#to edit the lines/verses and stuff on them with music or whatever to put it on other platforms

[thatone-churro]

yeah sure i can write a poem combining a dying moth i saw and unhealthy obsessions but PHYSICALLY and VISUALLY portraying it??? how the fuck am i supposed to do that

[rapsgoddess]

Washing Machine Heart Part 1. (Erik Killmonger x OC)

This is unedited so please have mercy on me in the notes 😭

Nahla knew she didn’t mean a thing to him. Next to being a mercenary, Erik was a player. He came and went as he pleased, spent his nights with more than one woman, and didn’t feel a single shred of regret whenever his girls would pour out their hearts to him. 

Nahla knew she didn’t mean a single thing to him, yet she still somehow fell in love. 

It was a painful realization. One that she came to during one of Erik’s many long term absences. It was another sleepless night for her and she was sitting in bed with her laptop open to her right and her keyboard directly in front of her. For the past week, the same melody had been on loop inside her head. A broken tune that conveyed so much sorrow that it nearly brought her to tears whenever she hummed it. Each day after she got home from work, she would add onto the melody bit by bit, putting in different instruments and sounds to create a beautiful symphony. 

When it came time to write lyrics for the song, all she could envision was a tune about unrequited love. The same unrequited love that she had been feeling for a while. 

It wasn’t until she put a name to that feeling when she finally realized how she truly felt about Erik. 

She decided to try and keep things suppressed for a while, hoping that her childish feelings of romance would disappear after a few days. 

They didn’t. 

When Erik returned a few weeks later, she didn’t, know how to act. The man made it known that he was not committed to anybody, and Nahla was no exception. On the rare occasion Nahla would catch a glimpse of him on social media, she would see him surrounded by women who looked as if they could be models. Women who were leagues ahead of her. The photos never failed to resurrect her insecurities. They made her question why Erik even bothered to give her the time of day. Yet those insecurities melted away whenever he came to visit her. 

Flash forward to the present, and Nahla found herself laying next to Erik’s naked frame in her bed. The faint sound of her washing machine echoed throughout the house, giving a sort of rhythmic banging as her shoes tussled around inside. The night was still fairly young, having only been a few minutes past seven, but all of the plans that Nahla had for that evening were discarded the moment Erik showed up on her doorstep. 

It didn’t take much for his words to lull her into bed and for his lips on hers to enrapture her. His low, smooth voice was like music to her ears, and her moans being music to his. Each praise that left his lips was like a toxic lullaby. Nahla knew that he had repeated the same words to dozens of women in the past, yet in the moment, they made her feel as if she were the only woman in the world. 

“You feel so good around me baby…”

“You don’t know how much I missed this pussy.”

“Say my name so everybody know who’s fuckin’ you right.” 

Thinking back to his words sent shivers down her spine. She was wide awake, restless and too excited to fall asleep. It was rare for Erik to stay after having sex, let alone fall asleep before her, but her inner turmoil prevented her from falling asleep. 

She turned back to look over at Erik, taking in every aspect of his being as if it were the last time she would see him again. No matter how many times she laid eyes on him, she would never be able to find the words to describe how beautiful he was. He had a smile that could light up a room and warm eyes that made her heart flutter each time she looked into them. It often left her wondering why exactly he even entertained the thought of her when he was way out of her league. 

A heavy sigh left Nahla’s lips and she threw the covers off the lower half of her body. She looked back at Erik one last time while putting on her robe, making sure that he stayed asleep. Slowly and quietly, she crept out of the room and down the hall to her makeshift studio, closing the door behind her and turning on the lights. She used her studio as an escape from both the real world and her own mind, and right then she needed an escape from both. Turning on her equipment and opening up her laptop, she opened up the file that held her latest project. The one that helped her come to her realization in the first place. She made sure the speakers were low as to not wake Erik up and pressed play, listening to her voice blend with the gentle melody. 

She had only written a few lines so far and could feel the next verse just on the tip of her tongue, but lyricism had never really been her strong suit. Muttering random words under her breath, she opened up the notes section on GarageBand and began writing down whatever sounded nice, replacing and adding words where she deemed fit. 

“Might as well give it a go,” she sighed, getting up from her chair and walking over to the small corner where her mic and the rest of her recording equipment was set up. She pressed record on an empty track and began singing the second verse, her voice coming out soft and almost broken in contrast to her usual strong, belty tone. She was tired, both physically and emotionally, but she couldn’t walk back to that room. Not with him still laying asleep in her bed as if the two of them were a couple. 

After a few more takes, she had finally gotten her voice warmed up enough to where it didn’t sound completely like shit and she walked over to her work station to edit the track on top the music. 

With her mind now completely engulfed in her music, she didn’t noticed the sound of her toilet flushing or her bathroom sink running down the hall. She didn’t notice the sound of footsteps leading to her studio and her door opening slightly. 

It wasn’t until the feeling of a hand snaking its way around her neck drew her from her work as she jumped in her seat while clutching her chest in panic.

“Whatchu scared for? It’s just me,” Erik muttered, his voice still laced with drowsiness. “What are you doing up? Any other day you’d be knocked out.” His fingers gently squeezed at her neck and he leaned down to plant a kiss on the top of her head. It was weirdly intimate of him.

“I couldn’t sleep so I decided to work on something.” Nahla spun her seat around to face him. He had on a pair of low hanging shorts. She recognized them as being one of the pairs she bought for him whenever he decided to stay over. She mentally scoffed at the thought; buying clothes for a man who she wasn’t even in a relationship with. 

“You’re not leaving?” She asked. It had just dawned on her that, miraculously, Erik was still there. 

“Nah. I haven’t seen you in a while so I figured I’d stay for a little bit.” 

The sentiment made her heart flutter but she quickly grounded herself back to reality. She couldn’t afford to get her hopes up. 

“So, what are you working on?” He asked, his arms folded across his chest as he looked past her and at the open editing software on her computer. 

“Oh. Well I had a melody that was stuck in my head for a while so I put it down and write lyrics. I lowkey wanna find a mini orchestra to record it though.” 

“Well can I hear it?” He suggested. 

Nahla’s eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat. Despite knowing each other for the better part of two years now, this was the most he had ever expressed genuine interest in her music. 

“U-Uhh, I’m not sure… I get really sensitive about my stuff. Plus it’s not what you’d expect it to be,” she said, swirling her chair back around to face her work station as she hesitantly placed her hand on the mouse  and moved the cursor over the “play” button. After taking a deep breath, she played the song and closed her eyes as she waited for it to be over. Throughout the entirety of what little she had to play, Erik was silent, giving no response, comment, or critiques. When it was over, she reluctantly turned around to face him. 

“So? What do you think?”

“Yeah, I can definitely hear an orchestra going behind that. Maybe start off with piano first, then bring in strings or some shit during the hook,” he suggested, walking over to the other chair in the corner of her studio and sitting down. 

“Okay. Thanks.”

For about an hour or two, the two of them stayed up in her studio talking about random things while sharing a blunt together. They eventually migrated back to the bedroom and made their way beneath the covers together, Nahla’s body molding perfectly into Erik’s as they cuddled. 

“Nah, I’m deadass. I thought I had locked his cage, but he always finds a way to get out,” Nahla giggled, referring to her pet chameleon who always managed to get out of his cage. “I remember a few day ago I had just woken up and went into the kitchen to get some juice and I see him inside the sink just sitting there. Then he have the nerve to look up at me like ‘what are you doing here?’ No sir, what are you doing here.” 

Erik laughed softly while shaking his head. “Nah, I don’t think I could handle an animal just freely roaming my shit like that.”

“You get used to it after a while. I was low-key thinking about getting a snake too, but I gotta figure out where to put the tank.”

“Oh hell nah. If you get a snake, I’m not coming by anymore.”

“What?! You used to be a whole Navy Seal and you’re scared of snakes, E?” She asked, a bit surprised that he even shared that information with her. 

“Girl, I don’t know how you can even stand them things,” he mumbled, “slithering around and shit. What if it gets out when you’re sleep and starts choking you?”

“Then we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” she giggled, earning an eye roll from Erik. 

Though it didn’t seem possible, she pressed herself against Erik even harder, somehow managing to get even closer to him. Resting her head in the crook of his neck, she had a perfect view of the many scars and keloids that littered his body. She could tell some of them are new. Whether or not they were accidental or self inflicted, she didn’t want to know. 

It was times like these where Nahla wished that her outlandish fantasies of romance weren’t fantasies at all. Having never been in a real relationship before, she constantly longed to be loved by someone in a romantic sense. Though she knew that Erik probably never thought of her as more than a fuck buddy, it was nice to feel his warmth underneath her. Even if it was an illusion, it was nice to imagine him as her lover while he was holding her close. 

“What’s on your mind?” He pried, letting out a deep sigh before closing his eyes and relaxing his muscles. 

“Where do you go when you disappear?” She partially lied. Even though that wasn’t what truly was on her mind, it was still a question that lingered over her head for a while. 

“That, I can’t tell you ma. At least not right now.” 

She wasn’t satisfied with how curt his reply was. Sitting up, she supported her head with her hand, her elbow buried into the pillow beside his head as she peered down at him. 

“You can tell me,” she pried. A childish grin spread across her face. “If it’s something illegal I promise I won’t tell.”

Erik peaked one up up at her, a smile of his own taking over his featured. He pushed his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. “Mm… Maybe I could tell you a little bit. I don’t even know where to begin though without you thinkin’ I’m crazy.”

“I won’t think you’re crazy.”

“You say that now.” There was a pregnant pause, and then, in the most serious tone ever, he said, “I’m apart of African royalty.”

“So there’s this country in Africa called Wakanda. At first glance, it seems like a small lil third world country, but in reality, they’re the most advanced civilization on the planet. They got this metal called Vibranium that allows them to all sorts of things, but they keep it hidden from the rest of the world.”

“How? And if they kept it hidden from the world, then how do you know about it?”

“They have a dome that surrounds the entire country. It’s practically impenetrable. And the only reason I know is because my father was the prince. He was sent here on an undercover mission in America but quickly saw how shitty thing were here, so he wanted to change it. “

“Wait, your father is the prince of an African country?” Nahla couldn’t believe her ears. Despite being secretive and mysterious, she knew that Erik wasn’t one to lie. After all, what could he possibly gain from lying about something as far fetched as this?  

“Was. He was killed before he could enact any change; by his own brother no less.”

She could hear a pain and vulnerability in his voice that she’d never heard before. Now she definitely knew that he wasn’t lying. 

Erik’s face had turned to the side in a fruitless attempt to hide the tears that welled up in his eyes. He’d never brought up his family or much of his life before he met her in a conversation, and now she could see why. 

Hesitantly, Nahla reached up to wipe away the tears that left his eyes. “So you plan on going back and getting revenge?” She pondered. It would make sense why he’d want to stay under the radar,  having no social media accounts, no permanent phone number, and constantly disappearing for months at a time. If he wanted to infiltrate an entire hidden country, then he’d have to be the closest thing to a ghost a person could be. 

“It’s on the list,” he replied, sitting up in bed while resting back against the headboard. “But, my main goal is to change the world. Wakanda has technology and weapons that people can’t even begin fathom. If our people were able to get their hands on that kind of fire power, we wouldn’t have to worry about the White man oppressing us any longer.” 

The sadness that was once present in his eyes had long disappeared, instead being replaced with a burning passion. It filled her with joy to see him get passionate about something, but it also put her on edge. Nahla knew what his plan implied, and she didn’t put it past him to sacrifice countless lives in order to see his vision come to life.

Staying silent, she simply nodded, too afraid that she’d say the wrong thing if she opened her mouth. Tearing her gaze away from the man, she began contemplating on everything she had been thinking about prior to his arrival. Her feelings for him were still unwavering, but now she was starting to ponder on whether or not being with him was a wise decision. It didn’t take being a genius to know that Erik’s path was a set one. He was a determined, goal-driven man, and when his mind was made up, there was no convincing him to go back on his decision. 

If she followed him down that path, she wouldn’t be able to turn back. 

“Do I scare you?” 

Nahla looked back up only to be met with obsidian eyes boring straight into her deep brown ones. His question threw her for a loop, no doubt, considering how Erik was never one to be considerate of other people’s feelings. 

“H-Huh? What do you mean?” She knew exactly what he meant. 

“That look in your eyes… You’re scared of something. What is it?” He demanded in an eerily calm manner. 

Attempting to spare his feelings would be a futile decision; Erik read people like his favorite novel. Yet, for some reason, Nahla had no control over the words that left her mouth. 

She almost never did when she was around him. 

“Nothing. I just get a bit spooked in the dark,” she chuckled. 

Erik simply blinked at her, a look of uncertainty and doubt dancing around in his eye before he shrugged it off and laid back down in the bed, facing her completely. 

“You should get some rest. Goodnight,” he said softly, his eyes never leaving her. 

Upon hearing his words, Nahla felt an immense tiredness wash over her as if he casted a sleeping spell over her. She glanced over at the clock and noticed how it was nearly 4 AM. She had only three hours before she needed to get up and get ready for work. 

She was tired, but fear kept plaguing her mind. A fear that he wouldn’t be there when she woke up. Or, even worse, a fear that she had dreamt the entire night. 

“Don’t worry. I’ll be here when you wake up,” he whispered. 

Nahla wanted to believe him, so she did, closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep. 

[dandaelions]

aespa’s “savage” album thoughts! 🐍😈

from debuting in controversy to rivaling established groups in the span of a year, the meteoric rise of this group has been veeeeeery interesting to witness. though I was initially one of those people with serious doubts about their concept, there’s no denying the powerhouse talent and energy these ladies are bringing to the scene - and the gobs of $$$ SM is throwing at this social experiment. they've definitely got some of the best visual designers working on this and it shows! going into this mini. I'm not quite sure what to expect - everything they've put out has looked GORGEOUS but do they deliver on the music? let's find out...

aenergy - can't quite understand what they're saying (edit: looking at the lyrics...I'm think I'm gonna need a glossary lol) but this is a pretty epic intro...in case you had any doubt what this group is about, now you know! I've never been a huge fan of chant-y verses so not quite digging the "everydaaAAAYYY we get better" but that beat HITS. oh gosh what does this rhythm remind me of?? I swear there's another song with this beat but I can't remember...

savage - intro really reminds me of super m's one (monster & infinity), that's a great build-up going into the chorus which then...goes nowhere...ok...I'm a little confused tbh. I wish the chorus was stronger to match the fierce energy from the verses. man these girls are KILLING it though! YAS THIS INSTRUMENTAL BREAK THOUGH!!! oh wait ok was that a key change? hold on whoa ningning is blasting off and then...it ends?

i feel under- and overwhelmed at the same time with this...like there are elements that are really great but that chorus totally kills the vibe, and don't quite understand the decision to add a key change at the end. everything ends up sounding quite disjointed when put together :/ mv looks AMAZING though so this is where dftf budget went lol jk jk corporation is gonna do what corporations do also props to the members for bringing their all, this is def very unconventional and honestly they sell it. we'll see how this does in the long-term...

I'll make you cry - oh fck. hold up. there's something going on here. the skitzy synth with those staccato verses and drum machine...

ok but that empty beat drop then that EXPLOSION at 1:15!!! THIS HITS!!! YAS I'M JUST!!! love this trap/hip-hop interpretation of a cyberpunk-y video game! I WANNA RACE A CAR TO THIS!!! the girls sound positively dangerous and I can totally imagine them as the protagonists of a futuristic action movie! OH BUT THE BRIDGE!! oh it's so sparkling and WOW they sound so amazing with their lower registers. the mixing actually sounds really incredible in this song, there's a lot going on but it's all balanced really well and all the vocal flourishes and harmonies!! despite the intensity, there's plenty of space for all of the members to shine. OKAY DOKEY I was not expecting that but MAN I was vibing!!

edit: QUEEN KENZIE THANK YOU

yeppi yeppi - the beat is PRESENT. sounds almost like they took a red velvet song and synth-ified it...oh WHOA the section that starts at 1:20 the drum machine!! the beats!! wooooo what a roller coaster ride! actually you know what, this almost seems like something that might've been slated for f(x), this song just gets weirder and weirder the more it goes on...holy SHIZ how much did they cram in here?? I'm just sitting here like 😧 producers really had fun with this one lol. def not for everyone's taste but I think I like it! might have to give this a few more listens...

iconic - ohh all right spy movie-action sequence vibes...heavy rap verses with this one, I'm glad they get to show so many different sides. nice contrast with the pre-chorus there, letting the space expand for a bit before packing the beats right back in. I am half expecting taeyong to drop in for a few lines here lol, sounds very much in nct's alley. lyrically the chorus feels a bit juvenille but I can vibe to it, the chromatic descents add enough movement to keep it going. ahhh the bridge sounds so refreshing! hmm yeah I feel this one!

lucid dreams - just based off the title I'm expecting something a bit more laid-back, and it seems like I'm right! the sustained synths add more mood and atmosphere here...really like the background noise, that's a nice touch! oh it's so nice to hear their voices a little bit more stripped back :) the trap beats are back at it again, except a bit more relaxed here. tempo is still pretty fast though. OOOOHHHH YESSSSS THE CHORUS. YES. sometimes doing less is more, and that's exactly what's working out here. the harmonies really get a chance to shine and they're able to convey so much emotion, paradoxically, by not conveying much at all. nice transition from the layered chorus to the singular vocal line, sonically a very interesting moment. love the shooting star effects and little touches going on in the background! OH THIS BRIDGE! oh wow what a way to close out the album

overall - I AM SO PLEASANTLY SURPRISED!! wow this really delivered some amazing stuff and I am so happy that a lot of this is in the vein of what I like listening to, like trap, synthwave, and electronica. sm back at it again with the weak title tracks, but I am honestly so glad the ladies got some b-sides to show what they're really about. clearly they're got the vocals and the musicality to tackle whatever is thrown at them, and I've really been impressed by them so far. even in the saturated landscape of kpop, this sounds fresh and interesting and PROPS to the producing team!! they brought it!! my playlists grew a bit today, yayyyy :)

[queen-erika-the-songful]

Okay, here are my initial thoughts on Princess Adventure. These are in no way organized; they’re just as I can remember them. Feel free to send asks if you want

- Barbie defending Chelsea’s creativity and imagination is great to see. It’s one of the best parts of Dreamhouse Adventures so it’s nice to see them continue that in this film

- I like “Try It On” a lot more now. It’s not my favorite, and I think it’s one of the weaker songs in comparison to the rest of the soundtrack, but it’s honestly kind of a bop.

- “It’s like they don’t even want me in this movie!” LOL even Tammy herself knows she’s been done an absolute injustice.

- Holy crap Amelia’s plan is so freaking funny to me. She could’ve just, like...invited Barbie over to her kingdom since she’s the princess and was already a fan of Barbie’s vlogs anyway. But nah, she’s gotta have this whole convoluted “cultural exchange” bullshit I just can’t

- Speaking of Amelia, it’s a little disappointing that we don’t spend nearly as much time with her as we do with Barbie, and, thus, we don’t get to see who the supposed “real” her really is. She says she finally got to explore things about herself, like her fears and dreams, but she never goes into details. Ironically, the audience never gets to see who the true Amelia is, we just have to go off what she said about “who [she] is does matter”. I mean, we certainly get glimpses of it (again, the convoluted plan - she’s obviously ‘act first think later’), but overall it’s not nearly enough, at least to me

- “(Not A) Picture Perfect Girl” might just be my favorite song from this movie. It honestly made me tear up a bit. We’ll see if that changes over my next rewatches

- The running gag with Trey mixing up Barbie and Amelia while Ted and Ned knew was a lot funnier than I expected it to be

- Trey is now trans and you can’t change my mind.

- I really appreciate “Somewhere New” a lot more now since seeing it in the movie. I love that the choreography starts on the plane. It was a cool choice that really felt like a “musical” thing to do. I also like that everyone got to sing at leaset a line or two on their own. 

- WTF happened between Floravia and Johanistan? Did they have a war or something? Why are they being united into just a bigger Floravia? It sounds pretty fishy. I can understand why Johan is so upset based on what little information is given to us, so I wish they had gone into it a bit more.

- Johan asked “Amelia” (Barbie in disguise) if she remembered what they said they would do as rulers when they were kids. That never comes back and it really bothered me. What was the promise? That they’d rule together? That they’d treat each other’s kingdom equally? I actually thought at the coronation that Amelia would give the answer to that question (something like “Johan, remember what we told each other...”) and then do something like absolve the treaty so that she and Johan would rule their own respective kingdoms. l

- IDK, I think I would’ve just liked it more if Johan had been like Amelia’s brother/cousin/whatever that wanted to become King. He’d be a more boring villain that way but it would be less complicated than this.

- WE GOT REPRISES OF 2 SONGS BUT THEY AREN’T ON THE SOUNDTRACK?! I will NOT stand for that. As soon as the movie comes out on DVD I’m ripping those tracks out and adding them to my playlist

- I really thought Ken and Barbie were finally going to get together. I shall now accept my clown shoes and wig. I’m already applying the makeup now.

- The sequence for “Life in Color” disappointed me a bit. It’s one of my favorite songs on the soundtrack, but the placement in the movie felt like it came out of nowhere. I was really hoping for a nice, tender moment between Barbie and Amelia. Even if they were kept separated, it could’ve started with them video-chatting again. Maybe they’d talk about their personal struggles and then Barbie would stop the recording (”We don’t have to film this...”) and they’d just have a moment between themselves to talk.

- On the other hand, “King of the Kingdom” was such a good scene. It was very entertaining and I laughed a lot (which I had to hold back a lot since I was still at work). Also, those boys can move!!

- To make up for all of the interruptions and missed opportunities, Ken Carson deserves at least 3 episodes centered on him and his life and 1 where he finally tells Barbie how he feels

- TAFFY HAD NO REASON TO BE IN THIS MOVIE. I don’t care that Barbie almost always needs an animal sidekick. Snowy (Amelia’s bunny) fills that role. Taffy just gave everyone a freaking heart attack. Also, how the heck did she survive the plane ride? California to Floravia is a 10-hour flight so how did she stay unnoticed for so long?? ROBERTS FAMILY, GET SOME DAMN LEASHES!

- Speaking of that scene, I hate it. It ate up valuable time that could’ve been later spent developing the plot or Amelia’s character. It was only like 2 minutes but in a movie that is already pretty short (1hr11min) every second counts

- Can DA please finally drop the whole “Hey look Renee is claustrophobic” already? It’s repetitive as all hell and honestly it rubs me the wrong way how often it’s played for laughs. It works in the DA Halloween episode since it’s all about everyone facing their fears but everywhere else it feels like a cheap & undeserved laugh (it only happens twice in the movie I think but I wanted to mention it anyway)

- Morningstar being a little bitch to Barbie was hilarious. I don’t really like animal toys anymore but I’d totally buy her. (She’s part of a doll-horse set called Prance & Shimmer Horse. The Barbie doll has Amelia’s princess dress).

- “This is My Moment” really warmed my heart. The last shot with Amelia and Barbie smiling at each other reminded me a lot of Princess & the Popstar actually. I also really like how they brought back stuff from “Try It On” for Barbie’s verse. Musical finale numbers that bring back earlier motifs is something I just cannot get enough of. 

- I liked Alfonso. Like Amelia said, he means well; he just didn’t put as much thought into what Ameila herself wants as he could have. But hey, he was learning just as much as they were

- I LOVED all of the stuff with Barbie trying to make it big and that bitch Rose Ross being all “This is what you have to do to make it sweetie :)” like that’s a great thing to show to kids. You can want to be famous and expand your content like Barbie wanted to, but you have to be smart about it, and you have to stay true to yourself. That plotline also mixed pretty well with Amelia’s life being formulated for the public too. I really did like all of that stuff about how media, social media especially, is constantly fabricated and edited to make things seem easier/better than they might be in real life. 

- THEY FINALLY WENT BACK TO INDIVIDUAL END MORALS THANK GOD. I got really tired of seeing “This is our story, what’s yours?” after every Barbie movie, especially when every movie that used it wasn’t going for that message. Hell, that’s not even a lesson or anything, that’s just a random end quote.

- “Life doesn’t happen on camera. Life is what happens when the cameras are off” THAT IS SO GOOD AND RELEVANT I CAN’T EVEN!!!

[hollenius]

Sorry, I just really love interviews where Peter Buck talks about books. And also about crying at a Pepsi commercial.

https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-2001-10-14-0110140554-story.html

Edit: apparently this is not accessible in all countries, so I am copying and pasting the text under the cut. Contains some discussion of Michael Stipe’s lyric-writing strategies as well as tales R.E.M. reading all of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories while in the van in 1982, whether Faulkner or Hemingway or Fitzgerald liked music, intuition vs. hard work in the act of creation (and how writing a song isn’t like writing a novel), the relative effectiveness of specificity vs. generality in bringing about an emotional response in the audience (and, again, how songs aren’t like novels) etc.

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FABLES: MARK LINDQUIST and PETER BUCK

THE HARTFORD COURANT     October 14, 2001

Mark Lindquist: The only thing I did to prepare for this was to go through my CD collection, and the three bands that dominate my collection are the Beatles, R.E.M. and the Replacements. I listened to albums by each in progression, and one of the things I noticed -- maybe because I was looking for it -- is that each of these bands became increasingly interested in narrative, in story, as their career progressed. Do you think that happened with R.E.M.

Peter Buck: Absolutely. When we started out, Michael was trying to find a way of communicating that wasn't a literal language. He didn't want to string together sentences that told a story that everyone could agree on. I really respected that, the feeling that the narrative stuff has been done, love songs have been done, and this sort of Rorschach blot of words and emotions are a different way to approach telling a story.It also opens it up a lot, in that people can listen to these songs and, without knowing exactly what they're about, put themselves in the song. Michael told me recently: His theory is, name your 10 favorite rock songs of all time. Write them down. Then write next to them what they're about. Guarantee that you'll only be able to do that for two of them.

ML: Let's try that. Name your five favorite rock songs.

PB: "Like a Rolling Stone," "Fight the Power," "We Can Work It Out," "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" and "Gloria" by Patti Smith.

ML: OK, "Like a Rolling Stone." What's that about?

PB: Obviously it's an aggressive song putting someone down, but I don't know who that person is. Assuming that I know a little about Dylan's life, it could be about the people who followed him around. It seems to be a portrait of someone who thinks they're a winner, who's high in society. Who that is, I don't know. I could be completely wrong. I don't know what Napoleon "who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat" means.

ML: But you remember the line about those Siamese cats.

PB: With Dylan, you always get that. "The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face." That's from "Visions of Johanna," which is one of my favorite songs, but I have no idea what that means.

ML: How about "Fight the Power"?

PB: I would assume, being a white guy from the suburbs, that it's about being black, but I don't know. If the Beastie Boys had written it with the same lyrics, I'd have no idea.

ML: "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" is from "Pet Sounds," which is chock-full of stories, at least in my mind. I may be imposing a narrative, because I listened to this CD when I left for college, and to me that album was about leaving home, going on a new adventure: "I once had a dream, so I packed up and left for the city." But that may have nothing to do with what Brian Wilson intended. Still, let's talk about R.E.M.'s progression toward stories.

PB: When we first started out, I know that Michael felt everything in rock and roll had been done. We didn't want to write a love song, or anything that could be construed as a love song, for 10 years.

ML: What would you say your first love song was?

PB: Well, it wasn't a love song. "The One I Love" is an anti-love song, but since "the one I love" is in the title ... we used to play it, and I'd look into the audience, and there would be couples kissing. Yet the verse is, "This one goes out to the one I love/A simple prop to occupy my time." That's savagely anti-love. But that's OK. People perceive songs as they are. People told me that was "their song." That was your song? Why not "Paint it Black" or "Stupid Girl" or "Under My Thumb"?

ML: But that's pop music -- Noel Coward's line about the amazing "potency of cheap music."

PB: It doesn't even matter, the value of the music. I've teared up at commercials.

ML: What commercial made you tear up, for God sake?

PB: The Pepsi commercial where the woman is depressed and the monkeys bring her a Pepsi. It was because of my life at the time, and not the commercial, but that's what pop music is, too. It's not necessarily what's written or even implied. It's what you as the listener take out of it. Which is why I tend to think songs that are less specific are more powerful.I've never cried at, say, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" by Bob Dylan, which is a very specific song. I know that there's a woman named Hattie Carroll, and she was killed. But it was reportage. It never made me tear up, but other songs have. It's all about what you bring in at that moment, so narrative is not necessarily the most important thing.

ML: Do you think that works in literature? One of the things they tell you in Writing 101 is to make things more specific rather than more general. Is literature more powerful if it's less specific?

PB: Absolutely not. I think literature is a chance for someone like me, who's led a more or less middle-class life, to look into someone else's heart and mind and be shown a world that I don't know. When I was a teenager, I read a lot of African American literature -- "Soledad Brother" or "Invisible Man" or Richard Wright, and there were things that completely changed my life. The strength of literature is its specificity.

ML: Why do you think R.E.M.'s music has become more specific, more story-driven?

PB: I think Michael was trying to find a way on the early records to tell a story without telling a story. As he got a little older and became more comfortable doing the singing and being a public figure, the idea was still, "I'm not going to tell a story where someone says this is a song about ... " Now as a writer Michael likes to take a character he imagines and write from that perspective, tell a story in the first person. But it's not necessarily his perspective.

ML: When I saw R.E.M. in Seattle in 1999, I think Stipe introduced "The Apologist" by saying, "This is a story about ... " And "All the Way to Reno" is a pretty classic narrative. It reminds me of "That's Not Me" from "Pet Sounds," not musically or lyrically, but conceptually.

PB: "Reno," I'm sure that is sung from the perspective of a 17-or 18-year old girl. It has to be. I've never asked him.

ML: And "That's Not Me" is sung from the perspective of a like-minded 17- or 18-year-old boy. Bret Easton Ellis has said as you get older, you become more interested in narrative, in stories with a beginning, middle and an end.

PB: Part of it is definitely an age thing. When I was in my 20s, and my band was in its early years, we were capturing an experience, not necessarily thinking about the chain between the past and the future, which is what a novel is. As you get older, your life is less about capturing the moment and more about understanding what you're doing.

ML: Has Michael's progression or change as a lyricist been influenced by literature?

PB: I don't know. The only way I can say our band was directly influenced by literature was when we did our first big American tour in 1982, before our first EP came out. We were in a van, touring to nobody, playing songs no one has ever heard. I managed to find all three of the Flannery O'Connor short-story collections, and every member of the band read every one of the words in those three collections on that tour. We passed them around, pages falling out, putting pages back in, reading them with a light on at 2 a.m., going from San Antonio to L.A. I felt really strongly that it changed the way we thought about writing. I don't know why, because she writes about faith and the problems of faith in a world where there is no faith, and Michael wasn't writing linear dialogues, but when we made our first record, I think we all thought Flannery O'Connor was something we would emulate in some way.

ML: I can be listening to a particular CD or song that evokes a mood or a moment in a way I admire, and I will try to get the same effect into what I'm writing. Has the reverse ever happened to you? You're reading a novel or short story, and it works for you so well, you think you want to get whatever it is that works for you into your music? Do you take what you read the night before into what you write?

PB: All I can say is I certainly hope so, which is why I try to read good stuff.

ML: OK, other books that have affected you as a songwriter?

PB: Denis Johnson.

ML: Why?

PB: I don't know why. "Already Dead" changed me when I read it. I can't say why or how, but I felt like a different person at the end, in the same way that when I was a teenager, Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" completely moved me.

ML: One of the things music can do for writers is that we can take a song, an idea in a song, or even a character in a song, and expand it into a story, or a screenplay, or a novel. Another thing music can do for writers is set a tone for whatever we're working on that day. Most writers I know listen to rock, but Kerouac talked about how he would do that with jazz.

PB: What do you think Faulkner did?

ML: I think he just drank.

PB: But do you think he put the 78s on? He probably wasn't a Glenn Miller guy. Was he a Duke Ellington guy? I bet Faulkner played records at his house. I'd be really shocked if he didn't play gospel stuff from the '30s and '40s, if he didn't listen to blues music.

ML: What about Hemingway?

PB: My feeling is he didn't get much pleasure in life. Having read his books, I doubt very much that he had an ear for music. I bet he loved music in the hills of Spain, dancing to it, no matter how good or bad it was. But did he go home and put on records? I doubt that very much. Now Fitzgerald, he found joy in life.

ML: And in drinking. It kept him from writing.

PB: He's another of those people who never really found what he needed to do in his life. I re-read "The Crackup" about a year ago, and there's a great quote, and I paraphrase, about how when I was young I wanted to be Byron, Don Juan, J.P. Morgan. All that is burned away. I'm a writer now, nothing else. Literature is something written out of deep understanding. Music is written more out of the intuitive. When I read great books, I refuse to think they just made it up as they went along. That's what happens in rock and roll.

ML: There are passages that come to you as a writer that feel like they wrote themselves. However, you unfortunately have to write the other 500 pages or so yourself.

PB: The good stuff occurs because you work really, really hard, spend your entire life immersed in one thing, and if you're able to let yourself go completely for that time it takes to do anything great. My superstition, though, is songs that are there that aren't written. I think every songwriter feels, "I'm really good at my craft," but the good songs pop up, and you always like to feel they come from somewhere other than inside of you.The night I wrote "Losing My Religion," I was drinking wine and watching the Nature Channel with the sound off and learning how to play the mandolin. I had only had it for a couple nights. I had a tape player going, and the tape has me playing some really bad scales, then a little riff, then the riff again, and you can hear my voice say "Stop." Then I played "Losing My Religion" all the way through, and then played really bad stuff for a while. I woke up in the morning not knowing what I'd written. I had to relearn it by playing the tape. That's where songs come from for me, someplace where you're not really thinking about it.That's what's different from literature. You can't sit down and let "The Great Gatsby" happen. The songs I write are four minutes long. You can disconnect from wherever you are for four minutes and find it. I really doubt you can do that for months with a novel.

ML: There's something that's always struck me as a little off about Peter Buck and Michael Stipe. Traditionally, the songwriter is thought of as the more intuitive, and the lyricist as the more lettered. The reality is you're the more lettered, and Stipe is the more intuitive.

PB: Michael has this amazing ability to absorb things. He doesn't sit around and read tons of books, but he does read. He probably reads more political literature than I ever have.

ML: It's funny, I know lots of novelists who wish they were rock stars, but I don't know any musicians who wish they were novelists.

PB: Hey, I'm raising my hand right here!

The poster has moved with me now for 15 years. It's part of a series for America's public libraries, featuring a very young-looking R.E.M., with Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe and Bill Berry each holding their favorite books. I'd love to know what Stipe is holding, but, like his early lyrics, the title is obscured. Peter Buck holds an Oscar Wilde collection, and that, along with a mention of Wilde in a Smiths song from the same era, "Cemetry Gates," conspired to send me to the library. Peter Buck's a tremendous reader. His Seattle home is filled with almost as many books as records. So we asked Buck to dine last week with his friend Mark Lindquist, whose music-infused novel "Never Mind Nirvana" gets like few others the profound way music can be not only a soundtrack to life but also a road map. We asked them to talk about how artists and musicians are influenced by each other. -- David Daley, Books Editor

[mc-doppomine]

Holding Our Hands to the Moonlight Commentary

I didn’t think it really worked to talk about the stuff all on the post. So I doubt many will read this one but hey if you like knowing where some stuff came from, welcome. Playlists are like the one thing I consistently contribute to things I’m really into. Like I’ve made a lot for just ships between me and my friends’ OCs and some AUs. So it was inevitable I was going to add one for Hypmic with how much it’s been on my mind. (And there’s more in my mind)

Originally this was going to be one playlist for just feelings related to them. However. I realized that the songs were feelings for a specific person and they were going in vastly different directions (I still think Doppo’s or Hifumi’s is the biggest mismash). So to avoid making a super long playlist that no one is gonna get through, I broke it down into three for each of the guys.

The title of the playlist was actually inspired from Tomoshibi, which I thought of putting in but I really couldn’t find where I put it in their individual lists. The quote in Doppo’s playlist is the actual lines I took from, which are the last two of the song. Jakurai and Hifumi’s quotes are actually from their verses in the song either before or after one of the members call to them. I still have feels about this song, okay? And really gets their relation down. 

Jakurai’s was surprisingly really sweet. I didn’t know what kind of sound I thought he was going to have but I wasn’t expecting so many slow songs. But has a lot of reflecting in his, as is Jakurai’s nature. I really had to think on which Jaymes Young songs to put in because a lot of his songs are really Jakurai’s mood with love. Like I could make a whole playlist with just his songs. Moonshine I had also pondered about putting in since it is also in a RamuJaku I’m hoarding for (I told you I have more) but decided that it is just a Jakurai song so it went in.

The oddest choice was definitely President Perfect and it was a last minute addition but relistening to it, I couldn’t NOT put it in. Because while this refers to school, the overall rigidity of it fit Jakurai. That he’s considered to be this saint. Just perfect in every way when he just wants connection. And yet when he gets close, he’s so scared of losing that perfect image because what is he without it? To which when Moonshine comes is his longing after his slipup with Hifumi and Doppo because he DOES want whatever it was he felt at that time. Oh and yeah, this is basically going in progression of feelings. Although there was a lot of focus on the quiet moments with Jakurai since I just think that’s where Jakurai shines as a lover, the quiet moments. 

Hifumi had so many going into this list because his has the most pop-y sound so it was easier to add, harder to edit down. I think Hifumi is the most self aware of Matenrou. So a lot of his songs are alternating between pining like tree and being a tease. All the stuff Jakurai and Doppo put up with from him. Pretty sure his is the only one that really mentions sexy times and that’s because...it’s probably Hifumi that brings up. I can’t unsee him as sorta thotty. Women might be difficult but men? Ha, different story. But in the end just wants to love and be loved, which is what Needy and I Wanna Be Yours. He just loves that hard. 

Although if Hifumi had his way, he’d come and kick my ass. Because I put in Kitchen because it’s by Saito Soma...Gentaro’s seiyuu. But. But. it wasn’t with any malice. I just thought of Kitchen and thought it fit with Hifumi’s mundane thoughts when he’s cooking for Doppo and later Jakurai. Like wondering what they would like and the thought them enjoying it together. So, hopefully a good choice that I can be forgiving for putting a rival’s voice in it. 

Guh, Doppo’s had the most arrangement and honestly the biggest mix of songs for me. Like I was in the middle of writing up the playlist post and I rearranged the order again. But considering I personally think Doppo’s feelings are a mess when it comes to love, it should come as no surprise his list isn’t the most organized (but damn did I try). The one for sure song in there was When He Sees Me because I have such strong thoughts of Doppo feeling like that towards Jakurai since his intrusive thoughts are like Dawn’s overthinking and warring with his pining. So it had to stay. 

A lot of Doppo’s songs just jumped out and was like ‘hey what about this?’ Like they’re songs I know but I forgot about until they jumped out while I was music searching. Flawless, Wherever You Are and Arms are all like this. Arms was such a random one that I was like ‘no I gotta get it.’ Because what came to mind was the lyrics. I couldn’t remember the name or melody. But I just thought of ‘you put your arms around me and I’m home.’ And that so succinctly explained Doppo’s feelings in the end. So I had to look up by lyrics to put it in. 

[whitleyschn33]

RWBY7 Soundtrack

Should I be reviewing/giving my thoughts on the OST when I have plenty of asks in my inbox to answer and have no musical authority at all? No, probably not. Am I doing it anyway? Yes.

This is just going to be in what (I assume) is the track order. Let me know if I miss any; I’m going off a YouTube playlist.

1. Trust Love

Initial thoughts: Eh.

It’s okay. It’s not my favorite opening, that honor goes to When It Falls, but it’s competent. Very optimistic, which is a trend for this volume’s soundtrack despite how dire the tone of the latter half is, so I don’t think it fully fits the volume it opens for, but it’s by no means a bad song. It’s easy to sing along and bop to, just doesn’t seem as impressive as the other opening songs. It feels like a different sort of sound than what RWBY songs have been in the past, which is also a running theme for the OST this volume - new artists singing, a lot of experimentation in the style. That’s not a bad thing; the tracks I like the most on this album are the different sounding ones, but it’s very.... noticeable, and didn’t go in the direction you would think for Atlas. 

2. Touch the Sky

Initial Thoughts: Why is the best part of this song the ending?

No, but seriously, that outro is a very different sound to the proceeding song and it’s so good. Other than that, I’ve got questions. Like, whose song is this? I’m leaning towards Team RWBY as a whole, but I’ve seen people suggest it’s Weiss’s, it’s Blake’s, I could see an argument for Yang - it’s very unclear. Also, why is the POV character(s) so happy? Their situation isn’t all that much better in terms of Salem and the Relic and all that; they should still be weighed down with that knowledge, shouldn’t they? They don’t trust Ironwood to help make things all better, they still have to carry the Relic (for plot reasons), the only thing that’s changed is that they’re going out on missions. Well, fresh clothes and a distraction are always nice, and it is a chance to put all that stuff on the back burner. I’ll give them that, then.

3. Brand New Day

Initial Thoughts: From the writers that make every Blake song a duet, here’s her volume 7 song; a duet with.... Qrow?

Have Blake and Qrow ever even spoken to each other? And, is there actually no solo Blake song, or am I beating on a dead meme? Actually, to be completely serious, these two actually work well in a song together. Their character directions compliment each other in this volume - both trying to reinvent themselves some and become better (Blake with her new hair and outfits, Qrow with a new outfit and a resolve to recover from alcoholism), it’s just a shame that, you know, this kind of talk or relationship never happens in the show. At all.

Someone in the YouTube comment section said this song sounds like a 90′s sitcom opening, and I have to agree. It really does, mixed with a bit of 50′s doo-wap. It’s not bad, I actually like the doo-wap, but it also has bits of the usual RWBY style rock, and they don’t mix as coherently as I would like in some places. The guitar bridge after Qrow’s verse is pretty nice, though.

Overall, it’s another good song to bop along to, but like the songs before it, I’m not sure it’s one I’ll be listening to over and over.

4. Let’s Get Real

Initial Thoughts: So, even the song thinks they should talk - why didn’t they?

Here’s something you may not know about me. I don’t romantically ship Renora. I’ve always preferred them as a brother/sister pair - probably in part because I’m a sucker for found family. I’ve never really had anything against romantic Renora, though... but this volume definitely made me go from neutral to dislike. Ren’s confused, he’s worried, he’s having doubts about their relationship that he’s not sure how to vocalize. He admits as much. And instead of, I don’t know, respecting that and letting it be for the moment, or pulling him aside to try and help him talk it through, she... kisses him. Instead of stopping to let them work through where their relationship is at the present (which would be nice, to clue the audience in on what exactly their status is), she pushes their relationship to the next level, presumably. It leaves a very bad taste in my mouth, that Ren’s emotions about his relationship with Nora are just shoved aside and aren’t brought up again. Hopefully it does in the next volume (Nora and Ren are notably split for, like, the first time ever in the Volume 8 preview), but still - I thought Tumblr had decided that “guy shuts a girl up by kissing her” trope was sexist or something - shouldn’t this be similarly scrutinized?

Putting that aside, I actually really really like this. It’s very reminiscent of Shine, but a Renora version; it’s got a great beat, the lyrics do a great job in character insight (something I love from RWBY songs, which are probably why Touch the Sky doesn’t do a lot for me), and it’s just a very fun, peppy song. It also feels very at home in Atlas with it’s more techno-leanings. The ending chorus chant of “Is it love?” is also a nice touch.

5. Celebrate

Initial Thoughts: The better Brand New Day (musically speaking).

And by that I mean, it leans all the way into this different style than the half/half approach Brand New Day did, and it’s all the better for it. Once again, another good dancing song, easy to listen and bop to, but it feels... oddly generic. For one thing, there’s no character tied to it, no character insight - I guess you could make an argument for Robin or the Happy Huntresses, but... not really? For another, while as a song I really enjoy the genre of music, it also makes it feel very much not like a RWBY song (something not helped by name-dropping Vegas). It’s fun, but it doesn’t feel like it adds much to the show.

6. War

Initial Thoughts: Wow, I didn’t think you could make me hate the AceOps fight more, but look at that.

Probably the first RWBY song I just flat out hate, and that’s a crying shame considering the excellent music and vocal performances. Those lyrics, though.  Just - I hate them. I hate them so damn much. I refuse to give this song more than that.

7. Hero

Initial thoughts: Hell yeah hell yeah hell yeah HELL YEAH - 

Best song on the album probably. It has all the usual RWBY flare, gives us a great insight into Ironwood’s thoughts and motivations, and is a fantastic performance by Caleb Hyles. The operatic section at the beginning is wonderfully chilling, and the rock section is very epic. 10/10 song even though I’m not rating these.

8. Until the End

Initial thoughts: Time to play “Who does this gorgeous song belong to?”

Actually, I really, really enjoy this song. It’s creepy in its melancholy, but I love it for that. The piano and subtle strings are beautiful, and the way Casey’s voice echoes gives the illusion of solitude in an empty place, perfect for the tone this song conveys.

Now, the matter of whose song it is. The consensus seems to be Ruby and/or Summer, and that’s pretty likely (and letting Ruby actually have a song would be nice). However, I heard a rumor before the album dropped that this was an Ozpin song, and going through it with that lens makes a whole lot of sense - the repeated “I’ll be here until the end”, the constant use of “we”, “our” and other plurals, the lines “ In waves of shame, we’re desperate to make amends / But through a simple soul, we lie complacent” could refer to him lying dormant in Oscar or other souls in the past instead of actively working to defeat Salem, and in the lines “ As light fills my eyes / I’ll picture me beside her / And pray that I’ll inspire”, it could be him thinking of Salem when he dies, and then praying that he’ll be able to inspire others to fight for humanity, for the light. 

I could see it either way, honestly, but no matter which it is, I love this song.

9. Fear

Initial thoughts: Fire whoever was in charge of sound mixing, otherwise, not as preachy as I was fearing.

This is actually the first time I’ve listened to this. I was pretty pissed at the ending of the finale so I didn’t stick around for the credits, and hearing that it was called “Fear”, I was not in the mood for more Ironwood bashing or “You’re just as bad as she is if you act in fear” or whatever BS Oscar said. So, yeah, wasn’t looking forward to this track.

Thankfully, though, it was not another War. I actually enjoyed the lyrics, and the music was top-notch. Don’t really have much more to say about it other than it was difficult to hear the lyrics over the music in some places, but that could be a factor of the video I was listening to. All in all, pleasantly surprised.

10. I May Fall (Acoustic)

Initial Thoughts: Can someone tell the Williams that “acoustic” doesn’t always mean “depressing?”

Like, acoustic doesn’t have to be a super slow, piano/strings, somber rendition, right? It’s just the instruments and the singer without any added computer editing/layering/whatever, if I’m not mistaken. That style of acoustic works alright with songs like Time to Say Goodbye, but not so well with more upbeat songs. This version isn’t bad, per se, but I’d like to see an acoustic version more in line with the original. 

That aside - the original I May Fall is my favorite RWBY song, bar none. This rendition was always going to be something I liked, and I do appreciate a lot about it. The strings are absolutely beautiful, particularly the cello(? I think, again, I’m not much of a music person, just have a sister that plays violin), and I love the way the violin/viola picks up for the second verse and gives the song a second wind, implying more strength and resolve. I love the music cutting out completely to let Casey sing, with the instruments slowly coming in to join as she gets louder and stronger, as if standing with her - beautiful, it’s all insanely beautiful, and this is one I will probably buy.

Closing Thoughts

This album was... average, to me. Only a couple songs really jumped out at me, while most were good, but not something I was dying to listen to again, or were dragged down by the context.

What’re your thoughts on this volume’s songs? I’d love to hear them! Until then, have a good evening, and stay safe!

[taltos-seidmadr]

Okay so I just happened to be working on two playlists that had nothing to do with each other but coincidentally their common aesthetic was “unhinged“. And then suddenly, at a moment’s notice, a god more ancient than pagan beamed an understanding into my brain in a matter of something like 10 seconds and my third eye just opened so wide that it fell right out of my skull. NONE of you are ready for the forbidden knowledge that I’m about to unleash

I would like to point out that a). what one’s definition of “unhinged“ is, is a personal metric that is not only very subjective but doesn’t need to be made objective, and b). the names are just meant to be taken as examples, they are obviously limited to music that I could think of off the top of my head, and c). regardless of a) and b) the spectrum itself in essence is still factually accurate and transcends musical genres or personal tastes

Why yes, thank you for asking, I actually DO have a playlist with examples to illustrate my point, MOREOVER even working on an extended edition of the playlist where I welcome your recommendations of music that you consider to be unhinged.

A little bit more wordy explanation of my playlist under the cut.

First, the purest forms:

St. Anger by Metallica (I meant the whole album, but the titular song is as good as any) a good example of Vaporwave that I could find Elddansurin by Heilung (pretty much anything from Heilung, but this particular song is both short enough to prove the point succinctly and fucks)

I don’t have a lot to say about these, listen into them for a few seconds and you will get a good idea what each tip of the triangle really means.

The 50/50 forms:

Sexy + angry: Engin Miskunn [No Mercy] by Hatari Their perfectly balanced nature is heightened by the complementary duality of their vocals - Hatari is like a two-headed monster whose one head is trying to seduce you and the other is very, very angry. Though, that can also be seductive in it��s own way, if that’s your thing, I’m not judging. Hatari would certainly agree from what I would know. Their entire oeuvre is kinda like this, so here’s a fresh and sexy sexy song by them that, indeed, mercilessly slaps.

Angry + c̵͓̗̿͘u̶͈̾̍R̸̪̔͠s̸̖͙̀e̶̺͖̓d̴̦͂̎?̶̥͂͋ͅ,̷̟̀,: Good God by KoRn KoRn has always been famous for doing their extremely unhinged own thing, especially in their early days. This is not even their most unhinged song from the album that this song comes from, but i felt like this is a good intersection between accessible + illustrating the point.

Sexy + c̵͓̗̿͘u̶͈̾̍R̸̪̔͠s̸̖͙̀e̶̺͖̓d̴̦͂̎?̶̥͂͋ͅ,̷̟̀,: Грустная Сука [Sad Bitch] by IC3PEAK If you don’t know them already, allow me to introduce you to absolute embodiment of Feral Big Dick Energy music of IC3PEAK. This is their most famous banger but literally everything that they make sounds like this.

Perfectly balanced, master of the three elements, the avatar themselves:

Blue Mark by Altan Urag Exactly what it says on the tin tbh. I want to add that technically any combination of modern music genre + leaning into a folk music aspect in a feral way + strange vocalizations/instruments could fit this bill, but there is something specifically about Mongolian metal that makes me instantly regress into the genetic memory of an 1200 year old ancestor who was still backwards-riding a horse on the Eurasian steppes as a nomad warrior. So here’s a little Altan Urag. If you think Apocalyptica is cool, you will like this A LOT.

Mixed forms:

Crucify Me feat. Lights by Bring Me The Horizon 60% angry, 40% sexy I had to ask for the expertise of my sister on this, who literally grew up on screamo. Based on my limited experience, I think the cursed aesthetic is missing from this genre entirely by definition, though there might be some variation to that.

Holidays In The Sun by Sex Pistols 85% angry, 15% sexy The spiritual great-uncle of screamo, this genre is an almost pure manifestation of angry unhinged, but as opposed to early Slipknot, with more of a slight sexy streak.

Human Behaviour by Björk 90% sexy, 10% c̵͓̗̿͘u̶͈̾̍R̸̪̔͠s̸̖͙̀e̶̺͖̓d̴̦͂̎?̶̥͂͋ͅ,̷̟̀ For me personally, Björk plucks the blurred line between “normal“ and “unhinged“ like the string of a harp, just being a tiny little bit off-kilter enough to be categorized as such, which in itself ads an uncanny aura to her otherwise whimsical music.

Székely keserves [Transylvanian Lament] by Kodály Zoltán 80% sexy, 20% c̵͓̗̿͘u̶͈̾̍R̸̪̔͠s̸̖͙̀e̶̺͖̓d̴̦͂̎?̶̥͂͋ͅ,̷̟̀ Kodály is a Hungarian neoclassical composer. Not everything he wrote is like this, but he can lean into the cursedness surprisingly hard if the topic/emotion demands. Please enjoy his unhinged interpretation of a miserable folk song.

Very different genre, but same sexy to cursed ratio: Too late, all gone by How To Destroy Angels

I admit that I have zero idea who the big names are in contemporary jazz but I added the first thing that sounded similar enough to what I imagined in my head. Since fluidity and going off the rails is a big staple of jazz, I think the whole genre deserves the honor. Depending on song and performance I would rate it on average about 50+% sexy, ~30-40% cursed and up to ~15% angry.

What You Believe by Jonathan Davis  20% angry, 40% sexy, 40% c̵͓̗̿͘u̶͈̾̍R̸̪̔͠s̸̖͙̀e̶̺͖̓d̴̦͂̎?̶̥͂͋ͅ,̷̟̀ This is such an interesting example because the chorus is completely unironically normal but the verses inbetween are just so cursed in a peculiar way, making the song overall both extremely strange and SUPER catchy at the same time. To the point you’re almost feeling like you’re being somehow subliminally manipulated. Just don’t worry about it mate. Everything’s fine. It slaps.

Closer (Deviation) by Nine Inch Nails Not everything that they make would I consider unhinged, but Trent Reznor has a great flare to inject music with electronic effects that sound kinda bizarre, putting his work somewhere in the direction of ~30% angry, ~50% sexy and up to 20% cursed on average. I added the most unhinged song that I could think of, and possibly one of the most unhinged songs ever made. 50% sexy, 50% cursed and 120% gnawing on the walls levels of sexually frustrated. Very NSFW.

Bitches by Mindless Self Indulgence 30% angry, 30% sexy, 40% c̵͓̗̿͘u̶͈̾̍R̸̪̔͠s̸̖͙̀e̶̺͖̓d̴̦͂̎?̶̥͂͋ͅ,̷̟̀ MSI, within this spectrum at least, is almost exactly the same as Nine Inch Nails except that they are way more cursed leaning. They are also a pretty good illustration for the point that sexual topics and “sexy” unhinged as an aesthetic are two completely different things. NSFW.

Apex Predator by Otep 60% angry, 30% sexy, 10% c̵͓̗̿͘u̶͈̾̍R̸̪̔͠s̸̖͙̀e̶̺͖̓d̴̦͂̎?̶̥͂͋ͅ,̷̟̀ I don’t have a lot to add about this, but if you wanna hear a truly unhinged woman lead a band, then you’re going to have a field day with Otep. Enjoy to your heart’s content. 

My Plague by Slipknot 85% angry, 15% c̵͓̗̿͘u̶͈̾̍R̸̪̔͠s̸̖͙̀e̶̺͖̓d̴̦͂̎?̶̥͂͋ͅ,̷̟̀ When Slipknot first entered the scene, I heard a lot of metalheads turn their noses up at their work for not being “heavy enough(?)“ whatever that even means, but I think that their earliest stuff is bravely unhinged in a way that seems entirely unique to them. Kinda like the sloppiest, dirtiest of punk, but in an intentionally unappealing, even disgusting manner. Early Slipknot shamelessly embraces the filth and that earns my respect, in a way (their later stuff unfortunately lost this quality but they still write good songs, I think?) You could listen to literally anything from their first album Iowa to get my point but to be seasonaI, I added a #quarantine mood to the playlist.

So that would conclude my introductory 101 tedward talk about unhinged music that literally nobody asked for but hopefully got you acquainted with some new music and/or ideas that you have never heard before!

[spookyspemilyreid]

Happy Anniversary "A Thousand Suns" (September 14th 2010)

A Thousand Suns is the fourth studio album by American rock band Linkin Park. It was released on September 14th, 2010, by Warner Bros. Records. The album was written by the band and was produced by Linkin Park vocalist Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin, who worked together to produce the band's previous studio album Minutes to Midnight (2007). Recording sessions for A Thousand Suns took place at NRG Recording Studios in North Hollywood, California from 2008 until early 2010.

A Thousand Suns is a concept album dealing with human fears such as nuclear warfare. The band has said the album is a drastic departure from their previous work; they experimented on different and new sounds. Shinoda told MTV the album references numerous social issues and blends human ideas with technology. The title is a reference to Hindu Sanskrit scripture, a line of which was first popularized in 1945 by J. Robert Oppenheimer, who described the atomic bomb as being "as bright as a thousand suns". It also appears in a line from the first single of the album, "The Catalyst".

"The Catalyst" was sent to radio and released to digital music retailers on August 2, 2010. "The Catalyst" peaked at the Billboard Alternative Songs and Rock Songs charts. Three more singles were released to promote the album: "Waiting for the End", "Burning in the Skies" and "Iridescent". "The Catalyst" and "Waiting for the End" were certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Linkin Park promoted the album through the A Thousand Suns World Tour from October 2010 to September 2011.

Although it received a polarizing response from audiences, the album received a positive response from critics, some of whom found it to be a natural evolution for the band. The record debuted at number one on over ten charts, and was certified platinum by the RIAA in August 2017 for sales surpassing 1.1 million copies in the United States, according to RIAA.

Recording for the album began in 2008, less than a year after the release of Minutes to Midnight (2007). As with Minutes to Midnight, Shinoda and Rick Rubin produced the album. Primary recording sessions for A Thousand Suns took place at NRG Recording Studios in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. In November 2008, lead singer Chester Bennington said the new record was a concept album; he said it "sound[ed] a little daunting to me, so, I think my confidence level will drop, but when it was presented to us by this friend of ours, we liked the idea. It was an inspiring idea, and it was something we could relate a lot of the things we like to write about to."

In May 2009, Mike Shinoda revealed info on the album in a Billboard magazine story, saying: "I feel like we've been writing a lot. I'd say we've got about half the music done, though I shouldn't say halfway because who knows how long the next batch of songs will take. But all the material's just kind of coming together, and every week we meet up and assess the situation and for the rest of the week we just go and work on whatever we find exciting." He also explained the experimentation that the band would be working with, saying, "It's not going to be Hybrid Theory. It's not going to be Minutes to Midnight. And if we do it right, it'll have a cutting edge sound that defines itself as an individual record separate from anything else that's out there."

Bennington continued composing for the album while touring with Dead by Sunrise in support of their 2009 studio album Out of Ashes.  He said Linkin Park was still making a concept record, stating in another interview with MTV, "we might need to just make a record and still try to do a concept but figure out a way to do it without actually waiting another five or six years to put out a record, to try to pull off all the grandiose insanity we were thinking of doing. And we're doing that." Bassist Dave "Phoenix" Farrell predicted the band's fans would be divided about A Thousand Suns, saying, "We've known [the album is] going to be different, and if fans were expecting Hybrid Theory or Meteora, they're going to be surprised. It's going to take people some time to figure it out and know what to do with it."

When asked about the new project, drummer Rob Bourdon said, "We tend to be perfectionists and it's sort of how we work. We like being in the studio and when we get in there we write a ton of material." Bourdon said the album was a challenge to complete; he said, "We've been making music for a long time so one of the challenges was to evolve and make something to keep us interested and also have a lot of fun in the process. We've been used to making a certain type of music and using sounds to accomplish that. So to break out of that and push ourselves to grow is definitely challenging." Shinoda later said the album was not a concept record,saying, "People asked us if it's a concept record, and in the middle of the process, we were contemplating whether or not that was what we wanted to do," although he said that eventually, A Thousand Suns at its completion has no narrative and is "more abstract" than many concept albums.

In an interview with Rolling Stone in May 2009, Shinoda said the band was in the process of writing and recording material for the album. The album was originally scheduled for an early 2010 release, but Shinoda was concerned with "the quality of the tunes" and said, "if we need to take a step back and make sure everything is top, top quality by our standards, we will". Shinoda also said that, in comparison to Minutes to Midnight, the new album would have a bigger "thread of consistency" and would be more experimental and "hopefully more cutting-edge".

According to turntablist Joe Hahn, the album's title is a reference to a line in the Hindu Sanskrit scripture the Bhagavad Gita "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one," which was made famous by J. Robert Oppenheimer in reference to the atomic bomb. The title also appears in the album's lead single "The Catalyst", which appears in the line "God save us everyone, will we burn inside the fires of a thousand suns?". The band said Oppenheimer's comments about the nuclear bomb influenced the apocalyptic themes of the album. 

The band has stated that the album's tenth track, "Wretches and Kings", pays homage to the hip-hop group Public Enemy. Speaking to NME about the song's reference to Public Enemy, Shinoda said, "There is a homage to Chuck D on there. It's probably the most hip-hop song on the record and one of the most aggressive ... Public Enemy were very three-dimensional with their records because although they seemed political, there was a whole lot of other stuff going on in there too. It made me think how three-dimensional I wanted our record to be without imitating them of course, and show where we were at creatively."  Ian Winwood of Kerrang! noted that "Wretches and Kings" references the Public Enemy song "Fight the Power" and compared the album's content to Public Enemy's third studio album, Fear of a Black Planet. Chuck D later provided vocals on a remix by HavocNdeeD. The fifth track "When They Come for Me" references The Blueprint2: The Gift & The Curse, the seventh studio album by hip hop artist Jay-Z, with whom the band collaborated on the 2004 EP Collision Course. The album includes samples of notable speeches by American political figures,  including Martin Luther King Jr., J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Mario Savio.

Critics and reporters labeled the album's material with several different genres, including trip hop, electronic rock, ambient, alternative rock, industrial rock, experimental rock, rap rock, and progressive rock on the album. Compared to their previous record, Minutes to Midnight (2007), Shinoda contributed many more vocals, while Brad Delson's guitar riffs are put further into the background, which Gary Graff of Billboard described as "on the back burner (and barely even in the oven)". Shinoda raps on the tracks "When They Come for Me", "Wretches and Kings" and the album's second single "Waiting for the End". Derek Oswald of AltWire.net noted reggae-like influences on Shinoda's verses in "Waiting for the End". He sings verses on "Burning in the Skies", "Robot Boy", "Blackout", "Iridescent" and "The Catalyst". Bennington and Shinoda sing together on "The Catalyst", "Jornada del Muerto" and "Robot Boy", while "Iridescent" features all band members singing together.

The album was exhibited at a 3-D laser exhibition at Music Box Theater in Hollywood on September 7, 2010. A Thousand Suns was officially released on September 10, 2010, in Germany, Austria and Switzerland; and on September 13, 2010, in the US. Linkin Park started worldwide promotion of the album with the A Thousand Suns World Tour, which started on October 7, 2010, and ended on September 25, 2011. The band performed an entire setlist in the Puerta de Alcalá Gate in Madrid; their live performance of "Waiting for the End" was shown at the 2010 MTV Europe Music Awards.

Linkin Park also promoted A Thousand Suns by featuring songs from the album in video games. Joe Hahn said "The Catalyst" would be included in the video game Medal of Honor. Hahn also announced he would direct a trailer for the game; it was released on August 1, 2010— one day before the single's release. Dave "Phoenix" Farrell stated that the band's members believed the song's "dark undertones ... fits with the subject matter" of the game, which was the reason "The Catalyst" was chosen for Medal of Honor. During the Japanese release of the album on September 15, 2010, Warner Music Japan announced that "The Catalyst" would be the official theme song of Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs.  "Blackout" was featured in the soccer video game by EA Sports, FIFA 11. The band released a video game called Linkin Park Revenge—an edition of Tap Tap Revenge that features four tracks from the album and six songs from previous Linkin Park albums.  "Wretches and Kings" is featured in the trailer for the video game EA Sports MMA.

"Blackout", "Burning in the Skies", "The Catalyst", "The Messenger", "Waiting for the End", and "Wretches and Kings" were available as downloadable content in the "Linkin Park Track Pack" for the rhythm video game Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, which was released on October 19, 2010, on the PlayStation Store, Xbox Live Marketplace, and Wii Shop Channel. Customers who purchased Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock from Amazon.com between October 17 and October 23 received a copy of A Thousand Suns. Three songs were remixed and released as downloadable content for the rhythm video game DJ Hero 2 in late 2010. On January 11, 2011, a Linkin Park track pack was released for the rhythm video game Rock Band 3; it includes "Waiting for the End" and five songs from the band's previous albums.

On March 5, 2011, Mike Shinoda announced the European release of A Thousand Suns +, a limited re-issue of the album that was released on March 28, 2011. The re-release includes a live DVD of the band's MTV Europe Music Awards concert at Puerta de Alcalá, Madrid on November 7, 2010, and an MP3 audio file of the show. On June 19, 2012, a live version of the album, titled A Thousand Suns: Live Around the World was released on Spotify. It features ten of the album's fifteen songs. The tracks were recorded in London, Hamburg, Paris, Berlin, and Las Vegas.

During the announcement of the album's release date, Linkin Park said the album's first single would be "The Catalyst", which was released on August 2, 2010. From July 9, 2010 until July 25, 2010, the band held a contest titled "Linkin Park, Featuring You". In the contest, fans could download stems from "The Catalyst", remix the stems and/or write their own parts for the song on any instrument. The winner of this contest was Czeslaw "NoBraiN" Sakowski from Świdnica, Poland, whose remix is featured as an extra track on a version of the album made available from Best Buy and Napster. The album's liner notes credit Sakowski with "supplemental programming" on "When They Come for Me". The top 20 remixes that were selected by the band are being considered for future use as b-sides and online downloads.

Two of the remixes by DIGITALOMAT and ill Audio have since been released via the band's webpage as free mp3 downloads, while two by Cale Pellick and DJ Endorphin been released on an exclusive German release of "The Catalyst". The music video for "The Catalyst", directed by Joe Hahn, premiered on August 26, 2010. On August 31, 2010, it was announced that the band would give their first live performance of the single at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12, 2010, at Griffith Observatory. The venue was kept secret until the performance, although it was revealed to be a prominent landmark in Los Angeles. The single peaked at number one on the Billboard Rock Songs and Alternative Songs charts, and on the UK Rock Chart. The single also peaked at number twenty-seven in the Billboard Hot 100 upon the release of A Thousand Suns, and spent five weeks on the chart. "The Catalyst" was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in July 2011.

On September 2, 2010, Linkin Park released the promotional single "Wretches and Kings" to those who had pre-ordered the album. On September 8, 2010, the band debuted "Waiting for the End" and "Blackout" on their Myspace page. The band announced on its official website the "Full Experience Myspace Premiere", the streaming of the entire album on its Myspace page on September 10. A remix of "Blackout" by Renholdër was included in the soundtrack of Underworld: Awakening.

Waiting for the End" was released as the album's second single on October 1, 2010. The music video for the song premiered on October 8, 2010, and was directed by Joe Hahn. Linkin Park's performance of "Waiting for the End" at Puerta de Alcala in Madrid was broadcast as part of the 2010 MTV Europe Music Awards. "Waiting for the End" and "When They Come for Me" were performed live on Saturday Night Live on February 5, 2011. "Waiting for the End" was featured in an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation broadcast on CBS on October 14, 2010. The single peaked at number one on the Alternative Songs chart; it was Linkin Park's tenth number-one song on the chart. It peaked at number two on the Rock Songs chart and at number forty-two on the Billboard Hot 100, spending nine weeks on the chart. The single achieved success in other countries, peaking at number thirty-four in Austria, number twenty in Belgium, number 29 in Germany, and number thirty-four in Japan. "Waiting for the End" was certified gold by the RIAA in April 2011.

On January 22, 2011, Linkin Park announced that its next international single would be "Burning in the Skies". The music video, directed by Hahn, premiered on February 22 and the single was released on March 21. The single reached number thirty-five in Austria, number 35 in Portugal,  number twenty-six in German airplay,  and number six in Mexico.

On April 13, 2011, Shinoda confirmed that the album's third US, fourth international, and overall final single would be "Iridescent". He also said a slightly shorter version of the song would be included the soundtrack of the movie Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and that a music video directed by Hahn had been made to promote the single. Linkin Park performed the single remix of "Iridescent" at the film's premiere at Red Square, Moscow, on June 23, 2011. The single peaked at number eighty-one at the Billboard Hot 100, spending three weeks on the chart; it also peaked at number nineteen at the Alternative Songs chart and number twenty-nine at the Rock Songs chart. Despite these low peaks, the single achieved moderate success in other countries, peaking at number thirty-nine in Australia,  number ten in Israel, and number two in South Korea and one the UK Rock Chart.

A Thousand Suns debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart with first-week sales of 241,000 copies in the United States, exceeding sales of Trey Songz's Passion, Pain & Pleasure by 1,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan.  It became Linkin Park's fourth US number-one album,  although the first-week sales were significantly lower than those of their previous album Minutes to Midnight (2007), which opened at 623,000 copies. The album entered Billboard's Rock Albums, Alternative Albums, Hard Rock Albums, and Digital Albums charts at number one. In the second week, the album slid to number three, selling 70,000 copies; in December 2010, two months after its release, its sales passed the half-million mark. On January 11, 2011, A Thousand Suns was certified gold by the RIAA for shipments of 500,000 copies sold in the US. It spent 30 weeks on the Billboard 200. By June 2014, the album had sold 906,000 copies in the US according to SoundScan. The sales exceed 1 million as of August 2017.

In Canada, A Thousand Suns peaked at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart with 23,000 copies sold. In February 2011, the album was certified platinum by the Canadian Recording Industry Association for 80,000 units sold. In the United Kingdom album chart, on which it spent seventeen weeks, the album debuted at number two with first-week sales of 46,711 copies, behind The Script's album Science & Faith. On September 10, 2010, two days after the album's UK release, A Thousand Suns was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), marking shipments of 100,000 copies to retailers. In Australia, it debuted at number one on the ARIA Top 50 Albums, and retained the top position for four weeks. The album remained in the chart's top 50 for 18 weeks. By the end of 2010, A Thousand Suns had been certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), and the following year it was certified platinum.

Upon its release, A Thousand Suns was well-received by critics, although some were less enthusiastic. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 66 based on 10 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Rick Florino of Artistdirect gave the album five stars out of five, saying, "after A Thousand Suns, all rock 'n' roll will revolve around Linkin Park"; he credited Linkin Park with creating their own genre. Ian Winwood of Kerrang! gave it an "excellent" rating, saying it "can only be best described as a political album".  He praised the songwriting, saying, "These are songs that have been constructed as much as they've been written", and that its closest comparison was Public Enemy's 1990 album Fear of a Black Planet. Dave de Sylvia of Sputnikmusic called it "an extremely well-crafted rock album," saying it was somewhat better than its predecessor Minutes to Midnight (2007), but does not live up to their debut, Hybrid Theory (2000). David Buchanan of Consequence of Sound gave the album three-and-a-half out of five, saying, "Some might argue this new sound is posturing, complete mutation to the point of absurdity; in the band’s associated artwork and videos, evolution has been touted from day one. In essence, Linkin Park has been chasing this all along, and now it has become tangible, complete." Johan Wippsson from Melodic said Linkin Park "have created a very cool and unique sound" and described "Blackout" and "When They Come for Me" as "really innovative". Ian Winwood of BBC Music, in his review of the band's succeeding album Living Things, praised A Thousand Suns and described it as "a body of work startling enough that it gambled with the massive commercial success the group had achieved since their debut album, 2000's Hybrid Theory."

Kerrang! listed A Thousand Suns as the nineteenth-best album of 2010 on their list of the top 20 albums that year. James Montgomery of MTV listed the album as twentieth best album of 2010, calling it "the year's most ambitious major-label rock album ... there's no denying the dense, dark power it packs".

[tisfan]

State of the Fics 2019

The WIPS and Dead Ends Edition

So: having recently had a few discussions with some fellow authors and talking about other writers and stuff... here is where I’m going to answer some/most/all of the MOARPLZ requests.

I have 440+ works on A03 and a lot of what I hear is MOARPLZ or “is there going to be any more of this...”

So, I’m kinda going through my list right now and letting you know what my plans are for 2020 and what, if anything, you can count on to see more of, and what is, in fact, truly over. If you don’t see a fic that you love and want to know more about it, feel free to ask me. 

Take Note and RSVP - every once in a while, we get asked about this story. This was my first jaunt into the fic world, and it’s unfinished. We lost our Steve writer because of some Fandom Drama (you can blame some stans who accused us of plagiarizing a fic we’d never read who continually attacked us until the stress just made it not worth the effort of finishing.)

Solar Powered Soldiers was my first solo effort. This fic, as far as I’m concerned, pretty much sucks. It was meant to be a Steve/Bucky fic, ended up with the only smut scene as a Nat/Clint piece, and didn’t really have a satisfactory ending. I am not likely to ever go back and fix this.

Steve of Oz was supposed to be mostly smutty foray into exploring Steve as the Avengers Bike. The plan was basically for him to end up having sex with literally everyone, while in a Wizard of Oz setting. Never happened, didn’t get much response to it. 

Lost in the Shadows Every once in a while, I get someone who asks me about this AU. Talk about your niche markets! On the other hand, I love me some ShadowRun, so I have not closed down the idea of writing more on this AU... 

So, here’s a fun thing: This particular AU is what’s been requested by my Marvel Trumps Hate winner, so, I’ll be writing a dragon-level event story for this, some 27 - 30,000 words. You ready, chummer?

The Communal Kitchen AU We have a few half-complete stories in this series; Vol 3, the Mating Habits of Hero Birds, a vague outline of a Team NuclearWinter side piece, and a couple of smut pieces that never got written. I may yank the sex pollen scene from Vol 3 out and post it as a stand-alone. We’ll see. If there’s interest in any of this, maybe we’ll come back to it. (I am currently re-reading the whole series, because honestly, I write the fic I want to read, and so I re-read my own stuff rather a lot.)

Anything involving Phil Coulson and Clint Barton - while I still ship this couple, and I’ll read stuff about them, I’ve pretty much given up writing them. Between Agents of SHIELD and everything with Clint starting in, say Age of Ultron forward, I just... don’t feel it anymore? Which does include the started and never finished Coulson’s Final Case 

Next Thursday Night - huh, I’d honestly forgotten about this fic. maybe i’ll revisit it this year upcoming... somewhere I think I have an outline.

Subject to PunTax - I love puns, and this story is very formulaic. I pick a topic, make up 5-7 puns on the subject, wrap a story around it and tie a bow with a suggestive pick up line. So, I leave this open to continue, the next time I’m feeling Punny.

Bucky Barnes has Kittens - Bucky as the crazy cat lady writer with bad anxiety. I’ve had a lot of people tell me this story has been great for them, dealing with Bucky’s anxiety issues. I do have more story ideas for this ‘verse, including Bucky finding out that Steve is also a writer and dealing with that. Decidedly On the List.

Eight Arms to Hold You - I have a handful of extra stories for these. Some of them went up on Tumblr for tentacletober... generally speaking, any mermaid fic of mine is subject to a continuation because MERMAIDS and OCTOBUCKY

All American Road Trip confession time here: I stopped writing this fic because of some anti-tonys who kept popping in my comments for this fic to rant about Tony Stark in a fic that was NOT ABOUT TONY. I’ve deleted all their comments, but they were nasty, and I stopped wanting to write for people who were being so abusive to Tony (and honestly, that much bile spilling in my comments, I don’t care who it’s about, it makes me sad) Like, they liked the Fic (steve/sam/bucky) but... eeeh, whatevs. I didn’t feel like dealing with it, and I’m not going to.

Also Prey - One of my more popular pieces, I reserve the right to add more to it when I’m in a fluff mood.

Kiss me Through the Phone - I wrote this with @27dragons and I have about... half a plan for a third chapter called Your Dirty Little Secret. So, with some encouragement, that could happen.

The Truth is Who You Are - my BDSM with religious song lyrics fic; this stuff is really emotional for me, and while I do have 2-3 more pieces planned, they take me a while to write and they knock the shit out of me while I’m doing it. There’s a lot of Tony working through his self-hatred that just... it’s deep. So... there will be more, it just... might be Some Time. 

The Killer and the Kid - this is literally my most popular piece. I get a MOAR PLZ ask on this at least once a month. I have been saying for a while I’m not planning any more of this, but I did offer it as an incentive for the Marvel Trumps Hate auction. This particular fic will ONLY BE WRITTEN for a charitable donation. 

Joyride - I’ve written a couple of addons for this fic loosely titled Bundle of Joy. They’re not quite Done Yet, but when I get there, I’ll be posting that.

Nights in Sandbridge - our most popular series, and I love these boys so much here. We have no major plans to continue, but if something strikes us, we may. 

WinterIron Pickup - a short story that spawned a second chapter. I have some ideas for continuing this, but it’s fallen by the wayside as I write other things.

What Good is the Sky - this piece is so angsty, and I keep getting requests to do moar of it. Trust me, you don’t want that, it will END BADLY. and I will cry a LOT.

Off the Menu - I really do have a LOT more of this story in my head. I just don’t know when I’m going to get around to it.

Bucky Barnes Prom CYOA this was SO HARD to format that I just gave up on it. I may come back and redo this as a few “completed” stories? 

Phoning it In - I do, in fact, have a few more of this AU in mind, I just lost a bit of the shiny after an amazing fucking against the sofa smut scene. So, there might be more of this in your future (also I kept expecting it to win March Madness, so I-- didn’t get back ‘round to it?)

A Poor Reflection - never got finished. Not sure why, I had the whole damn thing plotted out. Where is my outline??

The Enhancile War Series - mostly to play with the trope of naked girl in a box, this series originally had four plotted stories, but we just could NOT get the fourth story to GO anywhere, even pushing on it really, really hard.

Any Old Music Will Do - I have a plot outline for this one, with Bucky and Tony forming the core of the Defenders, along with Luke and Jessica, but I don’t know what I did with it... anyway, there’s more ideas here. a bit.

Indispensable we had a plot idea for a sequel and I actually think we wrote about 15000 words or so on it, but-- meh, it ended up not being very interesting. If we come up with some actual plot, then maybe?

Park(s) and Wreck(ed) - I have some more ideas for this as Tony and Bucky get their sexy on all over the office.

Stark, Naked - we did, in fact, do a sequel to this, which was rather short, but well-received. Not much ideas here for anything else, but we like this version of them, so if we get good prompts, we might be tempted to take up the reigns again.

Land After Time - We get a LOT of requests for Moar of this. If we had ANY FUCKING CLUE what was going on, we might. but we really, really don’t

We Can’t Eat That (It’s Dead) - I actually have an entire plot for this, on who the dead guy is and what happened...  I could be encouraged.

Forever Home - we wrote a full length sequel to this, but weirdly enough, it WASN’T the original sequel we’d sort of talked about. which means there’s potentially a third story here... (maybe a 4th one, too)

Excuse me, I think You Have My Suitcase - the further adventures of Tony and Bucky in lacy underthings. Yes. The next time I feel like PWP, I plan to revisit.

Dead to Rights - I still really like this idea... I just didn’t get as much traction from the Umbrella Academy fandom as I would have liked. Probably because most of my writer friends are Not Into It, which doesn’t give me many people to bounce ideas off 

New York: Become Human - there’s a LOT more story here to tell... maybe we’ll tell it.

Rejoice in the Sun - I started writing this fairly soon after Endgame, when I had a lot of feels, but between the absolute outpouring of hatred about that movie from the fandom. seriously, y’all were going all Annie Wilkes up in the house to the point that I put Endgame back on BLACKLIST to get away from the seething bile... it got really hard to enjoy post endgame content, and I got sick, too, so... that didn’t help any.

Once a Knight - Witch Bucky and Knight Tony... we have some more plot for this...

No Job Too Small - I think I even have another chapter of this WRITTEN. And some more plotted out. Tony and tiny children. What could go wrong?

(D)rift Away - Bigger Better Bugspray... what happens when the Rifters come back? There might be more of this, once I work out some plot. And honestly, stop getting distracted by the damn @heamarvel prompts.

The Door into Winter - I have a whole story for this, still working on it

Learning to Work Together (Good Omens) - we have some more feels for this, so possibly, if we can put plot together.

Pretty much everything else i’m posting in progress is still going strong, Blueberries, Hell Charger, Can’t Help you Fix Yourself, Reclamation, Draco Malfoy and the Rune... and I have a couple of other collabs with other people that are... bogged down with details right now.

We’ve got a couple of stories headed your way from the Marvel HEA Hallmark challenge, including what may well be my new favorite: Buck Barnes Got Married. We also wrote a Cyber Punk AU with companion Tony as an excuse to dress Tony up in skimpy outfits.

So, that’s like the general status of Old Fic... and having ideas is not the same as finding the time to sit down and WRITE them, especially since New Ideas are attacking me at the same time, honestly.

[kalluun-patangaroa]

Getting inside of their heads about the new CD…

TransAction Magazine, March/April 1999

www.rock-the-world.com

Written by: Karena Bernard

Photos by: Nina & Ariana

What follows is a full transcript of the whole band’s exclusive interview to the now long-defunct US-based online rock magazine Rock-The-World.com and its printed version TransAction Magazine. All Suede members talk here at length about their then just about to be released new album, Head Music. It’s a hilarious interview, well worth checking out, so I’m posting it here to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of this great album that could have been even greater… The above presented ‘artwork’ accompanied the original online article.

Can you tell us a bit about Electricity, the first single from the new album?

Simon - Electricity is our first single.

(Band sing bass riff intro to Electricity)

Simon - That bit came about later, but we had the track around for quite a while before that, didn’t we?

Richard - Yes, we did. It’s just little things to funk it up. The first demo that was done was quite garagey punk with lots of guitars and stuff. It’s an uptempo fiasco. It’s very good.

Brett - Sonically it’s possibly quite consistent with the rest of the album. It’s got a lot of bottom end and a lot of bass hooks and stuff like that. The bottom end of the tracks was something we were working on specifically on the album. We were working the tracks from the bottom upwards rather than from the top downwards, if that makes any sense.

It’s interesting in that it’s the first Anderson / Codling / Oakes co-write. How does that work, who does what exactly?

Richard - We all did little bits and bobs. The verse is very Neil and the chorus is very me and the singing’s very Brett.

Simon - The gap at the end is all mine.

Richard - It’s a shame having credits on a record because everybody works on it and does their own bit and stuff.

Mat - Right, where’s my credit then?

Richard - Mat played the…

Simon - Fool.

Richard - …sleigh bells on it, which are very low in the mix.

Mat - I didn’t play most of the bass on it so I should get a negative credit.

Richard - Coconut shells you played, didn’t you, but they’re mixed very low, it sounds like Adam and the Ants.

Mat - It should have that thing at the end, ‘No thanks to Mat Osman’.

Head Music is the first album you’ve recorded without Ed Buller. Why change producers at this stage?

Brett - We changed producer 'cause we just thought we’d gone as far as we could with Ed really. We just fancied a change, it was just a fresh scene and that. We almost half intended to change producers on the last album, but because we had line-up changes and stuff like that we needed to have a certain continuity and seemlessness about it, and Ed seemed to hold it together. Ed was the right producer for the sort of songs that we were doing on the last album. The way we were working on songwriting on this album we felt as though the sonics needed to change. We tried a few people out, we tried Steve Osborne out, and he just did something really special with one of the tracks, Savoir Faire. He just managed to get hold of an element of it that I knew was there but I knew the band couldn’t get hold of on their own and so he seemed to be the man for the job. So we got him in.

You’ve talked about Savoir Faire being one of, if not THE key track on the album. Why is this?

Richard - There are quite a few tracks that break a lot of ground for us as a musical collective and Savoir Faire is one of them. The first demo of it that Brett did at home in his shed was the strangest thing you’ll ever hear in your life. This spiky odd keyboard sound he’d come up with, covered in reverb and far too loud, and loads and loads of singing, but it was a really exciting thing to hear. We took it to the band and pumped it up and gave it a whole load of testosterone as it were…

Brett - Savoir Faire is one of my favourite songs on the album. If I was going to have a blueprint for the whole album, that’s exactly how it would sound. It’s quite sort of mechanical but quite groovy at the same time. But it still keeps a lot of the dynamics of the music of Suede as well, so Savoir Faire is my fave.

Can you tell us a little about some of your other favourite tracks?

Brett - Another favourite of mine is a song called Can’t Get Enough, which is just looking back at a period of utter hedonism and debauchery and realising that you’ve become this sort of monster and laughing at it really. Take it in your stride. And it’s this punky, edgy song about being a greedy bastard.

Richard - The roots of it and where the song came from was very much a cross-over period from doing stuff like Coming Up to doing stuff like Head Music. Again, when we came to record it, we did something different with it. It wasn’t all full on, stomping, Filmstar or whatever. I think musically it’s got the same sort of slink as something like She, but the good thing about the chorus is it’s so singalong, but it’s not one that opens out, it’s not like Electricity where there’s a change of key and everything. The Can’t Get Enough chorus is much more of a contained animal within a…

Mat - Cage.

Richard - …within a container. It’s a slug in a container. Mat - The rhythm track on the third verse is the five of us jumping up and down on a bridge and loads of pairs of scissors.

Simon - The scissors are all the way through, aren’t they?

Mat - No, the scissors are only on the third verse.

Simon - Are you sure about that?

Mat - Yeah, I fucking hate those scissors.

Simon - I love the scissors.

Mat - All the way through it’s like everyone, 'ooh, I like that scissors sound.’

Richard - A little hint for an edit if it’s released as a single, snip out the third verse.

Mat - The third verse is just stamping and scissors.

Simon - I like the scissors.

Brett - I really like a track on the album called Everything Will Flow, which is quite a traditional sounding Suede song. It’s just a big chorus sort of thing, it’s supposed to be a big karmic sort of thing, just watching the world go by. I think it’s a pretty successful piece of music. We managed to use strings without it sounding like, oh here comes the string section. I didn’t want to use strings on the record as a big padding or used as a signpost to say here comes the important part or something. When we used strings, it was a definite line that we’d written. Every string part we used on it, it was almost like we were using strings as a riff rather than as a padding, and that’s a perfect example. Neil wrote this line on a keyboard which is the intro string riff to Everything Will Flow. We just translated it to a string section and eq’d it strangely so it didn’t sound like Radio 2.

Richard - In the end we all just sat down and played it how we thought it would be without talking or thinking about it too much. And it only took one day to record and it’s got some really nice live strings on it. You know there’s a lot of sampled stuff on the record, but the strings on that are live and it came together really well.

Simon - That happens occasionally. You try and do it loads of different ways and six months down the line you play it how you played it in the rehearsal room.

Richard - The good way that that came about was it was the first one we started with and then it got forgotten about for a few months, so when we came back to it, it was very much just go in there and do it.

Mat - We’d done so much electronic stuff by then.

Simon - It was quite a breeze to actually play real instruments.

Richard - I don’t think there’s a synth on it, it’s just there, the five of us jamming away.

Aside from a trumpet player and string section, did you use any other outside musicians on this album?

Mat - Pretty much all the other instruments one of us or Steve could play.

Simon - Yeah, Steve played quite a lot, like the scissors for example.

Mat - Exactly, no one plays the scissors quite like Steve Osborne.

Mat - We all did a bit of shouting.

Simon - My debut was 'shout’. I shouted 'shout’ on Savoir Faire. And a lot of stomping as well.

Mat - I played some guitar on She’s In Fashion, I don’t know whether we ever used it in the end.

Richard - I think it’s on there.

Simon - I’m sure we did.

Mat - Neil played a bit of bass on Electricity.

Simon - Brett played guitar.

Mat - Brett played a lot of guitar.

Richard - I played just a ride cymbal on its own on Elephant Man, but it wasn’t used in the end.

Simon - It was much tighter than mine.

Mat - It’s a bad sign when you’re playing one cymbal and it’s still not good enough.

Mat - Richard puts his finger in his ear when he’s recording, like a folk singer. I’ve never seen anyone do it before.

Richard - I have to have it turned up really loud to get the vibe and then I have to put my finger in my ear because I can’t hear myself.

Mat - You really should have filmed that.

Simon - That would have been good, yeah.

Mat - A real hey nonny nonny bit.

Richard - You know, it’s embarrassing and I don’t know if I’ll be doing it live.

Mat - Oh yes, you will!

Simon - Oh baby!

Richard - We’re gonna take it right down now.

Simon - You’re great when you do your backing vocals, you do it really rock.

Mat - You can’t stick your finger in your ear if you’re playing the guitar as well.

Richard - I’ll have to get someone else to do it.

Mat, you’ve been quoted as saying that Down is your favourite track on the album, why is that?

Mat - I think it might be the best produced thing on the album. It’s the one thing that sounded fifty times better after Steve got his hands on it.

Richard - Every part on it and everything about it is really subtle, but the effect it has is far from subtle, you know.

Mat - And it’s also Steve Osborne’s favourite track, because in his own words 'I’ve never done a track with the word loonies on it before.’ He’s really happy about that. Strange things turn producers on, they really do.

What about She’s In Fashion, the next single?

Neil - I think She’s In Fashion is one of Suede’s more brazen attempts to be a pop band really.

Simon - A summer smash I reckon, I hope so.

Richard - Probably the most pop song you’ll ever hear in your life and the way it was done. That was one that for a while the thing we wanted to do with it was kind of harsh. We tried a few odd keyboard noises and funny little spiky guitar riffs and at the end it was like going back to how we’d imagined it in the first place and the first band demo we did. The actual first demo at all, it wasn’t a song, it was a piece of music on a tape Neil sent me, was about 15 minutes long and it was the strangest thing I’d ever heard in my life. Strange kind of, you know, 'gloopy strings’ it was called, it was a gloopy string riff over the top and a kind of Hawaiian bass line and nice acoustic guitar over the top.

Mat - We spent fucking months on that track and just couldn’t get it right. We must have tried about eight different versions of it. It’s just really weird listening to it now 'causes it just sounds straight and completely untouched and unforced. It just seems ridiculous to go through six months of three studios, and eighty attempts, to make it sound as un-studio as that. It was hard work that one.

Richard - But it’s one of those songs that will be on the telly.

Mat - Or possibly on the radio.

Simon - On the Clothes Show I think you’ll find, I think it’s guaranteed a six week run.

Neil - I had this string riff and beats and Brett wrote the melody to it. And however we tried to do it, we tried to make it a lot more obscure, and a lot more dancey, but it didn’t really suit it. We tried about ten different versions of it when we did the record and it just didn’t work.

The title track is one of the most singalong things you’ve ever done. Do you think it might become a terrace anthem?

Mat - I don’t know if that’s the sort of thing that football fans usually chant to be honest.

Simon - 'Give me head!’

What did you make of all the media frenzy over the mystery of the album title?

Brett - What happened with the releasing one letter at a time was actually a bit of an accident. It comes across as a bit of a scam, but it was actually just a bit of a joke between me and Saul from Nude. He just asked me for the album title and I just told him I was going to give it to him one letter at a time, and it got kind of leaked out and turned into this thing like we were trying to create this big scam, but it wasn’t supposed to be like that. But it kept people interested and kept people juggling letters for a bit, and they came up with some funny suggestions for the album title. I like Head Case, that was really good. There was some really funny ones, I can’t remember them… Hairy Shirts or something, there was some fucking great ones.

There are several songs that might surprise people, perhaps most obviously Elephant Man. Would you agree?

Mat - That was a really simple one, Neil did most of that on his own.

Richard - It’s an important one to have on the record as well, about the perception of the band. I think when the idea for having Elephant Man on the album came up it was like yeah, you know, it broke a little bit of ground for us and made everything a bit freer about how we work in the future.

Mat - I just thought it was really nice because we’ve done four albums now and there’s almost this unwritten rule that you have to get a bit more mature in your songwriting and the things you write about, and I thought it was quite nice to come up with the least mature song we’ve ever done.

Richard - We’re not a mature band.

Mat - It’s quite funny as well, I know the subject matter’s not particularly funny, but it always makes me laugh.

Neil, have you got any particular favourites from the album?

Neil - Indian Strings is one of the later tracks on the album, but it’s one of the first songs that was written for the album, quite early on. And it’s just one that Brett came up with on his own in the very early stages we hadn’t formulated any ideas about the record yet. But it just kind of stood on its own and I think it’s a really good piece of songwriting, and I think it could be sung by anybody really. It’s quite a simple ballad, very simple idea, quite open and honest, and I think you could imagine it being done by someone like Simon and Garfunkel. It’s quite a timeless song and it’s one of those things that could fit on the record in any shape or form. We started off making this record and we said we won’t have any real strings on it, but it’s one of those songs that warranted it, and I think it’s very much a Suede song, but like most of the songs on the album it’s quite an advancement from Coming Up for instance. I think it’s a great little song and that’s that.

Crack in the Union Jack has caught a lot of people off guard by its brevity, any comments on that?

Mat - It’s just meant to be a very small, very simple, cold little nasty song. A good one to finish on.

Richard - A poke in the eye for anyone who’s enjoyed the album.

After seven years in the public eye, you’ve still managed to come across as being quite a cool, credible band. How?

Brett - I think we just don’t smile in photographs, that’s the only reason.

Nevertheless, you’ve still maintained an incredibly loyal fanbase.

Brett - We’ve got a lot of loyal fans that listen to the heart of the music, and get a lot of comfort out of it and stuff like that, and really feel the music. I dunno really. I don’t think we’ve ever done anything in a cheap way. I don’t think we’ve ever cheapened Suede, but that’s not to say that I want Suede as some sort of pompous thing that thinks it’s some untouchable thing, it’s not like that. I don’t think we’ve done anything that’s been musically dishonest really. I’ve always tried to evolve it rather than do big turnarounds or big changes that don’t mean anything, that are just stylistic changes. I’ve almost tried to make the music speak and for everything to come from the music. If you don’t make records then nothing else follows, if you make good records then everything else follows. And it’s always been the music first and the music’s just informed everything else.

You’ve had an enormous amount of success in Europe, particularly compared to many other British bands of a similar level over here. Why have Suede succeeded where others haven’t?

Brett - I think we get a lot of success in Europe 'cause I think the music’s got a universal appeal. I’ve always liked to think that, I’ve always flattered myself with that thought. I don’t know if it’s always been a hundred per cent true. There’s a lot of cultural references in some of the words and that, but the general feeling of the music is about emotion. I think there’s a lot of British bands that are quite blinkered and I don’t think we’ve ever been that blinkered. The raw sort of feeling of the music is just simple, you don’t need to know about a scene in Britain to get it. It’s just there or it’s not, you either like it or you don’t and that’s it. It doesn’t require that much thought. Places like Scandinavia it went mad on the last record, I don’t really know why that is specifically. I think it’s probably because they’re all depressed sex maniacs and the songs do something for them in that way.

Finally, what are your plans for worldwide domination?

Brett - What are our plans for conquering the world? Dunno, haven’t got any plans really. We’re gonna go and do some dates in Europe soon and some festivals, play the album to people. Every time we start a tour we always say, oh we’re not gonna tour that much, because we want to get on with making the next record. You come out of the studio and you just have a load of ideas for the next one. And we’ve already got a pretty clear idea about how we want to do the next one, so we wanna get on with that really, but we’ll probably end up touring till we’re about 95.

[myaekingheart]

1, 2, and 12!!

Bless you, Jessie 🙌💕 

Alright so since I reblogged like 20 ask memes, I’m just gonna go ahead and take the liberty of doing all of these numbers for every single one I’ve reblogged that’s applicable to give myself extra stuff to do xD

Fanfiction Asks! 

1. Do you read fic? Do you write fic?

I actually write fic WAY MORE than I read fic. I find that the issue I have when reading fic is that I get really giddy and inspired and then I lose my concentration on the story in front of me and my interests rather shift more towards the story in my own damn head. I really need to start reading more of other people’s work, though. I have a handful saved on AO3 that I just have not gotten around to, but I really should. I really have so many damn things I want to read, fanfiction and otherwise, but lack the motivation to sit down and actually read it. 

2. Favorite genre of fic?

I feel like it’s kind of hard to pinpoint exactly what kind of fic I’m drawn most towards, but I guess the best descriptor would be drama? I don’t know, I just really like stories that focus heavily on character development and interpersonal relationships (so bildungsroman lmfao), especially when there’s some imperfect romance and action/adventure involved. Both of my main fanfics, my Narnia series Temptation and The Scarecrow and the Bell, my Naruto fic, both are pretty much just that: heavy focus on character with imperfect romance and action/adventure. I just think it’s fun seeing characters, especially ones that have feelings for each other, in stressful and dangerous situations trying to work through them together and oftentimes disagree and have to figure out how to handle the disagreements, too. Or have personal stuff they’re dealing with on top of things. I don’t know, I just really love focusing on relationship dynamics and situations like that are a fun lens to look through. 

12. What turns you away the most from a fic?

Honestly, grammatical issues and whether or not the story feels believable. I guess I’m kind of picky when it comes to that stuff, but I’m also used to being critical of writing solely because I’m a creative writing major and a big part of this degree’s curriculum is workshopping peer writing. Grammatical issues in terms of a misplaced comma or something aren’t that big a deal, I’m not that stingy, but things like lacking paragraph breaks, or not knowing when to switch paragraphs, bug me as well as habitual misspellings of common words--the one that peeves me off the most is spelling “definitely” like “defiantly” or “definately” or any other misspelling under the sun. The idea of a story feeling believable might just be me being really picky but I’ve opened up fics sometimes where I could hardly get through the first paragraph because the story didn’t feel genuine to me. It’s kind of hard to explain, but I guess as someone who puts a ton of research into my own fanfics and also really tries to perfectly capture the tone of the source material, sometimes I’ll read stuff that just feels out of place and it really takes me out of the story and honestly makes me cringe. I feel like saying all of that makes me sound like some kind of asshole, though. I don’t know, I’m just so goddamn picky when it comes to what I’m reading and especially with fanfiction, since it’s a lot more organic and it doesn’t go through the same fine toothed editing process that professionally published works do (although I’ve picked up on some questionable stuff even in print books; one such thing was so minor, but it was a forgotten period at the end of a sentence and I kept laughing about it saying to myself “Someone missed a period!” You know, like an asshole.) 

Music Asks

1. your favorite album opener

Beartooth’s Greatness or Death off their most recent album, Disease. It just really sets the tone for the rest of the album and feels like such an appropriate intro overall. They have a playlist for the entire album on Youtube with the correct track listing so that was the first song off thei newest album that I had heard and it just felt like such a great and appropriate intro, it really got me into the vibe and energy of the rest of the album and I just...I love it a lot. The song, the album, the band in general. 

2. a song starting w/ the same first letter of your first name

Aurora Avenue by Defeat the Low. I’m a huge Nirvana fan, and the song is all about Kurt Cobain. The entire first verse was literally pulled straight from his infamous suicide note (”Speaking from the tongue of an experienced simpleton who obviously would rather be an emasculated, infantile complainee.”) I stumbled upon this song by pure chance-- it was playing at the end of a video for a different song, which I think was actually a Beartooth one-- and it sounded interesting so I pulled it up and the minute I heard the first verse, I, who had read Kurt’s suicide note already, was like “WAIT A SECOND THIS SOUNDS REALLY FAMILIAR” but it didn’t hit me that that was what it was, and that the entire song was about Kurt, until later and it made me love it even more. 

12. a song you can scream all the words to

Hospital for Souls by Bring Me The Horizon. It’s an all-time fave, made even more so by the fact that it’s one of my top ship songs (for my Naruto ship, Kakashi Hatake x my OC Rei Natsuki, who I write the fanfic about, and even made an AMV for them with because I’M CRAZY). It also just hits really hard personally, especially the line “Have you ever put a blade to your wrists, or have you been skipping meals?” because it relates to my own mental health struggles. I’ve never had the right opportunity to actually scream all the words aloud along with the song, but I desperately need to find the right place to do it one of these days because I have a lot of feelings I need to get out that can only be done through that exact act and I need to do it in a way where I will not end up getting the cops called on me for being way too loud. I just need a soundproof room in general (not just for these purposes, but also because I’m a voice actress for an independent animated series called Space Hotel and I need someplace to record shit anyways.)

Soft and Ethereal Asks

1.secret garden or forest?

Secret garden! I love the idea of having someplace only I know guarded off by a wall with vines running up the side of it, the kind of place you enter through a wrought-iron gate, where flowers are growing through the cracks and there’s a bubbling fountain in the center you can sit by either on the edge or in the grass or on a dirty old cement bench from times before I was even a thought in my parent’s head, and just revel in the silence with a good book or a pencil and sketchbook and make flower crowns and daisy chains or have a little personal picnic laying out a checkered blanket and carrying everything in a big basket like strawberries and little sandwiches and homemade cookies and shit. I’m such a sap but I live for the idea of that gentle, pastel-tinted quiet afternoon. Pure solace. 

2.the stars or the moon?

The moon. I love stars to death, too, but there’s something about the moon that really hits me. Maybe it’s because it goes through phases but no matter what is still whole even when it appears not to be. Maybe it’s because it’s kind of comforting to look at. More than anything, though, it’s probably at least partially because one of my favorite films is Rise of the Guardians (and by extension, the book series it was based upon, The Guardians of Childhood) in which the moon is a major character, or at least The Man in the Moon. In the movie, he’s never seen or heard but he’s always there watching over the world. Jack Frost, the protagonist, doesn’t understand his purpose in this eternal life of his where no one can see him and no one believes in him, and constantly looks to the moon for answers but never hears any. The very first lines of the movie are even “Darkness. That’s the first thing I remember. It was dark and it was cold and I was scared. But then...then I saw the moon. It was so big and so bright. It seemed to chase the darkness away.” Not to get super religious here but in a way the whole moon thing even reminds me of Christianity a little bit, and I’m not really religious in the slightest (maybe spiritual, but not very religious) but this movie also came to me at a time when I was very at odds with the idea of God and faith and everything, and I felt like Jack Frost constantly questioning what the point of it all was and questioning whether something greater even existed and if so, then how could they let terrible things like this happen? Without any solid answer? I don’t know, I don’t want this to get into a debate about my own religious beliefs, but yeah. The moon and I have some history, so I’ll choose the moon over the stars. 

12.fiction or short stories?

Fiction. By nature of my degree, I have to read a lot of short stories for college and some of them are really enjoyable and interesting but then we get to the debate of genre fiction versus literary fiction, which I think is a stupid fucking debate and literary fiction needs to get off it’s damn high horse with it’s “holier than thou” complex or whatever. Or maybe it’s not the literary fiction itself so much as the people who praise it. Like yes, I get that literary fiction is contemporary fine art and nuanced and shit but sometimes I like stories about vampires and ninjas and teenagers with weird names and social anxiety. Literary fiction is fine and all, but let’s face it, genre fiction is way more fucking fun and that is why I chose “fiction” over “short stories.” 

65 Questions You Aren’t Used To

1. Do you ever doubt the existence of others than you?

If I’m going to be brutally honest, sometimes. Hell, sometimes I even question my own existence but I guess that’s just the depersonalization aspect of anxiety talking. 

2. On a scale of 1-5, how afraid of the dark are you?

With 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest, I’d say I’m at about a 3? I’m not as afraid of the dark as I used to be, but it’s situational. If I’m alone and it’s dark, then I get panicky because my awareness is impaired and I’m admittedly a very visual person so if I can’t see and I suspect there’s something going bump in the night, I’m going to freak out. Even hearing something, even when logically I know exactly what it is, freaks me out because I can’t know for sure unless I’m looking straight at it but if it’s dark, I can’t do that. I prefer to sleep when it’s like fully dark, though. I even used to wear a sleep mask to help with that and because the feeling of something soft over my eyes was comforting??? I don’t know, like I can sleep perfectly fine with the lights on, too, and sometimes if my anxiety is bad that’s what I’d prefer to make things easier on myself but for the most part, I guess it’s situational. I also feel like this is an appropriate place to say I have a duck nightlight in my bathroom, which doesn’t really have anything to do with being afraid of the dark so much as darkness in general but I also have a thing for rubber ducks so having a rubber duck nightlight is very on brand and I love it. 

12. Who told you they loved you last?

Probably my boyfriend. He’s the one whose always here anyways. If not him, then from my mother but I don’t particularly want to think about her right now because I’m kind of upset with her so we’re just going to go ahead and say my boyfriend. 

Sensory Asks

[sight]

1. favourite colour(s)?

Red is my top fave, and has been since I was three. I think it was when I got a red VW Beetle for my Barbie dolls that I really fell in love with the color. All the accessories that came with it were red plastic and looking at them just filled with me a lot of energy and joy, which I later realized I felt whenever looking at red in general. It also helps that I can now make the joke whenever I’m asked this question that I love red “like the blood of my enemies,” which is always fun. 

2. least favourite colour(s)?

I’m really not a fan of yellow, chartreuse, and tan/beige. I can handle yellow in certain instances like with sunflowers or lemons or sunshine related stuff, but I prefer gold over straight up yellow. I don’t dislike yellow nearly as much as tan/beige, though. That one I can also handle in certain instances but for the most part, it reminds me of a time I got sick as a kid so looking at it for too long brings back that nausea. Chartreuse is the end-all, be-all of the colors I’m not big on, though. It just...reminds me of snot. It feels really unappealing to look at for me, too. 

[smell]

12. favourite scent?

Clean laundry, hands down. I love nothing more than the smell of fresh laundry, like sometimes I’ll catch myself literally sitting at my laptop sniffing my shirt because I love the smell so much. It’s just so comforting, and I think that’s because it reminds me of this doll I’ve had literally since birth. I called her Baby Doll and she was just a basic baby doll with a plastic head and cloth body that my grandmother got from Avon and I was so damn attached to it as a kid. I brought Baby Doll everywhere with me, even in my backpack on my first day of preschool. I slept with her for way longer than I’d like to admit, too. But she smelled like fabric softener, and when I was a little kid and was having bad anxiety attacks (which I’ve been dealing with since I was three), I would hug her really close and the smell was just really comforting. So now I have to get it from my own laundry because I still own Baby Doll, but I’m a grown-ass adult and she’s very fragile now (and also currently in storage for safe-keeping). So yeah, clean laundry hands-down. 

Fashions Asks

1. What season has your favorite looks?

Fall! I’m such a sucker for big cozy sweaters and jeans. Back to school fashion lowkey excites me, too, and besides: I feel like it’s a lot easier to find appropriate outfits for my personal fashion sense that fit cooler weather than the seventh circle of hell 106-degree-heat-index I’m currently living in. I adore oversized sweaters, leggings, skinny jeans, combat boots, creepers, hoodies, layers, all that good stuff but you can’t do that when you feel like you’re dying of heat stroke even standing in front of the fridge butt naked. Not that I do that, but it’s hot enough here that I could if I wanted to. That’s not an issue in fall, though, which is super fucking nice. I just really love being cozy all the time always. 

2. Formal or casual?

Casual! As much as I love the look of formal clothes, I am chronically ill. I am anxious. I am depressed. I want to be comfortable all the damn time, and I just can’t be genuinely comfortable in formal clothes. For example, I attended my cousin’s wedding last spring and wore these really cute Mary Jane heels that I love. They fit my aesthetic and make my legs look great, too, if I say so myself. I was able to get through the ceremony with them on but after the fact, they started getting so damn uncomfortable that I went to the car and changed into my ratty five year old combat boots like a total punk because comfort. At least they still looked good with the dress I was wearing, though, so that’s a plus. 

12. What fashions do you hate?

Okay, I feel like a lot of people might get on my case about this but I really can’t stand Birkenstocks. They just...look like what your overbearing uncle would wear with socks to the summer barbecue to me. I don’t know, in certain cases they’re at least fitting for a certain look and I commend the people who can pull them off but as for me? I just can’t wrap my head around them. I dislike them even more than Crocs, which I am also not a fan of. But then again, like...I’m also not big on today’s fashion trends in general. There are some things I do like, like oversized t-shirts with leggings especially if they’re a band t-shirt, and those cute Japanese uniform style pleated skirts (I admittedly own one and I love it). The whole ethereal quirky pastel modern grunge e-girl shit, though, just doesn’t vibe much with me. My fashion sense is more on par with Luanna Perez’s alternative looks and the 2007-2012 era of the emo/scene style, as well as some pastel goth, genuine 90′s grunge, and kawaii/lolita inspired stuff. Like I will gladly tease the hell out of my hair, add in extensions and coontails and a little pink bow, and throw on a pink polka dot dress with fishnets and creepers or something. I don’t know, I just feel really disconnected from what’s considered trendy in today’s fashion sense. Maybe it’s because I tried so hard for so many years to fit what was in style despite it not feeling genuine to who I was personally, that now that I’ve finally mustered enough confidence to leave the house wearing what makes me happy even if it is unorthodox and alternative (like black lipstick!!!), I just can’t get on board with what everyone else is doing. Sure, I feel a little weird dressing like it’s ten years ago when everyone else is walking around wearing like those dinky crop tops that say “I have no tits” or have like applique roses on them or whatever and anything else that’s considered modern on-trend but like...in the wise words of Kurt Cobain, “I’d rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I’m not.” I’m tired of trying to fit the status quo and doing what everyone else is doing. If I want coontails and snake bites in 2019, then goddammit I’m gonna go for it (though not gonna lie, the 20NINESCENE craze has me crying because I regret not having “the phase” in middle school that everyone else did so much sometimes that it’s physically painful so to think that there are still people out there rocking the thick side fringe and heavy eyeliner and the RAWR MEANS I LOVE YOU IN DINOSAUR shit makes me feel like maybe I’ve been given a second chance to be true to myself and become a part of a community that means something to me, rather than what I was actually doing in middle school being dragged through the mud trying to redeem myself of some sense of popularity because I was losing my best friend to the alpha female clique mentality and I was so damn unhappy, I legit had a breakdown in her pool about it once so you bet your ass I’m going to say screw it and do everything I wanted to back then now that I actually have the confidence and stopped caring what people thought about me.) 

[uiruu]

Ranking all the 12 Loona solo singles! 12-8

So okay, what I’m gonna do here is rate each of the predebut Loona solo songs that introduced each of the 12 members. This post is number 12 through number 8, five songs, because I didn’t have as much to say and I think they fit. 

LINKS TO OTHER POSTS IN THIS LIST: 7-5  4 3 2 1

12. Eclipse by Kim Lip

idk, it just doesn’t really do much for me, I don’t think her voice in this song has much energy... the music as well isn’t as exciting as what I’m looking for. However, like with pretty much every Loona song, I know why people would like it a lot, and I know a lot of people do. It’s definitely well-produced, I just don’t think it’s as well crafted as the others, and it’s not really something that appeals to me very strongly. Still, even though this is actually my least favorite Loona single overall, it’s still better than the majority of other pop songs. I wouldn’t give it like a 2/10, not at all, more like a 5 or 6. So, above half. And that’s my least favorite lmao, it only goes up from here. The visuals in the music video are cool, but not as striking as some of the others. I will say the shade of red that is everywhere in the video is super vibrant and nice to look at though, Loona’s use of color is always so on point

edit (4/2/2019): okay so i like this song a lot more now, i realized that the only part that doesnt work for me is the second half of the chorus. the part that goes  “Nuneul ttegi himdeuni gyesok hamkke haejullae”, i think it kinda kills the momentum a bit and drags it out in kind of a flat way. because this song ends on that part as well, every time i’d finish the song i’d just kinda shrug.. but i didnt know exactly why. now tho i know why, and it makes me appreciate the rest of the song a LOT more. i think it’s still number 12 just cause one of them has to be, but yeah

11. Singing in the Rain by JinSoul

Wow, so, already a step up. Eclipse is the only one of these 12 that I wouldn’t listen to for fun. Singing in the Rain is one I listen to occasionally, but even though it wowed me on my first listen, subsequent listens kinda made it lower on my list. It’s alright, she’s one of the two more rap-focused members, and she does her own rap feature on this song haha. What really lessens this song for me is the chorus though, it’s okay, but it’s just very designed to be a banger cause its really just “singing in the rain” three or four times. And that’s fine, nothing against bangers lol, I love that, and I love this song, it’s just that I love the other songs with more substance more haha. The music video is cool, I love the editing with the weird moments where it like blurs in and out of shots and becomes like... lines? Man, idk terms... but yeah. It’s not bad, but it’s low on my list.

10. ViViD by HeeJin

This was the first Loona song, so that’s cool, and it’s a really really really remarkable start, and really showcases Loona’s unconventional style right out of the gate. I just thought this song was okay, but I watched that youtube channel “ReactToTheK” react to and talk about this song from the perspective of classical musicians, and when two of the members of that channel ranked all the Loona solo songs like I’m doing right now, one of them ranked it their favorite overall because of how interesting the song is musically. I don’t really know what they’re talking about when they talk about how the chorus is on really strange beats or something, but I know that they know what they’re talking about, so the song is in the process of growing on me. Still though, I can’t really put it higher than here just cause of how much I love all their other songs haha. It’s got a ton of instruments throughout it in various places, it’s weird. The video’s pretty cool too, starts Loona’s videography off in a great way too. But ultimately, like, it’s just not as gripping for me as the others lol I’m sorry

edit (4/2/2019): this song actually is my number 5 out of 12 now lol, it shot up a lot just like i was thinking it would

9. Let Me In by HaSeul

I like this song a lot, but it’s not the kind of thing you can jam to haha, I don’t normally go for songs like this. I will say though that the way the instrumentation builds throughout the song into something very overpowering is really incredible. This song doesn’t sound like anything else in kpop. Like, at all. I’ve seen people say that it sounds kind of like a Disney song, like, it sounds a bit like Let It Go, if Elsa was hunting a bird that was also herself and killed it with a diamond by the wreck of a crashed plane, and was reflecting on mortality or something lmao. I don’t think that’s necessarily what the song’s lyrics about it, but as someone who doesn’t speak Korean and hasn’t looked up the lyrics that much, it gives me that vibe. It’s such a good song, I just don’t enjoy it as much as I enjoy the rest haha.

8. Around You by HyunJin

Ugggggh, it really hurts me to put this song this low on my list! I really love this song! HyunJin might be my favorite member of Loona! It’s just hard to put it higher than this though because I’m not a big fan of ballads. This one in particular grew on me immensely after realizing that Hyunjin was my favorite member, and I started to really appreciate the vibe of the song. The music video is weird though, it starts with the first verse quiet in the background, being played on a speaker in her house, and then it picks up with the regular sound of the song part of the way through. It was originally a short film though, so the way it’s edited for the music video cut is because of that. Still, I listen to this song occasionally on spotify and just in lyric videos or whatever that have the whole song the whole time lol, so it’s fine. I think this song is really beautiful, but I’m much more a fan of jams and fast-paced adrenaline pumping stuff haha. So, I guess it fits here on my list.

(here’s the music video, but i’ll put a link to the song in its full version here)

[pedalfuzz]

Speedy Ortiz

Speedy Ortiz singer-guitarist Sadie Dupuis’s craft is in full focus on the album Twerp Verse, released earlier this year on Carpark Records. Complex lead lines twist and careen alongside tightly crafted power-pop hooks that have the record already being counted amongst the year’s best.

After playing a catchy, caffeinated set at the 2018 Hopscotch Music Festival, Pedal Fuzz sat down in a cluttered greenroom with Sadie Dupuis, to talk pedals, songwriting, and fingernails. THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS HAVE BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED

Pedal Fuzz: So first I would love to know about the guitar you were playing last night.

Sadie Dupuis: Yeah, I don't think they're making them anymore. The company was called Moniker, Austin-based—and they would do different custom guitars. That particular model is the Anastasia. It’s shell pink. It has like a like a crescent moon cutaway, and there are pearl details throughout it. And then the headstock has my Sad 13 logo on it.

PF: Cool, so it was made for you?

SD: Yeah!

PF: And do you move through the three pickups, or do you usually stay on one in particular?

SD:I put Strat pickups in the middle, but there are humbuckers on either side, so it's a little unusual. If I'm recording, I'll switch them, but for live I'm pretty much just in the middle.

PF: Is there a piece of gear—it could be an instrument or a device of some sort—that has changed the way you play, or changed something stylistically?

SD:I think every piece of gear has some impact in that sense. But I think the biggest thing for me over the past two or three years has been that I stopped playing with a pick. So, that's not so much adding a piece of gear as much as getting rid of a piece of gear. When we would record I would always have parts that I would need to fingerpick because I wouldn't be able to play them with a pick, and then live I was always playing with a pick. Going back and forth between the two felt kind of clumsy to me.

Or the things that I did have to fingerpick live wouldn't have the same presence or attack as the stuff that I would play with the pick. And so I would be modifying the parts to play it with a pick, and I kind of wasn't into that at all. I could never wear nail polish because—guitarists know—it just scrapes off. Especially the second fingers just get scraped off.

And we had a front of house engineer whose girlfriend was a nail artist who was like, “let me just do your nails. There's this kind of nail polish that won't come off. It makes your nails stronger.” And I was like, “Okay, I'll try it.”

And I sort of realized that I could just grow my nails out, have polish on them, and use these as picks [brandishes canary yellow fingernails]. So now I—Dolly Parton-style—have very long nails on my right hand, and I don't play with a pick at all anymore, because I don't have to - I’ve got five.

So that's been the biggest change in my style, I'd say, in the past couple years.

PF: You modded your hand! So, what pedals do you use now, or what are some ones that are important to you?

SD: I have a ton of pedals at home, and if I'm home-recording I tend to use totally different stuff then I use for the live setup. And that's partially in the same way that I don't want to eat hummus when I'm not on tour because I'm used to having it fed to me in greenrooms every day. Or I don't want to wear the clothes that I wear on tour when I'm home from tour.

The first thing on my chain is an Earthquaker Devices Monarch Overdrive, which is discontinued. It's just an overdrive pedal that's meant to model an Orange amp, and I use that basically as my clean tone, so that's on all the time. I have the gain turned up with not too much volume at 12 o'clock, bass at 9, treble at 12. I don't totally understand why they discontinued it. They do sell the Stew-Mac kits so people could theoretically build their own.

I got used to playing with that pedal because I was playing with certain Fender amps that just felt too common, you know what I mean? Like, a Deville is such a backline amp, which I like a lot, but I played it forever and I liked having this as part of my “clean tone” because it just made the clean a little bit different than the Fender stock sound.

Then I have a Catalinbread Callisto, which is a chorus/vibrato pedal. Again, it likes very mild settings.

And the Dispatch Master, which is another Earthquaker pedal. It’s a reverb/delay, but I'm using it to just give a little bit of reverb. Those are the three pedals that are on all the time. They make up my clean tone.

The second two that I mentioned kind of came onto my board later because I started playing with the Divided by 13 amp CJ 11, which I love, but the only knobs it has are master volume, volume, bass and treble. So, having played Fender amps forever, being used to having the vibrato and the reverb, I wanted to have a little bit of that so that’s what those two pedals kind of accommodate for me.

Beyond that, my overdrive, for when I want to do a cool solo or something, is Earthquaker stuff. I really like their tones. So I use The Dunes for when I'm playing a solo or I need to be loud. It’s another overdrive - I’m weirdly anti-fuzz.

Past that I have Earthquaker’s Pitch Bay, which is an octave plus overdrive pedal, so I'll use that if I want to make a solo a little weird and outerspacey, or sometimes to simulate a synth I played on the records, particularly older records. There would be a synth part that happens for eight seconds, and there was no reason for me to play a synth, so I would just learn the part and play it through that pedal.

PF: An octave up?

SD: Yeah, I have the tiniest amount of octave down that's basically inaudible but pitched off a little bit so it sounds like a weird synth, and then the octave up is pretty gainey.

I used to play a POG 2, but I could never make it not sound like an organ, which is why I like the Pitch Bay. I've always had an impossible time finding any kind of synth-emulating pedal that doesn't sound like it’s just an organ.

PF: I have an old Electro Harmonix Microsynth—one of the big ones—and it's pretty dirty and cool.

SD: Those are cool. I do have a Synth 9 on my board right now, also from Electro Harmonix. I use it on the Prophet-V setting for some of the songs from the new album that I didn’t even play guitar on during recording. The Pitch Bay is great, but it doesn’t really sound like a synth. It makes the guitar sound spacey and digital. So, I wanted something that could be a little more filtered and sound like the synth I play on songs from the new album.

I also have the Old Blood Noise Endeavors Black Fountain delay on my chain. Beyond that I use an ISP Technologies Decimator G-String, which is a noise gate. All of these overdriving pedals give me some signal noise.

PF: Is it noisy all the time otherwise?

SD: It's not. It depends on the electricity of the room. It can get pretty bad when the electricity isn't up to snuff, so I have that [Decimator G-String] in case of emergencies, and that's why I play on the Strat pickup live because if I'm on anything that's humming at all, it’s just magnifying…

Oh, I also use the Walrus Audio Deep Six Compressor, so obviously that's also propagating any kind of signal noise I get. So, there's a fair amount of a harm reduction that has to happen in this chain. [laughs]

PF: I was going to ask you if your setup changes when you're on the road versus recording.

SD: If I'm recording a record, and we're in a studio, anything is kind of fair game. I'll use what the studio has in addition to whatever I brought. But at home when I'm just making demos, I'm like, “I've accrued all these pedals that I don't get to use live so I'm just not interested in even opening my stage pedalboard.” I assemble a separate chain for whatever the song kind of wants. On a lot of the stuff that we've recorded, I didn't use any of the pedals I just mentioned. But it doesn't have to be the exact same sounds live, right?

PF: When you're thinking about your next record, writing songs and demoing at home, is there an ideal Speedy Ortiz song you’re reaching for out in the ether? And what does the ideal Speedy Ortiz song do?

SD: That’s a tough one, because I think it depends. I mean, not every song has the same goals or forms or changes, but there are things that I try to make happen with every song, and I don't really like when a song gets in, like, a groove, and it's too comfortable - I always want a weird surprise.

So whether that's in the lyrics, or whether that's in the time signature, or whether it’s just how many measures something repeats, I tend to change things. So even if a chorus happens three times in the song, it'll be slightly different every time.

So usually my goals are to get somewhere with the writing of it that surprises me, and that I think would be like a fun Easter Egg for the person who's heard it a few times, and then is like, “Oh, the chorus starts on the three this time rather than the one.” Or something like that.

PF: Something surprising.

SD: Yeah, and, by extension, even if the form stays the same, maybe the sounds will be different. One thing I love is to have a second verse in which a lot of stuff drops out, and maybe a weird sound is introduced. If I go back through all my songs, I can probably check that off happening a lot of the time. [laughs]

So there are certain tricks that I definitely pull from song to song, but I just like it to change throughout.

PF: Are you aware of things that you do habitually in the structure of your songs?

SD: I don't think about it when I'm writing a song, but when I show something to my bandmates, they're like, “Oh, of course it's a measure of six this time at the end of the chorus, sounds like you!”

So, I'm sort of aware that there are certainly compositional tools that I lean into more often than not, but I think also they're not super common, so I feel fine repeating them.

PF: So that's, like, your…

SD: Little signature.

PF: Yeah! It’s part of your architecture.

SD: [Laughs] You know all those condos that look the same? That's like the choruses of our songs.

*main photo courtesy of Hopscotch Music Festival / Garrett Poulos

TOM SOWDERS PIROUETTES ANGRILY THROUGH THE STREETS OF DOWNTOWN RALEIGH. LIKE REALLY AGGRESSIVELY, REALLY WINDMILLING HIS ARMS AROUND. HIS HOBBIES ARE NOT USING HIS PHD AND FRONTING THE BAND TOOTHSOME. 

[stardustandwar]

inkflows writing process project

a project curated by the members of @inkflowsnetwork 

basic questions: 1. where do you find inspiration for your writing?

90% of my writing is inspired by dreams that I have. I am a very intense vivid dreamer, and my brain just comes up with some of the weirdest stuff. And when I wake up in the morning, if I’m lucky I remember enough of it to build plots for some of my larger stories or poem ideas.

A large portion of my more descriptive, intense imagery in poetry in inspired by just weird ass images that pop into my brain when I close my eyes and nodd of a work and I don’t know how or why I think of these things, but that’s just what happens.

2. how do brainstorm ideas and form them into something digestible?

Honestly, I have to admit that most of my brainstorming does not happen on paper. My brother and roommate @jishur is my favorite human to bounce ideas off of. We typically spend hours in our living room just tossing concepts and ideas around, rehashing our stories and generally just screaming. Writing is hard and we suffer together. These incidents are where some of my more complex ideas are laid out and cultivated, and it’s how I kind of get to test out some theories before putting them on paper.

3. how do you get ready to write? mentally and physically.

So the meat of my writing happens in two places: A. in bed at 3AM when I’m supposed to be sleeping and have very important things to do or B. at work/school when I really have important things to do and a thousand distractions, but listen there are ideas in my head and I need to get them out before they are gone.

Any time I sit down and try to plan to write, I do kinda give myself a little set up. A cup of hot tea, good chill music, a comfy seat, and natural lighting. Sometimes, this is successful. Sometimes.

4. your outlining process for prose.

Prose is pretty scarce for me, and when it happens there is almost never an outline. Typically I will be driving, zoning out and being generally unsafe, and some pretty sounding line will just jump into my head. Once I get somewhere stationary where I can write it down, I usually just build off of that and see what happens.

5. your outlining process for poems.

My process for poems varies, but usually it’s the same as prose. I don’t think I’ve ever tried outlining a poem, unless its something I start through a list of prompts given to me. Otherwise, it’s all pretty messy and unorganized.

6. your process of brainstorming, drafting after the outline, revising, and editing. Bold of you to assume that I’ve ever revised in my entire life….

No but really, on the rare occasion that I get far enough in a project to reach that point, I typically just have to send it over to a friend that I trust to read and give good feedback. I always need a second set of eyes to look out for technical errors and plot holes, because I’m often bad at finding them myself. I know what I mean to say, but it’s very important to me to make sure that my audience knows what I mean as well.

Another method that helps me a lot is when I’m done writing and need to edit, I first put my writing down and walk away from it for an extended period of time. Once I come back to it later on, I’m looking at it with fresh eyes. Half the time, if it’s been long enough, I don’t even recognize my own writing and it helps me come up with so many new concepts and ideas for where to take my story.

7. what are the things you focus on when proofreading?

The biggest thing I focus on is flowing and fluency. I get so wrapped up in my own head that what I’m thinking does not always translate, and so it’s very important to me that everything flows well and makes sense. Especially with poetry because I am not good with structure and rhyming and beats. So pretty much everything I do is free verse, which can leave a lot to be desired with flow if I’m not being careful.

Given questions:

1. do you typically write for yourself or others? as a writer on tumblr, do you ever find yourself pressured as a writer to seek out notes and popularity or is that something you aren’t concerned with?

I primarily write for myself, because if I don’t then I will probably explode from all of the emotions welling up inside of me. It would not be pretty. However, I fully admit to being someone who gets very concerned about sharing my writing with others. I want to know what they think, how they feel. I want to know that my writing has an impact on people. And seeing notes and comments on my writing fills me with a fair amount of joy.

However, I’ve never gotten nearly enough attention for my writing for the concept of popularity to ever be anything to really entertain.

2. what do you think is the best process for getting out of writer’s block? what is your typical approach? My typical method of dealing with writer’s block is a lot of crying and avoiding whatever project I’m working. I either get online to seek inspiration for the project until I can work around the block, or I’ve found that switching projects entirely can help. I have so many that I’m working on at any given moment that it’s easy for me to just put one down and pick up another that is a little easier to get my brain into.  

3. do you have a certain playlist you gravitate towards while writing? or do you change it up based on what you’re writing, or how you’re feeling?

I have about 40 different spotify playlists that I listen to depending on my mood, and my ‘writing’ playlist is a culmination of all of those. Very rarely to I actually listen to it while writing. It depends on what I’m writing, but my favorite kind of music to listen to when I’m in the zone is my ‘Late Summer Mood’ playlist. Which has nothing to do with late summer except that much of it was discovered and listened to at that time of year a few years ago, and even though it wasn’t a great time, my brain still has some positive associations with this music. And a lot of the songs are by Crywolf, whose lyrics always inspire the crap out of me.

4.    what is your favorite aspect of your writing? your least favorite? why is that?

My favorite part of writing is those rare moments when I really get myself excited and inspired and I will sit and write for hour on end. Usually at the expense of any real sleep. I once had a mood like this that lasted three days, and it’s the most that I’ve ever written in any period of time. It comes at a great cost, but that excitement of seeing my own productivity is so worth it.

My least favorite is the editing/revision process. I already struggle usually getting a first draft down. The last thing that I want to do is have to tear it all apart and find the flaws, just to write it all over again. I’d rather just have it perfect the first time, which of course is impossible.

5.    what part does collaboration come into play with your work, if at all?

I don’t collaborate often with my writing, primarily because I am so inconsistent and don’t work well under pressure with writing. The notion of bringing other people into that and holding them back with my procrastination and bad writing immediately shuts down a lot of my excitement because I’m afraid of letting people down. However, I’d love to be able to do more collab work one day. It’s fun when it does work out, and I love sharing ideas with others and working with people when my negative headspace doesn’t get in the way.

[pastelgaykid22]

Drama Club

Not edited so expect mistakes

No POV

Not Dating Yet

♡

"No no no. You are all terrible. Let's try it again from the top." Eddie face palms watching his fellow club members stubble around on stage like fish out of water. "Stop, just stop. You're supost to-"

Eddie was cut off by some one loudly opening the door letting it slam against the wall then slam shut. "Sorry, I couldn't find where to go." The male sounding voice echoes off the walls of the big theater.

Eddie rolls his eyes and turns around to face the new student who's running down to the stage. Eddie instantly noticed who it was. I mean he only shared like every class with his since the sixth grade. And it wasn't till the tenth grade that Eddie realized he was in love with this boy who barely knew him. Sure he asked for answers and maybe even a pencil every know and then but besides that they have never even talked. Eddie takes in a deep breath and uses his acting skills to stay calm and pretend like he's never seen the boy. "You're 30 minutes late." Eddie crosses his arms and glairs up at the much taller boy. "Ya know what whatever, what's your name new kid?"

"Richard Tozier, but everyone calls me Richie." The taller boy smiles and hands Eddie a slip of paper.

"I'm Eddie." Eddie quickly scans it and something catches his eye. "So you're doing this to raise your grade?"

Richie nods and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Yea, I kinda fucking suck at classes so they said I could do this to help or some shit."

"Fine, but if I'm letting you do this you have to straighten up. Drop the trashmouth, stand up straight, spit out your gum, and get up on that stage." Eddie quickly grabs a script and pushes it to Richie chest. "Now go." Richie laughs and rolls his eyes and slowly walk on to the stage. "Ok you know what I changed my mind everyone sit down behind me." Everyone cheers and runs to a seat in the audience. "Everyone but you Richard." Richie stops half way down the stairs, that lead off the stage, and sighs turning back around going back on the stage. Eddie smirks and jumps up on the stage. "Now let's see how good you are."

Richie rolls his eyes and drops the script by his feet. "Well what do you wanna see?"

"Can you sing?" Eddie smiles when Richie nods. "Can you dance?"

Richie shrugs. "I don't know. I never tried."

"Can you act?"

Richie throws his hands up and shrugs again. "Again, I never tried."

Eddie sighs and shakes his head. "Ugh you're useless. Well what can you sing?"

Richie tences up and nervously laughs. "Y-you want me to sing now?"

Eddie nods and crosses his arms. "Yea, if you're gonna do this you're gonna have to sing in front of everyone at any time."

Richie sighs and runs his finger threw his hair. "Fine. But can you sing with me."

Eddie smiles and nods. "Of course! Do you know Seasons Of Love?"

"Uh what?"

Eddie glares up at Richie looking dissapoited. "The song, from Rent."

"Oh, yea I love that movie." Richie smiles and Eddie runs over to the piano sitting on stage left. (That means of your standing in the audience it's on the right)

Eddie smiles and silently cracks his nuckles and plays a few notes before looking at Richie. "You ready?"

Richie nods and Eddie starts to play. Richie stands next to him astonished by how well Eddie can play. Eddie stops playing and looks at Richie. "Well you gonna sing or not?"

"Oh shit, yea. Sorry." Richie smiles and watches him play again. The Richie softly starts singing.

"If you wanna pass then you gotta sing louder new kid!"

Richie sighs and sings a bit louder. Eddie blushes as he plays along begining to sing too. Richie sings looking at Eddie smiling. He was really good. I mean you kinda have to be if you're gonna be the leader of the drama club.

The boys finish the first verse and Eddie stops and looks at Richie with a big smile. "You're not to bad Richie. How about you stay after practice a bit."

Richie nods and smiles a bit.

...

"So.. Richard Tozier?" Eddie sits on the top of the piano with a smile as Richie sits in the piano's small bench. "You're grades suck so you come here to get higher scores."

Richie nods playing a few random notes. "Yea and as soon as my grades get back up I'll never have to take to you ever again."

"What? You can't do that? You're amazing!" Eddie blushes and looks away. "It's like you were born to be on stage, like me."

Richie runs his hand through his hair and shrugs. "Yea no, theater deffently isn't my thing. I'm more of a sports guy."

Eddie sighs and adjusts himself on the piano. "But in theatre you get to sing to all those cute girls in the audience."

Richie sighs and rolls his eyes. "No way, all the girls here are sluts and whores." Eddie giggles causing Richie to smile. "I would rather date a guy then one of those bitches."

"Wait really?" Eddie trys to hide a smile but fails.

"Deffently. As long as the person's cute, funny, smart, you know shit like that, I don't care what gender they are."

Eddie's face heats up quickly. "O-oh.." Eddie smiles like an idiot as he trys try not to blush so much.

Richie see Eddie and laughs a bit to himself. This was deffently gonna be a start to a great friendship and maybe even more.

...

"Ok people. Eddie's running a little late so I'll be couching you today, or at least until he shows up." Everyone rolls their eyes and get into the stage. "So, as you all know we are holding auditions for the musical Grease. So if you take a look at this paper-"

"You should totally be Danny Zuko!" A short little nerdy girl with suspenders, glasses, braces, and a small lisp scream from the back of the stage. "And I can be your Sandy Olsson."

Richie smiles and nervously laughs. "Yea, we'll see about that."

Everyone turns to face the back of the auditorium when the door slowly creeks open. "Sorry I'm late."

Richie smiles seeing his best friend but his smile fades when he sees him not smiling. "Uh ok everyone start doing warm up and shit, I'll be right back." Everyone looks at eachother and starts happily talking about auditions. "Is something wrong?"

Eddie looks up at Richie and smiles a bit. "No, I'm fine. It's just weird being late, I mean I am the director of this club so shouldn't I be on time?"

Richie takes Eddie's chin making him look up at him. "Eds come on, you can tell me."

Eddie blushes brightly and pushes Richie's hand away. "Don't call me that. And I'm fine ok? Now let's get on with practice." Eddie smiles and drops his bag by the stage then quickly runs up on to it. "So auditions are tomorrow and we will..."

Eddie's voice fades out as Richie watches from the audience with a dorky smile as Eddie leads the class. Richie he's deffently fallen in love with theater, and he never wanted to leave the stage.

"Richie!" Eddie yells down, snaming the boy out of his thoughts. "Can you play the roll of Danny?"

Richie smiles widely and nods. "Of course!"

Eddie smiles and turns back to the group. "Great. Now girls, there can only be one Sandy. And if you wanna get the chance to be here make sure you show up tomorrow." All the girls begin to whisper and stair at Richie lovingly. I mean he was perfict in every way, and puberty deffently treated him right. Eddie jumps off the stage and stands next to Richie. "All these girls are doing this just so they can kiss you."

Richie's eyes widen and he pulls Eddie aside so no one can hear them. "Wait, so one of these girls has to kiss me?" Richie's heart stops when Eddie nods. "But none of them are even cute."

Eddie giggles and brushes some hair behind his ear. "Well it's gonna have to happen with some one Richie."

...

It was the big night, the night of the play. Richie sits in the back fixing his hair trying to look nice.

Eddie smiles seeing Richie trying to fix everything up. Eddie walks over and pulls Richie's hands down. "Stop it, you look fine."

Richie sighs and looks at Eddie in the mirror. "Yea I know it's just... I'm kinda nervous. And I don't wanna kiss her."

Eddie giggles and lets go of Richie's hand. "Come on Sally isn't that bad." Eddie smiles and looks over at the nerdy girl who's trying to put in contacts and practicing to hide her lisp.

Richie looks over and cringes. "No she's pretty bad."

Eddie lightly slaps Richie's arm. "Richie that's not nice."

"Hey but it's the truth." Richie shrugs and goes back to fixing himself up.

Eddie rolls his eyes and pats Richie's back. "You'll be fine and everything will be great, trust me."

Richie smiles adjusting his glasses, that he refused to take off for the show. "Ok fine, but I'll tell you there is deffently someone else I would much rather be kissing tonight." With that Richie walks off leaving Eddie with pink stained cheeks.

...

Eddie watches from back stage as Richie and Sally perform. Everyone smiles and watches the performance.

Richie smiles and sings, dancing, ect. around the stage with Sally actually having fun with it. Sally lovingly acts along looking at Richie with a big smile. The sceane ends and the crowd cheers loudly. The curtains close to get really ready for the final sceane and song. Richie smiles and looks at Sally nefore running off. Sally grabs Richie's arm and smiles before he can run off. "Ready for the final sceane?"

"I'm sorry but I can't. I'm making a few quick changes. You where great Sally but I'm gonna need your mic and outfit for this last sceane."

Sally's jaw drops and she crosses her arms. "No way. I'm getting that dang kiss."

Richie sighs and quickly kisses Sally's cheek. "There happy?"

Sally squeels and melts almost. "Ok you can have my stuff now."

Richie smiles widely and kisses her cheek again. "Thank you so much Sally."

Eddie watches from the side and slowly walks up to Richie. "What's going on?"

"No time to explain. You know the last song right? And all the lines?"

"Yea of course. Why?"

"Good, well go get ready cause you're gonna the new Sandy."

Eddie face quickly turns blood red. "W-what? No I can't I-"

"You have to Sally isn't felling well and you're the only one that knows all the lines." Richie smiles and lies the best he can.

Eddie sighs and runs off to quickly get ready. Eddie comes back head down blush ing like crazy. Wearing the tightish clothes that actully fit him perfectly, and a small little blond wig. Richie giggles and takes Eddie's hand causing him to blush more. "You remember what I said before?" Eddie nods trying not to die. "You're that person Eds. You're amazing and as the song says, well, you're the one that I want."

Eddie smiles widely and squeezes Richie's hand. "Really?"

Richie nods and kisses Eddie's cheek causing Eddie to almost die. "Of course, now let's do this shit. Together." Richie smiles and tolds there hands up a bit.

Eddie nods and smiles. "Together."

The curtains open and everyone cheers then quickly goes quite when they see Eddie instead of Sally. Eddie bites his lip and quickly grows nervous. Richie smiles and whispers covering the mic so only Eddie can hear. "Some amazing person once told me, 'if you're gonna do this you're gonna have to sing in front of everyone at anytime.'"

Eddie giggles and whispers back. "Hey, I said that."

Richie smiles and nods. "Yea now let's fucking do this."

Eddie smiles and begins to resight Sandy's lines that he had known by heart ever since he was 5. Everyone in the audience laughs when he adds some lines or acts completely like a girl. Richie smiles watching Eddie act out Sandy's part perfectly. After a few lines are said and done the song starts and everyone cheers knowing what's comming. Richie smiles widely adjusting his glasses and begining to sing.

Richie and Eddie dance around the stage singing and just having fun with it, letting there true feelings show cause everyone will just think it's acting. Once the song starts coming close to the end the boys take each others hands and sing the last part before Richie spins Eddie around and dips him, smashing their lips together. The audience cheers giving the boys a standing ovation as they kiss eachother passionately, never wanting this moment to end.