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revasserium · 4 years

Note

Can I have 34 with Sugawara? thank you

hq!!reqs temporarily: closed ; all other reqs: open

send me a number a character and i’ll write you a drabble ;

34. insomnia: the owner’s instructions suga ; 1,659 words

a/n: suga, the type of stay up at night bc of an existential crisis.

the truth is – everything ends. it’s one of those fundamental, incontestable truths, a silver thread in the very fabric of reality, a cornerstone fact upon which the world was built, precarious and everlasting: everything ends. everything. and maybe it’s pointless to let the encroaching shadow of existential dread keep him up at night, but sugawara koushi is just that kind of person. he lies awake thinking about the probable heat death of the universe, and the fact that try as he might, nothing he does, nothing truly, really, actually means anything.

he flips onto his side, sighs, tugs his phone from beneath his pillow and flicks open the screen. the time glares at him – a jarring 4:33am. he groans and buries his face in his pillow.

shit.

and he has morning practice tomorrow.

double shit.

he peers at this phone again. 4:34am.

he opens up his messages and scrolls through his history with you, grinning at all the stupid memes you send each other. his eyes pause on your last message to him – night, love you. sleep tight.

he’d responded in kind, except exclusively with emojis that perhaps trailed into the questionable territory of being suggestive. but i mean. eggplants are perfectly innocent vegetables, aren’t they?

his fingers hover over the keys.

why the fuck not. she’s probably asleep anyway.

can’t sleep. miss you. wish u were here.

he hits send, and almost closes out the app when the signature three dots appear at the bottom of his scene and he freezes. why the hell are you awake?

it seems that you shared his sentiments rather exactly, as your message appears with a little bloop.

why the hell are you awake?

he crinkles his nose, fingers already flying.

said i couldn’t sleep. :( u never read my texts properly.

a moment later, his phone buzzes and he sees your caller id flare up over his screen. he grins, tapping the green answer button.

“i do too read your messages.”

he laughs, the sound just a tad strange in the echo of darkness.

“fine, fine, yeah you do. i was just teasing.”

“when are you not.”

“fair.”

quiet. the moonlight bleeds slivers between his curtains, the light slicing his room into bits – he raises a hand, staring at his bisected palm with a light frown.

“are you thinking about the end of the world again?”

your voice startles him, even across the line, he can hear the way you must be raising your eyebrows, that teasing smile he loves so much twisting your lips. you sound exasperated. and rightly so. he’s exasperated with himself too.

“may…be?”

“hm. figured.”

he lets his hand fall back onto the bed, rolls onto his back to stare at the ceiling.

“what do you think happens after we all die?”

he hears you shift in your bed as well, and a moment later, you sigh.

“the universe world keeps on spinning. nothing much changes.”

“right, but like… isn’t it weird to think that all this has existed before us, and it’ll continue to exist after? like. what are we, even?”

you laugh, the sound making his stomach flutter.

“cosmic fallout.”

“wow,” suga rolls his eyes before remembering you can’t see him. though he’s sure you can hear it in his voice. you’ve known each other for way too long. longer than he cares to try and remember. maybe that’s what it’s like to not worry – to trust something enough not to question it. to not have to question it.

“that’s not depressing at all.”

you hum, “well. it is. but it’s not like anything we can do will change that. so why lose sleep over it? it’s got no sway on how your life will be.”

“right, but it’s just… strange – isn’t it? like. how did we even end up here? with like… phones and computers and internet and – and relationships.”

you’re laughing again, and he closes his eyes. one of these days, he thinks he’ll tape it, the way you laugh, and maybe loop it so it can be the backing track to his entire existence. maybe that’ll give it some meaning, at least –

he wishes you were there. so he curls up onto his side again and cradles the phone to his ear.

“i miss you.”

“i know. i miss you too.”

“you should come over.”

“koushi. it’s 4am.”

“almost 5.”

“has anyone told you you’re terrible at convincing people to do things?”

and this time, he laughs, lets the sound shake through him like the first ray of daylight on a rising sun – warm and sharp and hopeful.

“once or twice.”

another silence. suga thinks he can almost hear the sound of the world turning, it’s so quiet. and then, your voice cuts through the invariable darkness.

“by accident.”

“huh?” he blinks, unsure of if the line cut off.

“that’s how we all ended up here, a massive, cosmic series of accidents. everything happened just so, all the stars that have ever lived or died – they all did it in just the way they had to for us to somehow end up here, and be able to hold hands and stay up late at night worrying about death and the end of all time.”

“one hell of an accident,” suga mumbles, crinkling his nose. a wave of tiredness washes over him. he wants to tell you to keep on talking. maybe he’ll record that too, just you talking about something, anything, everything. maybe that’s the cure to insomnia – just you and your voice, lulling him to sleep every night.

he wonders if that’s weird, and decides that well, he’s your boyfriend, he can be a little bit weird with this kinda stuff.

“still, pretty amazing right? all that happened so you could accidentally confess to me during homeroom.”

suga squawks.

“will you cease and desist? god – you’re just as bad as daichi and noya! they made fun of me for months – months! can you believe it? my own fucking teammates.”

your laughter washes over him, soothing his fraying nerves even as he huffs and tries to be angry with you. but it’s impossible – it’s been impossible for a long while now, and he wonders why he still tries.

maybe it’s because he’s so in love.

“but – whatever happens after we’re all gone,” you say, your voice soft and steady and full of a tenderness so striking it makes his chest squeeze, “at least we had this while we were here, right? at least by some strange conspiracy of the universe, we met each other. and – and fell in love. and… it doesn’t really matter if it doesn’t last forever. cause i’ll remember it happened. and you will too.”

you take a breath that sounds like the meeting of truth and tragedy, or perhaps the two finding out that they were always one and the same.

suga holds his own breath, forgets for a moment that he even has lungs.

“and… i think that’s enough. for me.”

he lets the breath go, his body curling into itself as he lets his eyes fall shut, his heartbeat thrumming to the sound of your breaths.

“wow,” he says again. though, it carries none of its former irony.

and, after a beat.

“you’re a sap.”

and this time, you’re the one sighing.

“i’m hanging up.”

“wait! not yet – c’mon, you know i didn’t mean it.” he’s laughing again. he does that a lot with you.

“fine, but only until you fall asleep.”

he smiles, a pleasant warmth already spreading through his limbs, making heavy his eyelids.

“i’m already getting sleepy.”

“good.”

quiet, once more. the moonlight falling across his room seems to spell out eternity, and it’s moments like this when suga wonders what it’d be like to live forever. not in the sense that he wants to live for a million years, but that he’d like to live in this moment for long than – well, this moment lasts.

he wants to stretch out the seconds like taffy between his fingers, relish in the sound of your voice, your laughter, in the smell of your hair after you’ve just washed it, the way you kiss him, on the lips, on the cheek, over his eyelids till they see in nothing but daydreams.

“hey,” he says, whispers into the phone like a secret.

“hm?” your voice answers back.

“i think i love you.”

you pause, and for a moment, just a moment, he thinks he can taste that unattainable forever. he wants to live inside that moment. for as long as he can.

“i think i love you too.”

and, even though they’re words you often say to each other, repeated so many times they might lose their meaning – there’s something about the time – the hours caught between morning and night, something about the foreverness of those precious few moments, that makes those words – that specific sequence of letters and sounds, mean so much more than they usually do.

suga realizes that this is also truth – a kind that he’s always neglected to think about. the truth of beginnings, and middles, and the eternities that live passed the endings.

because there are certain forevers that live outside the realm of time and space, forevers that are contained within their own special fragments of realities – his and yours, for instance.

and just for now, for this one moment – love is not an ever-ending thing.

and the truth is, no matter how dark and dreary the eventual end of the world might be, at least he had this. at least he met you. and at least, he’s known the taste of falling in love. and that’s something.

isn’t it?

–

taglist: @thewaterlily @dorkyama @undertheseabass @miyulovestowrite @writing-in-monotone @lceiji @vventure @writeiolite

(pls let me know if you’d like to be added to the list! or if you’d like to be removed! u__u)

#haikyuuwritersnet #sugawara koushi #sugawara koushi x reader #sugawara x reader #haikyuu scenarios #floofy floof floof #haicuties #suga inspires a lot of very interesting writing for me #i just think he's such an interesting character #and my obvious bias is showing again oof #anyway its my first time doing a taglist! lmao idk if im doing it right but!#i think about this alot too but its not like existential DREAd to me #i think about it like -- well if nothing means anything might as well do what u want and live ur best life anyway #if none of it matters then YOU get to decide what matters and thats a vERY great power to have

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cassiecasyl · 4 years

Text

we’re making it up as we go

Note: I haven’t seen 15x19 yet, so I’mma go into hiding after posting this to watch the episode. This is just a thing I was too tired last night to finish.

Prompt:

Chuck realizes the power of love through Destiel (that moment in s4e22 when Castiel volunteers to fight an archangel so Dean can do his thing bc I always got this vibe from that scene) + paired with s15e18

Read on ao3.

“You know what every other version of you did after gripping him tight and raising him from perdition? They did what they were told. But not you. Not the one off the line with a crack in his chassis.” Broken. That’s what they saw him as. The angel unable to follow orders, the one that was always causing trouble, even if he couldn’t remember it. Having his memory wiped countless times because no amount of brainwashing would ever stick. Defiant, rebel, traitor. Human. Just like Dean, no, following Dean, he transformed from the loyal soldier to an independent warrior.

When Castiel first laid a hand on you, he was lost. A reminder, cutting deeply, of how he didn’t fit in among his old family anymore. How they hated him, and Dean for taking him away from them, for poisoning him. His human weakness. Just like Akobel had said, how could he know them and not have fallen in love with them? At Dean’s side, Castiel had never felt lost, maybe confused though. At Dean’s side, he was found.

Dean. Hurt, angry, fighting, hopeless. The man preaching that there was always another way was at the end of his rope. He was lashing out at everyone, furious at the thought of being controlled, caged in. “You’re not in this story,” Chuck had once told him, before he revealed himself as God, in the beginning of Castiel’s fall. It seemed like so long ago now.

“Well, we’re making it up as we go,” Castiel had defended, because this was what Dean wanted, and this was where he belonged. Next to Dean’s side, keeping him safe. So, he had already given himself up back then, walking into a fight with an archangel with no hope to win. He’d figure it out.

That’s how they ended up here, at this epiphany that meant the end of Cas’s life, revealing a truth, and ultimately, saving Dean Winchester. He had slipped through the lines of the story, had hidden in the subtext, and now turned it around.

“I love you,” Castiel cried, happier than ever, as he found happiness in the being rather than the having. His very last action was a rebellion, and it was to save Dean Winchester. It seems that his whole being came down to this. Moments later, he was embraced by the empty, and pulled into its realm. He left his love behind, safe and soundly sobbing.

It was inconvenient love, Chuck realized as he watched this defiant finale unfold. It had been growing in the little cracks within his imperfect writing, like weeds on the street, and had planted its seed in Castiel’s chassis.

Once, he found it entertaining, and encouraged it even by resurrecting Castiel again and again. As Metatron had pointed out, it made for a good story. The angel had been an interesting play ball. But now, only frustration rose in him as he turned his perfect ending upside down, not even letting him enjoy Dean being murdered.

He’d seen it coming long ago though, hadn’t he? When Castiel was ready to sacrifice himself just to sneak Dean into a story he wasn’t supposed to be in. Chuck had seen something in the angel then, had realized his humanity that night, but had denied it. How stupid it was. It had been right under his nose and he had deemed it too unimportant to see it as a threat to his story. And now, it was slapped right into his face.

Castiel loves Dean Winchester. It was a rule his characters set up against his will, defying their very creator. It wasn’t something he had ever planned for, that he ever thought would interfere. He huffed frustratingly. Every other version had followed their plan, but it was exactly that he didn’t what made this version so fascinating.

So, what now? With Castiel finally gone, Sam, Dean and Jack mourning. The nephilim had to go. Of course he had survived. But what Chuck wanted was a perfectly world-shattering finale between just the brothers. Like it had started, so should it end.

An ethereal scream disrupted his thoughts as it echoed through several dimensions. He looked up, trying to locate it. He growled in recognition then, his eyes illuminated in pure rage. How dare he? Castiel had weaseled his way into this story and now, even after his final death, he wouldn’t lay still. The Empty’s scream of pain and frustration shook his core, tucking at him in a frightening way. It was more of a vibration, though.

Castiel opened his eyes to darkness. For a moment, he thought he could make out a little light through the all-encompassing, lethal hug, maybe a last glimpse of Dean. But, he was laying on the ground. Why was he awake? He looked around for a sign of his captor, or even his family. Jack had got him out before, hadn’t he? He’d been in full shape though.

Hope is a treacherous thing that sinks into the roots of your very being, wrecking it. Castiel knew that. But it was also what had let him time and time again back to Dean. It was there, always at his side, sometimes barely alive, sometimes a wildfire.

He heard it before he saw it. A scream filled the void, frustrated and tired, full of hatred. The angel flinched away from it, but there was nowhere to go. The entity manifested before him, taking from all around to form its body. “You just can’t stay asleep, can you?” it snarled, wearing Meg’s face. “Why does everyone have to make it loud these days? It’s not fun. Go back to sleep, Castiel!”

In all his lifetime, Castiel had never seen someone so seething with rage, letting it consume its whole being, and he had met Wrath. Hell, he had spent years with Dean Winchester, known for his poor anger management. Still, he wasn’t as intimidated as he thought he’d be. The Empty wanted something from him, and he wanted out. Maybe, they could come to an agreement, like before.

“No,” he said, and it was almost amusing how it infuriated the cosmic entity.

It moved closer, threatening the angel with its presence. “I could crush you, angel,” it whispered into his ear, “I could throw you into nothingness so poor that your being will forever be forgotten. You will never have even existed.”

“No,” Castiel simply repeated.

“No? Have you listened to a word I said? I could evaporate your very being and that’s what you say? No?” The want for sleep seemed to fill the Empty’s voice more and more with every word. It was at the end of its line. It was exhausted.

“If you could, why haven’t you already done so?” Castiel stated calmly, a strange contrast to the Empty. The living and the forever dead. Light against dark. The eternal struggle, reimagend. “You’re tired, and we both know there’s only one way to get rid of what’s keeping you up.” It growled, hating to be proven wrong.

“Don’t wake me up ever again!”

Castiel found himself in a blur until warm hands touched him, probing, worried, shaking in ecstasy. “Cas? Oh my God, Cas!” Dean whimpered, and Castiel blinked into the yellow light of the winter sun. He shivered, pressing closer to the hunter. They were smiling, laughing, united. “Don’t you ever leave me like that again! You hear me, dumbass?” Dean accused him, though unable to hide the grin on his face.

Castiel laughed, feeling the picking at his exposed skin, the impossible warmth that filled his heart, the sadness, anger, everything. He was so completely human. And Dean, Dean was there right in front of him, not letting go, crying of happiness. “I love you, Dean,” Castiel said, letting the happiness in those words swirl through. This was who he was. Castiel loves Dean Winchester.

“I know, Cas, I know,” Dean whispered back, sporting one of those rare smiles that reached his eyes. He was beautiful. “I love you, too.”

(Chuck watched from afar, his expression unreadable yet undeniably angry. This angel, who had weaseled his way into the story, had defied death again. Following love, he wound his way into a book he wasn’t supposed to be in, tossing words aside at his will. He scoffed as the angel and hunter kissed. Loved had won, after all. Chuck hated it.)

Tag List: @nightmare-in-plaid @luciferstempest @aniridescentdreamer @gnbrules @starrynightdeancas

#destiel #fanfic #my fic #S15 spoilers #castiel loves dean winchester #deancas #Chuck is angry #the empty is pissed off #tbh idek what this is #15x18 #coda

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lone-hand · 6 years

Text

A JOURNEY INTO THE INNER & OUTER COSMOS OF LINDA FOX

Though we were unable to reach Linda Fox, we managed to get a hold of a long term client and comrade of the sleep therapist / new age pop singer to discuss the making, meaning and musings of her first official album available for public consumption ‘Leopards Break Into My Heart’. Join us as we peer into Linda’s elusive world of dreams and nighttime existentialism.

“I think Linda encourages us to witness the Tragedy Of Being™ while we are awake, and then dream up a corresponding wealth of hope and courage while we are asleep.”

How do you know Linda Fox? What is your relationship to her?

I first met Linda when I was just ten years old. She was my sleep therapist. What happened is that I’d gone away to scouts camp in ’95, it was a winter camp at Manning Park, and we slept in snow caves, and when I returned home I was incredibly feverish and sick. One night I fell into a deep delirium and ran around my house screaming, a nightmare hallucination kind of an awful ordeal that my poor brother had to bear witness to, and then after that I had these crazy nightmares every night and would sleep walk. It got really bad so my parents eventually took me to a sleep therapist, Linda Fox, and she made me a personalized cassette with a guided meditation on it to help get into a good sleep state. It worked! After that I had NoMoreNightmares™.

How would you describe Linda? What is she like?

I haven’t seen her in person for quite some time. When I was young I remember she was incredibly gentle, she could maintain eye contact indefinitely which always pulled me into her energetic field. Basically contagious vibrations of pure goodness. I remember she was so calm and intense when dealing with dream stuff, but then when we’d be talking about normal life she would get super playful and goofy, make jokes and impressions like she didn’t really care about things outside of dreams, like it was all just imaginary stuff and dreams were where the real important things in life took place.

Was it an intentional decision to stay out of the spotlight or is she just reclusive and hard to reach?

When I tried to reach Linda for the first time eleven years after our therapy sessions (2006) I was unable to get ahold of her. I assumed she had moved away or something. Then I received an email about a year later from a company called LEP-E Alternatives© who said they were contacting me on Linda’s behalf. All of my contact with Linda since then has been mediated by LEP-E Alternatives©. I believe she’s most likely not interested in the spot-light as it exists now in relation to the commodification of lifestyle. Her interest is in the collective unconscious and how dreams can gain access to this realm of human experience. I believe that Linda remains in the spotlight of the collective unconscious. If you look you’ll see her center stage, maintaining eye-contact with anyone who’ll dare to look.

How did this album come to be? what inspired the creation of it?

From what I understand Linda began to add ambient synth sounds to her guided meditation tapes that she was giving to clients, helping guide them into sleep. I think she started singing her words more and more, adding more and more layers and rhythm sections, until the tapes were no longer guided meditations. They were pop songs with a Meditative Twist™.

“The heart must be cracked by life, it’s a fundamental quality of life to chip away at the heart”

What is her creative process like? how are the songs created? how was the album recorded?

Leopards Break Into My Heart is her first official album for public consumption and it is essentially a best of from all her personalized guided meditations. All the ones that were just a little too poppy to end up on a sleep tape for a traumatized client.

Does she have any favourite or integral pieces of music gear? What’s the set up?

Definitely the Korg M-1 Music Station. It is jam packed with the best in synthetic world music sounds. Linda is drawn to artificial sounds, because through the artificial one can gain access to the ‘real’. If the right combinations of artificial elements are organized together they can cause a sort of short circuit in the listener, which jams up the artificial façade that stands between them and the chaos of reality. Similar to the way a zen koan uses words to collapse the mediating powers of language, leaving us in the immediate presence of ThatWhichStandsOutsideOfLanguage®™.

So Linda uses the Korg M-1 with a loop station, creating loops that repeat endlessly during jams. Linda spends hours listening to them and slowly adding to them, building a sonic environment whose boundaries meet and blur and become seamless.

Is ‘Leopards break into my heart’ a concept album? How do the songs relate to each other?

The main theme that underlies the songs on Leopards Break Into My Heart is a conceptualization of time that is non-linear. This non-linear temporal frame is present in the content of songs, like Strangers for example, where Linda asks “who were those strangers in my dreams? / Their symptoms are the cause of my disease/ who were those strangers in my dreams? / They’re symptoms of my cognitive disease”. It’s an order of time that characterizes feedback loops, where effects cause their own causes, like the symptom of a disease that is also what caused the disease. This temporal logic seems to be primary in dream consciousness. Things are constantly happening because of themselves

Similarly, there are two songs on the album that were sampled by electronic bands, The KLF and The ORB. Linda’s songs are the originals, but they were made 15 years after they were sampled.

The lyrics evoke much curiosity, what are the songs about? Do you think there are any messages or sentiments she wished to convey?

“Hope is the sun of tomorrow’s cold embrace”. I think Linda encourages us to witness the Tragedy Of Being™ while we are awake, and then dream up a corresponding wealth of hope and courage while we are asleep. She is a nighttime existentialist, perhaps.

“It's like surfing waves of ontological uncertainty, if you swim too far out you might get sucked out past the break and not make it back, but if you do it right you can find your way back to the shores of stability.”

What does it mean for a leopard to break into ones heart?

Leopards represent a kind of change from the outside. Kafka wrote an aphorism that goes like this:

“Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry. It keeps happening. In the end it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual”

There is a certain quality of change that cannot occur from within a system, be it biological or cultural. This kind of change comes from the outside, and for Linda this change is represented by the leopard. Linda sings “There’s a crack in my heart where the Leopards get in”, which addresses her vulnerability (and I think a collective vulnerability) to changes occurring within the boundaries of our deepest source of identity. The heart must be cracked by life, it’s a fundamental quality of life to chip away at the heart, and it is also a fundamental quality of life to bring forth agents of change to infiltrate those cracks, aspects of the environment that enter into our deepest sense of self and reconfigure it. And we can’t fight the leopards. We Are The Leopards™.

Can you talk about the album art?

Linda rides a 1988 Suzuki Katana. It is a means by which Linda can find the cracks in the heart of this city:

Vancouver, BC, TheMostBeautifulCityInTheWorld™.

Once inside the heart of the city Linda can smile at the mayor, Gregor Robertson™, and say “you’ve gone too far”.

Are there any specific musical influences that informed the sound of this album? what music inspires her?

Enigma, Julee Cruise, Opus III, Future Sound of London, Harold Budd, The KLF, Orbital, Seefeel

What does it mean to be 'Horsin In the Void'?

Horsin in the Void is when you get outside of the stable. The endless task of conscious beings is probably to negotiate with their environment and maybe try to extract stability out of the chaos(!) This process leaves us worn out to say the least, and here's why: Chaos is unrelenting. Chaos has a multi-dimensional configuration, so its like, we finally stabilize things and then what the heck (?) here comes chaos from a dimension we didn't even know existed, so here we go on and on adapting to the new dimensions of instability that haunt us in Sisyphean fashion. Tiring stuff. So sometimes you relax and wander out of the stable, like a horse without a home. It's like surfing waves of ontological uncertainty, if you swim too far out you might get sucked out past the break and not make it back, but if you do it right you can find your way back to the shores of stability. Horses Surfing in Waters of Madness.

Will Linda's guided meditation tapes ever become available for public consumption?

Linda's guided meditations are strictly for those in need of her patented SleepCorrectiveTechnology™. That being said, there is a small section on Leopards Break Into My Heart that uses a sample from my original sleep meditation, and when I first heard that section I flashed back to a recurring nightmare I used to have where I was in an infinite black, empty space, and there was a giant, green, weightless cube that I was passing back and forth with an unknown opponent. It was a sort of game we were playing. At some point in the game I lost my focus and the cube drifted past me, out of reach. And as I watched the cube fade slowly into the endless dark abyss I realized all at once that by missing my chance to return the cube I had lost the game, and by losing the game I had ended the world. An enormous sense of guilt and dread filled me at that time. Enormous. I looked over at my friend who was listening to the album with me and she gave me a big thumbs up. Gosh that felt good to see that thumbs up symbol, and to know that the Green Cube Delirium (GCD) was long behind me.

Do you think we will hear more music from her in the future?

I'll be sure to pass your inquiry on to the customer service desk at LEP-E Alternatives™ for a comprehensive answer (within 10 - 12 business days[!])

Where do you think she is right now? What do you think she is doing at this very moment?

I don't know where exactly but I'd bet a horses handful she's sitting on a bench in one of Vancouver's fabulous public parks. I know she's been working on a groundbreaking cosmogony and that takes up most of her time so she's likely busy piecing that together. From what I understand she posits that the universe that we inhabit now is hollow, the only real part of the universe is the outer most boundary, the skin. By her logic, it is self evident in the concept of a universe that the only thing that could be said to truly exist is the boundary that separates it from the non-universe. But Linda's cosmogony also suggests that the boundaries of the universe are porous, open to exchange with the non-universe, like any functioning membrane must be. And that's why the universe is expanding, because non-universe is always sneaking in. THIS IS GREAT NEWS, because so much for entropy, the universe is an open system. And anyway here we are, probably just off shoot pieces of non-universe trying to fit in, and I'd guess that's where Linda is too.

#linda fox #leopards break into my heart #lone hand #interview #new music

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