact and its model leaves space for all possible interpretations, even the most contradictory ones.  This is how the politically anomalous - what was regarded as political aberration – can become normalcy.

Hypocrisy, carnage of profile, masked identities, faceless multitudes…

“I grew up in a city of great wealth and beauty” – these words, as it is made clear by subsequent images, allude to the baroque town of Vukovar, destroyed in the Yugoslav war - the first majorly destroyed European town in a battle since World War 2.  A sign reads “18. 11. 1991 - Vukovar, sjecate se?” (“do you remember?”), with a series of images of a ghost town, with decaying, deserted streets, demolished buildings and houses, dead bodies, streams of survivors fleeing… reminiscent of today’s devastated Syria. The authenticity of such footage images evokes the importance of the responsibility of the human race in the face of war crimes and atrocities committed by humans.

Possessed, therefore, wants to remind of and challenge human indifference. The shots show rooms empty of furniture but full of books and papers from the period of the existence of Yugoslavia (which was also the leader of the non-aligned movement of the so-called  third-world countries): Marxism, Kumrovecki zapisi, Danas: Jugoslavija, samoupravljanje, svijet, Class struggle and socialist revolution etc. These and images of “red” books bargains, Mao posters, Russian symbols, accompanied by the sound of a Croatian traditional song (“Spavaj spavaj diticu”, to make a clear reference to the war in Croatia), are a testimony to the recent European past, as well as a statement against general amnesia that has marked both post-industrial and post-communist societies.

But, “the war is always somewhere else”. The photo of a passport is aligned next to the photos of war tanks, weapons and military airplanes. Footage shows US soldiers rejoicing and dancing to the sampled “music” of gunshot sounds in Afghanistan.

 The ‘others’ imply that their bodies are more disposable and mortal, and the pain of ‘others; seems to be peripheral to the human masses, in spite of the power of  photography and media. We have face recognition software, but what and how much of human suffering do we recognize in a photo/image? We get an easy automated response to our (consumer tailored) needs (Siri, hello?), but show no reactions to others. We appear to have google maps that locate everything, but there seem to be no ‘maps for human suffering’. “As one can become habituated to horror in real life, one can become habituated to the horror of certain images,” states Susan Sontag in Regarding the pain of others.

Statements such as “we obey a fictional eye” and “our faces were attuned to a watchful eye—to adjust to being seen and shared” question and interpellate the capacity of reason and observation, even ‘common sense’ of the uniform masses, as well as the authority of god.

Indifference ‘to the pain of others’ is underscored by the repeated images of selfies and posing smilingly for selfies with a stick – a prolonged arm for the phone, restaurant images of food and drinks and a supply of a crane for “the ultimate selfie” in order to share the ultimate happiness with the world. Thus, we have cranes for photos to be shared on social media and drones for more arrogant photos and bombs. In parallel realities, innocent people die and disappear in wars, but we insist on more of our presence around the globe, offering our joy to the world.

But is this happiness fake or real? If it is real, how real is it? Do we know we are happy or do we act by orders? “Smile, be happy.” The collapse of the subject in post-modern age of neo-totalitarianism, post-truth and post-Trump?

In The origins of totalitarianism, Arendt stated decades ago: “In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement  was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness”.

As the mutations of the image follow the shifts of historical narratives, so the collapse of the subject as well as networks seems to be imminent. A pamphlet-like verbal segment declares: “Delete your own self, the networks collapse… the screen is crushed, instagram and facebook collapse”, raising a new set of questions: have smartphones become more clever than our brains? Do we base our knowledge on networks? Will our subjectivity collapse with the collapse of networks? Will our arm break together with the stick for selfies?

 “The arrogance of the camera. This helicopter won’t come to the rescue. It will patiently film my killing”.

These words echo Susan Sontag’s statement that “the shock can become familiar: the ultra-familiar, ultra-celebrated image—of an agony, of ruin—is an unavoidable feature of our camera-mediated knowledge of war”. By analogy, they also mirror Glauber Rocha’s famous words that “the camera is a lie” or Jean-Luc Godard’s that “film is a reflection of the reality or the reality of reflection?” 

The irony and powerlessness of the proliferation of narratives and realities can be demonstrated further by another example (not shown in the film): the phenomenon of Ron Haviv’s photo taken during the Bosnian war in March 1992, and used by Jean-Luc Godard in his video masterpiece Je vous salue, Sarajevo (1993), which pictures the Serbian soldier Srdjan Golubovic treading over a Bosnian female victim’s head; Srdjan Golubovic later became a famous DJ Max performing in various night clubs in Serbia, until he was arrested in 2012 not as a war criminal, but for possession of drugs. 

“Good citizen, happy citizen, legal citizen, undocumented person, see-through person… I travelled here from far… I tried to forget what happened to me before I fled. No one believes me.  I have to be the evidence. I’m my own document”

This verbal narrative is intercut with the images of identity papers shown at borders, finger print scan check at airports, and “Ausländer” signs & grafitti, showing that, in spite of techno advances in industrial capitalism that might signal the arrival of a cyborg citizenship, the Western context, actually, reflects the return to hierarchy of white capitalist patriarchy, struggling with transculturality (which is one of the most significant influences of late post-modernity in Europe) and becoming more homogenous, closed and insecure at a time of increasing fascism and racism.

“You were quiet, you never talked”. “I” becomes “you” as an older “I” (the new generation) speaks to “you” in the future “that you never saw coming”. 

“Will it be enough to love yourself?”

Contradictions and paradoxes of technology suggest that human bodies have become a source of maximum exploitation in the visual age: is it the end of the image, the end of knowledge, of imagination? Is the future foreseeable based on facebook, instagram and twitter? New forms of expression and representation are needed to reflect the changing and challenged subjectivity in the process of becoming autonomous agents of knowledge.

As the film title suggests, we are all ‘possessed’ by multiple master narratives: by technological advances, corporate structures, general amnesia, by the collapsed subject, beliefs that border on superstition, by our “shared” need to broadcast our lives to the world, selfies, fake smiles, illusory happiness (“the device did one thing really well – it made us always smile”), fake choices, fake needs created by fake consumerist capitalist discourse, by our own voyeurism and exhibitionism, by insanity and monstrosity of political leaders, powerful consumerist discourse, by our own powerlessness and indifference, failure to take responsibility, by the absence of empathy and love (“love yourself”), possessed by our own negligence to use our ‘cultural mirror’ in the midst of the collapse of the notions of self, knowledge and truth. We have timelines, but no time in the age of multiplication of signifiers and the collapse of the signifieds. 

“If I had all faith, but have no love, I am nothing. Love is patient and kind, it doesn’t envy or boast, it’s not arrogant or rude… it rejoices with the truth.”

The acknowledgement of the ‘fact’ that we forgot how to love adds a new ontological dimension to Metahaven’s visual research, a more hopeful one than most current sci-fi dystopian narratives, as the present reality we live in, not the imaginary future, is already dystopian.  In other words, the imaginary of the social and technological can be equally democratising and constraining, but if approached responsibly, it will rather be the former.

By analogy to Alain Badiou’s Eloge de l’amour (2009), this new neither/nor space, which is not free of imperfections, but is free of estranging social confines and prohibitions, can work as an “angel of love”, a new imaginary space for a human encounter that may never occur, but could create a new unrestrained space of love and empathy.

Such an ending, in spite of the detached, almost robotic youthful voice-over, may offer a much needed disalienating, humanistic message, simultaneously subversive and self-authenticating, as the technological and hyper-rational advancements don’t necessarily imply human progress - to paraphrase Hemingway’s words: the invention of an airplane doesn’t mean that we move faster than a horse. An alternative to this ending is the return to pre-social, pre-linguistic, pre-discursive and – pre-technological, as the final images show warehouses in ruins, desolate lands and several masked women, wearing scarves to hide faces (with emojis, stickers & comic strip captions, designed by Metahaven), whispering inarticulately with their black shadows and holding big stones instead of smartphones.

Finally, in a call to challenge the structure of subjectivity, socio-political relations and the social imaginary that supports it, Possessed transforms the current debate of the binary opposition truth/facts and lies into questions of interpretation and epistemology, contextualising them, further, to not only how something is interpreted but who it is interpreted by (are we ‘preaching’ only to the converted?), who are the agents of knowledge and how newly gained knowledge serves to justify the existing beliefs of the masses. In other words, whose timeline is it? 

This is, of course, only one of possible interpretations of the multilayered filmic reality.•

Maja Bogojević (PhD) is a freelance film theorist/critic, founder and editor-in-chief of the first Montenegrin film magazine, Camera Lucida, founder and President of the Fipresci section of Montenegro, and a member of FEDEORA and UPF. She has been, until recently,_ _film theory professor and Dean of Faculty of Visual Arts at Mediteran University Podgorica, and, previously, the Dean of Faculty of Arts at the University of Donja Gorica.

[radreactions]

Open Mic at Third Rail - Part Two

The Sole Survivor dedicates a song to a companion. Written by none other than @saintlyguy!

Longfellow - "The Escape" by Rupert Holmes

The first stop in the Commonwealth for a Far Harbor man was a decent bar. Where else to look besides The Third Rail? Ordering the oldest, brownest liquor on the shelf, Longfellow knew he had found a bar counter he’d be proud to pass out on. Good drinks and a good partner, Sole. But their choice in drinks made Longfellow cringe. Sole sipped on a fruity looking drink that had an umbrella. “What the hell is that?”

“It’s called a pina colada. Wanna drink?”

“That tropical mess is not a solid drink.”

Sole proved the old man wrong when they went on stage drunk, after Magnolia had encouraged someone to sing in her place.

“IF YOU LIKE PINA COLADAS *hic* AND GETTING CAUGHT IN THE RAIN. IF YOU’RE NOT INTO YOGA, IF YOU HAVE HALF A BRAIN!”

Longfellow ordered one thinking “What the fuck is in this thing?” Then he ordered another one. Another one. Another one.

Soon Sole wasn’t alone on stage.

Arm in arm, two drunks serenaded the unhappy patrons of The Third Rail.

“IF YOU LIKE MAKING LOVE AT MIDNIGHT

IN THE DUNES OF THE CAPE! I’M THE LOVE THAT YOU LOOKED FOR, COME WITH ME AND ESCAPE!”

MacCready - "Sakura Kiss" from Ouran High School Host Club

Back in the Third Rail with his employer turned traveling buddy, MacCready sat beside Sole with a bottle of beer and watching their back. You never know who’ll come up to you in a bar. On the lookout for trouble, Mac only found patrons sharing their tongues. A vocalized shudder caught Sole’s attention. “What’s wrong? Don’t like kissing?”

Trying to regain his cool “Not at all. As a matter of fact I’m quite the kisser myself. It’s just freaky watching others do it. Or even hear it mentioned.” Guess you can take the Mac out of Little Lamplight, but you can’t take the Little Lamplight out of Mac.

Sole had a fun idea to push Mac’s buttons. “Y’know, it’s open mic night. Could you go over my list of songs I could sing?”

Mac scanned Sole’s list only to cumble it up and throw it away.

“YOU DIC- I mean jerk! ‘Kiss on my List’ ‘Last Kiss’ ‘Kiss Me’? Are you trying to pis- I mean get under my skin? Just sing something else, anything else! Hel- I mean heck sing one of those cheesy theme songs of those pre-war shows!”

When a grin crept onto Sole’s, Mac knew he just fanned the flames. They leapt on stage, dedicated a song to Mac and all the lovely couples.

“KISS KISS FALL IN LOVE”

Although he didn’t say it, Mac’s mind could only think on word: fuck.

Maxson - "War" by Edwin Starr

Dragged by Sole from the Prydwyn, Maxson was forced to go on an intervention trip to address his prejudice. The trip to The Slog almost lead to a fire fight, Sanctuary proved a bit more successful (but that was because Sole was showing Maxson a bunch of ghoul kids who were in awe at his gatling laser and pulled his beard), but the most fulfilling (surprisingly) was the trek to Goodneighbor. After having his gatling laser and other weapons confiscated, Maxson went on a forced tour of the settlement led by none other than their mayor. The day ends with Sole and Maxson at The Third Rail. As much as Maxson would like to burn the place to the ground, Sole had planted a question he’d never thought before: Could he be wrong? Maxson’s train of thought was derailed when he heard Sole on stage.

“WAR! HOO!

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!”

If anyone could change Maxson’s mind, it would be Sole.

Nick - "Changes" by David Bowie

Sole and Nick had a lot in common. They were two pre-war souls trapped in the future. No amount of cigarettes could ever settle Nick’s circuitry and no amount of alcohol could harden Sole enough for such a savage world. But at least they had each other; they were partners who’d watch each other’s backs and have each other’s backs. Nick was assured once more of this truth when his partner stole the limelight during The Third Rail’s open mic.

“Turn and face the strange

ch-ch-changes.

Don’t wanna be a richer man.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Turn and face the strange

ch-ch-changes.

Just gonna have to be a different man.

Time may change me, but I can’t trace time.”

That chorus got Nick thinking: “A different man huh? Maybe I should be a different man.” Pulling out a holotape labled “Eddie Winter,” Nick was going to ask Sole for a personal favor. Right after this song.

Piper - "Nobody But You" by The Wondergirls

Nothing could escape a reporter’s curiosity, especially if said reporter was Piper Wright. She had uncovered many mysteries: the case of the missing sock, what was the secret recipe in Takahashi’s noodles, who ate the last fancy lad cake in the fridge? But the question that piqued her interest the most: is Blue interested in anyone (her in particular)? Certainly the most eligible bachelor(ette) in the Commonwealth must have their eyes on someone (please let it be me, Piper hoped). This was a question she needed to answer. Drunk that is. Hopefully she won’t remember making an ass of herself if they turn her down. Drinks at The Third Rail’s open mic night. The perfect opportunity. And if she messes up, hopefully she can use the background singing to cover her muck ups. Five shots in, Piper was starting to feel brave. And drunk.

“Yo Blue! Hey that rhymed. I gotta ask you something. Do you like anyone?”

“What do you mean, Piper?”

Time to be direct. That is if the alcohol would let her.

“Do you like anyone? I mean anyone called Piper? Last name: Wright? Because a little birdie told me that Piper Wright likes you. Like really likes you. By the way I’m Piper Wright.”

Before Sole could answer, they were hoisted onto the stage by Magnola, leaving Piper yearning for an answer that would have to wait after an imprompted song. Or would she?

“I want nobody, nobody but you!

Nobody, nobody but you!

How could I be with another?I don’t want any other. I want nobody, nobody. Nobody, Nobody!”

Drunk Piper sat confused as to what was happening. Sole must be singing a secret code. They like somebody. It must have something to do with them pointing to me whenever they say you. Who does Blue like?

Preston - "The Star Spangled Man With a Plan" from The First Avenger

The General and their Right Hand Man had just helped another settlement with raider problems, the two needed a place to relax and maybe get a drink. The mayor of Goodneighbor was happy to comp the two with drinks from the top shelf at The Third Rail. The two toasted and began to unwind. Preston needed this as much as the General. He needed some time to tell them how impressed and proud he is of what they’ve accomplished.

“I still can’t believe how you managed to bring the Minutemen back from beyond the grave. You must be a born leader.”

“Or just really convincing. Y’know during the war, I did commercials before I became a soldier.”

“What did you sell?”

“War bonds. Before I could fight on foreign soil, I had to fight at home. And I was in tights and singing.”

Taking by surprised, Preston had to repeat Sole. “Singing, how?”

Chugging a the bottle the two have been sharing, Sole took to the stage. Conveniently it was open mic night.

Preston watched, holding back giggles as Sole marched and sang with a trashcan lid which they seem to be using as a shield.

“Who’s strong and brave, here to save the American way?

Not all of us can storm a beach or drive a tank, but there’s a way all of us can fight.

Who vows to fight like a man/girl for what’s right, night and day?

Series E Defense Bonds: each one you but is a bullet in the barrel of your best guy’s gun.

Who will campaign door to door for America? Carry the flag shore to shore for America?

From Hoboken to Spokane.

THE STAR SPANGELD MAN/GAL WITH A PLAN!”

Strong - "All Star" by Smash Mouth

Who’s idea was it to bring a super mutant to open mic night? That’s right. Sole, the Vault Dweller from Vault 111. But it really wasn’t there fault. How could they have known that singing would pump up their super mutant friend. They didn’t even get past the first word.

“SomeBODY-!”

Right on the second syllable, their pal Strong smashed the table, ready to thrash about.

Sole stood onstage wetting themselves, whimpering.

-“the world is gonna roll me.”

X6-88 - "Legend Has It" by Run the Jewels

“We need two volunteers to take Magnolia’s spot while she powders her nose!”

X6 reluctantly followed Sole to the lit stage where two microphones awaited for them. He never wanted to do this, but he was prepared for this and a list of other scenarios. Y’know, to help him blend in.

Sole waited ecstatically with a mic, turning to X6 and playfully warning him: “Don’t freeze.”

“I never freeze.”

And the courser took the fuck off.

“Hear what I say! We are the business today!

Fuck shit is finished today!

X6 and Sole! We the new PB & J!”

An unexpected but welcomed surprise! Sole allowed X6 to demolish this first verse then came in to shred.

“We are the murderous pair

that went to jail and we murdered the murderers there. Then went to Hell and discovered the devil, delivered some hurt and despair!”

Oh what a murderous pair they were indeed.

[projectalbum]

Radio songs. 189. “Green,” 190. “Out of Time,” 191. “Automatic for the People,” 192. “Monster,” 193. “New Adventures in Hi-Fi" by R.E.M.

For R.E.M., signing to Warner Bros Records meant reaching more people, in the U.S. and abroad. It meant a bigger promotional push behind their albums.

It meant an exponential increase in their touring schedule, to the point where all four were pretty burned out by the idea after being on the road for most of ’88-’89. But for me, it was a move that meant my favorite music in existence was allowed to sprout from the fertile loam of commercialism.

If you’ll remember from my previous post, it was a compilation of songs from the WB era that first made me a fan. And it was the first few albums under that banner that made R.E.M. superstars, i.e. a band established enough that I would be aware of them growing up. It’s hard for me to grasp the amount of R.E.M. saturation that existed from roughly ’88 - ’94. By the time I was humming “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” and “Orange Crush” in high school, it was 2005 and the band’s incandescence had faded to the soft, respectable glow of “Dad Rock.” They were hipper than the Billy Joel & Electric Light Orchestra discs that they had replaced in my repertoire, but as far as my peers were concerned, barely. 

The first Christmas after I had announced myself as a fan brought, in shiny happy gift wrapping, Green (#189) and Out Of Time (#190). A veritable Mandolin-apalooza: in the campfire folk trance of “You Are The Everything,” mournful character study “The Wrong Child,” and midnight hippie spiritual “Hairshirt” that are scattered through the mix of Green, and powering the über-hit that secured their legacy, “Losing My Religion,” on Out Of Time. My relationship to those tracks has dipped and risen through the years— I was much less open to strange acoustic explorations back then (or in the case of “LMR,” its overfamiliarity), so I tended to skip them. I grooved on the electric menace of “Turn You Inside-Out” and the poptimism of “Untitled.”

“World Leader Pretend,” in which all the band’s instruments, including Stipe’s voice, seemed tuned to a lower register than ever before (now THAT’S some counter-programming to the bubblegum of “Stand”), has become a God-level composition in my mind. It’s gained some resurgence recently, seen as a pointed critique of the venal and power-hungry who are obsessed with controlling geopolitical barriers. "I raised the wall / And I will be the one to knock it down,” the protagonist intones, and yeah, “the Wall” has a connotation for current events in 2018, as it did 30 years ago (roughly a year after the album’s release, Berlin’s concrete schism was demolished). But I hear the divided self in “World Leader Pretend”: the man erecting the walls of his own isolation chamber, shoring up his fragile ego against outer pain, denying the possibility for connection. "I decree a stalemate, I divine my deeper motives / I recognize the weapons / I've practiced them well, I fitted them myself.” In other words, I hear myself.

Fortunately, he concludes that it’s within his power to level these barriers he's constructed, and I feel I can learn the same lesson. There’s a triumphant slide guitar in the bridge, an iconically Country-Western flavor that the band returns to on one of the most indelible tracks on Out of Time— the descriptively-titled “Country Feedback.” Heartache on an epic scale, deliberate, hypnotic tempo but bubbling like a volcano, the words a stream-of-consciousness chant over Peter Buck’s searching electric guitar and Mike Mills funereal organ. “It’s crazy what you could have had,” Stipe laments, his voice rising, and then, “I need this. I need this.” Is it the confession that he needs, or the connection slipping away from his grasping fingers? He’s called it his favorite song in the band’s canon; they’ve performed it with Neil Young providing the wailing guitar counterpart, like a Dead Man end credits song that never happened, and there’s a clever mashup on the Unplugged set that bowled me over (I’ll mention it when I get there).

The acoustic arrangements and sonic experimentation continued on Automatic for the People (#191), with a purge of the bubblegum (“The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” is a notable exception, but for a goof, it’s gorgeous.) Much has been made of the album’s apparent preoccupation with mortality and loss. For sure, there's the straight-forward teen suicide deterrent “Everybody Hurts,” predating It Gets Better by a couple decades; “Sweetness Follows,” about the steady, plodding journey through mourning, and the peaceful plateau you can reach; “Monty Got A Raw Deal,” a steely Western ballad inspired in part by the tortured, bisexual film actor Montgomery Clift. But it’s a hopeful album, not a dour slog.

To me, the common thread is The Past: that personal history that’s less about the agreed-upon facts and more about the feelings tied to events, coloring your reminiscence. “Drive,” the darkly insinuating opening track, takes inspiration for its rhythmic Beat poetry vocal from David Essex's “Rock On,” a song that Stipe might have heard as a teenager, one that itself looks back a further 20 years to the birth of rock n’roll. Add the string arrangement by rock royalty, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, and it’s nostalgia brined in nostalgia.

We’re looking at the reflection of the old photograph as caught by the passing streetlights: several layers of removal from the events. But in looking back, our feelings strike us clearer than whatever life we’ve built for ourselves in the interim; we’re still dwelling on whatever innocence we think we’ve lost. "I have seen things that you will never see / Leave it to memory me,” are the parting words of a person at the end of their life in “Try Not To Breathe” (often in the running for my favorite R.E.M. recording). "I will try not to burden you,” they promise, holding in secrets of a time gone by in hopes that the listener will forge a new path.

“Find The River,” which draws the book to a close with accordion and harmonizing voices, is another in a line of R.E.M. songs drawing on the river as a symbol of lost harmony. In youthful exuberance, there was “Nightswimming,” but "The ocean is the river's goal / A need to leave the water knows,” and time moves inexorably forward. The past feeds into the unfathomable depths of the future. Automatic for the People draws its title from the slogan at a soul food joint in the band’s hometown. It’s that sense of their own history, 8 records in and on top of the world, that merges with their innate creative restlessness, compelling them to shoot off in a new direction.  “I have got to leave to find my way."

This fuels their mission statement with each album since the WB era began: “Let’s write songs that don’t sound like ‘R.E.M. songs.’” If Automatic is self-reflective, Monster (#192) is about adopted personas. The sound of a middle-aged Art Rock band pretending to be a 20-something Glam Rock band, adding more neon and guitar distortion and posturing than you can shake a Mott The Hoople at. “What can I make myself be? (Faker!)” 

The video for “Crush With Eyeliner” furthers that sense of playful irony: the band members pushed off to the corner of the bar as a new generation, from a different cultural background, expresses the song for them. The entire radioactive orange LP kind of encapsulates every messy teenage feeling I've had since high school. I'm still a "faker," pretending to sing this song. And looking good doing it. (Though, full disclosure, the first time I did karaoke I went with “Bang and Blame.” I don’t mind telling you I nailed it.)

Monster is marked by the most prevalent sexual overtones in R.E.M. canon, as if they were embracing that self-aware Rock Star trope. It’s hard to get more on the nose than the title “Star 69,” but “I Don’t Sleep, I Dream” wins the prize with “Are you coming to ease my headache? / Do you give good head? / Am I good in bed?” As the public debated Michael Stipe’s sexuality, he parried the question in the press and played with his image in the lyrics. The topic of his “Crush” is gendered “she,” giving hetereos like myself plenty to appropriate for our own impossible Cool Girl daydreams— never mind that it’s an ode to his friend Courtney Love. “King of Comedy” addresses a legion of Rupert Pupkins getting their big shot by whatever means necessary, but it also contains the lyric "I'm straight, I'm queer, I'm bi,” a few years before he revealed publicly where the needle pointed on that dial for him. “Tongue” is a lilting, falsetto performance: piano-driven cabaret written for a female protagonist lamenting her inconsiderate lovers. More masks for a closely-scrutinized celebrity to find freedom behind.

New Adventures in Hi-Fi (#193) felt as appropriate a title as any for my first year at a university— trading my hometown for a cinderblock dorm-room, starting down my career path with all the film courses they’d allow me to sign up for. The road-grit guitars, open road expansive sound, Stipe’s tour-shredded front man vocals: the album is alternately weary and electrified. Choruses and riffs fit to fill a stadium (as many basic tracks were recorded at live soundcheck) beside intimate 3AM tour bus confessionals. I scored this huge chapter of my young life with the strutting, T. Rex glam of “The Wake-Up Bomb,” arena-ready choruses of “Bittersweet Me” and “So Fast, So Numb,” felt inspired by the dreamlike inscrutability of “How The West Was Won and Where It Got Us” and darkly-reflective poetry of “E-Bow The Letter.”

I’m not overly surprised to hear that this LP didn’t hit with the same impact as the previous ones— it’s always felt like an acquired taste that I couldn’t impart to anyone else. “You haven’t heard 'Leave?’ Ah man, it’s over 7 minutes long, and there’s a constant siren loop in the background! But trust me, when you hear the acoustic riff from the opening interlude reprised by double-tracked electric guitar, the goose pimples will be visible from space.”

Where Monster boasted the straight-arrow torch song “Strange Currencies,” the hushed, surrealistic “Be Mine” seemed as if it emanated from my own bruised heart. "I'll be the sky above the Ganges / I'll be the vast and stormy sea / I'll be the lights that guide you inward / I'll be the visions you will see”— it’s a cross-spiritual devotional that funnels the tenets of world religions into a promise for total intimacy. I would pay top dollar for the raw footage of Thom Yorke’s guest interpretation. 

Despite the public’s anemic response, the band’s estimation of Hi-Fi’s strengths is justifiably high. It’s an accomplished, energetic record that shows every member playing at his peak. It’s now frozen in history as the last document of the band as a foursome. In the next entry, I’ll delve into the CDs released after drummer Bill Berry retired and R.E.M. dramatically changed gears, rocketing into the 21st century.

[gamersam7]

Three Of A Perfect Pair (1984) by King Crimson (IV) on Vinyl Record via Warner Bros / E.G. Records Adrian Belew - Guitar, Lead Vocal Robert Fripp - Guitar Tony Levin - Stick, Bass Guitar, Synth Background Vocal Bill Bruford - Acoustic And Electric Drumming Engineer by Brad Davis mmy skin is metallic now, no longer an elegant powder blue... my body unhinged and sleeping in the jungle of motor block manifolds and metal relics... what was deluxe becomes debris, I never questioned loyalty, but this dead end demolishes the dream of an open highway... Tracks: Left Side Three Of A Perfect Pair Model Man Sleepless Man With An Open Heart Nuages (That Which Passes, Passes Like Clouds) Right Side: Industry Dig Me No Warning Lark's Tongue In Aspic Part III Dig Me... But Don't .... Bury Me #KingCrimson #RobertFripp #VinylRecords #Music #ProgressiveRock #80s #ThreeOfAPerfectPair (at Williamsport, Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/CDkaRyLjsCH/?igshid=1kjkrhtz4kq45

[ayasakihumblr]

Love Live Sunshine + Yugioh

So here’s a rambling idea for this ridiculous AU:

Basically it’s the plot of Yugioh season 1 with some fundamental differences. Namely, there’s no Egyptian religion/mythology BS, no millennium items, no puberty-on-demand, and everyone is a cute moe girl.

You is basically Yugi, the up and coming rookie who just so happens to be good at a card game. (Now imagine the YGO OP with images of You dueling and the vocals shouting ‘YOU MOVE!’ in the background. I think that’d be pretty awesome :P)

Chika is basically Tea, You’s best friend and number one supporter who can’t really duel but tags along anyway because friendship.

Riko is sort of a cross between Joey and Mai; more on that later.

Mari is Pegasus: fabulously wealthy and fabulously gay.

Dia is Kaiba, the reigning champion who’s competing too.

Ruby is Mokuba, but instead of getting kidnapped constantly she just runs off with Hanamaru. Dia is cool so long as Ruby texts her every hour.

Hanamaru is just a nice, casual duelist Ruby meets on the boat ride over. She’s a legitimately good person who is also legitimately good at card games.

Yoshiko is the personification of all the weirdness of season 1. Her intro scene is her fighting some random girl, declaring actions that would never work in a card game. (Like attacking the frigging moon!) After getting told that her shit won’t fly, she says screw it and dark holes everything, clears magic and trap cards with heavy storm, and summons some monster to attack directly and win. This is her basic strategy.

Kanan is like Bakura, who spends most of the time stalking You and friends, beating up scrubs for star chips, and only appearing for screen time when its time for her to duel. Unlike Bakura, she’s not evil.

SO! Now that the exposition is out of the way...

Everyone gets to Mari’s island for the tournament, Ruby meeting Hanamaru on the way and becoming fast friends with her. When they get to the island, You duels Riko with Chika cheering on the side. Riko gives this whole spiel about how friendship is stupid and the only way to victory is through self-reliance. (Like Mai does.) She takes an early lead with her signature Different Dimension Damsel (1300, 1300). 

You of course makes a comeback with Chika’s constant belief in her, and summons her signature monster, Aquarius Maiden (2500, 2200). She wins.

Riko is very upset about having her entire philosophy shoved in her face, but Chika and You invite her to join them, as RIko is still in the competition and they want to be her friend. Somehow, they manage to convince her, and they slowly melt her heart over the series. You and RIko support each other during their duels, and even have a tag team match. (Like with Joey.) The three of them become best buds, and perhaps something more. ^_^

Ruby and Maru come across Yoshiko as she pulls off another Dark Hole + Direct Attack victory. Maru recognizes her, Yoshiko freaks and runs away, and Maru runs after Yoshiko while Ruby runs after Maru. Long story short, they become BFFs, supporting each other in their duels. Ruby is best cheerleader. 

As a side note, as the first years become BFFs, Dia calls Ruby demanding to know if she’s okay because she was supposed to text her two minutes ago.

Anyway!

After a long and arduous journey beating up countless named scrubs, the relevant cast members make it to Mari’s castle for the final. (Two of these named scrubs can be Saint Snow, who team dueled YouRiko and lost. Mari calls these sisters the trolls that live under her castle.)

Round 1:

Hanamaru vs Dia

This duel is relatively short, with Dia getting an early lead and keeping the advantage, systematically taking apart Hanamaru piece by piece. At duel’s end, Dia crushes Maru, her Elder Destroyer (2250, 1000) annihilating Maru’s signature Animate Tree (1250, 1750). 

Ruby and Yoshiko comfort Hanamaru, but she’s super casual and doesn’t mind losing at all.

Round 2:

You vs Yoshiko

This duel is long, painful, and absolutely ridiculous. Yoshiko keeps shouting out nonsensical actions that Mari, watching from her throne, keeps allowing “because it’s fun, but only for this duel”, so You is kept against the ropes. 

She is rendered unable to attack any of Yoshiko’s monsters because of the blunette’s signature Guilty Eyes Restrict (?,?), so when she summons Aquarius Maiden, she has to resort to Yoshiko’s own tactics.

She basically says Aquarius Maiden will jump into the air and fire artillery directly at Yoshiko’s life points. Mari allows this “because it’s fun, but only for this duel” and You wins.

Round 3:

Riko vs Kanan

If round 1 was a brutal beatdown and round 2 was an absolute slogfest, then round 3 is nothing short of a flawless execution. Within three of her turns, Kanan manages to destroy Riko. Her signature Swift Orca from Beyond the Abyss (2100, 1300) overpowers Riko’s Different Dimension Damsel, and Kanan emerges victorious.

Before the final round (a 4-way match because it’s more fun) tomorrow, You, Chika, and Riko have some alone time. While Riko beats herself up over losing so horribly, Chika and You tell her Kanan (who is still their childhood friend) is super good and there’s no shame. More emotional stuff happens, and, because I’m OT3 trash, the three of them consummate their relationship.

Kanan walks by, intending to congratulate You for making it to the final, but stops when she hears the noises coming from You’s room. She thinks to herself, ‘Hey that reminds me of when Dia, Mari, and I used to- Nope! I’m outta here!’ and she walks away.

Round 4:

You vs Dia vs Kanan vs Mari

This is basically 3rd years trying to destroy each other while You tries to stay afloat in the middle of this maelstrom. Because KanaDiaMari have history, and want to demolish each other. 

There’s some scene where they all summon dragons to the field, Mari taking out her signature Shining Rainbow Matriarch (3000, 2500), vs Kanan’s  Undead Leviathan of the Oceans Deep (2850, 2400), vs Dia’s Dread Queen of the North (2900, 2500), vs You’s rather pathetic Traveler of the Starry Sky (1600, 1200).

Because, you know, this is the final duel. Everyone should get dragons.

But this passes, and there comes a time when Kanan is about to defeat Mari, but Dia plays a card that stops it and Dia defeats Kanan her next turn. Because only Dia can beat Mari and Kanan. Basically 3rd years kinda hate each other, and Kanan goes down first.

Somehow, You summons Aquarius Maiden (again), and plays an awesome card to summon more monsters. Her first is Composer of Dreams (1100, 2200), much to Riko’s confusion.

Riko: Wait, that monster looks like me! WTF?!

Chika: If you think that’s weird, check this out.

You summons Kan Kan Mikan (2100, 2000). It looks like Chika.

She attacks with all 3 monsters and wins the tournament.

Stuff happens, and after realizing they all got beat by a rookie who has no business being as good as she is, the 3rd years reconcile their OT3, and You gets a trophy.

The End

[walterfrodriguez]

The Closing: Barry Sternlicht

Barry Sternlicht (Photo by Emily Assiran)

Barry Sternlicht, who has amassed an estimated net worth of $3 billion over the years, is co-founder, chairman and CEO of Starwood Capital Group. The investment firm manages more than $60 billion in assets, and Sternlicht is launching a public company focused on special acquisitions that will hold a $600 million IPO in May. Sternlicht is now on the hunt for discounted properties, including distressed hotels. The Brown University and Harvard Business School graduate got his start in real estate investment at JMB Realty. Sternlicht was laid off from the company in 1990, following the market’s collapse, and went on to launch Starwood the next year with his partner at the time, Robert Faith. In one of their first deals, they bought apartments from the Resolution Trust Corporation — which the federal government formed to hold and liquidate properties owned by failed savings and loans in the wake of the S&L crisis. Starwood, which is building its new headquarters in Miami Beach, now employs more than 4,000 people across 16 offices on three continents. Over the past three decades, the company has acquired and developed more than 150 million square feet of office, retail and industrial space, 300,000 hotel rooms and 180,000 multifamily units. Starwood has also invested about $7 billion in energy infrastructure and $230 million in oil and gas. While the company has largely withstood the pandemic so far, Starwood has had to furlough some of its hotel workers. Sternlicht told The Real Deal he’s optimistic the hospitality industry will rebound from the pandemic, but said he’s more skeptical about the future of retail and voiced his many frustrations with Amazon. In a wide-ranging Zoom interview from his home in South Florida, the billionaire CEO also talked about everything from his stance on restarting the economy and his relationship with Donald Trump to his father’s harrowing experience during World War II.

DOB: November 27, 1960 Lives in: Miami Beach Hometown: Stamford, Connecticut Family: Divorced with three children

I always start with the hardest question: What is your full name? Barry Stuart Sternlicht.

Where were you born? Long Island. Stamford, Connecticut, is really where I grew up. I moved there at like 4 or 5 years old.

What were you like as a kid? Happy and a frustrated jock. I was pretty good at most sports but not great at anything. I actually taught tennis to earn a living during my summers before college.

Were you a good student? Yeah, I was a pretty good student. I always leaned toward the humanities. My major at Brown was called Law and Society. I used to call it Lost in Society because it was a major that combined economics, political science, history and philosophy.

Your father was a Holocaust survivor. Did he ever discuss that with you? Yes, but not until I was 38. I took him back to Poland. I think that was when he first told me that he killed someone during the war. He was not in a camp. He was lucky to survive in the mountains, and he was liberated by the Russians.

How do you think that experience shaped his worldview and how he raised you? I think he had a hard time trusting people. He always felt a little bit like an outsider, even though he married a gal from Brooklyn. He obviously taught me to be tough. My worst day was probably better than his best day during that eight- or nine-year period. He was angry, though — he really had a lot of anger against the Poles for their behavior during the war.

How did you get started in real estate investment? I really didn’t start in real estate until after business school. I had an offer from Goldman Sachs, which I didn’t take, and I went to JMB Realty instead. I always walked a little less conventional route, and that was the less conventional route.

Let’s fast-forward to the present, with Covid-19 continuing to wreak havoc on the world. What’s your next big move as an investor? I don’t know. Well, I’m not going to tell you. Too many of my competitors are going to hear about this. I think a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. I was exceptionally bullish on CNBC on March 13 and said we’d have a very quick recovery.

Are you referring to your comment about the pandemic being World War III for 90 days? Yup. I got that right. But with the fallout from Covid in the real estate markets, it will take time to figure out which tenants survive and which tenants don’t. The equity markets reprice overnight, and the real estate markets don’t.

You’ve said Starwood will look to be opportunistic during the pandemic. Does that mean you’ll look to buy properties at discounted prices? We will. We’ve probably laid out half a billion dollars in the last 45 days, but we haven’t bought any individual assets yet, although we have been actively acquiring public equities and CMBS securities. When it looks like the world is totally ending, that’s the hardest time to actually push the button and buy something.

Are there certain types of assets that you’ve got your eye on? We have a pretty deep background in hotels, and I’m willing to buy cheap real estate in the hotel space because I believe in the asset class. I think I know what we can do with them. Our thinking is: “Okay, where will we be in 24 months? Let’s not worry about the slope of the recovery right now.”

What’s your outlook on distress bets these days? We love distress markets from a buyer’s standpoint. I like markets like this where you have to hustle. Hopefully, we’re big enough now to help people survive, too. They can come to us, and we can give them capital.

Barry Sternlicht in the Zoom interview with The Real Deal’s Eddie Small

How do you feel about restarting the economy? Do you think it’s time to start lifting some of the social distancing restrictions? Yes. We have to reopen the economy, and we have to do it soon. People who are at risk should stay home, but the vast majority of people are probably not at risk. We have to open with protocols, and we have to watch the results really carefully, but that can be zip code by zip code. The medical experts, they’re the same people who told us that 2.5 million people would die. They’ve since revised their forecasts.

Have you had to lay off any workers or cut salaries? Not at the parent company or the asset manager. At our most impacted assets like hotels, we had no choice.

If you had to boil it down to one point, what is your biggest concern about the pandemic in the long run? I’ll give you two. One is treating money as if it’s free and doesn’t matter. I do think we should spend trillions of dollars. I just think we should be super careful about how we spend it.

What’s the second one? I worry about fear-mongering. I heard a mayor say the other day that she’d keep her city closed until a vaccine was found. That may not be until next year — the country would be in a depression. You cannot keep [more than] 30 million people on unemployment. The whole financial system will collapse. We can keep our hotels closed for a few months. We can’t keep our hotels closed for a year and a half.

What has been the pandemic’s biggest impact on Starwood so far? I suppose hotels, but I think it’s just temporary there. We have some retail outfits, but they’re not really significant investments. For retail, this was a dagger to the chest.

Do you see a way forward for retail after all this? Walmart’s big enough to survive. Target and Costco seem to be doing fine. But I don’t want to walk down Main Street in Greenwich and see a Costco. I’m not interested in seeing an Amazon outlet. I like the mom-and-pop stores. I have to say, I’m not a fan of Amazon. They’re demolishing the Main Streets of America, and they could behave a lot more benevolently to communities.

Are there any Starwood assets that you think are well-positioned to hold up during the pandemic? We have apartments, and so far they’ve held up really well. We have 98 percent of the rent, so I’m pretty happy about that. Our best-performing asset, the one I’m happiest about, is a company we call InTown Suites. It’s classified as a hotel, but it’s a low-end extended stay, so people use it as an alternative to housing. We have 196 properties, 24,000 keys, and we’re 80 percent occupied.

How long do you think it will take for the hospitality industry to recover from this? It’s going to vary [depending on] the kind of asset you have and your location. I expect high-end resorts to do okay. The large fly-to markets and the large convention businesses will come back last. That’s Vegas and New Orleans and Chicago’s convention center base.

Do you see demand for office space going down after this, especially with so many people now working from home? The faster you reopen the economy, the faster people get back to their old habits. We might have less demand for space if companies are nervous about the economy and don’t need to expand, but they’re probably going to offset that by social distancing themselves a little bit. I think we’re down to like 220 square feet per employee, but they’ll go back to the 250 or 300 square feet you had 10 or 15 years ago. You’ll inch your way back that way.

You said before the pandemic that a bubble in tech stocks could impact office leasing by some of those companies. Does the same theory apply now? As long as those tech companies are growing, there’s going to be demand for office space, regardless of what’s going on. The government is busy trying to get money to the unemployed, as it should be, rather than breaking apart Google or Amazon. I do not know how it can get much better for those companies.

Are you bullish on any particular company stocks these days? I might have been one of the more vocally bullish people on the equity markets. But I did not expect the market to be down 10 percent from where it was pre-Covid.

You had been warning of a recession well before the pandemic. Are we in it now? Yeah. I thought that the country would slow its investment cycle this year. I didn’t realize you’d have Covid to deal with. There are two things I worry about coming out of this. One is our relationship with China. The outcome of that relationship is critical not only for U.S. economic growth but for the world. The second thing is the political climate. We’re going to have an election. It isn’t going to be kumbaya, I love you, you love me. This is going to be ugly.

Do you consider yourself a Republican, or are you more flexible ideologically? What are you, crazy? I’m an independent. I’m socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I think capitalism is the best form of government, but I think it needs to be regulated.

How would you rate the Donald Trump presidency so far? There’s one positive thing I’d say about the Trump presidency: If you’re a businessman, you’re no longer demonized. What I objected to under the Obama administration was the thought that we were morally corrupt for succeeding. I do think there are certain things that the federal government can uniquely do, like defense spending, and there are national priorities, like energy. We still don’t have an energy strategy.

What about a national pandemic strategy? Well, we had one [for an influenza pandemic] under Bush, and it was abandoned and dropped, so I guess we need one now.

When did you first meet Trump? I’ve known him for decades. He came to the opening of the first W Hotel on Lexington Avenue in 1998, so I probably met him around 20 years ago.

Do you consider him a friend? I consider him a friend, but I don’t talk to him as president. I haven’t been involved in the administration. I’m pro-choice, and the environment is another very important issue to me. It’s complicated.

What is the biggest mistake you’ve made in your career? Randsworth, that’s easy [JMB acquired the London property owner for $425 million in 1989, and by 1992, Citicorp forced it into bankruptcy, according to Forbes]. It really wasn’t my mistake, but I got blamed for it.

More recently, we bought some retail assets. I probably didn’t have the right management team for them, and I didn’t realize how quickly the retail space as we knew it would be reorganized and dismantled.

What do you like to do to unwind? I golf. My tennis career is still around. I work out and bike, and I travel and drink wine.

You have two sons and a daughter. Do you get to see and talk to them on a regular basis? I see them all. My daughter’s an hour away right now. I am divorced, though. I was married for 25 and a half years.

Are you still in touch with your ex-wife? All the time.

Are you dating anyone these days? I’m going to pass on that question.

Where do you live? I live in Florida, in South Beach.

Do you have any other homes? Yes. I have a home in New York City and on Nantucket.

Are you abiding by the stay-at-home rules in Florida? Well, I’m working from the house, but I’ll drive this weekend to play golf in a neighboring county. So it’s stay-ish at home for me.

What are you most looking forward to doing once the pandemic ends and social distancing restrictions ease up? Traveling. Going to Europe for the summer. I’m also excited to get back to the office. I’m not one of those people who’s in love with working from home. I like having people around me.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The post The Closing: Barry Sternlicht appeared first on The Real Deal Miami.

from The Real Deal Miami & Miami Florida Real Estate & Housing News | & Curbed Miami - All https://therealdeal.com/miami/2020/05/22/the-closing-barry-sternlicht/ via IFTTT

[lulusspace]

holy sh*t

okay here is how i feel about each song on the album babes

intro: persona

the queen herself. namjoon killed it as well as us. it takes us back, but it still sounds like the music they make now. it’s a good feel-good song that you can hype up to.

boy with luv

the song was vv cute and so was the music video. i was a little wiry about halsey being on it, but i actually liked what she contributed to it!! tis a good song to bring up your mood

mikrokosmos

to be quite honest... this wasn’t my favorite :( i mean, i still love her, but i didn’t vibe with it like i did the others.

make it right

my first time listening to it i didn’t think much of the song, but after listening to the album more i began to love this one a lot :’) ed sheeran did a good job with helping produce it in my opinion. the lyrics are nice and in a way the song just comforts me??

HOME

omg they really killed it with this one. immediately when i heard it, it reminded me of paradise. it’s probably my second favorite track. i also like how they incorporated spanish the tiniest bit hehe. anywayz this is just such a vibey song.

jamais vu

this one. this song right here. my favorite track by far. it was the first song to really catch my attention and when looking at the lyrics i just,,,, i felt so touched? it’s a powerful song with powerful vocals. speaking of which, MY BABY JUNGKOOK JUST he killed me on this track. 10/10 would cry to this at 3am.

dionysus

what. a. BANGER. i had seen so much hype about the song on insta and twitter... but y’all... i was not prepared for that. jhope really did that omg. AND JINS BACKGROUND VOCALS IM- our kings just DEMOLISHED the entire music industry with this one. it’s the perfect hype/workout song

in conclusion:

kings snapped.

[joneswilliam72]

Review: You Tell Me is a complex, unprepossessing album of charming indie folk from two old hands of the genre

‘National Treasure’ is a faintly patronising thing to call anyone, but Field Music - Peter Brewis and his brother David’s rock day-job - are well on their way to earning that honorific. The consistency of the band’s output since the release of their debut album fifteen years ago has remained stubbornly high. Since then Brewis has found time in between recording and releasing half a dozen records to become a father, run a studio (and see it demolished) and work on myriad other compositions and side projects, his latest being the partnership with Sarah Hayes as You Tell Me.

Sarah Hayes of Admiral Fallow has a similarly impeccable background; a classical education; indie-folk and traditional folk including Celtic and Northumbrian roots. Despite being born on the Wirral (always a good sign), she has inhabited the Northumbrian and border milieu for much of her working life. It's hardly surprising that two firmly North Eastern artists of distinction should have found eachother. It's even less of a surprise that the resulting album is almost impeccable.

‘You’d laugh in disbelief if I told you the impact you made’, the soul of You Tell Me, is firmly self-deprecating, with enough light and shade provided by satisfying tonal shifts from perky, radio friendly pop (‘Water Cooler’) to wistful ballads (‘No Hurry’). Hayes’ reedy voice is often beautifully pitched amongst a straightforward blend of un-effected drums and piano. Production tricks are largely eschewed for a spring water-clean mix focused on criss-crossing melodies and tracks that develop and build rather than overwhelming the listener with atmospheric noise.

Highlight ‘Starting Point’ bends this template a little to introduce some field recordings and a gentle phasing on Brewis’ vocal, but the pair of artists never seek to wrest the listener out of their thoughtful enjoyment of what is a very enjoyable, and very thoughtful record. Everything is given space and time to develop; the second verse of the beautifully brief ‘Kabuki’ breaks into a string quartet topped only by Hayes’ gentle vocal; "I’m not sure that anyone’s realised yet/ there’s more courage than before/ my arms, my hands, my heart/ I’ve missed out on such a lot."

As pretty as much of the album is, it can lack the immediacy to really grab the listener and pull them into a different world. It can sometimes feel like you’re watching a dress rehearsal rather than the full performance – something is withheld. There’s no firm sense, despite the poignancy of the lyrics, that anything is actually broken. A sense of emotional urgency is crucial to any music. Other than on opening track ‘Enough to Notice’, nothing much appears to be at stake.

Despite that criticism, this is a masterfully pulled together collection, as you would expect from artists each with their own lengthy playbook. It will be interesting to see if it draws enough attention to warrant a follow up.

from The 405 http://bit.ly/2SOGCWO