#who does the music love

[dustedmagazine]

Outer World — Who Does the Music Love? (HHBTM)

“Outer World” has a powerful momentum, bass grinding, synths popping, guitars clanging, as Tracy Wilson’s singing surges over it. “I love the music,” she declares repeatedly, joy bubbling out of every syllable, until she asks, “Who does the music love?” It’s a hands-in-the-air, hips-on-a-swivel psychedelic bop along the lines of Os Mutantes’ “Bat Macumba,” and the best song on Outer World’s debut EP. Though, not by much, this is groovy, exuberant stuff.

It starts with the bubbly, bouncy, woo-woo space-shot of “The Drum The Beat,” a cut that hops up and down like the B-52s and buzzes and hums like switched on Stereolab. “Flower Gunpowder” runs slower, but still buoyantly, a hard, slapping beat pushing witchy new age mysticism through a Peter Max lens. It is brightly colored, playful and vibrating with spirit. “Forms of Knowing” again abuts Stereolab’s sonic world, an underlying drone of organ connecting airy vocals and puncturing, rackety percussion. “Loteria,” the one track you might not want to dance to, is a dreamlike astral projection with interleaved vocals and whooshing atmospherics.

It's all just a gas that you might be surprised about the backstory, which involves coming back from considerable adversity. In the 1990s, Tracy Wilson was the big brassy vocalist for the NJ hardcore band Dahlia Seed. Later, she served that same outsized role with the more lyrical Positive No, this time with Kenneth Close on guitar. Sadly, Wilson caught a bad case of long COVID, which destroyed her lung capacity and diminished her outsized vocal presence. Outer World grew out of Close and Wilson working with her post-pandemic voice, not as powerful now but still stirring.  It’s a testament to perseverance and struggling to do what you most value, even when your body isn’t cooperating, and it makes Wilson’s declaration, “I love the music/Who does the music love?” even more triumphant. Wilson may not be as loud as she was, but she’s a riveting presence all the same.

Jennifer Kelly

[justarandombrit]

I don't know

[kindred-spirit-93]

*appears with a note saying "odypen art pls?"*

mwah!

*skidaddles*

russet potato & banana peel <3

[opera-ghost]

it's immensely funny to me how andrew lloyd webber read this passage from the book and was like yeah the journey down to the phantom's lair is this really breathtaking magical gondola ride where christine is just captivated by the strange and fantastical beauty of it all (see below)

when in the novel they're both like in a rowboat in the dark with christine scared out of her mind and confused as hell while erik is paddling like he's out for an extreme day of fishing and just staring christine down for the entire duration of the journey without blinking once . like mind you his eyes quite literally GLOW in the DARK and he's just fucking staring into her soul and silently rowing and probably not even breathing like

[zarnzarn]

Penelope owns a golden chain.

It is a thick, large piece with two cuffs connected to one end of it, made of robust metal that still shines beautifully years later. It stretches perhaps some four metres, at most, and the clasp in the middle allows her to twist it tighter if she wants it to. The blacksmith she had commissioned it from had given her two copies of the key- one of which she'd tossed off of a high cliff, and the other that she keeps safe in a locked box in her room.

It can clasp to her bed, to the throne and to the bath flooring. She had it enchanted by a witch on the run from a neighbouring kingdom in exchange for security, to never cross the limits of the shoreline- so she never loses it, she'd said. She had won a favour off an alchemist in a bet and gotten it spelled to never break. She polishes it every day carefully to look it's best before she leaves the room.

It has only one use.

"I will hobble you like a horse," She hisses to her husband when he returns to her after twenty years. Adjusts herself and leans down to whisper in his ear, "I will chain you down like a common beast, cut out that silver tongue of yours so you can no longer get into trouble, break your fucking legs."

The chain clinks as Odysseus gasps for air. Penelope smiles and traces the edge of his adoring, breathless grin. "You are not allowed to leave me ever again."

Penelope owns a golden chain.

It looks wonderful around her husband's feet.

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance - Traverse Town

[blueskittlesart]

deeply refreshing to see someone critical of Swift who also like, genuinely likes her. Like i'm neutral to positive on her, but the online discourse has been absolutely rancid. flipping between "Taylor Swift has never done anything wrong ever and she's a fucking genius" and "Taylor Swift is the worst lyricist of all time and also a bad person" is exhausting, so thank you for like. nuance or something lmao

not to make it serious for a sec but i genuinely think that being able to like things that are bad is really important. like I think that it's an important skill to be able to look at something and see what you personally enjoy about it and then take a step back and acknowledge that objectively it's flawed. and to also be able to acknowledge that liking something isn't necessarily an identity or a moral stance. and i think that fandom space in general could really benefit from more people taking the time to learn how to do that. it's okay to like things that are bad

[starry-bi-sky]

mmmm musical cultivator shen yuan again. Feng Xuanlu, the Wind Song. He has this well-loved wooden pipe he inherited from is adoptive father that he uses on occasion. When the traveling day gets slow and he doesn't feel like singing, when he's stressed, when night falls and he's sitting around a fire with his troupe and they've all had a little bit to drink.

His hair is long and black, always tied up into a ponytail or a braid of some sort. When he's in camp he loosens it up until its splayed messily over his shoulder. He has crows feet around his eyes that scrunch up when he smiles. His eyes are bamboo green and his hands are rough and callused from years of plucking strings and work. He has scars on his back that he won't explain the origins of.

His voice is low and warm like a fire, it gets raspy in the mornings or when he's been humming or singing for too long. He speaks like there's sunshine dripping off his tongue. He speaks soft, he speaks and his voice takes up the entire room. He's spent over a decade hearing his praises getting sung and he still gets shy over it sometimes.

Whenever he goes into town he has to have at least three other musicians with him at all times -- not his decision of course, but the unanimous choice of his companions. Shen Yuan gathers admirers everywhere he goes, and his companions have long since learned that their dear friend and leader is completely unaware of it. So they have to beat off these suitors with sticks.

[sleepy-spaceman]

when im sad i look at the trivia section of the jacobi wiki page and my day gets a little bit better

[deadchannelradio]

my fanfiction abortion morgue is gaining another jayroy victim that is not long enough to clean up for ao3. this was going to be a very long and meandering noodle about in the river that is jason's mental health and trauma and relationships of all types and healing and the asexual/aromantic spectrum (not that that's the verbage jason would use or language hes even aware of) and low sex drives all that beautiful muck and mire but i have not put a single word on it in well over a year now. so i'm letting her go. be free little fish.

-

They’re better now, anyways, better than they ever were before. Jason had a crisis a few months back, stopping himself from reaching reflexively for his phone to give Dick a call about- nothing important. And then he had realized that he had reflexively gone to call Dick about nothing important, and had gone and stared out the window for 15 minutes, trying to work himself into a different, less horrifying conclusion than the one gathering in his brain like an avalanche. Roy had come home in the middle of it, taken one look at his face and dropped his bag on the floor with a thunk.

“Holy shit,” he said. “Who died?”

“I like him,” Jason said, somewhere between incredulous and horrified. “That cunt, that motherfucker- he made me actually like him-,”

“Who?”

“Dick!” Jason had shouted. “That piece of shit, I want to spend time with him, hours out of my actual human life that I can’t get back-,”

Roy had proceeded to laugh in his face for a solid ten minutes, positively gleeful about Jason’s horrible emotional crisis. “He does that to you, man,” he said once they’d settled in, still chuckling as he cracked open a can of soda, posted up on their couch with Ethiopian takeout in his lap. “One minute you’re sitting there thinking oh my god, this guy, he’s so loud and annoying-,”

“And he never fuckin’ stops moving,” Jason groaned from his spot laying on the floor below him. “His body or his mouth. And he chews loud, he’s obnoxious on purpose, and he’s a model and dated Kory but half the time he dresses like something a goodwill dumpster threw up-,”

“Have you seen his new shoes?” Roy asked. “I dress like dogshit, man, but those things-,”

“Wally got them for him,” Jason said, and then immediately slapped his hands over his face, horrified that he knew that. Roy laughed again. “He’s constantly in your fuckin’ business! Constantly! Last time I saw him he knew the social security numbers of the baristas in the coffee shop I’d been going to-,”

“He gets enabled,” Roy muttered, shoveling injera into his mouth.

“He gets enabled!” Jason said. “Everyone enables him! I enable him! And god, his fucking- puns, man, his quips, we’re all guilty of it but this is a fight, not comedy hour, and even if it was you’d get booed off the stage-,”

“He texted me what he said to Mr. Freeze two weeks ago and I wanted to eat my phone,” Roy said. “It’s amazing no villains kill themselves after he hands their asses to them, I would be humiliated.”

“He sucks!” Jason snapped. 

“He sucks,” Roy agreed. “And then you look around one day at your life-,”

“And you go oh shit, I think this motherfucker’s alright!” Jason mimed hitting himself in the face with Roy’s abandoned house slipper. “Fuck! What’s fucking wrong with me?”

Roy laughed at him, again. “Dick Grayson Derangement Syndrome gets us all in the end,” he said. Jason curled a hand around his bare ankle, and Roy looked down to smile at him, the smallest touch making his whole face bloom open like a rose. Jason had to look away from it, wanting to say: stop. No. You know I’m not enough. You know I’m not like you. You know I can’t give you enough.

He’s been wanting to say that a lot, these days. Toss Roy off the sinking ship with a lifeboat before he has to wake up one day, years on, and realize he’s wasted years with Jason, who can’t love that loud.

He wanted to call Dick about it, which was another horrible realization. Hi big bird, I’m having boy problems. Dick would probably tell him that it means more that Jason has to try, that wanting to try for it is selfless, makes it more significant, which is the kind of thinking that lands a motherfucker in bed with Barbara Gordon, who is enough like Jason to warrant a comparison, but not enough to call her and ask what he should do. Babs loves like the Bolton Strid, and sometimes Jason isn’t sure he loves at all. Not like that.

Jason isn’t nearly as selfless as Dick is convinced he is, not deep down. Because he doesn’t want to let Roy go at all.

It’s late, well into the witching hours, and they’re laying in bed in what was formerly Roy’s bedroom but now holds them both, blinds cracked to let the streetlights through. Jason doesn’t like the dark. Roy’s threatening to buy an eyemask. Jason thinks it’s stupid to blind yourself to potential attackers. Neither of them have brought up going back to sleeping separately. Roy’s nose is pressed between Jason’s shoulder blades, breath humid through his shirt. Not asleep yet, but close. Jason’s books are proliferating on Roy’s shelves, his boxers in Roy’s laundry basket, garrotte wires coiled next to bow strings on the desk that has framed photos, past-Jason’s mouth a little white slash in the bar of orange streetlamp.

Something is clawing at the inside of Jason’s chest, scrabbling like a wild little animal. Trying to dig its way through his spine, into Roy. It hurts.

He shifts, turns over, pushes Roy over onto his back and rolls on top of him, propped up on his elbows to look down at him. Roy grunts, half-awake and confused, but takes his weight. He blinks blearily up at Jason, a crease between his eyebrows- Jason must look intense right now. “Jaybird?” he starts, quiet.

Jason knows this feeling- as all-consuming as it is- is fleeting. It’ll be gone in the morning, and he’ll forget it was ever here. He won’t be able to recall its bite until it comes back around again, like Halley’s comet. He should say something now, while he has it. While he feels it. So Roy can know it’s real. He just doesn’t know how to describe it.

“Jase,” Roy says, sounding more concerned, “Jason, what’s-,”

“Something in here,” Jason interrupts, putting a hand on his own chest, a thudding sound of muscle on muscle, “Wants to eat you.” God, he feels dumb. He’s not good at this, he sounds so much better in his head. His words come out of his mouth sour and curdled and stupid, there’s a reason he doesn’t try to talk about this shit-

Roy lights up, slow at first, then all at once, his face creasing up in his smile like old paper, following familiar folds. Jason feels his toes curl next to his calves, his feet pointing and flexing in excitement. Jason wishes he could make himself smile back, anything other than the dead-eyed concentration he knows he’s wearing right now, but the weight in his ribs is too real and too wild for that- if his teeth come out this might get literal. He wants to crack open Roy’s sternum with his bare hands, climb in like a contortionist and slam it shut behind him.

“Really?” Roy asks, small and soft and giddy. Jason nods, serious. Roy’s teeth dig into his bottom lip, smiling so wide his nose is wrinkling up, little inky lines in the artificial twilight. “Cool,” he says. 

Jason’s hands spasm in the sheets next to Roy’s head. “Roy,” he starts, “Can I-,” stops. Doesn’t know what he wants. Maybe just to look at him until the sun comes up, just to watch the light turn his freckles from a smear in the dim to pinprick-sized marigolds. Maybe to go to sleep on him like this, the thunder of his heart under Jason’s cheek. Maybe he wants everything. Maybe he wants to be the greediest son of a bitch in Gotham. 

“You can do anything,” Roy promises, and the sincerity in his voice makes the thing chewing on Jason’s lungs shake. “Anything you want. I’ll let you do everything.”

Jason drops his head against Roy’s chest with a grunt like he’s just been punched, unable to choke it back. He pushes himself up- Roy makes a quiet, sad noise, grabbing for him- and fumbles the bedside lamp on. He wants to see everything. Roy’s pupils are huge, even in the light he’s flinching from, irises that strange half-color, too dark for blue or green and too flat for hazel and too light to be brown. His cowlick’s sending his hair in every direction at the left temple, and he’s still smiling at Jason, like he can’t help it. Jason doesn’t know what to do, now that he’s here. A restaurant with an infinite menu. What he wants is strange, probably. Not how normal people want things, not what they want. Jason is off-putting, sometimes on purpose, frequently not, and he doesn’t know how this will come across. But Roy said he could have anything. Whatever he wanted. Giving up all of himself, for nothing. For free. 

Jason should take it. Roy will stop him, if he needs it. He puts his mouth on the cowlick, not a kiss, tucks his nose into Roy’s hair and breathes in deep. The nothing-smell of hair that’s not clean but not dirty. Roy’s hands are pressing into his lats, his legs spreading and crossing behind Jason’s thighs, holding him there. Jason curls both his hands around Roy’s skull, presses gently, cradling his head- all of Roy is in there, somehow, and he needs to be careful with it. His skull feels too small to hold something so important, too fragile. 

Jason drags his thumbs over his eyebrows, presses a thumbnail into the scar bisecting the left one- string snap, Roy told him, nearly took that eye out. Roy’s looking up at him still, and they’re close enough that Jason could count his eyelashes, if he wanted. He runs his fingers over Roy’s ears, feeling the cartilage, gently pinches the flesh of his earlobe, over the hole where he used to have gauges. He moves down to Roy’s neck, puts his hands around his throat, doesn’t squeeze. He feels it when Roy’s breath hitches. Roy shuts his eyes, swallows, his Adam's apple moving under Jason’s palms. 

Jason bites him where his neck meets his shoulder, hard. He thinks about being normal, trying to make it a hickey- but Roy jerks hard beneath him with a strangled noise and that thing in Jason’s chest makes him hold that position until Roy stops moving, until the bolt of his jaw aches. He lets go, spit shining around the deep purple indents in Roy’s skin. Roy lets out a shaking breath, eyes still shut.

Roy already knows he’s an inscrutable freak, Jason decides. He’s going to do everything he’s ever looked at Roy and thought about doing, everything he thought might be weird that he’s ever refrained from. Roy won’t run.

If he does, well. Jason will chase him. Roy is the one who said he was locking Jason down, said nobody in or out. He can’t get too mad if Jason takes him up on it.

He presses his nose near Roy’s armpit. The sharp, live smell of his sweat in Jason’s lungs, muted by whatever axe deodorant he uses that always makes Jason think of a cold wet morning. He rubs his mouth over Roy’s deltoid, teeth dragging. Jason pushes up and kneels with his thighs on either side of Roy’s torso, picks up an arm, runs his hands over Roy’s bicep, digs his thumbs into his elbow. Puts Roy’s thumb in his mouth, tastes skin and salt, bites the draw calluses on his fingers, gentle. Does the other arm too, to keep it even. Roy’s breathing slow and even, looking at Jason again as he shoves his mouth into Roy’s wrist until he can feel the pulse against his lower lip. Roy’s trying to caress his face with that hand, can’t quite manage more than a brush of his fingertips against Jason’s ear. 

Jason knows what he should say here. What he hasn’t been saying, because he knows it’s not the same as how Roy will say it, thinking that it will somehow be a lie because the meaning’s different. But it’s words, which are only stories. There is nothing in a story that is a lie, and no analysis that is wrong, with supporting evidence. Which Jason has, which Jason has always had. Roy at his right shoulder. Never wanting anyone else at his back. Saying to Dick: if there wasn’t Roy, there wouldn’t be anybody. The way they keep finding each other at the lowest of lows, facedown in bottles or looking down barrels of guns to see if they can spot the bullet. Standing there feeling stupid in the holes they’ve dug, pickaxes in hand, before turning and finding the other, just as deep as they are. Saying: gimme a boost and I’ll give you a hand.

Even if he doesn’t mean it in the same way, he means it. I want you, I want you, I want you. The inflection changes the meaning, but only by the barest degrees. 

“I love you,” Jason says, and he’s not lying, because he means them, even if it’s not always how he thinks he should.

[sirjo-esque]

Okay I think that one thing we're really not talking about is how Telemachus adds something to the end of each song, the exact moment we think it's over.

"If I fight those monsters, is it you I'll find? or "Tell me Athena why you came to my aid"

He's setting up for the next song, telling us that there's still more to it. In the Wisdom Saga, he figuratively acts as a reprise to Odysseus, through his relationship with Athena and the riffs Jay pointed out in We'll Be Fine.

That's why I think it's especially important that in We'll Be Fine, Athena is the one adding to the end of the song.

"You're a good kid."

Though Telemachus technically has the last line there too, it's not one that provokes action. Instead Athena adds a line, which in theory didn't need to be there. In all technicality, the song had ended. The next song, she takes action.

She's giving herself a reprise. A second chance.

[horrorlesbion]

lolita, my love || interview with the vampire 02x07 "i could not prevent it"

bonus:

[lokittystuckinatree]

The Doctor, back on his “I’m the Last of the Time Lords. I’m so special. Look at me,” melodrama, sobbing his eyes out while fighting literal gods and saving the world with the power of friendship

Vs.

The Master, still stuck in that tooth, making sock puppets of themself and the Doctor, probably. “Don’t you see? You’ve been blind too long, Doctor! Look at what you’ve made! Look at me!”

“Oh Master, I’ve always seen you and I always will…because you…see me.” (Doctor puppet passionately kisses Master puppet)

“You’re too late.” (Master puppet brutally murders Doctor puppet)

[gotta-bail-my-quails]

(ch366 spoilers) ok but seriously, i have some thoughts on this that are maybe too long to put in one go but essentially, I don't think Iruma will take up Mephisto's offer on the basis of him being the "king-maker", rather I think he would ask for his guidance more like as a teacher. Especially since Sullivan has already told Iruma becoming the demon king is only one path he has of many, and Iruma himself saying he's still a student when Mephisto originally (jokingly) named him king of the Many-Ears. Plus him being a teacher now and always admiring the teachers of Babyls.

(Although personally I think school + action shounen that results in the MC becoming a techer is hit or miss. Like Assassination Classroom made sense because the whole point was the teachers and students' relationship to each other not the killing. And how people are kinda hating on MHA's ending for yoinking Deku's power [idk that's what I heard] and making him a teacher even though personally I think the ending makes sense from a pure narrative structure perspective though it perhaps doesn't have the same context that makes it satisfying since AssClass was a very small enclosed world centered around the school and MHA did not, afaik. Anyway, I think it would work with Iruma, and I could definitely see him being both a teacher and demon king--it's very greedy but it fits M!IK's themes perfectly)

on the other hand, Mephisto's declaration is basically saying he has chosen who he supports as the next demon king, so regardless of what Iruma decides, Baal will absolutely not overlook it. Obviously, because he has gotten Princess Shura's support seemingly to become king himself, but what if Iruma becoming king will help his goal to (as it seems) extract Delkira's power? Ali only gets stronger as Iruma's rank goes up, so who knows what will happen if he passes Scala here. Maybe Delkira's power will manifest enough for Baal's goals. And now that I think about it, does Iruma even know Baal is trying to kidnap/use him? If Baal ends up showing his support for Iruma and Iruma doesn't realize his malicious intent...

[softgothbabe]

[the-one-that-weeps]

Over Rad Squad happened so long ago but I'm still not over how much of Kohane's arc is about love.

It takes her 3 events to fully connect to Vivid Street and she does it through the love for music they share. And that love helps her realise that Vivid Street is also stuck, also scared of taking that first step, like she used to.

She's blowing up the wall for Vivid Street too.

So if Kohane is the only one who could blow up that wall— that means the only one who could ever save Vivid Street was Kohane.