#might edit in more song references later

[muzaktomyears]

George Harrison remained an enigma to many people, even those who were close to him. For a man who lectured passionately about karma and the meaning of existence, he seemed self-protective and closed off. Witty when called upon, there were also moments when he could be quite boorish. Perhaps it was because he was only twenty years old when the Beatles became a global sensation. That might not seem particularly young in today’s world of social media fame, but at the time, it was uncharted territory for the kind of adulation he was experiencing.

It was also difficult living in the shadow of Paul and John. In the beginning, they were openly dismissive of him. Paul said he always thought of George as a little brother. At first, John pretended not to know his name and sardonically referred to him as “that kid’’. Ironically, one of George’s compositions, Something, became the most covered song in the Beatles catalogue.

This interview was conducted at George Harrison’s palatial home, Friar Park, in Henley-on-Thames, on November 5, 1980. George was gracious but cool. He made a pot of tea in the drafty, vast kitchen of his 120-room estate, and spent two hours lecturing about Transcendental Meditation and the details of a limited edition of his autobiography, I Me Mine, which is certainly how he must have felt getting out on his own.

In 2000, George was diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer. George died on November 29, 2001, in the company of his wife, Olivia; his son, Dhani; musician Ravi Shankar; and Hare Krishna devotees who chanted verses from the Bhagavad Gita. He was 58 years old and left nearly $100 million in his will. George told Olivia that he didn’t want to be remembered for being a Beatle, he wanted to be remembered for being a good gardener.

‘It was a transcendental experience that was beyond the mind’

On taking LSD

LSD was just such a violent, big experience. Before it I was totally ignorant, and afterward I knew I was totally ignorant and I was now on my way to having some sort of knowledge. I related it to the childhood experience of Catholicism and going to church on a Sunday and seeing all that phoney baloney. The moment I’d taken LSD, it just made me laugh because I understood it inside, just in a flash. I understood what the whole concept of God or religion was just by seeing it. I could see it in the grass in the trees.

It was an absolute truth; like a light going ching. I took three very powerful trips — big, very important — and then it left me a bit unsure because I had to try and figure something out. By that time I had gotten into Indian music and spent time in India, [and] there was so much about it that felt like home to me. Not the surface that you see — all this poverty and the flies and the shit everywhere — [it] went beyond all that. Smells in the atmosphere and the people’s attitude and the music, the food, the religion, everything about it … home.

‘I’d hear his voice wailing at five in the morning’

On the death of Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones

I liked Brian a lot, and later on, I realised it was probably because we were both Pisces. We both had similar natures. He was also similar in that he had a Keith and a Mick, whereas I had a John and a Paul. We both had that problem of two mighty egos to deal with in order just to try and survive. I was very susceptible to dope, and Brian [Jones] was even more susceptible. He’d come [to my house], and I’d just hear his voice wailing at like five in the morning: “George, Geeooorrgggeeee.” So I’d wake up, see what was going on, and I’d look out the window, and he’d be all white and just shattered walking around the garden — just looking for somewhere to be.

I would always meet him at that time of day and just try to calm him down. And I saw him a lot before he died in that sort of circumstance. The last time I saw him, I think, was when I’d been in hospital to have my tonsils out and he came to see me in hospital and the next week he was gone. He was like all of them who kicked the bucket — it was sad because there were too many pressures, really. Not just the pressure of being famous and having the press hounding you day and night and young fans hounding you day and night. Plus the drugs hounding you day and night.

‘F*** it — I could do better than that’

On his childhood inspiration, Cliff Richard

I remember being a kid of about twelve, dreaming of big motorboats and tropical islands and things which had nothing to do with Liverpool, which was dark and cold. I remember going to see Cliff Richard and thinking, f*** it — I could do better than that.

‘I think being Elvis was lonelier than being one of the Fab Four’

On fame — and Elvis Presley

We kept realising we were getting bigger and bigger until we all realised we couldn’t go anywhere —you couldn’t pick up a paper or turn on a radio or TV without seeing yourself. I mean, it became too much. We became trapped, and that’s why it had to end, is what I think … We were like monkeys in a cage. I think it was helped a bit by the fact that it was four of us, who shared the experience. I mean, there was more than four of us, there was Peter Brown and Brian Epstein, but there was only four of us who were actually the Fab Four — whereas Elvis had an entourage and maybe 15 guys, friends of his, but there was only one man having that experience of what it was like to be Elvis Presley. I think that was far lonelier than being one of the Fab Four because at least we could keep each other laughing or crying or whatever we did to each other. It was definitely an asset being in a group.

(source)

#george harrison #the beatles #brian jones

[likeadevils]

Speak Now Timeline

This is a very long post that puts all the songs on Speak Now in order of Taylor creating them. I’ve also added a few other songs she wrote while writing Speak Now and quotes from Taylor and her collaborators talking about her process.

If you don't want to read all that, check out this playlist of the album in order or this playlist of her entire discography.

Due to a surprising amount of digital decay and her life not being highly documented yet, exact dates are bit harder to come by then they are with following albums, but you can still find a few! I’ve added this color coded scale of how sure I am of the date: 

Confirmed: There is some type of official source for the date

Inferring: Nobody has officially said “This is when we wrote it,” but everything points to that date

Speculation: This date is based off pure vibes and guesswork and is highly likely to change.

Unknown: All that is known is the year (from the US Copyright Offices)

More notes: I will probably be editing it as information about vault songs and new details about old songs get come out, so it probably won’t be finished until July, so check back in with this post and/or follow me if you want updates. Most tweet dates come from crawling through the wayback machine, but if you want further sourcing, feel free me an ask/dm.

Without further ado...

Sparks Fly: Late 2006 (Inferring)

Taylor opened up for Jake Owen on October 31, 2006 In Portland, Oregon (the secret message for the song), and wrote Sparks Fly about the experience shortly after. I’ve seen a few second hand sources say she wrote it on the airplane ride back to Nashville later that same night, but I can’t find Taylor herself saying that, so it might just be an old fandom legend, or the source has been lost to digital decay, or I just haven’t looked hard enough. She first performs the song in May 29, 2007.

Haunted: 2009 (Unknown)

Taylor: "Haunted" is about the moment that you realize the person you're in love with is drifting and fading fast. And you don't know what to do, but in that period of time, in that phase of love, where it's fading out, time moves so slowly. Everything hinges on what that last text message said, and you're realizing that he's kind of falling out of love. That's a really heartbreaking and tragic thing to go through, because the whole time you're trying to tell yourself it's not happening. I went through this, and I ended up waking up in the middle of the night and writing this song about it.

February 17, 2009: Tweets "It's 3:58 am in London.. And I accidentally fell asleep at 6:30 pm, so now I'm wide awake and have no idea what to do. Write a song?"

It’s possible that this was what Taylor was referring to when she said she “ended up waking up in the middle of the night and writing [Haunted]”, but it’s also very possible that Taylor didn’t write a song on February 17, and waking up in the middle of the night and writing a song is not a rare occurrence in Taylor’s life, so one tweet doesn’t really prove anything.

March 13, 2009: Tweets "A day off in Sydney. Drove two hours out of the city and spent the day on the beach. Wrote a chorus you'll hear on the next record. :)"

Pure speculation, but I think she was working on Mr. Perfectly Fine. It was created in 2009, and in my opinion, of the possible songs it has the most notable chorus.

March 19, 2009: Posts on Myspace “I’m wiped out. I’ve been in the studio all day ( I know, I know.. We JUST put out a new album. I think I have a problem, I cannot stop writing songs.) It’s so much fun knowing that you can take your time, because you have like a year and a half to make something you’re really proud of. I love recording a few songs, waiting a few months, recording a few more.. Instead of devoting a few weeks to “record the album” and then it’s just done. I like dragging it out, that way you can be meticulous about every detail. Daydream about different ways to put the songs together, and then take them apart. I’m pretty obsessed with the whole process. So needless to say, it was good to be back in the studio with my redheaded producer who I missed terribly.”

If This Was A Movie: April 2009 (Inferring)

Taylor has literally never talked about this song, but April would be six months after and Joe Jonas broke up in late September/early October 2008.

April 24, 2009: Taylor plays in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and possibly writes a song: "I'd get my best ideas at 3:00 AM in Arkansas, and didn't have a co-writer around and I'd just finish it. And that would happen again in New York [likely Enchanted], that would happen again in Boston [likely Long Live], that would happen again in Nashville." (x)

May 23, 2009: Taylor records Half Of My Heart with John Mayer

On March 1, 2009: John Mayer tweeted: “Waking up to this song idea that won’t leave my head. 3 days straight now. That means it’s good enough to finish. It’s called Half of My Heart and I want to sing it with Taylor Swift. She would make a killer Stevie Nicks in contrast to my Tom Petty of a song.” On May 23, John Mayer tweeted "I couldn't get Taylor Swift on my record so I found the world's greatest impersonator, Laura Jacksheimer" with a picture of Taylor.

Superman: Spring 2009 (Speculation)

This could have been written any time in 2009, but due to it's general sound and the following quote, I’d guess it was written sometime in spring, when her and John Mayer first started working together. Taylor: “This was a guy that I was sort of enamored with, as usual. This song got its title by something that I just kinda said randomly in conversation. He walked out of the room, I looked over at one of my friends and said, ‘Man, It’s just like watching Superman fly away.’”

May 29, 2009: Posts on Myspace “Tomorrow, after the performance on the Today show, I’ll fly back to Nashville and record a lot of new songs I’ve written in the last few weeks. I’m really excited about that.” (She also posts "Tonight I went shopping at Top Shop in New York with the band. I got purple shoes. I’m really excited about the purple shoes, and I just needed to tell someone. I got purple shoes. Ok. That’s done." Which. If I had a nickel for everytime Taylor teased her new album by posting about shoe colors I'd have two nickels, which isnt a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.)

June 4, 2009: Posts on Facebook "In the studio. I don't know whose computer I'm using. Pssh.. Such a rebel right now.."

June 9, 2009: Tweets (about recording Thug Story) "If I said I was in the studio with T-Pain, would you believe me?"

Better Than Revenge and Let’s Go (Battle): June 2009 (Inferring)

These were probably written sometime between June 12, when the Jonas Brothers released “Much Better”, and July 1, when Taylor posted on Myspace: “What else is new.. Recording a bunch of new songs. Lots of new things to write about…..”

Last Kiss: 2009 (Unknown)

Taylor: "The song "Last Kiss" is sort of like a letter to somebody. You say all of these desperate, hopeless feelings that you have after a breakup. Going through a breakup you feel all of these different things. You feel anger, and you feel confusion, and frustration. Then there is the absolute sadness. The sadness of losing this person, losing all the memories, and the hopes you had for the future. There are times when you have this moment of truth where you just admit to yourself that you miss all these things. When I was in one of those moments I wrote this song."

July 22, 2009: Tweets "Hanging with my producer Nathan, discussing the next adventure" and then in a separate tweet "...album #3."

Never Grow Up: Fall 2009 (Speculation)

Lover Diary Nathan Chapman: "The song 'Never Grow Up' is just she singing and I on acoustic guitar. We recorded ourselves live. That song probably happened in two hours." This could’ve been written at any time in 2009, but I put it here because she bought her Nashville apartment sometime before October.

September 8, 2009: Tweeted "Last night in nash before heading out tomorrow for 4 shows, then VMA's. But right now I can't put the guitar down."

September 13, 2009: VMAs Incident

Enchanted: September 15, 2009 (Confirmed)

On September 15, Taylor attended an Owl City Concert in New York Taylor: "It was about this guy that I met in New York City, and I had talked to him on email or something before, but I had never met him. And meeting him, it was this overwhelming feeling of: I really hope that you're not in love with somebody. And the whole entire way home, I remember the glittery New York City buildings passing by, and then just sitting there thinking, am I ever going to talk to this person again? And that pining away for a romance that may never even happen, but all you have is this hope that it could, and the fear that it never will. I started writing that in the hotel room when I got back. Because it just was this positive, wistful feeling of: I hope you understand just how much I loved meeting you. I hope that you know that meeting you was not something that I took lightly, or just in passing. And I think my favorite part of that song is the part where, in the bridge, it goes to sort of a stream of consciousness of ‘Please don't be in love with someone else/Please don't have somebody waiting on you.' Because at that moment, that's exactly what my thoughts were. And it feels good to write exactly what your thoughts were in a certain moment.”

September 26, 2009: Taylor plays in Little Rock, Arkansas, and possibly writes a song: "I'd get my best ideas at 3:00 AM in Arkansas, and didn't have a co-writer around and I'd just finish it. And that would happen again in New York [Enchanted & Back To December], that would happen again in Boston [Long Live], that would happen again in Nashville." (x)

October 17, 2009: Tweets "Travis: you look so out of it. Me: I'm writing a song in my head. Travis: oh, I apologize. I didn't realize you were working."

November 30, 2009: Tweets "If I had a dime for every time my producer and I blurt out the same thing at the same time, followed by an awkward, uncoordinated high five..."

Ours: December 6, 2009 (Inferring)

Myspace Post on December 6: “I just got back to Nashville this morning after being in LA all week. Today I was out and about and in the studio all day” Taylor: "I wrote this when I was about to turn 20. I was in a relationship I knew people wouldn't approve of, and it was just a matter of time before everyone found out. When you're first getting to know someone, it's a fragile time, and then you add newspapers and magazine covers and it can get kind of rough. I wanted to have this song to play for him when it got difficult. Singing it for him was one of the sweetest moments I can remember."

December 22, 2009: Tweets "I was writing a song and my pen fell into the piano. Still trying to figure out if I should do anything about this."

January 2010: Starts polishing up the demos made in 2009 into fully produced tracks

Billboard: "Swift and Chapman had begun recording new songs almost as soon as "Fearless" was released. The two cut demos in his basement studio and would only take those songs to larger facilities once they felt they had an emotional foundation in the basic tracks. Still, it wasn’t until early 2010 when the album truly began to coalesce." Nathan Chapman: "We stripped it down and made the demos first. Taylor came to my studio and I played all the instruments on the demos, and because I have a good vocal booth, her demo vocals ended up being the vocals you hear on the record. After finishing the demos, we went out to different studios, and tried different combinations of engineers and musicians to replace some of the elements of my demos, mostly the programmed drums, and to do additional overdubs. [...] A pop artist would probably release what we'd done after five hours, but country artists don't want to hear programmed drums, they don't want to hear fake stuff. So once we had recorded the demos, we would book whatever studio we wanted for each song, to replace the drums, in many cases the bass, and to add whatever overdubs we envisioned, like fiddle, keyboards, percussion and strings. After we got the demos right, we opened it up and allowed ourselves to spend money and cut a big record." Taylor tweets on January 11: "Studio-ness with all the same boys who played on Fearless" and on January 13: "More recording. So excited. So excited. So excited. See, I said that three times. Once for every album we've made in this studio."

January 13, 2010: Posts on Myspace “Thank you January. I have had this month off. I have walked on snow-covered grass and discovered new coffee shops and laughed hysterically with friends about things that probably weren’t technically funny. I’ve written songs on napkins and sat at a giant table with my whole family on my mother’s birthday, all of us in one place for the first time in too long. I’ve gotten to take what has happened to me and process it to my full capability, and celebrate it the way it deserved to be celebrated. I’ve made new music. I’ve gone over the memories and jumped up and down with my producer and floated around with nothing on my schedule other than just appreciating what my life has somehow turned into. [...] Getting back in the studio with the same guys I trust and know and love.. (right, the pointing one: my producer Nathan Chapman) (Left, the waving one: Bass extraorinaire, Tim Marks. Clearly marked on his road case.) [...] Nick Buddha is in charge of the drums.”

February 22, 2010: Posts on Myspace "I’ve been writing lots of songs"

February 13, 2010: Writes in her diary "I’ve been obsessing over the new album. I always do that until it’s just right. I don’t know if I have the formula just right for this one yet. I know there are great songs. I just need to figure out the strands that bond them together into a great album. And I will obsess until it’s there. This album, any album, is the next 2 years of my life. It has to be more than amazing. It has to be great enough to keep my attention for 2 years."

Mine: March 10-12 2010 (Inferring)

Taylor (above interview, at 5:17): "I wrote Mine somewhere on the road, I think in Texas, actually." Nathan Chapman: "The demo for 'Mine' apparently took less than five hours to record, and sounded, according to Chapman, "almost identical to the record. After that we worked on the track for another four months, off and on, and spent $30,000 to make sure it sounded perfect in the real world."" Taylor: "This song is the first single because it has this…there was this moment between Nathan and I, my producer, when I brought this song in and when we made this demo in one day in his basement and we just kinda looked at each other and we were like, "This is it. This is the one. All of the times that I've had "The Moment" with songs of "This is the one," it's been a good call, so I'm hoping for the best on this one. Wish me luck." Scott Borchetta: "Mine" was a turning point in the album’s development. Swift and Chapman had begun recording new songs almost as soon as "Fearless" was released. The two cut demos in his basement studio and would only take those songs to larger facilities once they felt they had an emotional foundation in the basic tracks. Still, it wasn’t until early 2010 when the album truly began to coalesce. Swift presented "Mine" to Borchetta in his office [...] "We probably played that song four or five times," Borchetta recalls. "I’m jumping around playing air guitar, she’s singing the song back to me, and it was just one of those crazy, fun, Taylor teen-age moments."

March 13, 2010: Taylor records Mine, brings it to Scott Borchetta, and says she’s done with TS3

Scott Borchetta: "I said, ‘Keep going,’ [...] She kind of looked at me like, ‘You’re challenging me.’ And I said, ‘Yeah. You’ve found true north here. Keep going.’ " Taylor: “During Speak Now, when I went to (label head) Scott Borchetta and said, 'The album’s finished,’ he said, 'No, it’s not – you need to keep writing.’” (Right after playing in Texas, Taylor leaves for a vacation in the Bahamas, meaning Taylor likely had about a day in Nashville between the two trips).

Innocent: Late March 2010 (Inferring)

Billboard: “It was some time in the period after that challenge — between February and June — that Swift wrote “Innocent,” her response to the Kanye West incident.​​” Taylor: “Some songs take 30 minutes to write, and some take six months, which was the case with “Innocent.” When things affect me intensely and really hit me hard, it can take a while to figure out what I think about it and what to say about it.” (March would be just over 6 months since the VMAs).

March 24, 2010: Taylor goes lunch with Taylor Lautner and both of their publicists, inspiring Back To December.

Taylor: Swift says she based the song on a conversation she had with the guy about whom she's singing. "It's not loosely based," she says. "It's almost word-for-word. It is a song and a conversation that needed to happen, because I don't want to hurt people. If you unintentionally do so, you've got to make that better."

Speak Now: Early April, 2010 (Inferring)

On April 3, Taylor attended the wedding of Josh Farro as Hayley Williams (who is Josh's ex) plus one. That day she also tweeted: ""Nathan you smell really good! Is that a new cologne?" "Thanks! Actually it's a two in one shampoo and soap. From Dial." My producer rules." implying she was in the studio. The conversation below could have happened any day after the VMA awards in September, when Hayley first reached out to Taylor, but I think Taylor probably wrote the song fairly close to naming the album after it. Taylor: "This song was inspired by one of my friends who was telling me about her childhood sweetheart, crush guy. They were kind of together in high school and went their separate ways, and it was kind of understood that they were gonna get back together. Then, she one day comes in and tells me he's getting married. He had met this girl who was just this mean person who made him completely stop talking to all of his friends, cut off his family, had him like so completely isolated. And I just, kind of randomly, was like, "So, you gonna speak now?" She was like, "What do you mean?" And I was like "Oh, you know, like storm the church, speak now or forever hold your peace? I'll go with you. I'll play guitar. It would be great." She was just kind of laughing, and later on I just was wrapping my mind around that idea of how tragic it would be if someone you loved was marrying somebody else. Later I had a dream about one of my ex-boyfriends getting married, and it just all came together that I needed to write this song about interrupting a wedding. For me, I like to think of it as good versus evil, and this girl is so completely painted as the evil one. So this is "Speak Now.""

April 13, 2010: Names TS3 Speak Now

Lover Diaries: "So I’ve been obsessing over the new record to the point where it’s all I can focus on. I’m majorly stressed and borderline losing it, with all these lists and chronic dissatisfaction. Perfectionist-ness. I keep growing tired of songs because I know I’ve raised the bar and I can beat half the songs. Scott and I had lunch the other day. We were talking about the record and I had this epiphany. I didn’t talk in interviews about how I felt about much of what has happened in the last 2 years. I’ve been silent about so much that I’m saying on this album. It’s time to Speak Now. Scott freaked out. He loved it. We have a title, ladies and gentlemen!" Scott Borchetta: ""At one point, the record was not called ‘Speak Now.’ It was called ‘Enchanted,’ [...] We were at lunch, and she had played me a bunch of the new songs. I looked at her and I’m like, ‘Taylor, this record isn’t about fairy tales and high school anymore. That’s not where you’re at. I don’t think the record should be called "Enchanted."’” Swift excused herself from the table at that point. By the time she came back, she had the "Speak Now" title"

Dear John: Spring 2010 (Speculation)

This was likely written sometime after February 2010 (Taylor implies she's single in her vlog and her diary). Beyond that, it could have been anytime between February and June 2010.

Brief Interruption: The next two songs (Back to December and Mean) are going to use quotes from this interview that @1989worldtour found. If you've already listened to the interview attached to the Mine section, then it's the same interview

Back To December: Early May, 2010 (Inferring)

Taylor (above interview, at 5:12): "Back to December was written in New York City. Taylor was in New York city from May 3-5, and May 12-15 2010. she was not photographed in New York any other time in early 2010, and given her busy touring schedule, I doubt she was in New York at another time. USA TODAY: “Swift says she based the song on a conversation she had with the guy about whom she's singing. "It's not loosely based," she says. "It's almost word-for-word. It is a song and a conversation that needed to happen, because I don't want to hurt people. If you unintentionally do so, you've got to make that better."”

Mean: May 29, 2010 (Speculation)

Taylor (above interview, about 6 minutes in): "I started this song called Mean on my, like sitting on my kitchen counter, just playing it, and then, you know, took a plane and flew to the venue where we were gonna play that night and finished it in the dressing room." Now, this may be a too literal interpretation of "took a plane and flew to the venue where we were gonna play that night," but if we want to theorize: the only tour date (that Taylor could've conceivably written Mean during) without another show right before or after it was in Baton Rogue on May 29, 2010.

Long Live: June 2010 (Confirmed)

Lover Diary She likely wrote this around June 5, when she ended the Fearless Tour at Gillette Stadium (Wikipedia counts two festivals as being part of the Fearless Tour but Taylor doesn't, so I'm going with her opinion), since she said that she wrote a song for Speak Now in Boston (which is the closest major city to Gillette)

The Story Of Us: June 9-16, 2010 (Confirmed)

Taylor attended the CMT Awards (Which goes on to be the secret message for The Story Of Us) on June 9 and was sat very close to John Mayer. Taylor: "The people closest to me are used to me deserting a conversation and bolting into some corner of the room with my phone out, hunched over, singing some melody or lyric or hook into my phone. I wrote “The Story of Us” about running into an ex at an awards show, and I came home and sat down at a kitchen table and told my mom, “I felt like I was standing alone in a crowded room.” She tried to console me, but I was gone at that point." Lover Diary: "So I’ve been a little studio rat since the tour ended [...] Ever since, I wake up to my cell phone alarm around 9:30 each morning. Throw on a sundress, skip make up, tie my hair in a messy side braid, and head out the door with no shoes on. Because the only walking outside I’ll be doing is from my house to my car, then from my car, three steps to Nathan’s basement studio. [...] I worked on a song for a few days, then basically finished it in the car on the way to Nathan’s this morning. It. Is. So. Good. And I can safely say I am DONE writing this record!! This song is up-tempo, and hooky and sort of torn-sounding … like this horrible stressed confusion that comes on when you knew the person you’re pining away for is in the room. And for some reason, there are these invisible walls keeping things from being ok. So you’re not fine. And they’re not fine. And I’m so happy I wrote that song!! Footage of Taylor working on TSOU

June 30, 2010: Taylor tweets “@amosjheller is SLAYING a bass part in the studio right now. http://twitpic.com/21am7t” 

Footage Nathan Chapman: “We tried several bassists until we had a bass part that worked, which was played by Amos Heller, of Taylor's live band. In Nashville, it's rare for a road musician to be on the record, but he earned his way into this record by kicking ass. In fact, all Taylor's road musicians played some parts on the album, which was important for me and her.”

July 15, 2010: The orchestra for Back To December and Haunted are recorded (footage here, same outfit as these candids)

Taylor (talking about Haunted): “I wanted the music and the orchestration to reflect the intensity of the emotion the song is about, so we recorded strings with Paul Buckmaster at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. It was an amazing experience - recording this entire big, live string section that I think in the end really captured the intense, chaotic feeling of confusion I was looking for."

And that's all for this timeline! Check out my others:

TIMELINES: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights PLAYLISTS: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights • entire discography GENERAL: tag

#txt* #timeline* #taylor swift #if this deletes again i might actually delete my account #let me know if theres a typo or anything my eyes are glazing over

[purgemarchlockdown]

What Animal can tell us about Amane

(EDIT: Purge March Remaster of This Has been Posted! Go Check that out!)

In celebration for Purge March coming out soon let's talking about Amane's cover and what it can tell us about her! Because I've had these thoughts stuck inside me for too long.

Let's quickly talk about some imagery first before getting to the lyrics.

So cats and cat imagery is a big part of Animal as a song, in Japanese culture tend to signify good luck and protection, cats are also just known as lovable housepets, even ignoring the mischief they can cause and how aloof they can seem to people, generally speaking cats are thought of as cute lovable pets.

However that isn't the type of cat Animal is referring to. Animal is referring to a beast, an untrained and wild animal that can't even follow basic commands. One that doesn't bring protection and love but danger to the people around them.

The mask comes off and the beast comes out, barefaced animal, I do it wild even if it’s ugly I can’t do sit, I can’t even do stay, purr until I go

Keep this in mind for later because it's going to be important!

You want me to bite you? Accelerating beat, let’s do both the good and bad Let’s get lost in each other, plunge into the gate, high expectations of love is not allowed

Analyzing the lyrics of Animal in the context of Amane is interesting, due to how suggestive the lyrics can be. Still there is a repeating idea of a lack of love and the search for happiness in Animal. We can see the first hint here:

High expectations of love are not allowed.

This is something that Amane is (unfortunately) very familiar with, Amane is an abused child in a cult and she knows that at a moments notice the people around her might decide that it's time to punish her for something, and tries to minimize the chance of that happening.

Not meaning to brag but I’m pretty happy I’ve made up my mind so they don’t make that face at me again

She's pretending to be happy, pretending that she's satisfied to protect herself, but she isn't! She wants more, and treats that as a bad thing. She asks if its alright to "spoil" herself in Magic even though spoiling in this context ranges from stuff like cake:

21/06/27, Amane's birthday:

Shidou: Amane, I heard it was your birthday today. I asked Es-kun if we could get this cake to give to you…… Amane: I don’t need it. I’ll gratefully accept your well-wishes, but I don’t eat things like that. Also…… Shidou-san, I can’t say I’m especially fond of the way you assume that all children will love frivolous things like this. Shidou: ………… Is that so… I apologise. I’m sure everyone else will be happy to eat it, so don’t worry about it. Sorry for intruding. Amane: ………… ……cake……

Or...not being abused.

I won’t say “I’ve had enough” Will you laugh with me and forgive me?

Note that she also identifies this as her being weak. Amane wanting love, or happiness is selfish and frivolous.

If you can be a little greedy, I want to be happy

Happiness and greed are conflated, high expectations of love are not allowed here. Because that's greedy and selfish and Amane is a very virtuous good girl who definitely does not want any of that and even if she did she promises, oh she promises, that she'll not fall to those temptations.

Dear wise one, Is this ok? Is it ok to be weak sometimes? I promise! A good girl that keeps a promise is like, mwah!

Continuing off that, A lot of Animal is about indulging, about not holding back. Doing all sorts of things, good and bad.

You want me to bite you? Accelerating beat, let’s do both the good and bad ----------------------------------- Why don’t you get h!g%, why don’t you go cR%&Y, why don’t we do it m0rE, hahaha

Which is a very loaded concept for Amane, person who was punished for helping someone because her cult thought it the way she was doing it was a bad thing. Not only that but as stated above, Amane promised so very much that she wouldn't fall to her temptations.

The thing is, Amane does want More than what her cult offers, wants to feel happy, wants to feel love.

She wants to eat some cake.

Q. 17 What would you do if the world ends tomorrow? If everything ends? Amane: Then, I might do all sorts of things I have never done before.

This isn't the end yet though I've been sidestepping the chorus a bit for the sake of flow but let's talk about it!

So as mentioned this entire song has the singer be equated with a wild beast. Specifically a wild cat.

But cat's are pets right? You can train a cat to be a pet by discouraging certain behaviors through punishment and encourage others through rewards.

Layers of makeup, the perfect animal, I'm waiting with my eyes wide open

I talk sometimes about how spiral eyed Amane represents Amane at her most emotionally vulnerable and defeated state, the state where she can be easily controlled and manipulated. Amane is easily molded, she becomes the perfect pet.

Except...it's makeup, as much as Amane tries even at her most lowest, even at the moment where she literally kills for her cult she can't fully become the special good girl her cult Wants her to be, who She wants to be for her cult.

Because being a good girl is a goal that's has arbitrary standards that are impossible to reach, abuse can be erratic and unpredictable. No matter how hard Amane tries she can never Be a good girl, it was rigged from the start, she never had a chance.

I can’t do sit, I can’t even do stay, purr until I go Show your fangs and howl, are you ready? on the count of three let's say "ZUKKYUUUUN♡", once I bite I don’t let go Layers of makeup, the perfect animal, I'm waiting with my eyes wide open

At the end of the day the wilder, beastlier, parts still remain, the Amane that knows something is wrong is still there, the Amane that broke the cult's taboos to help someone is still there.

The Amane that wants cake is still there.

#milgram #amane momose #008 #milgram amane #milgram meta #milgram analysis #Hope you guys enjoy this! Animal is such a fun choice for Amane and Im very obsessed with it #cw cults #cw child abuse

[softie-rain]

Step On Me

Part II - The President

Pairing: Sejanus Plinth/Coriolanus Snow

Summary: “Aren't you going to tell me when you fell in love with me?” Sejanus asked with a pout. Coriolanus froze. When did Coriolanus fell in love with Sejanus? Was he ever even in love with him in the first place? Coriolanus thought he had to be, at least at some point, because how else would he explain the way Sejanus was still haunting him after all those years?

Notes: woo new chapter! This one isn't happy but it's less sad than the first one. (I'd argue the ending is. Blame Scott Street) We have a song reference in this one too, let me know if you spot it (:

chapter: 2/7 (weekly updates!) prev. chapter

read it on ao3 here

The second time Coriolanus saw Sejanus, it was two weeks after he won the elections. 

Years had passed since his times as a peacekeeper in District 12, Lucy Gray Baird now only living in the furthest abyss of his mind, no one had memory of her in the Capitol, or in the other Districts. If they even knew about her in the first place. 

He had made sure to outshine the 10th Hunger Games by working hard as a gamemaker under Dr. Gaul during the following Games. His ideas had brought new interest to them, thanks to the addition of mutts and traps all around the newly rebuilt arena. His first edition as a gamemaker, right after Lucy Gray’s games, won by the girl from District 4, was probably the one he was the most disappointed by. The only reason being that everything was still in the projecting phase, and those goddamn drones still caused trouble.

But now, five years later, as he sat at his desk in his office in the Presidential Palace, he truly felt at home. It stung that Tigris was colder to him lately, sometimes he sensed some lack of support on her side. But she was still his cousin, and he knew they’d be together till the end, no matter what.

“President Snow?” Cassia, his secretary, knocked at his door. Although president for just a few weeks, Coriolanus was already used to the title. It felt familiar, like it was meant to be. Everything he deserved, was finally his. 

“Yes?” He responded. His secretary appeared behind the door, holding a plate of cookies. 

“Ms. Plinth passed by, she brought these for you. She also told me to tell you they’re inviting you over for dinner, her and her husband.” She said, leaving the cookies on his desk. Coriolanus observed them and nodded. He knew Strabo had a terminal illness, he wouldn't give him more than over one week of life. He assumed the dinner was Ma’s idea for Coriolanus to say goodbye. 

He considered it pathetic, but he had to go anyway. What impression would he give to the people of Panem if it got known that President Snow hadn't been by Strabo Plinth’s side, a man who had given him everything and considered him a second son, in the moment of his final breath?

“I will. Thank you, Cassia.” He said, grabbing one cookie to try it. He noticed Cassia was still standing in front of him, looking rather uncomfortable. “You can go now.” He added.

“She’s still here. She’s insisting on seeing you. I know you said you don’t want to be disturbed at any hour today but-” 

“Then you already know what to tell her. Go.” Coriolanus stated, more angry than he intended. Cassia bit her lip and nodded, quickly exciting the office and closing the door behind her. 

Coriolanus sighed and leaned back on his chair, passing his hand through his hair. He gave another bite to the cookie, quietly moaning at the taste. Ma’ Plinth might have been a sad pathetic woman (even more so as she aged), but her cooking was still as delicious as ever. 

“Coriolanus Snow, President of Panem.” Coriolanus almost choked on the cookie upon hearing the voice. He immediately got up, looking around the room. Like that night of many years ago Sejanus appeared in the corner. He was leaning on the wall right next to the window, observing Coriolanus. “I always knew you were going to get far. Even before the Academy, I would look at you and think ‘Man, this kid will do big things.’”

Sejanus was talking to him with an admiring tone, sounding almost proud of him, as if he was his mother. And, to be fair, it wasn’t far off from what Ma’ had told Coriolanus right after he was nominated President. The boy walked over to him and sat on his desk, looking at the cookies. “Can I? It’s been ages since I’ve eaten one.”

Without responding Coriolanus nodded. Sejanus leaned forward to grab one and as he did so Coriolanus took a good look at his neck. The bruises of the rope were still there, as fresh as ever, like the hanging day had been just the day before, as if no time had passed at all. 

“You seem surprised to see me.” 

Coriolanus raised an eyebrow surprised, gesturing to Sejanus. “Shouldn't I be?”

Sejanus shrugged and shifted on the desk, sitting with his legs crossed. “I visited you once already.” 

“Yeah, when I was nineteen.”

“And now you’re twenty four! Where did the time go? You look just as handsome though. Maybe even a bit more now.” Sejanus leaned in, winking at him. Coriolanus felt himself lightly blush and immediately shook his head, trying to recompose himself.

“And you look just as dead.” Coriolanus bit back, ignoring the effect Sejanus still had on him. When was he going to grow out of his stupid crush? He had finally realized and admitted to himself that he liked Sejanus years ago now, not shortly after his first post-death visit actually, and he thought he was over it. So why did he still make him act like he was twelve again, blushing for a compliment or for the slightest sign of affection by his side?

It made him feel weak, powerless. All that time and Sejanus still had such a strong hold on him. It made him wonder of his time in District 12, how Sejanus had always had that effect on him. Was all the power he felt over the boy just an illusion? Obviously not, or he wouldn’t have sent the recording to Dr. Gaul.

“I’m glad to see the guilt isn’t eating you alive anymore.” Sejanus said, sounding sincere. Coriolanus hated him. 

“It’s not.”

“Good. You look happy now.” He said, tilting his head. “Are you?”

Coriolanus frowned. “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

“You tell me, I asked the question.”

“Well, I am.” Coriolanus replied, shifting on his chair and crossing his arms. “So no need for you to be here.” He dismissed him, waving his hand at him.  

“I'm not your secretary Coryo, you can't just tell me to leave.” Sejanus said, as if it was a matter of fact. “I didn't decide to be here, you know?”

“Right, because my mind made you up, or whatever.” Coriolanus said, rolling his eyes, leaning his elbow on the desk and resting his hand on his palm. 

“That's one rational explanation, yes. Or maybe I'm a spirit and I lied to you.” Sejanus said in a neutral tone, crossing his legs on Coriolanus’ desk. 

The blonde boy frowned as the other's shoes dirty the surface and then looked up at him again. Sejanus was staring down at him smiling, and Coriolanus found himself missing his curly hair. Truly it had been a shame he died with his head shaved. He would have loved to see his hair one more time. 

Coriolanus had given up on trying to find a rational explanation for Sejanus’ first apparition, and he wasn't certainly going to start trying to find one for the second. 

Coriolanus cleared his throat and gestured around himself. “So you're proud of what I achieved?” He asked, smiling proudly. “Pretty great, isn't it?” 

Sejanus grimaced. “You did big things, that's for sure. But great? I wouldn't say that.” He said, sadness in his voice.

Coriolanus couldn't say he was surprised, though he felt disappointed. He expected Sejanus to congratulate him on what he'd done, but after all he knew his morals: Sejanus could have never been happy for Coriolanus when all he had done was making the tributes’ lives even more miserable. But he had also come up with the idea of the Winners Village in every district, and what about the money for the winners? Also Coryo's idea. Couldn't Sejanus for once be content with the lesser evil? 

“Well, I didn’t ask for your approval.”

“Yeah, I assumed you didn't when you turned me in.” Sejanus said laughing, as if he had just made the funniest joke. 

Tigris would call him resentful and here he had Sejanus still holding grudges of something that happened almost six years ago. 

Coriolanus scoffed and looked down at the documents he was examining before he got interrupted by Cassia, ignoring Sejanus’ eyes on him. He felt the boy shift next to him. Sejanus got up and started pacing the room, observing his surroundings. “Oh, look at this! It's beautiful! And fancy.” He said, pointing at the portrait they made of Coriolanus on his second day as President. 

Although Coriolanus hadn't exactly been euphoric to pose for that painting, he had to admit it was rather flattering to have it in his office. Every time he looked at it, every time anyone looked at his portrait could recognize the power Snow held. The hard and proud look he was represented with did him justice, so much that his secretary and most of his employees would on purpose avoid the painting when they entered the room. In Coriolanus’ eyes it was perfect: feared and respected by everyone.

But Sejanus was standing there, quietly, with his hands crossed behind his back, observing the painting with a smile on his face.

“I like it. Except for the eyes, they don't do you justice.”

Coriolanus scowled, trying not to snap at Sejanus. “Why so?” 

Sejanus turned to face his Coriolanus and his smile widened. “Yours are much more blue.” He told him, looking at him with those lovesick brown orbs Coriolanus worshiped. 

“Did I ever tell you when I realized I was in love with you?” Sejanus asked, walking up to Coriolanus. Coriolanus shook his head no.

“I'm afraid you died before you could.” He replied sarcastically.

Sejanus nodded. “Ah. True. Well, we have time now don't we?” He said excitedly, jumping on the desk again. Coriolanus sighed and pushed his papers aside, knowing it was useless to even just try and tell Sejanus to go away.

“We were fifteen.” He started, looking up. Coriolanus didn't know if it was to avoid his look, but his own eyes were fixated on Sejanus’ face.

“I've always known I liked you, since I first saw you. You looked so adorable, with those rosy cheeks and blonde curls!”

Sejanus smiled widely, and Coriolanus couldn't help but lightly blush at the thought of the Plinth boy being head over heels for him at such a young age, complimenting him like that. 

He also found himself getting used to the odd happiness and calm that seemed to be characteristics of post mortem Sejanus.

“Anyway, this day in particular we were at school,” He kept going, “And Festus was talking behind my back. I mean, I could perfectly hear him. I'm not sure if he meant for me to hear or not, actually. I never thought about it.” Sejanus commented, more to himself than to Coriolanus. 

Coriolanus rolled his eyes and cleared his throat, gesturing Sejanus to go on. 

“As I was saying, Festus was making fun of me. And then he said, I remember this clearly as if it was yesterday: ‘I think he should be repead for the next Games. That way he'd learn his place!’” Coriolanus gulped. He could see the hurt on Sejanus’ face. So many years had passed and he was clearly still affected by it. He wasn't sure if he could blame Sejanus (or accusing him of being pathetic) for that, though he usually would.

Even to Coriolanus, with that comment Festus had overstepped a line. 

“I remember running away, trying not to cry. Which I did, eventually, but only when I got to the bathroom. Which is when you found me.” Sejanus said, pointing at Coriolanus. 

“You knocked at the stall where I was hiding and asked me if I was alright. I lied, said I was fine.” Sejanus let out a laugh and shook his head. “You knew I was lying. So you insisted and kept knocking, until I opened the door and got out. And that's when I saw them.” 

Coriolanus frowned, confused. “Saw what?” 

“Ocean blue eyes, looking in mine. I felt like I might sink and drown, and die.” He replied, staring at Coryo. “You saw me crying and hugged me, no questions asked. Your hand touched mine, and that's when I knew. That I was utterly and desperately in love with you.” 

Coriolanus remembered that day. He had immediately followed Sejanus because he had assumed he had gone crying. Assumption that was confirmed when he heard the sobs in the bathroom. Truthfully he had rolled his eyes and sighed before knocking on the door, getting annoyed when Sejanus pretended to be fine. 

When he finally came out of the bathroom the site before Coriolanus was pretty pathetic: Sejanus had red and puffy eyes, he kept sniffing with his lips parted, how could he say he was fine when he looked like that?

The hug seemed like the only rational option to Coriolanus to put Sejanus out of his misery, an act of mercy. Apparently it had meant much more to him than Snow thought. Still, he didn’t see any reason to break the news to the boy, so he didn’t say anything about it.

“You’re welcome?” He said instead, which sounded more as a question than a statement. At least it earned a laugh from Sejanus. 

The Plinth boy kept staring at him lovingly without saying anything, and Coriolanus was starting to feel rather uncomfortable. He went back to study his documents, clearing his throat trying to stop his voice from breaking when he spoke. “Well now that you’ve told me your sob story you can leave, right?” 

His voice was cold, he had already shown his weak side to Sejanus last time, he wasn’t going to repeat the scene once more. Although he would have loved to feel the warmth of his hugs one more time. He despised that feeling, the one he always had around Sejanus, of caring, of attachment. Why couldn't he let him go? Why was it so hard, if he wanted to so badly?

“Aren't you going to tell me when you fell in love with me?” Sejanus asked with a pout. 

Coriolanus froze. When did Coriolanus fall in love with Sejanus? Was he ever even in love with him in the first place? Coriolanus thought he had to be, at least at some point, because how else would he explain the way Sejanus was still haunting him after all those years?

But when, that was very blurry.

He never really thought about it and even now, he didn't think there was a specific moment. In Coriolanus’ eyes Sejanus had just always been there, and the blonde's feelings just kept swinging back and forth from hatred to love. Whether said affection was platonic or romantic had never been the main focus of Coryo, who simply would try and go on with life fighting the urge to either slap or kiss some sense into Sejanus.

Uh.

Maybe the feelings had never been platonic.

Either way, he wasn't going to tell Sejanus any of that.

“Do you really want me to go?” Sejanus finally asked, tilting his head. 

He didn't seem upset or sad about it, it was a simple genuine question. One to which Coriolanus didn't know the answer to. “Yes.” He replied, looking down at his papers. But was it really what he wanted? What he needed? 

“But I'm assuming you won't listen to me will you?” He added looking up, only to find out he was once again alone, as he had always been for the past five years.

He went back to write notes on the documents, pushing away in the deep bottom of his mind the feeling of longing for Sejanus. 

In his head he could hear an echo, that he desperately ignored, and that sounded too much like Sej.

“Anyway, don't be a stranger.” 

#the ballad of songbirds and snakes #tbosas #tbosbas #sejanus plinth #coriolanus snow #sejanus x coriolanus #coriolanus x sejanus #snowjanus #snowplinth

[fists-on-up]

My Thoughts on the Loie Fuller + Taylor Swift Connection (Part 2)

This part will be a bit more speculative and subjective than the last, but I think both are important to examine. In this part I want to discuss where I think Taylor's interest in, and dedication to, Loie came from and how I believe she has shown this influence beyond the Reputation Tour.

ORIGINS, MAYBE?

I think that really understanding human nature is fundamental to being a good writer. If a character is going to do or say something, it has to make sense and feel organic. The better aligned with that character's past, values, and intentions something is, the more real it feels. Humans are very predictable creatures, really, and our options for actions or responses to any given thing are much fewer than we realize. Being good at making fictional choices make sense often makes you good at recognizing when real-world actions or statements don't.

It becomes this kind of background process that's always running, and when someone says or does something "off", you feel it. It's not unlike recognizing subverted rhyme. The foundation is laid, you know what the word will be, and when it's subverted, it's obvious. It makes it easy to sort of reverse-engineer someone's motivations, also. If situation A or B would result in saying X or Y but they said Z, A or B could not have really happened and situation C is more likely true. It's hard to explain, but it has as much to do with what people do not say or do as it does what they do. It's a huge part of the reason I ended up in the gaylorverse.

So how might a singer/songwriter and pop star who started in country music come to dedicate a very telling song to a little-known lesbian dancer who lived in Paris a hundred years ago? (Who fled to Paris, even, literally because the culture was clever?)

Maybe because she was very in love with a dancer who also loves Paris.

A while back in my journey down the gaylor rabbit hole I came across this video of Karlie backstage of the 2014 VSFS. I'm not sure if it's a rehearsal, or if it was on the day, but at the time I saved it because it's adorable.

(recall the quote from the excerpt in Part 1 that stated Loie played a "hide-and-seek illusionist game" with the audience. All eyes on you, my magician, all eyes on me, your illusionist, etc.)

Some months later, I came across this video. I'm not sure if this was another take, if this was a rehearsal, or if it was edited but the televised version of this walk we all know so very well does not include this very Loie Fuller-esque flourish Karlie does at the end of the runway.

For reference, here is a portion of Loie Fuller's Butterfly Dance.

Can I say for sure that Karlie introduced Loie Fuller and her history to Taylor Swift? Nope. Nothing is impossible. But it sure seems to me that one of them introduced her to the other, and it seems more likely it would have started with Karlie. I'd expect a gay ballerina to have a greater knowledge of Loie's history than Taylor just as I'd expect Taylor to have a greater knowledge of, say, Melissa Ethridge, than Karlie. And if this is the case, the dedication to Loie could have been a sort of vicarious dedication to Karlie.

BUTTERFLY DANCE / SERPENTINE DANCE

Of course it's applicable as fuck that the two dances Loie Fuller was known for were the Butterfly Dance & Serpentine Dance. Especially considering the association between Karlie Kloss & butterflies since, well, the presumed beginning of her involvement in all of this.

But it gets much more interesting leading up to Reputation when several things happen and Taylor ends up embracing the title of "snake".

It's always a bad idea to pin a label on a girl who's been told who she has to be her entire life. That's not going to go well. But Dear Reader, if you're young this is absolutely the best way to respond to bullies. They want you to fight back. They don't know what to do when you gleefully make it you're entire personality and thank them for it.

If you follow me on TikTok or Twitter, you probably know that I think Taylor was sabotaged from coming out not only in 2019, but before Reputation. I think that was the purpose of whatever album "Karma" would have been and I don't see any other reason why an album would be scrapped entirely.

So presumably we have this knowledge of Loie Fuller, Karlie's association with the butterfly and now Taylor's association with the snake, and I think this is exactly where all of this emerges. It's all so serendipitous, and as a poet I can confirm we sure do love that shit.

I think in a way Loie Fuller and the true reason behind her artistic choices became a way to sort of romanticize closeting. It wasn't forced, it was a magic trick. It wasn't torture, it was a game. If you have to do it anyway, you might as well approach it in a way that makes you hate it a little less. It gives you a sense of control. If you can't make it stop, make it *art*.

And this continues into the Lover era in such a beautiful way. To my knowledge, that's the first introduction of The Crest. And you will never convince me that's not a snake in the shape of an S and a butterfly in the shape of a K. The entire crest is for the Lover. I seriously doubt she used both to represent herself, despite the use of fluffy imagery during the era.

I think Taylor does cover up self interest with a thin (and messy) layer of allyship, but I think it's also true that her inability to honor the one person she wants to honor often makes her look like she only cares about herself. Another example of this is the montage of sweet clips in Miss Americana that are just... all Taylor. The "someone" she had fallen in love with is never shown. Likewise the Rep attic movies in the Lover music video are all Taylor. Because she couldn't make them all the muse like she wanted.

It must really fucking suck to always look like something you're not, but I digress.

I'm adding this depiction of snakes & butterflies mostly because in looking for what I wanted to include here I noticed something about this back tattoo I'd never noticed and I've never seen anyone else talk about - there are two snakes. It's not a snake bursting into butterflies like the beginning of ME!, it's two district snakes with different patterns coiled around one another.

Perhaps two "snakes in the grass" were meant to finally fly free. I'm not sure if that's what it means, but I had a good cry about it anyway.

Of course after the Lover era and the absolute clusterfuck that came with it, it's understandable that everything wasn't sunshine and rainbows anymore.

But one thing that did remain was the crest. We see it again in the Evermore photo shoot, albeit behind glass which I'm sure is a coincidence.

But even now, the crest remains relevant. It pops up again in Anti-Hero, when Taylor's glittery insides are exposed and she ruins her friends' dinner trying to cover it up. Then she tries to drink from a wine bottle with the crest on it, but fails because it's empty.

Once she's OUT of the house, however, a similar wine bottle is able to be drank.

The crest was even in the Apple Music experience thing a couple of months ago, both on the stained glass found in the Lover House, but on the "a message in a bottle" bottle.

Although I do think the crest itself is a symbol of Taylor & Karlie's relationship, at minimum it's an ongoing use of the butterfly/serpent juxtaposition seen in Loie Fuller's work and throughout Taylor's.

I think it's fascinating how much we're all inspired and impacted by one another & those influences are meaningful whether people ever know about them or not. I know I have people who have inspired me but will never know. I'm sure you do too. We're all connected in that way.

I just love to consider the "why" behind someone's actions or choices, especially when it comes to art. I like to understand people, and doing so helps me understand myself. Of course it's impossible to ever get confirmation for these sorts of things, but I think it's as good a theory as any.

If nothing else, I'm almost certain that the Vogue writer had good reason to suggest Loie Fuller was the key to Reputation and Lover, although they left it at that. I suppose they had to hide their thoughts in plain sight too, in a way. Maybe they knew, or maybe when you've had to be the illusionist, you can't help but see how the trick is done. It takes away the magic, but it gives you the truth.

#gaylor #gaylor swift #taylor swift

[presidenthades]

Once again, I am doing a series of my behind-the-scenes thoughts for The Golds while I do light edits for formatting, typos, and continuity. Here’s Chapter 6!

For this chapter’s title, I chose to reference the Stranger because of the fear for Jace’s life throughout the chapter. But there are no lyrics for the Stranger in “The Song of the Seven” because, as Sam Tarly says in ASOIAF, “no one sings of the Stranger.” Hence the placeholder: (The Stranger has no songs). And, at the end of the chapter, Jace tells Aegon that she wants no more songs.

Like Chapter 3, this chapter has no scene breaks since it is essentially one long scene during one day. In Chapter 3, there’s a mystery while Jace is trying to figure out what Aegon has been up to, then in Chapter 4 we find out the truth. Here it’s reversed: we already know from Chapter 5 what happened to Jace, but now we’re following Aegon as he tries to figure out where she is.

The chapter starts with Aegon having a normal morning. We see he’s developed the habit of helping his wife dress, and his knowledge of her gown, shoes, and hairpin is useful in his investigation later.

The irony of Aegon and Jace’s last dialogue before they separate! Turns out it’s not Aegon we have to worry about missing the lunch meeting 😢.

Aegon is of the opinion there’s nothing wrong with a little brawl between boys (he and Aemond still brawl on occasion). TBH he probably would’ve kept moving if he didn’t know any of the boys, but because he knows Ronnel, he intervenes. Also, since Aegon pays Gyles, Gyles and Ronnel are part of Aegon’s household (although Gyles makes pies for pretty much everyone who asks), so there’s some of that feudal responsibility where a lord takes care of his people.

Ronnel is basically the new kid at school, and the other servant boys don’t like him because they perceive favoritism from Aegon (which there is). I’m sure the castle staff have some kind of hierarchy that factors in things like tenure, and suddenly Ronnel and his dad show up going “milord Aegon” in what the others deem an overly familiar way. Gyles’s pies are very in demand among other highborns at the castle, which means Gyles’s standing quickly rises (and Ronnel by proxy), so the boys are envious of Ronnel’s good fortune. And most of the servants are from the Crownlands, so the boys are quick to pick on Ronnel’s Vale background.

Gyles is around 30 (Aegon is 18) and from a very different background, so it would be difficult for them to be true friends in a society that places so much emphasis on class and wealth. But they’re at least friendly because they’ve known each other for so long, and Aegon has been thinking a lot more about fatherhood. Gyles is one of the few men he personally knows who seems to have a healthy relationship with his son, so I feel like Aegon has asked Gyles a few questions about fatherhood prior to this chat in Chapter 6. The convo about Gyles’s wife foreshadows some of the issues Jace wrestles with in the coming chapters (although she has a much happier resolution), and it’s definitely on Aegon’s mind while he helps her through the aftermath.

Aegon’s little detective business just kind of happened. Probably started with one of the former captives at the warehouse asking for help related to the Tyroshi, and it snowballed from there as word spread around the city that “hey, if you have a problem, Prince Aegon might help you out.” Of course Aegon would prefer not to get the boring problems (I keep imagining BBC’s Sherlock only taking interesting cases), but he puts up with them because the smallfolk are very enthusiastic with their gratitude—and Jace likes it when he helps people, which is probably the bigger incentive.

The innkeeper disapproving of his daughter’s elopement is supposed to parallel Daemon disapproving of Jace’s elopement, so Aegon is inclined to sympathize with the young couple instead of the father (again, the theme of smallfolk and highborns being essentially the same, just with more or less money). AND the daughter is pregnant, so Aegon is envisioning what he and Jace would want in that scenario. Also, Aegon specifically buys a goat as a wedding present because it’s just about one of the most useful things a peasant could have. The goat is relatively inexpensive to maintain and feed, and it provides milk and some wool. And it can be marked with ownership, so it’s harder for a jealous neighbor to steal than a sack of coins. (This is my amateur understanding of goats, I know very little about goat husbandry.)

I’m probably going to write a chapter from Liane’s POV in my smallfolk anthology. She’s a very smart girl who was born into poverty, can’t read (hence the X she signs on the contract) but has a good head for business. For a poor prostitute in this society, the most common career paths are either a) keep being a prostitute forever, b) repent and join the Faith as a septa, or c) become a brothel owner. Liane has been working on option C for a while, and she sees the opportunity to buy the building she works in when Aegon shows no interest in the Garden. He also doesn’t take a cut of their earnings, so she’s able to save up faster the next few months. I like to think that because she’s worked side by side with the other girls so long, she’ll be a good manager to them rather than let the authority go to her head. And the influx of money that Aegon sends them after they help Jace significantly improves living conditions, to the point that Liane might even be able to change it from a brothel to a different establishment.

But the most important point of the scene: Aegon sows good karma by selling the Garden to Liane for dirt cheap (1 groat = 4 pennies), and it pays dividends that very day when Jace needs help.

Rhaenyra mentions in the Handbook that Luce had quite a few childhood fears, including storms, which she still secretly has. I gave this fear to Luce because I was thinking about the canonical Storm’s End chase scene and how that would be even more harrowing with a fear of storms. Now I also realize there’s some symbolism because Cassandra Baratheon is one of the Four Storms ⛈️.

In Chapter 4, Aegon is quick to distract himself when he starts thinking about the baby and being a father. Here, he purposefully lingers on thoughts about fatherhood as he observes Daemon interacting with Alyssa; Aegon is making progress coming to terms with being a father.

Sorry not sorry but I love the imagery of short Lucera wearing Aemond’s big coat 🥰. She’s soaked after flying on Arrax in the rain, and he probably makes some snarky comments about how unkempt she looks while he wraps the coat around her. (Meanwhile Rhaenys is off to the side like “OK ignore me, I’m just an old lady, thanks.”)

There is some irony that Aegon sneaks out alone to the city all the time and deliberately gets in trouble but is always fine, while the one time Jace leaves the castle during her pregnancy, the worst happens.

Aemond thinks Aegon is being panicked and reckless (which he is), but Aemond follows him anyway because a) that’s his brother even if he’s kind of a dumbass sometimes and b) Aemond knows he’s the only person who can keep up with Aegon right now 🥲.

Bethany is in a heckload of pain right now, and it would be her right to demand a maester’s attention before her own wounds worsen/get infected, but she cares about Floris so she makes sure Floris isn’t alone at the end 😢.

Aegon’s threat to feed the madam’s brother to Sunfyre and make her watch is indeed a reference to a certain canon event… 👀

Aegon has definitely done his homework on the Tyroshi since he spent a while trying to catch him. I might flesh out the guy’s backstory in a future fic, but I imagine him to be from one of Tyrosh’s ruling families (the archon is chosen from a conclave of the richest families in Tyrosh). I had to make up a name based on the naming patterns of other Tyroshi characters GRRM created.

Throughout this chapter, Aemond serves as the voice of reason and is able to quickly refute many of Aegon’s arguments because he knows how Aegon thinks. Admittedly, Aemond would act a lot like Aegon right now if Luce were the one in trouble—but then Aegon would be the one knocking sense into Aemond into that scenario. The brothers are more similar than they like to admit.

Bethany is very angry at Elinor, understandably so. Bethany did her duty and came to Jace’s defense, and she almost died for it—plus she’s aware that her face is never going to look the same again. Meanwhile Elinor abandoned their mistress and did absolutely nothing to help anybody, and she’s perfectly fine (for now). I don’t think Elinor was thinking at all about her crush on Aegon at the time, but Bethany really wants to make her words hurt and ensure that Elinor doesn’t come away completely unscathed. Definitely not friends anymore.

As I’ve said before, book!Aegon has excellent zingers, and TGC says Aegon has an eye for people’s weak spots. Here, Aegon deliberately says one of the most hurtful things he could possibly say to a girl who likes him: “you’re worse than a dog.” 💀 (I can’t blame him though.)

Despite the circumstances, Westerosi values are pretty engrained into Aegon, so he feels like he can’t lay hands on a highborn girl like Elinor, whereas he wouldn’t hesitate to beat a man into a pulp. So he hands (pun not intended) Elinor to Rhaenyra, because the optics of a mother/another woman punishing Elinor are much less bad, and he’s confident Rhaenyra will make it hurt. (And he forces Elinor to personally tell Rhaenyra what she did. Oof!)

Book!Aegon is capable of immense cruelty, especially after he’s been wronged (I’m hoping we see that in S2). I wanted to channel that here when he punishes Edwyn Pyle. First he unofficially puts Edwyn on trial, with Aegon as judge and jury, and makes Edwyn sweat as he confesses everything he did wrong. Of course Aegon deems him guilty, and part of him would like to kill Edwyn personally. But Aegon also thinks the other guards need to be punished for blindly obeying orders (we can argue whether this is fair to the guards, but Aegon doesn’t care about being fair right now), so he includes them in Edwyn’s punishment. I was inspired by the Roman practice of decimation, where if an entire group of soldiers (usually groups of 10) needs to be punished, one of them is randomly selected and the others beat him to death. Aegon makes the other guards take turns beating Edwyn so they never forget their failure (and if they mess up again, next time it might be them being beaten to death), and it adds extra burn to Edwyn’s death because he’s being beaten by the very men he was ordering around. (And yes, Edwyn does end up dying after 12 hours of this.)

Although I just said Aegon is capable of immense cruelty, he is arguably “nicer” than Aemond 😅. In F&B, Aegon shows mercy to Gaemon Palehair and agrees to knight Trystane Truefyre before execution, neither of which he needed to do. Compare to Aemond, who slaughters all of House Strong including the toddlers and burns tf out of the Riverlands 😐. Neither of them is really nice though, let’s be real.

A younger Daemon would’ve been out searching on the streets too, but he is sadly no longer a young man. Instead he’s been playing spymaster at the Red Keep, and it pays off. The old man who has info about the hay wagon goes to a brothel in Mysaria’s network, and she sends word to Daemon. The show has made Mysaria a populist, so I think she approves of Jace’s attempts to help the people of KL. And I’m sure Mysaria has heard about Aegon’s detective services, so overall she’s inclined to help find Jace.

A wagon, two mules, and pile of good hay are worth way more than a little rowboat, hence the old man’s eagerness to trade and disinclination to ask too many questions.

Kites have been used in warfare for many centuries. When you have dragonriders, you need to be able to signal them somehow, and I feel like kites would be a pretty good solution for that. Now that there are so many adult dragonriders in KL, someone (probably Corlys or Daemon) suggested incorporating the kite system for emergencies such as this. The gold cloaks were notably incompetent during Chapter 4, but I think the Targs have whipped them back into shape during the last few months.

Luce is honestly not in much danger at all on dragonback, with only one “enemy” on the ground. But Aemond worries anyway 😛. (Aegon’s been in a state all day, some of it probably wore off on Aemond.)

When Aegon asks “where is she,” the Tyroshi realizes they haven’t found Jace. He knows there’s no way he’s escaping now, so he decides to drag out Aegon’s torment as much as he can before he’s inevitably executed.

Aemond reacts very strongly to Aegon digging into the Tyroshi’s mutilated eye because…uh…well, the eye thing 👁️👄⚫️. Aemond has zero sympathy for the guy but he’s probably getting some secondhand pain watching it happen.

I actually do think Jace saw Arrax while Luce was flying out, but she had no way of signaling Arrax, and it was too dark/high for Luce to spot Jace in the trees 🙁. Jace probably thought about trying to follow Arrax, but she had no idea when/where Arrax would land (and a dragon is much faster than her on foot), so she continued onward to the city.

Contrary to common belief, House Hightower’s sigil colors do NOT include green! It’s a white tower with orange flames on a gray field. That’s why Alicent’s necklace is white gold and amber. I imagine it as a necklace from when she was a girl (long before her green era), and she gave it to Jace shortly after the elopement.

The guards who refused to listen to Liane are probably due for some very arduous training drills once the Targs have the bandwidth to pay attention to them 😬.

The Liane chapter I mentioned above will probably cover in more detail what happens when Jace shows up at the Garden. I imagine that once the girls realize Jace is in fact the missing princess, they kick out all their customers so they can focus on her.

Jace has a big problem with people touching her in the next chapter, but right now she’s still in shock, so she lets one of the girls comb her hair. The Garden girls have never interacted with anyone as high society as Jace before, but they’re offering the best hospitality they can: dragging out a clean mattress and blankets, building the fire as hot as they can (firewood ain’t free), giving her clothes (they don’t have much that’ll fit a heavily pregnant woman but they try), scrubbing Jace’s muddy shift.

Jace being soundly refused help from the other shopkeepers shocks and hurts her a lot. She’s spent her entire life being recognized instantly because she’s a princess. But the smallfolk have only ever seen her from a distance, if at all, and she would’ve been dressed in royal finery, like during her wedding day. Now she’s only wearing her shift and one shoe, and her hair (which is black instead of a distinctive Valyrian silver) is a mess. Usually the only people who walk around in public in their smallclothes are whores, so the shopkeepers take one look at her and assume she’s a whore. Meanwhile the girls at the Garden are at the bottom of society, so they know what it’s like to need help but be scorned by everyone else. They don’t believe Jace’s identity at first, but she’s a pregnant woman in desperate need of help, so they let her inside because they’ve been in similar straits before.

This is a turning point in Aegon’s journey to fatherhood. His concern most of the day was about Jace, but when he feels Cheeseball move for the first time, it suddenly strikes him that the baby is not just an extension of Jace, as he’s been thinking so far. This is the moment when Aegon realizes he loves the baby because it’s his child, not just because it’s part of Jace.

Luce has been away for six months, but she grew up with Jace. She immediately clocks that Jace isn’t going to be entirely OK. Aegon also knows this deep down, but he’s desperately hoping for the best so he’s acting like it’s only a physical thing.

Rhaenyra picked a very poetic punishment for Elinor. Elinor loses her dominant hand, which she used to push Jace, but it’s also the hand that made her excel as a LIW because many of Elinor’s talents, like hairstyling, lay in the dexterous use of her hands. But even if Elinor were ever welcome at court again, she wouldn’t be able to reclaim a similar position. The loss of her hand also takes down her marriageability a lot, if the dishonor weren’t enough. I also imagine Aunt Elinda had a lot to say to Elinor 😬.

Alicent doesn’t know how to comfort Aegon (and he probably doesn’t want it right now), so she defaults into “hostess” mode (the queen is basically hostess of the entire castle/court) by making sure he and Jace have their physical needs taken care of.

Jace spent many hours alone in the woods, so she had a lot of time to think about what happened that day. She’s already begun internalizing her guilt about her ladies’ deaths, and how her pregnancy led to them being in the Sept. She feels like she shouldn’t celebrate the baby when her ladies/friends have died because of it. And the Tyroshi talked about how people sing about Jace and Aegon, hence Jace’s temporary aversion to songs. So Aegon’s first attempt at helping her back to “normalcy” fails—but as we see in future chapters, he figures out another way.

#my writing #meta #house of the dragon meta #hotd meta #fanfic meta #aegon ii targaryen #female jacaerys velaryon #the golds

[theartfulv]

The Making Of My Lockwood & Co. Animatic!

Some people wanted to know about the process on Discord (and I’ve said most of this on there though I think this will be a little more coherent) but I thought maybe the lovely folks on here might be interested too!

This will probably be quite long so bare with (it was over a month of my life 😂)

maybe I’ll be cool and split this into sections

The Beginning/ Scripting Phase

Originally I’d planned for it to focus solely on George and the bone glass, so all of The Whispering Skull, and scripted as such.

(If you want to see the first rendition let me know I’ve still got it all saved 👀)

Generally when I approach lyric based projects I copy down the lyrics, separate them into sections and then write a description of what I want to happen on each line with camera angles and any general cinematography or editing notes.

(I will say though I’ve switched to writing on top of my music file so I can describe everything to the beat and see the timing of each sequence)

So after planning it all out, collecting screenshot references, making numerous Pinterest boards and the thumbnail… I scrapped it.

Peak planning on my end. 🫠 So I scripted the second rendition which was a total of…

Yeah…. That’s it. That is all I scripted and just made sequences up as I went along! Though I did take heavy reference from my original script for the bone glass sequence.

As you can see it was to a completely different section of the song and some of it differs from the final, i.e I didn’t end up using a canted angle in this sequence or any shallow focus.

The Boarding Process

Again I made up sequences as I went! So I started with the beginning for once?! Drawing in Sketchbook Pro and editing the frames together using HitFilm.

(FLASH WARNING)

I planned it so I’d spend half of my time on rough boarding and the other half on finalising it, so 8 seconds per day, which is a lot of work and can range from anywhere between 2hrs and 8hrs… commitment 💪

I did the majority of it during my Christmas break but other than that I just worked on it whenever I wasn’t at college.

So this is what all of my original boards looked like!

Anyway! Onto the first dilemma… The Bone Glass.

After boarding about 20 seconds of the start and one Combe Carey frame (the outside of the hall) I decided to work on the Bone Glass section, originally I’d planned for all the 7 spirits the fly into the frame and merge together to create the bone glass that didn’t happen… but I was inspired by kaleidoscopes and thought that’d be cool too. So I attempted to create that sequence and it was so stressful 😂

Somehow I miraculously figured out how to spin all the different layers in different directions and then inverted each one every second alternating! Then I had to export the file and put it into my actual Animatic which HitFilm did not like at all…

Eventually I managed to export it and that allowed me to zoom out/cut outwards whilst the sections were moving and inverting and then I created the second section with the spiral which HitFilm also did not appreciate so I had to make the file much smaller but I think it worked out anyway!

Then I continued to work out of order…

I did parts of Combe Carey (which is actually quite different from the final version) and then got to work on my favourite sequence!

(Or rest of the sequence) George’s section/ The Bone Glass, and just had this image mixing the original papers taped up in his room with a suspect board, I had visions of Roxanne in Megamind working out Megamind’s next plan/ superhero Titan and the intro of A Series of Unfortunate Events.

I think I’m always very heavily influenced by other media and material and thought it’d be a fun nod to some of my previous hyperfixations.

And I think this is when my plan of ‘do the rough half first then the final half later’ failed… because I finalised all of these frames before even finishing the rest of the roughs 😭

At this point it was about the 27th December and I had about a minute of footage.

After that I realised that I actually had total creative freedom and that’s when I did the first half of the Combe Carey sequence with Annabel’s shadow and the Red Room door!

This then led me to take much more liberty with the rest of the animatic including Annabel hovering over Lucy, The Spiral Section of The Screaming Staircase and The Monks!

Throughout this project I studied so many different pieces of concept art and different storyboards, beats and random animatics to gain insight and inspiration which led me to create a new Pinterest board!!! 🥳

Then…

Disaster struck (except it didn’t but it felt like it)

My PC decided to stop working… then… My GPU broke!?!

Yeah… so no drawing for me!

Oh and all of my files turned blue!!!

Somehow I managed to transfer all of my files onto another family member’s PC who thankfully let me draw on it for the foreseeable/ until it was done (absolute legend) but I’d still lost 3 days working time… which at this point was the equivalent of 24 seconds… and it was not looking good for me and the deadline.

In my head I just had to finish it for the anniversary of the show.

But life went on and so did my college work aka. I had exam week… yeah did I revise for it… (the answer is very little but I actually was only 2 marks of an A so I think that I was pretty iconic) and I also planned all of my coursework (due on the 29th… yikes). But I did it!!!

Then I had a power cut…

But it was okay!!! And I finished it (had to do 14 seconds worth of work on the day of but I finished it!!)! There were a lot of sequences that I’d had to cut or shorten which I’m not too happy about but I finished it!!!

And I guess that’s it really!

As a final thing I thought I’d share a few of my favourite frames :)

That’s All!! If you’d have any questions or thoughts let me know!!!

I LOVE YOU LOCKNATION 😭😭😭

#art #locknation #lockwood and co #fanart #animatic #art process #my brain is melting

[summertimemusician]

Linktober Shadow Day 6

Shadow Beast

The Twilight Princess fan in me really came out on this one huh? I blame the sleep deprivation. We never quite addressed the effects of the Twili Magic on Twilight and how it's only sheer force of will and the fact he's so darn kind, Midna's influence and Time teaching him the Song of Healing first being the main factor in making sure he doesn't fall huh? Even more so than the One Cutscene. We also need to talk more about the fact we technically kill Midna's people and how by the end of it all Twi is so changed by the Twilight Realm who's it's own can of worms that, much like Time he can't quite go home as himself me thinks, as a treat to myself

Mostly Twilight x Reader, this goes out to all of the folks who never quite recovered from Twilight Princess and the fact we never got that sequel (I mean it gave us BOTW and TOTK and Wild, but at what cost?), but can be read as Link x Reader either on the platonic or romantic.

Don't think there's any warning this time but might edit later if needed.

Actually yeah there is one warning

TW:

References to body horror typical to Twilight Princess, though I recommend not reading it I'd you're squeamish period.

Even after so long, you and Twilight could still remember the beauty and solemnity of the Twilight Realm, with it’s zircon skies with clouds of trapped fire and rains of viper obsidian.

The silence of the infection upon the realm of light broken only by the echoes of the howling elegy of the Twili and Interlopers who came before creeping over the land like rot and wither over flowers, the lament of the lost spirits of the people and animals of Hyrule falling over your spirit like a shroud, a shared hymm from two worlds reality had been twisted, only both of it’s princess, one filled the luster of empyreal sorrow in her mind and one with the scorch abyssal fury in her heart knowing to see the reflective tragedy befallen to their people. With Link as the one who restored the memory of what once was in both worlds as divinity and calamity sang in his bones and you a witness to the restoration of harmony to the discordant symphony, the two different songs of light and shadow refusing to let go of either of you in an eternal duet.

(Once touched by magic, it shall never leave the one if holds onto Twilight may have been the one with the Beast in his soul, with the howl of a wolf, the bite of shades in his veins and the lament of innocents taking precedence over anything purely because he learned how to silence the whispers of the one’s who made a grab for heaven’s throat and we’re pushed in the cracks of reality for their prideful vánitas even as he could taste it in the back of his tongue, twining around his ribs and overgrowing into his shattered mirror heart like vines, flowering with the divinity and eternal nature of the Hero’s Spirit, already having the hunt of the Fierce Deity in it’s veins and the remains of cursed divinity welcoming the new aspect merrily so he could bear it. The song of the innocent wrongly punished among the sinners rang into your mind, scratched at your skin and dug it’s claws around your throat, chocking you with sorrow and regret, more willing to leave gouges than to let go of someone’s who’s looked into the reverse side of the sacred realm and wept with grief for it’s people and the curse of it’s beauty.

It would never leave you, Link or Zelda, who learned who love the darkness the way Midna did, madness and unsightly delight and all.)

While the people of Hyrule merely became trapped as observers at best, if they were lucky, Midna’s raging grief and resentment quickly became obvious, once she revealed that rotten Zant had done to her and her people, twisted into a new form, distorted in body and trapped in mind like the animals and beasts of Hyrule, their pain driving them in becoming feral attack hounds for the usurper, their howling screams as much sorrow, wailing in an attempt to let their agonized, tortured souls to escape from it’s mouth, a futile attempt to flee from the strain of reality forgetting their true form in favor of Zant’s twisted design, of being used as sentient canvases for cruelty and ruthlessness, of their will being stepped over in favor of corrupting recreation.

Of how it only didn’t quaff down at Midna’s mind because of the nature of her ephemerality, fully beloved by the Realm of Darkness, of how she loathed him for it and wouldn’t wish her fate of that of her people’s on any living or dead soul, once she came to love the Realm of Light through Zelda’s sacrifice.

Which was why, when you saw three of the victims of the telltale twisting from darkness utilized with the intent to drive one insane, a familiar looking plate of stone engraved on the remains of ashes from their identity, the curling of distorted, solid darkness making crooked mishapen manes, bent out of shape from their too long torso and long, long arms adorned with twitching, deformed claws, you feel very justified in way your blood froze, holding onto Wild’s arms and yanking with all you had so his shot will miss, his yelp of surprise swallowed by the bone cracking, blood curdling screech from one of the beasts as a Skyward Strike grazed it’s petrified flesh.

You feel something warm drip down your ears, taste the promise of violence and the cry of lost souls on the back of your tongue and swallow it down as the memory of the Twilight Realm attempted to bite and crack your ribcage to quaff down your heart, to devour it bones and all, calling out in desperation, “Don’t! That’s a person!”

Sky freezes, as still as a statue, Legend curses the heavens crimson in a way you are so glad Wind isn’t around to hear as he retreats Twilight snarls, the wolf in him revolted and disgusted, you wonder if the Twilight is singing in his mind too as he restrains himself from reaching for the crystal as nails just a tad too sharp invite droplets of blood to one hand, grimm as a graveyard “We need to get them together anyway, felling just one won’t be enough.”

You grimace, releasing Wild, keeping your eye on the Shadow Beasts and another on your group, pointedly not mentioning the twitch in Four, amethyst clouding his gaze and the prism of his eyes turning gray with memories you and Twilight both knew all too well, of the grimace in Time’s otherwise stony countenance, you’d wished to avoid bloodshed of whoever was turned against their will, but you and Twilight both knew that might not be possible, death, unfortunately, might be the greatest mercy you can grant these poor souls.

(The Twilight is harmonizing in your ears, jeering, you feel the Interlopers insanity and the Twili’s lament on your teeth. As lovely as it could be cruel, the merry feeling upon meeting, the sorrow at a parting.

If you ever see the Shadow, you might just try indulging the echo by offering it’s blood as tribute. You'd make it hurt. The fact it learned the spell used to deform reality in such a way was cruel and vile.)

“Legend, how is your magic?” shoots Warriors, analyzing, calculating, it snaps the purple back into Four’s gaze, brings his mind back to focus as he reaches into his inventory for his Moon Pearl, Twilight is circling the beasts with single minded purpose, herding them together and prowling as he would as a wolf, Wild thankfully listened to your warning and had switched from the more destructive Flame and Lightning Arrows to ice ones. It doesn’t contain them for long but it gives a few precious seconds to strategize.

Legend catches on, switching to the Ice Rod on one hand and grasping his own Moon Pearl with the other, Sky has another Skyward Strike ready, but doesn’t release it, you switch from your sword to accepting a Magic Rod tossed at you from Wild, “Good enough.”

You breath in shakily, the symphony of the Twilight Realm has quieted, more lament than anthem as it’s Hero steps back, returning to your side, he nods grimly, “... Then, let’s end this quickly.”

You know your will boys will do their best to heal them, and failing that, you hope that they’ll hear the requiem of the Twili rather than the lament once they’re at peace, that they'll find some form of threnody.

It is a horrible thing, to be forced to die as a beast.

#linked universe x reader #linked universe twilight x reader #We really need to talk more about how the Twilight Realm sticks with Twilight and how it's magic never really leaves him #Heck I also want to know what it was like learning to turn into a wolf on his own. I bet that it was quite the process #friendly reminder that Time Twilight Midna and her people can all shake hands over identity and technical body horror #And how the Twilight Realm also likely has it's form of sentience due to the duality of both people like the Interlopers and the Twili #Something something how the difference between light magic dark magic is more about how willing much each reality changes you #and how Twilight more than anything and anyone who was with him on his journey would embody that fine line #Also the conflict between not wanting to kill the people that remind you of your old friend and the echoes all you have left of her realm #and knowing that their fate is so darn awful that death is a mercy #The reason Reader sees the Twilight as they do is because the dark magic latched onto them via association and Twilight's fondness #Maybe I'll elaborate on that later idk lol #Also the reason Dark Link knows the curse Zant used is both because of his nature and a reference to the TP Manga if you know you know #Hero's Shade mauls Zant in it. It's arguably the best thing in any manga I am begging any people who like Twilight and TP to go read it #summer writes linktober shadow 2023 #summer writes #I could go on an entire essay about the relationship between the Realm of Darkness in each game and the Realm of Light and magic in loz #but I doubt anyone would want to hear about it lol

[shivunin]

Songfic Tag Game

Rules: Pick a song to accompany each of your fics or as many as you like. This might be the fic's inspiration or just pure vibes that you'd like to share with readers. Tag as many people as fics you feature (or do as you please!)

Thank you for the tag @greypetrel!! You know I'm a sucker for anything music-related 💗

Lol well I sure have more fics than I remember, so I'll do them until I'm ready to go back to writing/editing the oc kiss things c:

Tagging back @idolsgf @nightwardenminthara @inquisimer @dreadfutures @bitchesofostwick @vakarians-babe @jtownnn @ndostairlyrium @dungeons-and-dragon-age @star--nymph @zenstrike

Your Fate For Mine: (Elowen decides to sacrifice herself instead of allowing Hawke or Stroud die in the Fade; her friends try to find and bring her back) Anywhere On This Road by Lhasa De Sela

Wander the Drifting Roads: (After a horrible accident, Emmaera loses her Commander and lover in one stroke of a knife. Separated, the two of them must relearn who they are and where their paths lead) Mausoleum by Rafferty or Remember Us by Gabriel Royal or Flowers from Hadestown

Between Strokes of Night: (Hawke and Fenris's first night after deciding to be together again) Awake at Night by half alive

Saccharine: (Arianwen gives in to emotion for the first time in her life and takes Zevran to bed) Saccharine by Jazmin Bean or Kiss Me You Animal by Burn the Ballroom

To the Bone: (Soulmate AU! The last person Salshira intends to seek out is the one on the other side of the flame brand at her jaw. Love is, after all, one of the most dangerous things a person can do. Luck--or fate--drags her to the Inquisition anyway) Die Young by Sylvan Esso or All I've Ever Known from Hadestown

Scattered Stars: (Fenhawke anthology fic--this is where all my Tumblr fics go when they've been edited and expanded upon c:) Right on Time by Brandi Carlile or Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac

Palimpsest: (Fenris's perspective of the events leading up to the romance scene in Act II) That Unwanted Animal by The Amazing Devil or Peregrine by Mako

Tempered: (The Inquisitor learns of a death in the family and tries to manage her grief) Good Grief by Dessa

In Any Life: (Fenris leaves for Tevinter; he and Hawke try to write to each other, but their letters have gone astray) Siuil a Ruin by Anuna or Francesca by Hozier

The Scourge of Sundermount: (A monster lives in the mountains outside of Kirkwall. What fate is there for a monster but a knight with a blade sent to kill it?) Leviathan, the Girl by Phemiec or The Killing Moon by Echo & The Bunnymen or Strangelove by Black Math

Misericordia: (An elaboration on the scene where Cullen explains lyrium addiction to the Inquisitor) The Myth by San Fermin or Nothing Fades Like the Light by Orville Peck

As Two Reflected Stars: (Hawke and Fenris's developing relationship, as traced by the healing of wounds) I Know You Know by Charming Disaster or Arms by San Fermin or Anybody Else by The Ballroom Thieves

Book of Memories: (Sequel of sorts to Wander; moments in Emma and Cullen's relationships, each carefully noted in a single book for later reference) You and Me On the Rock by Brandi Carlile or Photograph by Cody Fry

Sleight of Hand: (Hawke is a stage magician. She's asked very few questions about her surly assistant, which has worked just fine for both of them--until his past comes calling) Enchante by Dirt Poor Robins or The Magic by Lola Blanc

#arja i almost tagged you again three times because i kept forgetting where this came from lol #tag game #music #honestly. these games make me enjoy my own writing again #music has a way of bringing you back to the mindset you were in when you wrote something #and it feels good to dig back through my old playlists again #there are some really cool ideas in here. actually. #and i had fun writing them c: #and dammit i'm going to commission maria in her magician outfit someday because i love that au #thanks for the tag hun <3

[taylortruther]

Yk with the added context of the Matty-Taylor relationship timeline, I was compelled to go back and reconsider certain songs from her discography and see them differently. Obviously we have The 1, Cardigan, Question..?, Glitch etc but what about the 1989 vault?

I have a strong belief that Taylor re-touches, if not fully edits the vault tracks before the album releases (as evidenced by the punchline lyric on ATW10MV).

Ofc, we don't know for sure, but in Now That We Don't Talk there's that line about the muse "growing his hair long" and Harry hadn't done that till late 2014 (atleast to a noticeable extent) so I felt that maybe that song was written later on.

Anyways, listening to TTPD got me thinking some thoughts. Like Taylor is very deliberate with her word usage on the songs. In Down Bad, the lyric "How dare you say that it's..." is supposed to be auto-filled with the word "over". This instantly made me think of Is It Over Now?

Was "Slut!" about Matty too? I mean if the rumours of a 1975 feature on that song were true, then obviously it has a connection to them? Also, I've always felt it was weird to have that song be about Harry for so many reasons, but whatever.

I mean ofc there's glaring references to Harry on the album, but by now we know that Taylor likes to merge her muses for a single song. She even liked a Tumblr post back in 2015 that related STYLE of all songs to Matty. Not a joke. Twitter recently rediscovered it and went nuts over it.

I feel like many songs we attributed to Harry over the years was just about Matty. I mean it always bothered me how much Taylor seemed to be affected by a 2 month situationship with an 18 year old all the way back in 2012. I mean she never brought up Kennedy or Lautner or Tom like she did with Harry in her later works....now we know that it was most likely Matty.

One part of me believes that So It Goes was also bout him. I mean "you did a number on me" means to mess someone up in a bad way, and I have no idea why she would put that lyric in there otherwise.

Also Ivy and Illicit Affairs were widely regarded to be about the Calvin-Tom-Joe situation...but in retrospect they might've been about Matty. These might sound like mindless rumours to most, but keep in mind that Guilty As Sin and Fresh Out The Slammer exist. Both Ivy and Illicit Affairs were fictional songs, but they expressed her inner feelings (swirled you into all my poems). Again, just theorizing here.

i guess he could be ~swirled~ into a few songs from 1989 tv (anything is possible! we didn't know the full story until the red vault! disclaimer!), but mostly i think what you are picking up on is that... taylor has a pattern in her relationships. and she has stories she tells herself about relationships, or herself, just like we all do, which create songs that share many themes.

like, obviously i don't know taylor, and i could be wrong about anything i write about her lyrics. but while ivy could be about matty (anything is possible!), i think it makes more sense that she has, on a few different occasions, left a dying relationships only after another person she liked came into her orbit. and this isn't even uncommon. lots of people only leave relationships when they have someone in the wings, or they've met someone who makes them realize the grass might be greener.

[tillthereweretangents]

The book in the video for Free as a Bird

The video for "Free As a Bird" is chockablock with references to Beatles songs. We believe every one of their songs is in there somewhere, maybe even including songs that they didn’t release, and we’re working on putting together a comprehensive list.

However, true to form, we got waylaid by a tangent. (Stick with us to the end, we promise it's worth it).

In the scene representing "Paperback Writer" a book is seen on the table closest to the camera:

Tragically this is the clearest shot of the book (you can watch the video here, the book appears at the 3 minute mark). It seems as though it has been intentionally blurred. We’re not ones to back down from a research challenge though!

We tried all the obvious things: it’s clearly not Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, for example, but we weren’t having much luck finding a book with a two-word title (first word slightly shorter), whose author had a longer first name and shorter surname. (Did you know there are 1.5 million books in the Penguin archive collection?)

So we contacted [email protected] (because of course we did). They got back to us quickly, and were very helpful. 

Our correspondent Esmé tried to find a contract for any Penguin book being used in the video, but came up empty. So the Beatles didn’t get permission to use this book. Very interesting, especially since it seems to have been obscured. 

She pointed out that the combination of:

Two line book title

One line author name

Dancing penguin figure (only used between 1940 and 1950)

Is quite rare, so that really narrows the search. 

She suggested that, since it doesn’t appear to have “genre markers” on the sides, it would be from 1947 or later. However when you watch the video there may be compression artifacts (smudges) remaining of genre markers that are on the book, but not clearly visible (more on that later).

She proposed Silas Marner after having done a bit of research on her own (have we mentioned what a star she was?):

Armed with all this information we trawled the website given to us by Esmé for more suitable candidates.

The shape of the author name seriously narrows it down, and where a book might match by name, it fails to match by title. In fact, we only found three real candidates, plus the book Esmé gave us: 

Holy Terrors by Arthur Manchen

Paper Houses by William Plomer

And

Peter Waring by Forrest Reid

Just on first glance, only one of these books really had the shortness of the surname seen in the video,

But just to be sure, since the book in the video is blurred and very under saturated, we tried to replicate it:

Silas Marner, Holy Terrors

Paper Houses, Peter Waring

These are the settings we used if anyone wants to check our work:

And that blurred and compressed, the “fiction” marker really is more like a smudge, so we feel confident that we don't need to find a book with no genre marks. 

Here’s that screenshot of the book again, to save you scrolling back to the top:

Only one of these books has the right surname length. We actually measured with a ruler on screen, and the ratio of length between the Author names on our mystery book is 2.333. The ratio between Forrest and Reid (in the font on the Penguin edition): 2.3. Given the inaccuracies of measuring on a screen that’s remarkably close.

We found it. The book is Peter Waring by Forrest Reid. 

After watching the relevant section of the video through, with this book in mind, we’re now totally convinced this is the right book. (Please let us know if you can find another candidate!)

But why? Why that book? It’s not like they’d ever mentioned it, as far as we could find, at least. 

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Peter Waring (1937) is a full-scale revision of Reid's earlier Following Darkness (1912) in which Peter, a sensitive boy with literary inclinations, grows up unhappily in the household of his father, a cold village schoolmaster in Newcastle, County Down, and among his Belfast relatives whom he finds intolerable. 

'An acute and subtle story of adolescence. . . . A delicacy and a grave beauty which make their own quiet appeal.' Times 

'Reid has written one of the finest studies of the mental, sexual, spiritual life of the adolescent without ever mentioning the words.' Glasgow Herald

Sound like the family background of anyone we know? (hint: replace father with Aunt)

But, oh wait, it gets better. 

Forrest Reid was a gay man (very repressed by many accounts but seemingly just ace, or the equivalent at the time, by others) who wrote novels about the queer adolescent experience, more emotional than sexual, in the early 1900s. 

He was good friends with EM Forster, another queer writer of his time and other suspected but never confirmed queer writers as well such as Arthur Greaves. His works are not really well known still, and frankly weren’t even well known in the 50s and 60s, except in queer circles, according to our research. 

Perhaps the choice of this specific Reid book is related to one or more of the Peters in their circle? Shotton, Best, Brown, and Asher. That's a lot of Peters!

As we said at the start, in the music video the book appears in a scene depicting the song "Paperback Writer". And you know what fits better than “Lear” in the lyrics of that song? 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book? It took me years to write, will you take a look? It's based on a novel by a man named Reid And I need a job So I wanna be a paperback writer Paperback writer

(note: Lear never wrote any novels).

Knowing how they liked plays on words (read, Reid), half rhymes (Reid, be), and internal rhymes (Reid, need) we think it’s very likely the novel in the first draft of the song was by a man named Reid.

Much to think about!

Thanks again to Esmé Library and Archive Assistant at Penguin Random House Archive

#free as a bird #book in the video #paperback writer #forrest reid #peter waring #queer bugs #the beatles #em forster #following darkness #arthur greaves #music video #tillthereweretangents

[th3b4dk1dzz]

Just Dance Theory: Jack Rose's sibling

I'm so glad Littlsiha brought up the Kid of the Swan because I've been theorising this for a while and have just a few days before, made a huge break in the case that I would like to share with everyone and my supporting evidence to why I think Dahlia the coach for Don't Start Now and Flowers is Jack's sister.

Exibit A) Naming Convention

The most obvious connection between these two is that they both have flowers as part of their names.

Exibit B) Costuming

Now, although both the Flower siblings wear suits, with blacks, golds, and pinks prevalent in their designs, that's not the comparison I want to make. I want to compare Dahlia's suit to her mother's costume for Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This.

Both coaches wear black pantsuits over a brighter low cut, brighter top/leotard. Given that Flowers is a song about moving on, self-care and healing, perhaps she has decided to accept her past and better herself from it. Hence why her suit is adorned with her own floral motif.

But this is not the first time we have met Dahlia. The first time we see her is in Don't Start Now, where she wears a blue and gold dress, I will say, though, her top, her shoes and her glove are purple and red, colours that are worn by Jack Rose. I like to think this was shortly after leaving Eternyx as a form of rebellion against her mother and is doing everything to distance herself from Night Swan.

Exibit C) Map Colour Palates

Flowers, Don't Start Now,and Treasure all have backgrounds, which have pale gold and light pink tones to them.

Not only that, but in the later two, they both have sections within the routine where that background shifts to a stronger gold and deep purple, the colour of Jack Rose's glove.

Exibit D) Purple Glove Theory

Before I get into this section, for clarification, when I say signature glove, I'm referring to the glove that all coaches wear that the player matches the controller to.

So, as previously stated, Jack has two gloves. Typically, his gold glove is his signature glove, but in Treasure, the illusion is flipped, using the purple glove as his signature, specifically in this idealic dream under Night Swan's control.

Now, what's fascinating about this Sweet Dreams, Night Swan's glove is pink. However, the trailer for the upcoming Y2K event has an emote where she her glove has now changed to purple, so why would they change it for the emote?

I think this represents a familial bond between the three and by showing the real Jack himself, wearing it in a world associated with Dahlia's colours. Night Swan might be tempting him with the prospect of being a complete family again, as well as his "narcissism."

Exhibit D) Ice Cream

So this is just an interesting detail I picked up on. If anyone has a better explanation, please let me know.

So, the JD Twitter account posted a thread about what the 2023 coaches' favourite foods are. While most of the answers were jokes and references. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what Jack's favourite food being vanilla ice cream is a reference to.

For the JD 2024 Edition celebration event, one of the rewards was an avatar for Dahlia with the quote, "Art is more comforting than ice cream. It helps me break free!" There's nothing in either of her maps or Jack's maps that reference ice cream, so it seems a bit weird and out of left field. Unless this is a comfort food between the two that reminds them of the other.

So what happened between these two siblings and what had to Dahlia after she left?

Well that is a theory and a post for another day as this one is pretty long as is. But I do have some ideas and let's just say their interesting to say the least.

#just dance #jd 2024 #enter the danceverses #dance with the swan #night swan #leda nox #jack rose #jd dahlia #just dance lore #just dance theory

[kaddyssammlung]

This Place Will Become Your Tomb

(Transcript from the Revolver mag Special Edition)

I don't own any of this! TW! SH and "unaliving"

Released in September 2021, as the world was finally reopening in the wake of the pandemic, Sleep Token's second album, This Place Will Become Your Tomb, marks a significant evolutionary leap from the masked band's previous work. Lyrically and narratively, it's both darker and more nuanced. In terms of world building, it's more complex with additional layers of meaning hidden in the artwork for the record and the merch released in conjunction with it. Musically, it's more cohesive and mature. Lyrically, This Place Will BecomeYour Tomb traces a tumultuous emotional arc. The album opens with the crystalline Atlantic, a song that most fans seem to agree is about the aftermath of a suicide attempt. Vessel wakes up surrounded by unnamed people who “talk me through the damage, consequence and how it's a pain they know they don't understand”. They sob as “they turn to statues at the bedside”.

Flood me like Atlantic, bandage up the trenches. vessel croons is expressing that some have theorized is a wish for death by drowning, echoing the image. On the album's cover, a humanoid figure submerged arms outstretched in bubbling water. Whatever the preferred method, vessel's reasons for his suicide attempt remain ambiguous. Is he trying to escape Sleep to rid himself of the tremendous pain their toxic dynamic causes him? Or does death offer a path for them to be closer? Either way, he desires to leave this place at all costs, as expressed in his agonizing plea, anything to get me to sleep. Later,in the album, the song “High Water” calls back to the apparent act of self-harm when Vessel sings “You are still a perfect reminder of what all these scars on my arms are for”. Across the rest of This place will become your tomb Vessel's emotions are even more vivid, twisted and contradictory than on Sundowning. On “Hypnosis”, Vessel is as love-struck as ever “You know you hypnotize me always”. But his romantic feelings are undercut by a perverse craving for Sleep to “sink your teeth, split my skin, just make me bleed”.

It's from a place of both desire and desperation that Vessel appears to offer Sleep his body for the deity's own gain, possibly even his mind too, since hypnosis might involve some processing another's brain for their own purpose. “Like that” also blurs contrasting sentiments, blending submissive devotion, “fall into your eyes like a grave, burry me to the sound of your name” with frustration at their continual state of war, “talking with razors on your tongue just to provoke my combat”. “Fall for me has” a double meaning of its own when Vessel asks Sleep “Won't you fall for me?” He could either be referring to falling in love or a shared descend to a watery tomb. At the time, Vessel's potent emotions are more straightforward. His mind showcases the strength of his affection for Sleep while the “love you want” sees him desperately trying to keep sleep close when he appears to be straying. For a time, love seems to win out “I'm dying to melt through the heart of her molecules till the particles part like holy water” Vessel sings during the awestruck “Alkaline”,

but the high quickly drops to a low on the next “Distraction” when Vessel once again realizes he's at the point of no return “It's too late for me”. Regarding the depth of his feelings and the hurt such intense devotion can cause by descending Vessel seems to have grown weary of the lack of reciprocity and their relationship “Take it all for nothing”. Again, he sings before aiming a pointed question back at Sleep: “So what would you do for me?” Although “Telomeres” sees the tension cool and desire reclaims center stage, the disorder sets in again by “High Water” as Vessel admits defeat over what appears to be final separation from Sleep.

I will accept that I can't pretend we will ever be together. He concludes and the album finishes with him back in place of emotional devastation and physical injury.

See the title of closing track “Missing Limbs” just like he was in the beginning.

As compelling as the story is that's told on the record, there is a whole other level of the

narrative taking place outside of the song on This place will become your tomb and it's justas intriguing. A significant element of the lore woven into Sleep Token's second LP came in the form of coordinates which fans in the band's Discord and Reddit communities eagerly poured over. A string of numbers on one of the merged designs from the era proved to be coordinates for a whale fall, a seismic oceanic event where a whale carcass falls to the ocean floor and provides nourishment for an entire ecosystem that typically has little to survive on in the dark depths. Additionally, fans with physical copies of the album found a set of numbers on the back of the CD and vinyl editions that reference distance measured in nautical miles. When the nautical miles were converted to letters, they spelled out the phrase Leviatan Sun. In the Bible Leviatan is a sea monster embodying chaos and in Anton LaVey's the Satanic Bible Leviatan represents the element of water.

This place will become your tomb came with even more mysterious numbers. The album's liner notes as well as the artwork for the individual song on YouTube ascribe each track a measurement in meters each larger or deeper than the one before. For example, the measurement of opening track Atlantic is 914meters which fans later discovered was the depth of the first ever Atlantic deep dive. The depth increase and increase until closing track “Missing Limbs” whose corresponding measurements is 10924meters which happens to be the depth of the Mariana Trench, the deepest oceanic trench on earth. It's a lonely place that only five people, half the number of people who've walked on the moon have visited. Speaking of lonely places the artwork for “This Place” there's three singles Alkaline, The Love You Want and Fall For Me which were released in a slower more conventional album rollout than “Sundowning's” tracks contain three additional coordinates between them. Those turned out to be the coordinates of the most remote location on earth point Nemo the furthest spot from any inhabited land mass in any given direction around 1700miles out into the sea. A literal explanation for the inclusion of these Easter eggs would be to pinpoint a possible location where the events of “This Place” narrative play out but it's more likely these numbers and locations serve a poetic purpose. In a whale fall the Leviathan in question has lost its life but its death enables the nourishment of thousands of other life forms. This parallel spells Vessel's relationship with or even function to sleep. Vessel enables Sleep to thrive and continue existing surrendering parts of himself to make this possible.

In addition the whale fall relates to the continued motif of feeding and biting heard throughout Sleep Tokens work. Furthermore it resonates with the themes of obsession, mental illness, self-harm and death in “This Place” twisted love affair as do the two notably isolated locations. Vessel's obsession with Sleep has seemingly brought him to the point of suicidal ideation, a lonely place. Will he sacrifice himself to manipulate to the manipulative deity much like a whale that falls to feed the creatures of the deep? It's no accident that the very first line of the album invokes an image of burial at sea. “Call me when they bury bodies underwater”, the symbolism hardly ends there just as every song on “Sundowning” was given its own visual identity in the form of sigils. Each of “This Place” says songs are represented by a specific sea creature. These have appeared on sleep token merch designs and the feature of some ofthese organisms tie into the themes of the album's narrative. Many of the animals have notable feeding heavens, prominent physical structures related to feeding which echoes the band's preoccupation with biting and consumption. For example the comb jelly that represents “Mine” has five jaws. The black swallower representing “Atlantic” is known for ingesting fish larger than itself, mirroring Vessels call for Sleep to completely consume him, the deep-sea lizard fish that represents “the love you want” will eat anything it meets including members of its own species, a reflection of Sleep's own voracious lawless appetite. Meanwhile the cookie-cutter shark representing “Distraction” is known to migrate vertically coming to the surface at dusk and descending at dawn, an uncanny parallel of the times when Sleep visits vessel is laid out in Sundowning's “the night does not belong to God” - and it feeds by gawking holes out of larger animals. This brutal manner of eating echoes Vessels sense of what sleep does to him: taking without giving, leaving Vessel dislocated in the process. Finally, some of the other organisms are known to live in deeper parts of the ocean, sometimes even corresponding to the deaths indicated by the coordinates each song is labeled with. The Hadal snailfish, for instance, which represents the album's penultimate track “High Water”, is one of the main predators living in the Mariana trench, while the creature corresponding to “Missing Limbs” is the fallen whale itself.

Such heavy themes and multi-layered imagery demand dynamic music to match and This Place more than delivers. Compared to Sleep Token's previous efforts, the individual components of the band's sound are woven tightly together rather than treated as separate parts. Even so, the soft-into-heavy structure that the band favors is just present as on Sundowning, contrasts between the two musical extremes even more stark. “Atlantic” opens as a sweeping piano ballad before racing towards a crescendo as the guitar's thunder in, while Like That vacillates between eerie electronics and crunchy riffs. The guitars are considerably more prominent than on “Sundowning”, lending the album a heavier, grittier tone, yet the album doesn't sacrifice the group's singular genre-fluidity. “The love you want” and “Descending” both return to the softer airier R&B that's threaded throughout This Place's predecessor and record's most adventurous turns arrive during some of its gentlest, most vulnerable tracks. “Missing Limbs” is a sparse, fragile acoustic guitar ode, while “Fall for me” is even starker, sung almost a cappella with the use of a vocoder. All together “This Place” is a more complete and focused record with a greater feeling of cohesion, all without losing a fraction of the band's identity.

This Place dropped at a particularly opportune moment. Shortly before the album's release, in June 2021, Sleep Token played their first post-quarantine life ritual on day one of Download Pilot, a sized down 10 000 capacity version of the iconic British rock and metal festival that was organized as a test event to measure the spread of COVID-19 at live shows. The band played right before the night's hedliners Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes, a notably high-profile slot for a group with only one album their name and a mighty step-up from where Sleep Token had been before the covid-19 shutdown. Seizing the moments they debuted “Alkaline” and set in motion their next chapter.

Five months later, Sleep Token embarked on their biggest UK tour to date, including a ritual at London's 2000 capacity O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire which was over double the size of the last headliner in the capital. The fervor in the stands particularly fizzed in the air, to the point that fans were moshing while Vessel opened to the show with the somber “Atlantic”, playing piano alone under a spotlight before his masked compatriots emerged. The most significant show of the album cycle however was a much more intimate affair. The band - or rather Vessel joined by three female backing singers - played a one-off “Room Below” ritual at London 600-capacity Lafayette in April 2022, after being delayed twice: once in January due to COVID-19 concerns and again in March due to illness. With just an acoustic guitar and piano Sleep Tokens frontman performed stripped-back takes of songs from across the band's discography including the live debut of Sundownings “Give”, plus covers of Outcasts “Hey Ya!” and Leonard Cohen's “Hallelujah”.

Being a Sleep Token gig, it was never going to be a run-of-the-mill acoustic show. Indeed, it offered an unprecedented glimpse into the mind of the man underneath the cloak and mask. To that end, Vessel did them two things that most fans never imagined he would do. Firstly, he removed his mask playing the piano with it placed to the side - but he still preserved his anonymity by performing his back to the crowd and his hood up. Secondly, he broke his usual rule over speaking between songs - sort of anyway. A speech was played to the crowd with his voice warped and altered beyond recognition, and it was here that the curtain was pulled back as far as the band would allow.

“Some time ago i was given a message,” Vessel said during the speech. “It was a message that originated from one among you. Someone possessed by a strong desire to tell me something. The message went very simply “you saved me”. “I did not save anyone. I do not believe I have the capacity to save anyone. All I have ever given anyone is a small window into the emotional waiting room of my mind. I do so while doing everything in my power to minimize my own vulnerability. In this way I am selfish I choose not to give what others can and yet I am the benefactor of this thankful praise. I experience a great deal of pain in my life. However I do not believe I have suffered as you have suffered. Perhaps that is another reason why we are all here. At the very least we have all suffered.” He continued : “I am nothing without this music. I am nothing without this mask. So, in this sense, the message I received was true but only in an inverse sense. The truth is I did not save anybody. You saved me."

#sleep token #sleep token worship #sleep token revolver #sleep token lyrics

[pricechecktranslations]

the heavenly yard blog infomine, part 3: Re_Birthday, making Servant of Evil, more karaoke, surprise Luka

Yada yada, these are not translations, yada yada

Blog link for anyone who missed it the first time

14 December 2008 ~ 30 January 2009

---December 2008---

14th

-mothy is making a Len song for the Kagamine's anniversary but he doesn't think he'll have it done on time.

24th

-he has the song done, but he doesn't think he'll get the video done in time. he's been quite busy

27th

-appropriately, the Len song he uploaded for the Kagamine birthday is Re_Birthday.

-He didn't have time to recruit illustrators for this one so he just made the art and video himself.

29th

-mothy provides a bit more commentary on Re_Birthday, how it's sort of a compilation of the songs he's made until now. The "Re" in the title sort of references Regret Message, making it an answer song to it, in a way (in addition to just plain old "Rebirth").

-He wishes he'd been more prepared, there was a lot more he wanted to do with the song (like add in other VOCALOIDS, something he does do in later editions of the song might I add). It's taking him longer and longer to make songs now, before it used to only take him like 3-4 days.

-He replies to comments. Someone asks if he's going to collaborate with Shimoda from Piapro (Asami Shimoda, I think?), which he isn't sure will happen. Another person brings up how Rin is singing alongside Len at points in Re_Birthday.

-2008's been a good year for him

31st

-mothy does a roundup of all the songs he's uploaded this year, sharing his thoughts on listening to them now.

-10ML he thinks sounds pretty bad, but it's also his first song so he still likes it. Wordplay feels like a "trial and error" type work to him. Clockwork Lullaby is something he was really proud of making so it struck him that it didn't get popular--it was around this point he really wanted to make something that got big on NicoNico. He's made a remake of it that, to him, sounds totally different.

-Daughter of Evil is naturally his big hit, and it sounds very unique among the songs he's made. Servant of Evil he says feels like it's "walking on its own"--he admits he was trying to replicate the success of Daughter of Evil, to an extent, though he had fun making it and he's proud of it with all its ups and downs. He wants to surpass it someday. Regret Message on the other hand he feels he's improved a bit on his VOCALOID voice mixing (or at least he did it better accidentally). It seems to be an audience favorite.

-For Girl of the Miniature Garden he basically says that the Clockwork Lullaby series is to stretch his skills with song types he's not good at, and he doesn't think the instrumentals are as good. Still, he found Miku easy to use and he'd like to use her again. He did remasters of Daughter and Servant of Evil with RinLen act 2, which he didn't hugely care for, but he does think he learned something useful doing it.

-He was originally going to call Tale of Abandonment on a Moonlit Night "Inokori Doubutzuen(Zoo Detention)", and the lyrics were apparently much darker? Then he changed the subject matter to be about Hansel and Gretel (he writes Gretel as GLAY☆TERU, not sure what that means). Someday he'd like to do "Zoo Detention", but milder. As for South North Story, he learned a lot during the collaboration and surprised himself by making something so upbeat and positive.

-Re_Birthday borrows motifs from previous songs, of course. Originally it was going to have the melody for Servant and Daughter of Evil in its interlude. And he thinks he made the low tones in the mix too weak. And, in generally, he'd like to try making something new next year.

-Also replies to some comments, only relevant one is that he does allow iterative works of his songs.

---January 2009---

1st

-mothy wishes his readers a happy new year and expresses his intentions to talk about the making of Servant of Evil in commemoration of his karaoke success.

-he replies to comments, which--again, because I'm not seeing what he's replying to, I can't really summarize them properly. He does, however, discuss his name a bit.

-So, apparently the correct pronounciation of "mothy" is "mocchii" (mo-chee). However, I'm assuming that's because "thi" isn't a syllable in Japanese, so I'm going to continue pronouncing it the American way I do (moth-ee). Apparently a lot of people tend to pronounce it "masshii" or "maashii". He also says that it should probably actually be spelled "motty" (and that it used to be in the past), but for arbitrary reasons he's going by "mothy" instead. Not 100% sure of what to make of this but perhaps his "arbitrary reason" is that it stands for "master of the heavenly yard", which I believe is the reason given at present day.

2nd

-mothy finally begins discussing the making of Servant of Evil, which he essentially was motivated to do to capitalize on the positive reception for Daughter of Evil. There were a lot of people asking to see the perspective of the "blue", "green", and "red" characters, as well as those curious about the servant (or rather, lambasting him for being a "HetaLen", a pun which means "useless Len").

-He wound up focusing on Len for the song because he didn't have any other VOCALOIDS at the time.

-Looking back, he sort of wishes he'd used the word "princess" rather than "daughter" for Rin's song so it would match the title of "Servant" better.

4th Page 1

-mothy uploads a remaster of Clockwork Lullaby onto Piapro, and responds to comments.

-Apparently mothy didn't share Servant's vsq because he had to mess with it so many times that if he did, it would not sound like the finished song at all.

-He addresses how people thought poorly of Len in his songs before Servant of Evil came out because, naturally, it looked like he just abandoned the princess to her fate.

Page 2

-more on Servant of Evil. He made it into a four-part composition (I think? I'm not familiar with this word but basically it's four distinct narrative pieces to the song) to contrast it with Daughter of Evil, saying it's a convenient model for story songs. He also wanted it to be understandable even if you haven't listened to Daughter of Evil. He also wanted to put the chorus in the opening of the song because that's what hit songs do? (again, sliiiightly confused with the musical terminology he's using). Girl of the Minature Garden is the only other song where he's done this.

-He also wanted to put in lines from Len everywhere.

-He went back and forth a little on the tone of the song. Originally, he conceived of the twin switch as having been Rin's idea, but eventually he went with it being Len's, to make it more of a tragic story than a dark one to better fit the melody he'd made.

7th Page 1

-reply to comments. People are finding his posts on his songmaking interesting.

Page 2

-more on Servant of Evil. He began work on the song as soon as he had an idea of what he wanted to do (he also prefaces this by saying that he's by no means on expert on making lyrics and that he may have made mistakes in explaining it).

-So, basic lyric construction--opened with the chorus, introduced Len's relationship to the Princess. There's two meanings in Len saying he'll "even become evil", which we'll get to later. Len gets more explanation in this first section of the song, with his character background in the next stanza (with the "A" melody) and his mindset in the one after (the "B" melody, which was apparently half the length that it is now at first but this made it too hard to work lyrics in). Then back to the chorus.

-He was trying to make sure that everything was explained while using the bare minimum amount of detail.

9th Page 1

-Luka's release has been anounced. He's interested, but he also owns several VOCALOIDs at this point that he hasn't used yet, so he might hold off.

-Mothy replies to comments. Largely inconsequential, but he does laugh with someone over the fact that he wound up buying all the Japanese VOCALOIDs after only having the Kagamines for a while.

Page 2

-Back to Servant of Evil, getting on the second part of the song. He figures that since he said Len would "even become evil", he needed him to do something evil. It's at this point that he started trying to work in the parts he cut from Daughter of Evil, though he couldn't work in the bit with the glass bottle (where Allen kills Leonhart) due to syllable space. (note, this section follows the "A melody equals plot, B melody equals character mindset" pattern from the previous section).

-The "today's snack is brioche" line is to contrast Riliane's "Oh, it's teatime" line, and also reference what he'd learned about Marie Antoinette. And, it shows the main character, who is a servant, doing servant things.

-As a tangent, he brings up how little we know about the Miku character just going off those two songs--we don't know who she loved, whether she actually died or not, or if she was even human to begin with (basically teasing the Michaela reveals in Daughter of White, I think).

-He does state that like the princess and swordswoman, she is modeled after a character in a story, she is not a princess or high status, and she's not the miniature garden girl.

13th Page 1

-More news on when Servant be released on Karaoke, and sharing his remastered Servant of Evil and Wordplay.

-Replies to comments. Again I don't have context but I think he clarifies that some of his concepts on the Miku character that he just shared came about after the fact, but he was picturing a character from a different work when making her during the song's production.

Page 2

-Onto the third section for Servant of Evil, which he says was the most important and so took a lot of trial and error (the twin switch, of course). Eventually what he ended up doing was having the "A melody" section contain both the plot events AND Len's character psychology, and have the "B melody" section consist solely of dialogue. That way he could leave the characters' feelings during the switch up to the imagination of the listener.

-As a small note, Len is using honorifics when he tells the princess to run away wearing his clothes. mothy claims this was inspired by a nursery rhyme (in English it's often called, "The Other Day I Met A Bear"), where in the Japanese version at least the bear tells the girl to run with the same honorifics (despite that being uncharacteristic of a bear), which he liked, so he put it in here. I am not 100% sure I believe him.

16th Page 1

-mothy shares a remastered Regret Message

-he replies to comments. He's not sure what decides the release schedule for JOYSOUND's karaoke, he thinks it's due to song vote ranking. Apparently there are also people saying the "of evil" songs are their first VOCALOID songs, so that makes him happy.

-Again I don't have the original comment but I guess someone asked what the gender is (without specifying whose), so he confusedly replies that the princess is female, the servant is male, and he, mothy, is male.

-mothy makes clear that though he is incorporating a lot of fairytale knowledge into his work, it's not a result of research but rather his own childhood memories, as he read a lot of books when he was young.

Page 2

-Onto the fourth part of Servant of Evil. Here he repeats the lines from the ending of Daughter of Evil, but with an entirely new context behind them and some minor tweaks to match the new subject of the song.

-The first iteration of the chorus shows Len's determination, and this final one shows that he has accomplished his goal. The lines about how the princess ignores the crowd is the people talking in Daughter of Evil, and in Servant of Evil it's Rin talking. And, in general, when Len says "I will even become evil", that includes becoming the "Daughter of Evil" himself, in a sense.

-Basically just lots of repetitions but with the meaning changed.

-Mothy added on the bit with the music box after the song was done, as a final tearjerker.

20th Page 1

-Responding to comments. A lot of it is fans expressing their admiration which is sweet, but not really worth summarizing. Here's some tidbits though.

-Mothy used to use 私 a lot as his personal pronoun, but since he keeps getting mistaken for a woman he's started using 僕.

-The last line in Servant of Evil was meant to kind of bring out the servant's inner childishness.

-Mothy's first encounter with VOCALOID was before Miku was even released, and he was inspired to buy one after hearing a certain song on NicoNico (he may, or may not, explain this later).

-Though he tells a commenter to leave it up to their imagination, he does hint as to having plot reasons why Len's character was made a servant rather than a prince.

Page 2

-He goes in very briefly on the process of making Len sing the lyrics of Servant of Evil after he'd had them written. Apparently it was really hard. The Kagamines are apparently harder to work with than Miku, and Len moreso than Rin. There was a lot of trial and error involved--eventually he just settled on something and went to the tuning stage.

25th Page 1

-Mothy's other songs are now up for voting on JOYSOUND. He encourages people to give South North Story priority in the voting. He's also remastered Tale of Abandonment on a Moonlit Night, though it's not very different.

-Comment replies. Mothy is not very fast at making songs.

-He shares the website he got the stock sound effects for Servant of Evil, and tells someone that he's considering releasing CDs of his work.

Page 2

-(again discussing the production of Servant of Evil) MEANWHILE on Piapro, mothy got carried away chatting about the setting and backstory behind Daughter of Evil in the comments for it, apparently, because it was still getting attention. He finds that funny because then someone correctly guessed the twin switch, so he wound up having to be very noticeably vague and mysterious about it (in a complete 180 from his other comments) to avoid spoiling anything.

29th

-Luka is taking the community by storm, but mothy is making a song with MEIKO instead.

-he's been getting some questions about a collaboration with Asami(I think) Shimoda, but he refuses to comment.

-Other comment replies that I won't summarize because I don't have full context (nothing terribly important, mostly just being humble or asking for patience with his slow speed). Apparently one of the commenters spoke to him in English, though, which is interesting.

30th

-mothy finally finished Servant of Evil (he recounts having dubious impressions of it at the time, such as not being able to understand what's being said, worrying that it's too different from the tune of Daughter of Evil, and being a little moved by it himself.

-He uploaded it onto Piapro and recruited illustrators to make the PV.

#can't explain the feeling i'm getting reading these #internet was such a different place then #()mothy blog posts

[realreulbbrband]

About the character ask, you reblogged! What about Macavity?

Yay one of the characters I’m scared to talk about!! This won’t be hard!!

tw: mentions of slow death?

Why I like them

I like how his entire gimmick is just that he's evil and “not there” It really feeds into the fact he's a mystery cat and leads to a lot of fun speculation

Why I don’t

Besides the obvious things he probably put Demeter and Bombalurina through

These nasty Dumbo Ears, “I hear everything” looking aaaaa

Favorite episode (scene if movie)

Ngl his fight with Munk, I feel like it's where we get to see him at his most raw if that makes sense

Favorite season/movie

Love him in 2019 since he seems to be more of a character there if that makes sense, and I really like his motivations there.

Favorite line

“I'll be back for you Demeter” (I think that's what it was) it's technically his only line on stage so

Favorite outfit

I'm especially fond of the Broadway revival look because of course I am look at him

OTP

I don't want to be harassed 😀

Uhh but from like a purely “canon” standpoint I really only see him as being in love with Demeter rn so let's go with that.

Brotp

While I don't play around with it too often I like the idea that he keeps Mungojereie around begrudgingly, he hates his guts but he's useful and Mungo often teeters the line of co-workers as pals and refers to Macavity as such which he happens to do on the occasions that Macavity isn't in the mood to stifle someone.

I don't know I haven't thought about him having friends a lot so that's the closest thing 🧍

Head Canon

his magic is slowly killing him; as a punishment courtesy of the everlasting cat. She gifted him with a power that was intended for the use of protection, and defense because in her eyes he was destined to be a tribe protector, never the leader despite his age.

and that made Macavity lose it, to be fair most jellicles assumed he’d take over after Deuteronomy strictly because of age and inheritance of magic but fate said otherwise and when his father told him he snapped. he grew disdainful, and easily tempered, and aggravated which led to him neglecting his duties completely and eventually boiling into him leaving the tribe.

but his powers only started to sting years later, when he’d hypnotize strays, attack the innocent etc. He was using a gift for harm and the everlasting cat didn’t like that. Soon his magic would take a lot more force to control, he grew tired more easily, his fur was thinning and even falling out daily, he got thinner and his mind was eating away at him. It was torture, just like the torture he had put so many others through.

Unpopular opinion

His portrayal in 98 is one of the weakest for me, his makeup was so overdone that he didn’t even look like a cat and the ways his scenes were edited were hard to follow in general.

A wish

I think it was Il sistina that did this but they had Macavity sort of spying or watching Demeter as she was singing his song (might have been Bomba’s part too) but I thought that was cool and you know more stage time for him so might as well. I just think it’s neat.

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen

Idk a reboot happens and they try to give him so redemption arc would be pretty ehhhh and questionable for me

5 words to best describe them

Callous, Feral, Vicious (that’s at least what I think an alternate three words for him would be ) and then of course his regular three words Jealous, dangerous and hypnotic

My nickname for them

Dumbo ears Mac is like the only one I use to describe *that* design but I do like the “his ears are so big cause they’re full of secrets”

#Thank you for the ask! #macavitys really one of the characters who intimidate me cause I feel like there’s always that stronger “you get him or you don’t” emphasis #In the fandom That makes me avoid talking about him at all #But this was really so fun so I might talk about him more in the future #macavity the mystery cat

[jcforsapphics]

Hsmtmts 4x08:

Ok last episode I am so so scared but I'm so glad it's an hour longg

Good on EJ for being on his last play but babygirl what happened to your face

"Btw, who the fuck are you guys?" LMAO RICKY IS SO REAL

"Are you asking as my son or as my brother?"

I'm loving all the Kourtney appreciation because she desreve that so much

Troyella are getting very personal to rina right now

Jet being the biggest madlyn shipper!!

"I have every feeling for you" THEY ARE HAPPENING

NOT EJ PREDICTING MADLYN?? HE'S SO REAL FOR THIS HE IS US HE IS THE FAN BASE

"I feel like I don't deserve to be as happy as you make me" so I'm getting called out by every character this season, huh?

They are so not staying just friends who are they lying to

MADLYN KISS OH MY GOD THAT WAS THE CUTEST THING EVER I ?? THIS SEASON IS SO GOOD FRIEND FOR THE GAYS

Plot twist Ricky and Mack ends up together

Joshoua Bassest you have the voice of an angel

Full disclosure I actually hate public declarations of love and would not like it at all if he'll confess in front of everyone I'll probably have to skip it I can't handle second hand embarrassments

JET CALLING MADDOX HIS BEST FRIEND I LOVE THEM VERY MUCH

Hey I better get a fic expanding on Ricky feeling like he didn't deserve to get into college because??

Big Red and Ricky hug!!

Everyone singing together might have made me tear up a bit haha I don't want to actually cry I already cried last night when I prepared myself mentally (I'm attracted to this show in a very autistic and not at all healthy way and my therapist told me she's genuinely worried about me and about what will happen if rina won't end up together)

OK FIRST ANTINE IS NOT FRENCH?? ALSO WE WERE ALL RIGHT ABOUT HIM AND RED LET'S GO!!

"My dad knew I was gay since I was two!" Seb I think everyone knew

Ms Jen I'm sorry to tell you this but Gina always looks like a star

I don't have words for Ricky's speech because how dare he

GINA IS BEAUTIFUL

Gina talking about every single person and crying I can't I can't :((

"I really wish the world was as pure as you see it" is actually such a good line

Not Gina calling Jet out on his feelings for Kourtney in front of everyoneee

The camara not finding EJ when Gina is trying to talk to him??

This whole speech is really making me feel like I missed with my horrible theatre group I wish we had what they do

"I feel so seen and so understood and so known" I LOVE YOU GINA PORTER

RICKY TELL HER YOU LOVE HER YOU BITCH

MACK IS A RINA???

RUN RICKY RUN!!

This is literally the most unserious show in the world

THE SEASON ONE REFERENCE!! Loving this

"I'm in love and I know it" I'M COLLECTING MY RINA ENDGAME TONIGHT

This song is so going on my playlist

HOW DOES EVERYONE JUST KNOW THE LYRICS WHAT IS THIS GLEE

I genuinely love this song very much but I need an actual spoken confession for the edits

IT'S HIS FAVOURITE HAT <33

She did not tell him she loves him way back in season one and we didn't know??

"It's been there all along?" "Just like me." You don't know how much they mean to me

LMAO GINA JUST DECIDED THEY'RE GONNA SHOT AT SALT LAKE GO GIRL

Honestly Quinn deserve such a rise after this

MY CHILDREN

I can't believe the show is over :((

Definitely a few things I would change about this season but more on that on a later post! (Mostly the fact there was no chocolate theory reveal obviously)

Overall I'm so so happy with how the show ended but still going to ignore it and pretend it'll go on forever

#hsmtmts #high school musical the musical the series #hsmtmts season 4 #high school musical the musical the series season 4 #hsmtmts spoilers #hsmtmts liveblog #liveblog #liveblogging #ricky bowen #gina porter #rina #madlyn #seblos #cal's basement