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everysongineverykey · 3 years

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I'M DONE. HERE. TAKE THESE CHAPTER 2 THOUGHTS AND RUN, BABY.

so i'll try to go in order here. uhhhh... there's a LOT i have to say. first: toriel giggling sprite my beloved

on that note, ALL THE NEW SUSIE SPRITES MY BELOVEDS

NOELLE YOU'RE SO GAY. I THINK THIS IS PROBABLY JUST BECAUSE I TOLD HER TO IN CHAPTER ONE BUT SHE GAVE SUSIE THE LUNCHBOX FULL OF CHALK!! I LOVE ITTTT

ralsei's, uh... kinda sus. the whole "recruiting" thing REALLY sketches me out. and he looks kinda... smug, all the time, like he knows what's going on.

LANCER JOINED! ROUXLS JOINED EVEN THOUGH NO ONE WANTED THAT! STARWALKER JOINED, TO EVERYONE'S JOY!

LIBRARY PORTALLLL

so before i entered the city there was that pre-city area? that looked very much like the city? except it had different music? and i thought they'd cut welcome to the city and i was SEVERELY disappointed. but then they didn't! just something i wanted to mention

NOELLE!!

throughout this game i went from despising berdly to feeling bad for him to not really liking him again, but not hating him as much as before. he'd better stay the fuck away from susie though

the queen is the best villain. she's the kind you love to hate! she's literally so funny AND her boss battle is actually tough (rip to the king but he just. wasn't a formidable enemy at all lol)

THE GANG CHARLIE BROWN DANCING TO WIN A FIGHT! SUSIE GAINING THE POWER TO ACT THROUGH SHEER FORCE OF WILL! SUSIE FORCING RALSEI TO LEARN TO ACT EVEN THOUGH HE DIDN'T WANT TO! THAT ENTIRE BATTLE WAS AMAZING! THE "BATTLE WON" END DANCING SEQUENCE! GOING INSANE GOING INSANE

the puzzles in this chapter were genuinely really impressive! i especially loved the word search puzzles and the ice-ee undertale word search reference💙

that being said. the mouse puzzles were SO fucking infuriating. i caused poor noelle a LOT of grief with those and i feel bad.

SPEAKING OF NOELLE!! the scene where she and kris are walking through the puzzle, the one that spells "december", and she's talking about when they were kids, how she loved sneaking out? beautiful. the cinnamon tography <3 also i guessed dess's full name was december a while ago and while i guess it was obvious, it's nice to have that confirmed!

also, i love that susie and ralsei are real friends in this chapter! he taught her a healing spell!!

ugh. fucking berdly. so smug and pretentious. i love queen's desire to be as far away from him as possible though

i also like his backstory. it gives his behavior, even if it's still annoying, at least some context. i get the feeling of feeling like if you're not smart, people will forget about you, and that's scary.

ALSO ALSO. GAMER BERDLY. LITERALLY EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT IS PERFECT. "I THOUGHT YOU WERE A GAMER!" "i only play mobile games, berdly." "NOOOOOO!" like i ADORE that

anyways. time for me to talk about the only thing that matters in this world: suselle. i mean, did the gays win in this chapter or DID THE GAYS WIN IN THIS CHAPTER?? THEY RODE A HEART-COVERED FERRIS WHEEL AND HAD A HEARTFELT, TENSION-FILLED CONVERSATION!

"did you ever wonder why the real susie never picked on you? well, maybe it's because... when you were both new to class, you lent her one of your pencils, like... maybe a dumb one with candy canes on it or something, and... even though it didn't actually taste like candy, she... remembered your smile." okay god thanks toby it's not like i needed my heart or anything

SERIOUSLY. TOBY "i'm gonna give the gays everything they want" FOX IS BACK WITH ANOTHER BANGER LADS

QUEEN'S BOSS BATTLE! ACTUALLY TOUGH, UNLIKE KING'S! AND GIGA QUEEN! I'M GOING INSANE THAT WAS SO SICK AND SO HARD

the way my heart BROKE when lancer turned to stone good god thank GOD our boy's okay

AND ROUXLS KAARD IN HIS PIRATE DUCK!! WITH HIS LITTLE HAT! DEMANDING THE QUEEN MAKE HIM BUTLER SUPREMETH! I LOVE HIM MORE THAN LIFE ITSELF

also!! kris and ralsei's little moment on the swan boat💙 i wasn't a kralsei shipper before but uh... that may be starting to change

it's hard because ralsei's still suspicious but at the same time i love him and want him to be happy. i don't know how to feel

also, if darkners outside of their dark worlds turn to stone after a while, why didn't ralsei? that's, uhhh... VERY sus. very weird. mr fox i need ANSWERS

WE FINALLY HAVE A WAY TO SAVE AFTER WE'VE FINISHED MOST OF THE EPILOGUE LADS. REJOICE!!

seriously the thing that peeved me about ch1 was that the last save point was on the battle stage and if i wanted to play the epilogue again, i had to. do that entire battle all over. BUT NOW THAT'S BEEN FIXED!!

UNDYNE AND ALPHYS HAVE MET UNDYNE AND ALPHYS HAVE MET THIS IS NOT A DRILL UNDYNE GAVE HER A BOX OF CANDIES EVERYBODY SHUT UP THEY'RE IN LOVE ALL IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD

ALSO! NEAR THE BEGINNING! I FORGOT TO MENTION THE LITTLE WHITE DOG DOING DONUTS IN A TOY RACE CAR AND BACKING UP TRAFFIC! THANK YOU LITTLE WHITE DOG!

on that note: "looks like a car. this one has a man in it. he waves at you happily." AND THEN THE MAN'S GONE??? HEY TOBY???

ALSO. THE SEGMENT WHERE THE ANNOYING DOG HELPS US FIND THE KEY THROUGH THE POWER OF WANTON DESTRUCTION. THE BEST PLOT DEVICE!

TORIEL TEACHING SUSIE TO MAKE PIE STOP ITTTTT

and yes yes i KNOW kris slashed toriel's tires. that was extremely troubling. but THEY MADE PIE TOGETHER!!

"leave the chalk alone, kris" TORIEL!!

sans and toriel making egg puns and asgore running in and going "don't forget me, your eggs-husband!" is the FUNNIEST sitcom moment type thing ever. GOD.

on the other hand sans let me meet your brother god dammit i'll kill you

METTATONNNNNNN

RUDY... "who got you these flowers?" "is it weird for a married man to get flowers?" "so your wife did?" "oh, no! kris's dad did!" "...not even gonna try to understand this..." TOBY STOP ITTTT YOU'RE GIVING THE ASGORUDY SHIPPERS FALSE HOPE. YOU KNOW YOU'RE JUST GONNA KILL RUDY. YOU'RE JUST RUBBING SALT IN THE WOUND!

NUBERT! MY MAN!

seeing kris repeatedly they-themmed by multiple characters makes me so happy <3 poor kid... "college summer vacation when" "you opened the door with your eyes closed. you saw nothing" kris....

KRIS...

fucking. BLACK FOG STORM IN THE LIVING ROOM KRIS STOP IT. HOW'RE THEY GONNA REVEAL THIS WAS INNOCENT? THE KNIFE IN CHAPTER ONE WAS EASY BUT HOW WILL THEY EXPLAIN THIS

the staticy tv appearing in the dark and a toothy smile slowly fading into view in the center and lingering there ominously for far too long >>>>>>> every hollywood horror movie ever god. GOD

snowy and monster kid checking out the red door. implying there's something in there. something that kris knows about. knowing we won't get any more deltarune content for 5+ years does NOT fill me with determination

also. gaster's symbolic theme being mus_smile. and the final image in the game being a smile. god. gaster's COMING lads.

onionsan hears a song at night... a familiar song... memory, perhaps? or maybe a certain... four-note arpeggio that's hidden in a sound test room in undertale? who knows? guess we'll just have to wait for chapters 3/4/5.

this concludes my ramblings for now, but don't get it twisted- this is FAR from the last post i'll make about ch2. this whole chapter was absolutely amazing! brilliant! showstopping!! i'm genuinely soooo super impressed and excited for the chapter 3/4/5 bundle!!!

#deltarune spoilers #dr spoilers #deltarune chapter 2 #deltarune chapter 2 spoilers #dr chapter 2 spoilers #trying to get as many spoiler tags as possible!

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transmascfrankiero · 4 years

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all of mcr’s songs ranked out of ten based on whether or not you can strip to them:

romance: could work if you were going for a Super Melancholy smiths-esque vibe but overall too slow and pretty. 1/10

honey: headbanger soundtrack to showcase your revenge body to ur ex. bonus points for underlying ‘gonna murder shitty boyfriend’ context thanks to audition-inspired video. but slightly too angry to be seductive. 5/10

vampires: too goth, too many feelings. reminds me of pot dreads frank. would not work. 0/10

drowning lessons: this song is cursed and cannot be listened to in public unfortunately 0/10

sorrows: if u were going to do a strip routine while beating the shit out of someone for trying to stealing ur tip money this would be a gr8 choice 6/10

halos: it’s about blowing your own head off and taking too many pills to cope w/ wanting to die all the time. 0/10

turnstiles: please do not!!! strip!!! to a song!!! about 9/11!!!! what is wrong w/ you!!! -100000000/10

monroeville: if u were doing a private lil strip dance for your george a. romero-obsessed s.o. where u both cry over the idea of having to kill the other person b/c they turned into a zombie then sure??? but other than that no. .5/10

best day ever: ehhhhhh. too fast. kinda weird to get sexy to unless u have a hospital kink. 0/10

cubicles: wow the thought of doing a strip routine to a song about pining for ur coworker who doesn’t know u exist is too sad to even joke about -20/10

demolition lovers: it’s a long song but it’s got cool tempo changes for variety and if u got the stamina then go for it. 4/10

helena: so, like, i get it. it’s a bop. u could dance to this beat for sure. the costumes and color scheme from the video make for gr8 stage pictures and the dancing corpse lady is v pretty. i could understand why if u were doing an emo strip routine u would want to use helena. but please for the love of all that is holy do NOT strip to a song gerard way wrote about his dead grandmother okay i am BEGGING you -∞/10

give ‘em hell kid: FUCK YEAH YOU LOOK PRETTY WALKIN DOWN THE STREET IN THE BEST DAMN DRESS U OWN. 10/10

to the end: this would be a hilarious choice for a bachelor party ngl 7/10 for that alone

prison: absolutely you could strip to this song but u gotta COMMIT okay u gotta light something on fire onstage and challenge gender norms while screaming your head off 8/10 but only if ur not a coward

i’m not okay: it’s a bop, but can u strip to it? no. 0/10

ghost of you: mikey way did not die on a beach in fake normandy for u to strip to ghost of you. seek help -5/10

jetset life: dude this song like. actually works??? for a strip routine??? so long as you don’t actually listen to the words, from a musical perspective, u could totally strip to this 10/10

interlude: what kinda weird catholic shame kink do u need to have to strip to this song. also it’s too short and too pretty. -5/10 (unless ur into catholic shame idk)

venom: this would require such a high energy routine but if u can make being sweaty work then this is a gr8 choice 7/10

hang ‘em high: this is a BATSHIT INSANE choice for a strip routine but if u want to do it then PLEASE do. i like ur style. 8/10

deathwish: u can strip to this only if u introduce ur routine by dedicating it to everyone who ever said eyeliner on dudes was gay. 5/10

cemetery drive: i think not. 0/10

never told you: if u are a highly theatrical highly murderous stripper then yes definitely 7/10

desert song: this song is Way Too Beautiful to strip to sorry you can’t have it -300/10

the end.: the only sexy thing about this song is how good gerard’s voice sounds so no. 0/10

dead!: this is a bold fucking choice but u have to play your cards just right. high risk high reward but SO much to potentially get wrong 6/10

how i disappear: u could. but why. 2/10

sharpest lives: holy SHIT yes ABSOLUTELY u should strip to sharpest lives. the drama. the beat. the spy rock guitar that frank accidentally nailed. this is one of THE choicest options from their catalog. why aren’t u stripping to this right now 50000000/10

wttbp: cute idea but don’t actually 0/10

i don’t love you: again, a bold fucking choice. u could strip to this in an edgy, meta sort of way but it’s missing the trashy factor so it’d have to be part performance art and part strip routine. if ur into that then totally 5/10

house of wolves: i mean i would pay money to see someone strip to this song so 7/10

cancer: LMAO YIKES -2000000/10

mama: this would be GLORIOUS if u fully embraced the sheer insanity and went Bonkers in Fuckin Zonkers burlesque-show-in-hell w/ it. 100/10 but u gotta pound the floor wailing at some point

sleep: i’m conflicted on this one like on the one hand it’s a good tempo for stripping but on the other hand it’s a song about being cruel to ur loved ones in order to force distance between u and them b/c you’re terrified of them getting hurt and it being all your fault. so maybe don’t strip to this one actually 0/10

teenagers: a bop w/ a great beat and fun costume ideas from the video but two major drawbacks being 1. ur getting naked to a song about teenagers which is uhhhh sort of Inappropriate and 2. it’s kind of also about school shooters which is also Inappropriate to get naked to. 0/10

disenchanted: why would u want this. you sad fuck. idek what to say except if you want to strip to this song i’m crying on your behalf -100000000/10

famous last words: don’t????? don’t. Do Not. stop that. -12/10

blood: this is HILARIOUS omg please strip to blood 10/10

kill all your friends: sure?? no objections but it’s an odd choice. this goes for the demo too. 2/10

heaven help us: if u want to strip to this then you definitely just read unholyverse for the first time and while u are valid, Don’t 0/10

my way home is through you: not an especially sexy song but it’s fun!! you do you 3/10

astro zombies (cover): uhhhhhh it’s a no from me dawg. i’d be thinking about danzig, like, the whole time. 0/10

desolation row: sure but u gotta be willing to get punched in the face by the riot squad for maximum effect 4/10

common people (cover): just b/c gerard would strip to britpop doesn’t mean u can. 0/10

emily: NO!!!! -50000/10

party at the end of the world: nah. 0/10

not that kind of girl: literally please consider the subject matter of this song and rethink ur life choices. -10/10

all the angels: it’s a cool song but don’t strip to it that’s weird -2/10

jack the ripper: you and the person who wants to strip to astro zombies can go sit in the suicidegirls corner together how about that. 0/10

na na na: a banger!! strip away my friend 9/10

bulletproof heart: a good song but not a strip song 1/10

sing: sorry this song is [REDACTED] it gets no score

planetary (go!): you could try to strip to this but it’s such a classic four-on-the-floor that i think you’d end up just regular dancing to it and forget to be sexy so 4/10

the only hope for me is you: are you doing a strip tease for michael bay. stop. put ur shirt back on shia lebeouf 0/10

party poison: like this is a hilarious option and i support you but realistically it’s pretty fast for a strip song 3/10

save yourself, i’ll hold them back: this is a safe option. Too Safe. almost soulless. a person who’d strip to this would avoid eye contact the entire time and never smile and later when you went out for a smoke break you’d overhear them on the phone with their ex arguing over child support payments. 4/10

s/c/a/r/e/c/r/o/w: the more i think about it the more fun the idea of stripping to this becomes so i say go for it 6/10

summertime: i’m Certain that gerard would prefer if you didn’t -5/10

destroya: is this objectively the best mcr song to strip to? Absolutely. it’s got everything you could possibly want right down to built-in moans and fever dream drums. but the only person in the universe who Can Must and Should strip to this song is gerard. sorry them’s the breaks. ∞/10 but only if you’re gerard way

kids from yesterday: don’t. 0/10

vampire money: 100% yes you should strip to this. bonus points for stealth twilight references 1000000/10

we don’t need another song about california: do i like this song? yes. is it sexy? no. 0/10

black dragon fighting society: i can’t understand what the FUCK gerard is saying in this song AT ALL so i can’t recommend that u strip to it b/c i have no fucking idea what it’s ABOUT 0/10

f.t.w.w.w.: i mean. this song is about eating pussy. and robots that are built specifically to fuck. so yes you can strip to this but you gotta dress up like a pornbot 100/10

mastas of ravencroft: again i cannot understand most of the fucking words and the ones i do understand are something something RICKETY BONES RICKETY HANDS so like. probably not the one 0/10

boy division: i could go either way on this one like it’s really fast but it’s also about cocaine so??? 3/10

tomorrow’s money: while this song slaps overall violent nihilism does not a strip song make 1/10

ambulance: no. 0/10

gun.: antiwar messages are sexy but not the right kind for stripping 1/10

the world is ugly: PLEASE no. 0/10

the light behind your eyes: oh my god this is so DEPRESSING why would you want to strip to this who hurt you -2000000/10

kiss the ring: yes yes yes it’s got built-in audience participation conceit factor if u let ur audience kiss ur ring, totally works 10/10

make room!!!: again, slaps, but not a strip song 1/10

surrender the night: dude we talked about this!!! dying violently w/ ur loved ones is Not Sexy!!! 0/10

burn bright: i guess you could strip to this but again it’s Too Safe tread carefully 3/10

fake your death: i want frank iero to strip to this song so i can throw tomatoes at him for being a LYING SACK OF SHIT FOR TWO YEARS i’m not gonna rate this one but frank if ur out there i have a basket of slightly squishy heirloom tomatoes and i am COMING FOR YOU

#mcr #this is the dumb post idea #i spent like an hour on this lmao

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bumbershots · 3 years

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Mistletoe & Wine

A/N: Hello this is my collaboration for @goldenbluesuit very well put together Christmas song fic challenge. It’s my first time participating and my first time posting my writing here as well (I’m sort of new, I have no friends) so, I’m kind of nervous and English is not my first language (sorry for any mistakes) thanks to my boyfriend for being a Brit so he could help me with the “slang” and for reading this about fifteen times and listened to Mistletoe and Wine by Cliff Richard throughout the entire week with me lol. Thanks for taking the time to read this :) If you want to befriend a twenty six year old Aries, or just send me an ask click here.

Word count: 2.8k

Summary: Harry meets a woman that is not here to stay, he will need to decide if that will keep him from making the most of the very few days they have together or dread the imminent separation.

It was raining when her flight landed in London. The kind of rain that doesn't pour heavily, instead it settles over the city for days. And although she can't afford to take a cab, she steps out of the airport just to stare at the endless grey of the sky and wrap herself in her coat because of how cold it was. After a few more minutes she goes back inside to find the way to get out of there on the tube, she knew it to be possible after all the research she's been doing since the age of twelve on the internet.

Soon enough, the man she approached to ask for help, confirms that a train is leaving in a few minutes and she can easily get off at Hammersmith, he even helps her buy the ticket and recommends to get an oyster card if she is going to use London's Underground often. But she doesn't know, she relishes in the element of surprise that is surrounding her life for the next 3 weeks. It excites her to an unfamiliar degree to see people come and go into the carriage, it almost makes her miss her stop, but she manages to get off just in time, her hands clutching the heavy suitcase that contains all her nicest and warmest clothes. She follows the crowd up the stairs and out of the station, the busy street revealed before her is straight out of those books she restlessly studied at school, people wearing trench coats and long scarfs hurry in hopes to avoid the rain and then a red double-decker bus passes by. The cherry on top.

The spontaneous decision to spend Christmas in England instead of her home country was made months ago, on the night of her birthday, although her closest friends would say that she's been dreaming of it since she read Harry Potter. No one gave her a hard time for it, in fact, almost all her friends and family members went to the airport to wish her a safe trip. Her grandmother was cheeky enough to slip a twenty pound note when hugging her goodbye.

Every day of the first week went by in a blur, visiting museums, galleries and walking around the city, getting soaked in its beauty and the endless rain. By the beginning of the second week, a bit tired of the scarce options from the hotel's breakfast, she ventured out, burying half of her face in the scarf she bought the day before at Primark, her feet guiding her almost out of instinct to the little cafe at the end of Hercules road. The place is warm and the menu seems to have it all for a very fair price. After a couple of minutes the Full English wins, she iterates the order to the woman behind the counter and adds a cup of tea handing over the money.

"Get a seat love, I'll bring it over." The elder lady says making the girl smile and thank her before scampering across the room to sit by the window at the four seat table tucked in the corner.

It doesn't take long for her food to arrive and for her to dig in, feeling kind of full almost at the end, she slows down then, a trick her father passed down on her. Let it settle in for a few minutes before going back at it. Works every time. She gets lost on the daily life happening before her eyes, the people walking by, some in a rush maybe to get to work, others in a rush to get to the shops early and buy presents. She could easily tell the difference between one and other. The elderly couple walking to the market, slower than anybody else, arms linked and without a care in the world. A girl around her age doing "the walk of shame" elicited a smirk on her lips. Good for her.

"Do you mind if I take a seat?" She almost missed the question by the stranger standing there. "There's no empty seats elsewhere I'm afraid, I won't bother you." He was right, in the span of thirty minutes the place was full to the brim with families, the three seats at her table the only ones free so, she nodded and even managed to smile in a friendly way. Unfortunately for her, the green eyed stranger did the same, a sweet dimple on his left cheek more prominent than on the right one and she had to eat a spoonful of beans in an attempt to hide her blush.

Two weeks in the country, almost two weeks, and the best looking man on it decides to show up on a greasy spoon cafe when she's eating what's left of her sausages and beans. His food is delivered by the same lady from earlier, of course it is something that looks healthy. The sudden need to fly away from the place pops in her head, it's not a bad one, he doesn't even know her name. She wants to know his. She remembers how he said he wouldn't bother her, it's almost disappointing, she wants to be bothered.

The situation seems to be straight out of a rom-com, she is cutting the banger in little pieces, as if the formula to spark conversation with the mystery guy keeping her company is hidden in them. But after five minutes she sighs quietly, knowing that her own shyness won't let her even glance at him again. She will have to do her best to remember him and observe from the corner of her eye until the last piece of minced pork is consumed by her. And maybe she will gush about how gorgeous he was with her friends once she is back home, describing his shiny emerald eyes for them, sharing a sigh when she recalls how dreamy his accent was and squeal upon the memory of his raspy voice.

Ten minutes later her last bite is chewed and swallowed, the cup is empty as well. She's about to grab her coat draped on the back of her chair. "I'm going to have to break my non-disturbing you promise but... um, that's a sick cardigan." His voice doesn't sound confident as before, he even clears his throat, but his eyes never leave hers.

"Thanks, my grandma knitted it for me." She forgets about her coat and straightens out a bit for him to appreciate the colourful patchwork and extends her left arm to show the over-sized sleeve. Her companion hums in approval. "She hates it."

"What?" His green eyes widening in disbelief and she just shrugs.

"As soon as I put it on she went on and on about how horrible it was, the wrong proportions and how it all seemed better off in her mind." They share a giggle and don't notice that their empty plates have been taken away and the place is no longer swamped by people. "But I like it, I like it a lot, does a good job keeping me warm." And makes her look lovely, he thinks but doesn't say.

Instead he licks his lips before speaking again. "I'm Harry." He offers his left hand and she quickly eyes the cross tattoo.

"I'm a tourist." She says before adding her real name, earning a deep chuckle from him before letting go of his hand.

The set of circumstances in which she met Harry is dreamy for sure, but something about him made the set of affairs so real. When he asked about the places where she'd been the scoff afterwards and the roll of his eyes made her ask what was wrong about them. But he didn't answer, with a shake of his head and a deep sigh he asked for her phone number. The promise to show her the real London lingered in the air as they parted ways outside of the corner cafe.

Her heart raced at the very sight of him outside Borough Market the following morning. "Morning love, alright?" he greeted her before hugging her tight and quick. It was so genuine it made her wonder if she really just met him the day before. "Do you like doughnuts?"

"Who doesn't?" she says with that grin he worries will wait for him in his dreams.

"Wisest words ever spoken." Harry's arm is wrapped around her shoulders, guiding her on their quest inside the huge market.

The early morning is spent too soon, Harry guides her to talk to the stall owners, they are so passionate about their produce, most of them willing when possible to give them a sample. The highlight is the stop at Bread Ahead, they buy more doughnuts than what she thinks they need. They eat them all while sharing a Monmouth coffee. Harry shares with her stories about almost every stall they passed by. "I'm not a fan of red meat, and oysters." She keeps record of it, basking in his lovely anecdotes that seemed to summon the sun from it's hiding place. "We're granted a sunny day in winter!" He celebrates and it's impossible not to join him. "Let's go to Richmond Park."

Of course she nods in agreement and follows him down the street where he parked his car before she gets in the passenger seat. The stranger danger alarm, should've gone off in her head. But there was something about him, like he was holding her in place. As she heard Harry speak about his job, it started to make more sense in her head. Harry was a lot like this country, foreign, new, exciting and hers for the next few days. He made that clear when they parted ways at the end of the day.

"Come home with me for Christmas." Harry asked her on what would be the beginning of her last week in London, while having a picnic on Primrose Hill.

"With your family?" Her eyebrows were shot up when he nodded, fighting back that deadly smirk of his. "All your relatives will be there?" He nods again and she scoffs completely agitated. "Don't be daft Harry!" She voices out her feelings borrowing an expression of his.

He laughs and it's impossible for her not to join him, her face growing hotter by the second. "I don't want to go without you, and mum will love to have you there," that's what she fears.

"I don't know Harry, might be weird." He disagrees right away.

"It's close to Liverpool, we could spend a day or two over there." The past week he's been trying to learn as many things from her as possible and if he chooses his words carefully he can convince her. "Pay a visit to Anfield, The Cavern." His fake nonchalant attitude makes her roll her eyes, "Strawberry Fields is there too, you know?" She agrees and he kisses the back of her hand to mask the proud grin on his face.

In the past, she was always careful not to let a partner know how deeply she cared about them. The thought of being vulnerable made her lose her mind, thinking it was a sign of weakness. But seeing Harry drive through the English countryside, singing at the top of his lungs to Mistletoe and Wine by Cliff Richard and smiling just for her. It made her want to tell him, but not even all the words in every single language ever spoken by humanity could be enough to give him an idea of how much she cares for him.

There hasn't been a proper kiss between them, it puzzled her at first. Because his gaze seemed to be constantly directed to her lips. But then there was all the touching, holding hands, tucking her to his side when walking, his tender touch before hugging her goodbye. And the way he was always running his hands through her hair.

"She's a friend," he introduces her to his mum Anne and sister Gemma, after saying her name, chewing on the word like it's that mint gum he carries in his purse everywhere he goes. "Was a bloody tourist when I first met her but now... she's a proper Londoner." She doubts it, but she agrees on them being friends and she likes it, a lot.

They help Anne and Gemma to set the table and the finishing touches for dinner. Only three more family members show up and she chastises Harry for making her believe that all of his offspring was going to attend. That's how they usually spend Christmas Eve back home, she explains.

It saddens him, the thought of her going back to her home country in five days time. All the way across the Atlantic, six hours behind him. It's almost unfair.

"Tell me more about it," Harry's curiosity is genuine, thinking that he would love to know more about her traditions. Perhaps even be lucky enough to share them someday.

"We don't have these," she regrets taking a tube of brightly coloured paper. "We have piñatas though." She adds proudly and Harry's jaw hangs open in surprise.

"No fucking way!" He is immediately told off by his mum as they all take a seat at the table. "I thought that was only allowed for birthdays."

"There's no rules for that!" She takes the Christmas cracker out again and Harry takes it from the other end. "So, I just pull it?" He nods and it makes a noise revealing the present.

"You get the crown." Harry unfolds it before helping her fix it atop her head. "And the little toy, what is it?oh... I get the joke!" His family groans, his sister hiding her face in hands, but all she sees is the glint in Harry's eye before he reads. "Who's Rudolph's favourite pop star?"

"I don't know," she's the only one that was going to ask him. And she really wanted to know.

"Beyon-sleigh!" Harry watches in delight how the girl before him snorts at the silly and not so funny joke.

"That was awful." She confessed.

"Agree, next year we'll make our own. Riddles only." His mum adds and Harry protests right away but is shushed by Gemma's voice reading out loud the riddle from her cracker.

Next year, she will probably be spending the day with her numerous family, she thinks. Harry will be here again, telling awful jokes, pulling away Christmas crackers. Perhaps he will bring another person with him. She tries to push the poisonous thoughts down with a big gulp of wine. Only succeeding when Harry's left hand rests on her knee, his thumb rubbing circles on her skin exposed by her ripped jeans while he listens to his sister talk about her podcast. It marvels her how he is there, for everybody.

After dinner they play family games and Harry makes a fake tantrum after his cousin Chloe claims his companion for her team.

"She's mine!" He argues, his long arms embracing her easily. She ends up joining the other team, but the quick kiss she bravely gave to his neck before he let her go, confirmed the words he spoke.

There is a three step process Harry follows to know he's fallen in love. If he finds himself talking about them with every living soul, if he does something they like just because it makes him miss them less and finally if he takes them home to meet his mum. He knows that for the past few days, there was no other topic to discuss with him than the girl sitting beside him in the sofa. He's been drinking tea every morning, just because it reminds him of her. He watches her talk to his mother about how much they like Rod Stewart and knows that he's in too deep.

It should bother him, because she will leave. And all these moments spent, will be just distant memories for him to torture himself over and over again. He wants to feel the angst of knowing that maybe she will forget him, maybe she has a partner back home. He gives up on trying to feel miserable, agreeing with that song from earlier. It is a time to rejoice in the good that we see, a time for living and believing.

Right now all he sees is her, he sighs before tucking her by his side, her brown doe eyes meeting his briefly before sneaking an arm around his waist. She continues to chat with Anne and Gemma even after the rest of the guests leave, still holding onto him. Harry can see the fondness radiating from his mother and sister for the girl in his arms. He sees trust, and he smiles thinking of a new beginning.

What a beautiful sight.

#harry styles #gbsxmaschallenge #fanfic

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pvtrichors · 3 years

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MENA MASSOUD , 29 , HE/HIM/HIS , CIS MAN | hey is that RAMESES "RA" EL AYOUBI ? i think i’ve seen the 26 year old walking around THE EIGHT , so i guess that means they’re a KOOK right ? apparently if the weather’s right, you can find them LAUGHING THE LOUDEST FROM THE FAR CORNER OF THE PARTY , which makes sense since they’ve got the whole thing about them PURPOSELY LEANING IN TO THE CONFUSION BETWEEN WANTING TO FIGHT OR FUCK HIM, THE WHISPER OF FINGERS ON PIANO KEYS AT 3 AM & CHASING THE BOTTOM OF A BOTTLE. if people had background music , their song would definitely be EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES BY PANIC! AT THE DISCO

His parents were convinced that they were being blessed when they were finally given a male heir, someone to carry on their prestigious name. Now, he was very much capable of doing that for them, but that meant he had to want to, and the inclination to actually settle down rarely appealed to him, mostly in spirit, rather than commitment issues (surprise, surprise), but people rarely seemed to stick around him long enough to figure that one out. He hides it well, after all, and instead let's everyone sink their own ship, or even leans into the villain that he is painted as. It's easier to embrace the rumors than it is to fight them, after all.

The one thing those rumors don't know, is that his career choice, wasn't even good enough for those same parents. He just returned from college, and the degree's that should have been hanging in his mother's study were instead boxed up in the closet of his house. You know the one, the one that all the parties are held at, but no one ever remembers actually seeing him, the one that is big enough to throw a banger but never big enough to give space to out run the ugliness of your own truth when you are left inside of it for too long. That's right, you guessed it: both mommy and daddy have agreed to pay their son to stay quiet and tucked away, in his own right, because apparently his passion wasn't quite as acceptable as they would have liked.

While it is easy to see the physical glow up, there has been a slight change in some of his behavior since his return almost four months ago, but it's very hard to put your finger on. Again, most people don't really care enough to figure it out, but it's there. Maybe it's the lingering sadness behind red rimmed eyes, or maybe it's the way he never looks too long unless he's grinning, his mouth always a better focus (for many reasons), than his heart.

WC: There are very few people in life that will stick with you, but when they do, god they never really do go away. As pretentious as Ra's parents are, they embraced "helping" the community by hiring themselves pogue's to help with several things around the house, including cooking, cleaning, and basic tasks neither of them seemed to have time for. That being said, there was one family that always seemed to be called on, for one reason or another. Since both parents were sometimes called on for projects, their kids ended up coming with them. At first, they would play together, but eventually, he was breaking things around the house just to make the family some money, and to bring his friend back around (it's not like he could outright ask them to head to the cut back then). So, their childhood was spent together, and even after that, until he ended up heading off to college. After the farewell party, and the night that they spent on the roof of his parents second home, talking about the mixture of the past, and fear for the future, and him of course dipping back inside to find relief in the keys of the grand piano (writing what ended up jokingly being "their song"), there wasn't much to say. Now, he's back, without supervision, and stripped of the excuse to break something just to have it fixed by their family, or is he?

The thing about being your parents favorite, about being the apple of their eye, is that you never really expect to find out what it feels like to fall from the family style grace they created. Perhaps it was telling when they didn’t even realize what he was studying, or maybe it should have been, but he lived in ignorant bliss for the most of the time that he was away. It wasn’t until the closing ceremonies were being finished, the gowns were being bought, the degrees were being delivered, that they seemed to actually pay attention to their so called pride and joy.

But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here. Giving it a proper rewind, things were normal, or as normal as one could have expected, growing up. Then again, normal was a relative word when you took their wealth into consideration. There was always a divide on the island, the loudest note playing on the classism that existed between them all, but thankfully he was never really too susceptible to the pull of peer pressure, or perhaps it was the rebellion that did it. Again, his parents didn’t even pay enough attention to him to notice that he hung out with a healthy mixture of people, one that would eventually probably come back to bite them in the ass.

Granted, he was well aware of where he should be, and what he should be, at all times. That, however, didn’t meant that he was above attending an extra benefit in his mothers name, wearing a designer suit that could have paid a pogue’s rent five times over, to smooth things over. That was all when he was younger, though, and eventually, the only attention he seemed to get was when they were stopping in to tell him to be careful who he associated with, to make sure that his parents friends didn’t start to talk if they caught him making out with someone “undesirable”, or sneaking out to a few choice parties in the cut.

It wasn’t until he went to college, until he was removed from all of this, that he really began to notice how fucked up the dynamic at home suite home seemed, suite, because that’s what that shit always was. Regardless, his eyes were opened whether he liked it or not, and returning to his usual patterns of sneaking in and out of the beds of his peers, or forgetting that he wasn’t a priority for...well... anyone, anymore, might be a little bit harder now that he seems to have went and (albeit inconfuckingviently) grown a little more of a conscience than before. Well, that paired with the fact that he was now very much on his own, or, given the keys to his own downfall, truly.

Honestly, I wrote three intros and I don’t have anything left to dress this lil bitch’s life up into something pretty, but I DO have the energy to plot and shout about him, so come slide into my DM’s and talk nice to me.

#banks.intro #❪ ⠀ 🌱⠀ ┆ ❝ THROUGH THE TREES I WILL FIND YOU & I WILL HEAL THE RUINS LEFT INSIDE YOU. ❞ ╱ ⠀ ABOUT. ⠀ ❫

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grimelords · 5 years

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There is no limit to how many good songs exist! There are just so many!

My June playlist is finished, and on time too! Please enjoy all manner of bangers from Dave Brubeck, Nelly Furtado and everyone in between.

listen here

Night And Day - Hot Chip: I’ve started a band with some friends and my friend Tiana (who has requested a special shoutout in this playlist and is currently receiving it!) suggested this as a song for us to learn and she was extremely right to do it! It’s extremely funky and probably the most i’ve ever liked Hot Chip because they’ve finally allowed themselves to be emotional and feel the most important emotion of all: horniness.

Infinity Guitars - Sleigh Bells: The other day a friend of mine said ‘hey whatever happened to Sleigh Bells?’ and guess what: they have five albums and continue to release new music as recently as last year. They seem to steadfastly refuse to advance their sound and you’ve got to give them props for that. When nobody else sounds anything like you the smartest thing you can do is double down on your own weird thing. I’ve always loved this song and am totally enamoured by whatever mixing trick it is that enables this song to start loud as fuck and somehow finish even louder no matter what volume you play it at.

Hurricane - Bob Dylan: I haven’t watched the Rolling Thunder Revue thing on Netflix yet but I’m excited to because this is a good Dylan era and I’m always down for more footage of the world’s freak Bobby D acting like a maniac. This song is a good example of how have no control over how music is consumed once you release it because this is ostensibly a serious and angry protest song about a great injustice but my greatest memory of it is for at least a month when I was in boarding school a guy in my dorm would play it every morning super loud and we would all yell the words along as we were getting dressed. Having a great time being fifteen and yelling happily about a miscarriage of justice.

Grindin' - Clipse: I started putting together a playlist of songs with super minimal or no pitched instrumentation that almost totally rely on the percussion and the vocals to carry it. Basically the Pharrell special because he did it on this and Drop It Like It’s Hot and I’m sure more songs of his I haven’t heard yet. But also songs like Lipgloss by Lil Mama, Fix Up Look Sharp by Dizzee Rascal, Tipsy By J-Kwon (almost if it didn’t have the baseline) and The Whisper Song by The Ying Yang Twins. There’s heaps more I’m sure. It was a real minimal style for a little while in the mid 2000s and I think it’s great. It gives you so much space in the mix and it’s a great lesson: if the beat is hot enough and you’ve got enough charisma to carry the vocal you don’t need anything else at all.

Rock Lobster - The B-52's: Did you know the guitar in this is tuned CFFFFF? Did you know this song is nearly 7 minutes long? Did you know The B-52s had a hit with this and then didn’t have another hit until Love Shack fully ten years later? Truly everything about this song is insane.

Johnny Irony - Bad//Dreems: I think ‘are you bleeding?’ is my favourite bit of pre-song hot mic dialogue i’ve ever heard. I love the energy of this song, and what a fun throwback it is to I guess reference Lead Belly’s ancient song about doing cocaine Take A Whiff On Me for a new modern twist on a song about doing cocaine.

Girls On Film - Duran Duran: Have you ever noticed how the bass in this song is absolutely popping off? It rocks. I listened to just the isolated bass track on youtube the other day and it’s my new favourite song. I’m having a big moment with this early eighties art-funk thing where someone figured out you could put huge funky basslines into rock music and completely changed the game.

Love - Lana Del Rey: I figured out this month that my vocal range seems to be just Lana Del Rey but an octave lower which is absolutely great news for anyone that wants to hear me sing this song in a cowboy voice in my car.

Want You In My Room - Carly Rae Jepsen: I am absolutely in love with this song and also absolutely furious at it. Absolutely in love with the way it’s written like a duet with herself, trading lines and overlapping and harmonising. The big ascending guitar line that leads into the chorus. I love how horny the lyrics are, I love the very 80s robot voice in the chorus who also wants to fuck. It’s just phenomenal, which brings me to the the think that makes me so furious: this song just fades out? After the second chorus just as the saxophone comes in? Just as it’s getting good???

Genevieve (Unfinished) - Jai Paul: It's just unbelievable how good this sounds. The bass sound. The way the whole mix seems to float around. The cuts to silence that feel like someone took a razor randomly to the master. It all culminates in this frenetic nervous energy that feels like the song could just fall apart and stop at any point. And it does! It just fades to silence and then comes back in as a totally different song near the end before fading away again.

Elephant Talk - King Crimson: King Crimson is on Spotify now and I’m comically striking them off my list of Bands I Have A Grudge Against For Not Being On Spotify. It’s always kind of surprised me that for someone who loved The Mars Volta as much as I did I never really had a big King Crimson phase. I always liked them fine, and I love this song, but I never really sat down and gave them a proper listen. Maybe now they’re on streaming that’s all about to change and my girlfriend will have to suffer accordingly.

Kids In The Dark - Bat For Lashes: Very excited for Bat For Lashes next album if this is an indication of the direction. She's always had a very hazy 80s feeling, so purposefully leaning into it is only going to be great.

CHORDS For Organ - Ellen Arkbro: My favourite lady is back with 15 minutes of rock solid chords. Something I've been thinking recently in regards to Ellen Arkbro and Holly Herndon is people who make pretentious art unpretentiously, truly believing in their process and outcomes but very aware of and fine with the fact that it's silly, useless or unlistenable to anyone who's not interested. Ellen Arkbro posted a photo of an organ on instagram the other day and wrote "turned out this was one of the biggest instruments in berlin and it was also connected up to two other organs in the same space. Despite that I ended up playing an extremely quiet version of my music. I don't really know how that happened. I will play a louder version in st giles cripple gate in london this saturday if you're around" She posts like Courtney Barnett about her experimental organ drone music, I just love it. As for the music itself I don't really know how to explain this other than if you let it it can be extremely overwhelming. It's also the closest I've come musically to Malevich's Black Square and how I feel about that, which is hard to explain properly other that to say I love it.

SWIM - Holly Herndon: I'm obsessed with this Holly Herndon album. It's just amazing though I think the marketing and a lot of the writing about it is sort of.. misleading? There's a lot of emphasis being put on the machine learning and AI aspects of it, which as undoubtedly good and cool as they are, are sort of overshadowing what's so good about this in a simple way which is that it's just choral music for the future. It feels like it reaches so far back and so far forward at the same time it's incredible.

Too Real/Television Screens - Fontaines D.C.: I really had to stop myself from putting the whole Fontaines DC album on here because quite literally every single song on this is amazing. Just when you think guitar music is well and truly dead it pulls you back in!! Also the way he says 'aaa' at the start of Too Real just absolutely kills me.

Dangerous Match Ten - Scientist: I forget where I read it but some bass player was saying she learned to play by listening to Scientist albums, and so that made me listen to Scientist for the first time and go on a long dub trail and have a very good and dangerous day where I thought “..what if I become a dub guy?”. It’s very good. I don’t know anything about dub really, we don’t really have the jamaican population here for it to have any cultural currency like it does in america and the UK so my biggest exposure is the Dub radio station from GTA III and San Andreas which I’m now learning was mostly made up of Scientist songs anyway. Anyway dub is good, please keep an eye one me and watch as this playlist evolves into me becoming an evangelical dub guy over the next few months and start calling everyone m’brethren in a racist way.

Lipitor - Longmont Potion Castle: Lipitor. This is unfortunately unavailable on Australian spotify which is a crime but if you're from anywhere else please enjoy.

A Lot’s Gonna Change/ Andromeda - Weyes Blood: I am having such a time with this Weyes Blood album. Yesterday I spent all day playing A Lot’s Gonna Change over and over and over and today I spent all day listening to Andromeda over and over and learning how to play it. I suspect this will happen to me with the entire album, it has a complete hold over me.

I’ve listened to Weyes Blood before and she’s never really grabbed me and so it took a lot of people rhapsodising about this one to get me to give it a go and I’m so glad I finally did. This album really took me by surprise, and looking back now I love the development of her sound: from her original spacy noisy thing to the bonafide soft rock of Front Row Seat To Earth to this - an expensive sounding 70s singer songwriter pop album of absolutely devastating beauty and inventiveness.

Wasting My Young Years - London Grammar: I think what's so interesting about this song is that it sounds like an acoustic cover of a trance song. I don't really know how to explain it better than that. The way the deceptively fast four on the floor drums come in, the sort of adult-contemporary The XX instrumentation, the whole structure of it, it feels like a BBC Live Lounge cover of some forgotten rave classic. I love it regardless but it's an odd song as well.

Left Hand - Beast Coast: Beast Coast is lames and I didn't make it more that halfway through the album. On the fourth song there's a verse where one of these guys is doing that rap thing of talking way to graphically about eating pussy. He says lick lick lick it's gross. Anyway this song rocks though. The beat is that perfect mix of hard as hell and a little bit spooky and I love any song where one million guys do like four lines each.

Hung Up - Madonna: In the wake of not listening to Madame X I've been reflecting on how it's been 15 years since Madonna's last true banger, Hung Up, and in my opinion she's a legend forever for this song alone. Do you remember the Madonna x Gorillaz performance at the 2006 Grammys? Where she walked BEHIND the hologram? She still has so much to teach us.

Never Fight A Man With A Perm - IDLES: I love just how purely sweaty man muscle this song is. 'concrete to leather' are you kidding me?? That's the coolest shit I've ever heard. 'You look like you're from Love Island' also quite good.

Speakers Going Hammer - Soulja Boy: I was listening to this the other day and had to keep stopping and rewinding because of how advanced the flow is when he says 'Style swift hot like it's July 10th/Fly chick in my whip with nice tits/Her boyfriend paid for it, I didn't" he's like five minutes in front of the beat and combined with the internal assonance it just sounds sick as hell.

African Woman - Ebo Taylor: Man goes ham on toy piano must see

(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone - The Monkees: My friend Tiana (who I've mentioned twice now!) came to band practice and said she saw The Monkees last night. I thought no, that's impossible. The Monkees are all long dead, forgotten legends from a forgotten age. BUT I was wrong! Michael Nesmith and Micky Dolenz, the surviving Monkees tour to this day! And she introduced me to this great song which we learned for the band! Monkees forever!

Whoo! Alright! Yeah! .. Uh Huh - The Rapture: Somehow as time goes on this song becomes more and more important to me and more and more groovy.I used to think life’s a bitter pill but it’s a grand old time. Now that’s wisdom.

World Of Stone/Loinclothing - Hunters And Collectors: I've been getting very heavily into early Hunters And Collectors over the last couple of months. I think I put Loinclothing on last months playlist as well but fuck it, it's great. It's so primal and raw it feels like the first caveman who learned to talk fronting a band of cavemen who sing songs about caveman issues and passion. I love the incredibly wide open sound the drums and bass have and the fidgety guitar combined with the unhinged vocals creates this really unique ambience of menace and power without ever getting particularly busy and losing the spaciousness. Feels like yelling about monkeys on a wide open desert plain.

Coisa No. 10 - Marcello Gonçalves and Anat Cohen: I found this song ages ago on ABC Jazz I think, and I absolutely love the intricacies of it. It twists and folds in on itself over and over and over without ever losing the groove or relaxing into anything easy. There's so much tension in it even though the melody and groove are so fun, it's a great mix. I also found out it's from an album that's a tribute to someone I'd never heard of before named Moacir Santos, so I got the great joy of discovering his music via this song as well.

Monologue/Nana - Moacir Santos: Moacis Santos, as I understand it, was one of Henry Mancini's film composition assistants and also the guy that taught all the Boss Nova geniuses like Sergio Mendes. I love this Monologue where he tells the story of a mystical vision that inspired this song, which you assume being inspired by a vision would be of mythical importance and weight and but instead sounds like the theme to a cartoon about a grandma who has superpowers.

Weird People - Little Mix: I need more info about the identity of the robot voice in this song. What is his relationship to the singer. He starts off antagonistic: “get off the wall” then commenting on what happened to her: “fell off the wall” then just echoing her: “on the other side” then becoming her “i’m living my life”. It’s complicated and hard to explain but I believe the robot voice in this song is god. Anyway this song is a masterpiece. It’s an incredibly goofy and great piece of 80s revival that imagines a glorious alternate future where Oh Yeah by Yello is the template for all pop music.

3 Legged Dog - Marisa Anderson: Marisa Anderson used to write songs with words here and there among her instrumentals but it seems that over the last couple of albums she’s decided to stick to instrumentals only which I think is a shame. She’s obviously brilliant at it but I’d hate to be missing out on beautiful little slices like this. I love how small time this song is, it feels like a song you’d sing to yourself more than a song for anyone else.

Nighttime Suite - Adam Gnade & Demetrius Francisco Antuña: Adam Gnade is a guy I’ve been following for about ten years now who seems determined to stay obscure. He self-releases all his stuff in limited editions or on cassettes, some of my favourite things he’s ever done don’t seem to be available anywhere digitally any more (if they ever were). I remember years ago he seemed hard up for cash and he ran a deal on his website called a ‘lifetime subscription’ where if you sent him I think $100 he would send you everything he’s ever done AND would continue to send you everything he made in the future for the rest of his life. It was absolutely great, I would get CD-Rs and tapes and zines and things delivered randomly to my mailbox every so often for a couple of years and they were all fantastic. I guess at some point my lifetime subscription lapsed because he’s released a bunch of stuff I haven’t heard or read but that’s ok, you shouldn’t be able to buy someone’s eternal soul for $100.

Adam Gnade has developed his own style of folk music where he just recites a sort of prose poetry over music and it’s incredible. In the hands of anyone else it could feel overly pretentious, and he pretty often rides that line. He’s reaching for a sort of poet laureate of Americana ideal but very often he actually grabs it. His writing is great and magnifies the minor details of normal life into larger symptoms of the American mindset, like depression-era songs of marginalised and exploited people individualised and updated for the modern era. Most of the time he backs himself on a lazily strummed guitar or banjo and his music sounds like sitting on the front step or laying down in the tall grass, but for this song he’s teamed up with Demetrius Francisco Antuña for some real Godspeed feeling dark soundscapes and it’s really something.

We Are The Same - Lurch And Chief: I think it's a damn shame that Lurch And Chief broke up before they even put an album out because this song is a damn classic and I have begun praying every day for the return of Lurch and/or Chief. I love a big voice and there's two distinctly huge voices in this song fighting for position.

983/Near DT, MI - Black Midi: Fucking hell I love this Black Midi album. I'm so, so glad it exists. It feels like the next generation of the Slint Hella, Tera Melos etc lineage of math rock and I simply can't get enough of it. Pump it directly into my veins I'm obsessed with it.

Take Control - Amerie: I just screamed out loud in my car hearing this song for the first time because it samples Jimmy, Renda Se by Tom Zé one of my absolute favourite songs ever. And samples it amazingly, totally transforms it into something new while keeping the spirit of the original. Do you ever feel like a song was just made for you personally? It’s a very kind thing of my vlogger wife Amerie to do for me but I guess that’s just how she is. Also, thanks to Spotify’s new feature where you can see the actual credits for songs I got to find out that Hall And Oates are credited on this because it basically interpolates the the whole verse melody from You Make My Dreams Come True which I didn’t even realise until I looked up why they were credited.

Unsquare Dance - Dave Brubeck: Dave Brubeck's brain is huge. I can't belive it's possible to make 7/4 this funky. How come nobody else ever ripped off this rhythm? It deserves to be a whole genre. I also totally love the piano solo near the end where it turns into like a funky 7/4 stride and then abruply ends with a shave and haircut like it's 1925.

Suddenly - French Vanilla: Get a load of this fucking slice of dance punk that Discover Weekly served me up. I haven't even listened ot the album yet because I just love this song so much I'm stuck on it. Singing "I like the nightlife! I'm in the spotlight!" like you're being hunted with a knife? Incredible. The impromptue glossolalia about halfway through? Incredible. Everything about the saxophone? Incredible

Maneater - Nelly Furtado: There's nothing deft or subtle about Timbaland. Everything he does is just so heavy handed and thick. The drums in this are so straightforward and they sound like garbage cans.. Nothing ever plays at he same time as anything else . It's like a gorilla learned to play and it's absolutely fucking sick. And then the whole rest of the song! His insanely thick buzzy synth lines against the big beautifully stack clean harmonies

I, The Witchfinder - Electric Wizard: I've been getting back into Skyrim because I have a little worm living in my brain and I've discovered a good trick is to turn off the game music and turn on Electric Wizard instead. It increases the ambience because it feels like if you did an x-ray of the Dragonborn's head this is all that would be in there. It's just stoner metal in there and no other thoughts.

Music Sounds Better With You - Stardust: Can you believe how lucky we are to live in a world where the greatest song ever written is finally available on spotify? You can just listen to this any time of the night or day and immediately improve your life.

Don’t Chew - Spilled Oats: Here’s a very good and underexplored idea: what if guitar music but it sounds like chopped and screwed? Absolutely dynamite.

As an extra bonus treat here the absolute best ever chopped and screwed channel I’ve found on youtube, please explore Scobed & Robed: https://www.youtube.com/user/scottalexanderburton

listen here

#playlists

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badbookreviewclub · 4 years

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Empress Theresa, Chapters 3 & 4

If you haven’t read Chapter 2, here is the the link. I recommend reading through this and Chapter 1 first before continuing on for the sake of continuity. These WILL contain spoilers, so if you’re not cool with that, don’t read it.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 by far has to be one of the most boring chapters I’ve come across in this book. It took me forever to work through this chapter alone simply because of how boring I found the writing and the general story line of the chapter. Its sole purpose is to introduce a couple things, one being Theresa’s love interest, Steve, and how ‘interesting’ she is. Summary and Analysis: Theresa has finally moved on from her high school baseball career to attend Boston College, which Boutin, the author, constantly abbreviates to BC throughout this chapter. This abbreviation grows annoying rather quickly, considering that I don’t think the name of the college needs to be mentioned as often as it is. Aside from annoying abbreviations, this chapter is absolutely littered with a poor attempt to follow the story line Boutin seems to have loosely laid out throughout the book as well as piss poor logic. In chapter 3 we learn that Theresa is a whiny little bitch who thinks the amount of homework given to her is absurd despite the fact that there are plenty of college students out there who are handling it just fine. “The assignments I got in my classes seemed endless. Could anybody do all that work in a semester? (Pg 40)” This is Theresa’s first day of classes and she’s already getting upset over the amount of work she has to do. I don’t know about anybody else, but even with my higher level courses the amount of homework ramps up over the semester before the assignments become more manageable when finals start to draw near. Aside from complaining about her homework, we never even see Theresa do it once throughout the chapter. After her classes, rather than starting to work on this ‘endless’ amount of homework she has, Theresa relaxes in her room before a group of girls (I assume her roommates and not just random strangers - It’s never explicitly stated which one.) invite her down to the cafeteria. In the cafeteria, out of a “”long habit” Theresa started to look around the room. She notices pretty quickly that a group of ‘kids’ are staring at her. I tend to take issue with the fact that Boutin constantly refers to these college-aged adults as ‘kids’ simply because it throws you out of the story. Theresa wouldn’t refer to people the same age as her as ‘kids’ and the book is supposed to be written like an autobiography. Nonetheless, these ‘kids’ are staring at her and Theresa automatically picks two out to comment on in the book. “Mr. Intense,” who was looking at her intently, hence the name, and “Mr. Fast Move.” I have a slight problem with the name “Mr. Fast Move” simply because Theresa gave him this name before he even got up to introduce himself. Theresa somehow being omniscient is a problem through everything I’ve read up until this point and I’ve found it to be more and more annoying as I keep reading. Boutin also tends to have a really big problem with making Theresa assume the emotions and thoughts of other people. “One boy [Mr. Intense] was intently looking at me.... he was around six feet which was a good match for my five feet four inches. I liked taller guys and apparently he liked smaller girls (pg 40).” ‘Mr. Intense’ hasn’t even gotten up to talk with Theresa, nor will he for the next little while as far as I can tell. Yet, somehow, Theresa already knows his likes and dislikes and what he looks for in a potential partner. It doesn’t end there though, Theresa also goes on to continue and assume just what he is doing and thinking. “He wasn’t gawking at a pretty girl, or lusting for her body. He looked interested. And that’s ok. A girl gets used to being looked at (pg 40).” Aside from assuming what he’s thinking, there’s a lot of problems with this quote, enough so that I’m not sure where to being. Starting simple, I absolutely hate when authors write out ‘ok’ rather than ‘okay.’ It comes off as lazy to me. It only takes two more strokes of the key to add the ‘ay’ to the first two letters. Moving on to the next problem, Boutin never takes issue with the fact that someone may be looking at Theresa like an object, and Theresa never objects to that idea. She seems to be fine with the idea that someone is looking at her like an object or like a potential partner. Boutin never out right states that someone is looking at Theresa like an object as far as I’m aware, but it tends to be heavily implied throughout the book that Theresa is fine with that. Moving on from Theresa’s assumptions about ‘Mr. Intense’ for now though, ‘Mr. Fast Move’ obviously makes the first move. As stated early, Theresa gave him this name before he even got up to make the first move. She also keeps calling him this after he gives her his name, Jack Koster. To keep it short and sweet so you all don’t have to suffer as much, Theresa knows pretty soon into her and Jack dating that the two of them are not a good match and that their relationship won’t last. Yet, she continues to keep dating him and dragging him along. One day, when she goes down to his dorm because they have a movie at eight. Turns out, Jack has another girlfriend named Ginny from before college. Despite the fact that she knew her and Jack wouldn’t work out and was just dragging him along, Theresa still gets angry at him and wants to make him jealous. Jack says that he’ll talk to Theresa upstairs so she goes upstairs to wait for him. Before I go further, I just want to point out that Boutin wrote that there were six guys in Jack’s dorm waiting on him as well as Ginny. That’s a lot of people for a college dorm. Still chugging along, Theresa decides she wants to make Jack so jealous he’ll “throw Ginny out a window (pg 45).” Theresa says that there’s no chance that her and Jack will get back together, so I’m not quite sure what her logic is on this one. But she dresses in a “backless dress made of flimsy, cling material (pg 45).” The dress falls six inches above the knee, which “wasn’t a big deal these days, but to make it more interesting I folded back the hemline three more inches inside the skirt and taped it (pg 45).” I may just have short legs, but I measured how short this dress would be on myself, and this wasn’t even covering the bottom of my ass cheeks. Anyways, Theresa watches a movie which Boutin goes into way too much detail to describe and it’s just overly boring and pointless. Jack never shows up but surprise surprise, ‘Mr. Intense,’ better known as Steve at this point, does. At this point the dress has ridden up Theresa’s hips at this point and despite Steve’s clear discomfort with the whole dress situation, she makes no move to try and make it better even though he’s there to offer her comfort. We do get this banger of an exchange though (Pg 49): “You’re quite, Steve. Something on your mind?” “Yeah. I’m trying not to think about what I might see.” “I’m wearing a thong. You won’t see anything but my hip.” “And a nice hip it is, I’m sure.” Steve has had a total of maybe 5 words spoken up until this point but he’s already my favorite character solely from the line “And a nice hip it is, I’m sure.” Steve and Theresa’s relationship develops absurdly quickly from there and it’s almost at a worrying pace. After only about a month of dating, the two of them decide to get married. Father Donoughty, or as I lovingly refer to him, Father Dick Doughnut, convinces Theresa’s parents to let her marry Steve at the tender age of 18 and after only a month of dating because he is more than certain that their marriage won’t fail. Eventually her parents give in because “Discouraging it [the relationship] could do more harm than good (pg 54).” Theresa and Steve apparently have an absolutely amazing wedding and we get a lovely detailed description of what Theresa wore that I’m more than happy to share with all of you because it’s not in the slightest drawn out or excessive; “I was gorgeous as a recently turned eighteen year old. For the church service I wore a two piece wedding gown. A floor length wide skirt with spaghetti shoulder straps made from matte duchess stain. Over this I had a jacket made of peekaboo cotton Venice lace that more or less covered my shoulders and the top half of my upper arms so as not to scandalize the congregation. At the reception the jacket and train came off and my shoulders and cleavage charmed the crowd (pg 54).” This description just reminds me of the excessively long description of what Ebony was wearing in the all-time classic My Immortal. Nobody gives two shits just what Theresa was wearing and the comments about what she is wearing don’t even make sense. I don’t recall a congregation ever being ‘scandalized’ by a young woman having their shoulders exposed. I also don’t recall a crowd ever being ‘charmed’ by someones breasts and shoulders, or you know, I just live in a boring world where people don’t get dazzled by my boobs and my offensively sexy shoulders. As for the poor attempt for Boutin to continue the plot throughout chapter 3, in-between Theresa meeting Jake and then finding out about him cheating, Theresa is called into the campus police office because her ‘watchers’ were caught following her. Nothing really comes of this other than that we learn the Pope is paying for her tuition and finds her a ‘highly interesting’ case. The president also talks on the phone to the head of the campus police and tells them to pass along the message that they didn’t see anything happen, that they shouldn’t tell this to anybody, and that they should just forget about it. It’s a boring scene with boring dialogue and its rather pointless as well. If anything, it only serves to create more plot holes throughout the entire story. Chapter 4 So we got through the boring hell that was chapter 3, but what about chapter 4? It’s not better. Arguably it is so much worse. I can sum it up fairly simply for you. Theresa gets kidnapped by government men, she assumes they’re ‘Navy SEALS’ but calls them goons through the entire book. She’s then put on a plane with an atom bomb on it because I guess the president finally decided that he wanted her dead and yet nobody objected to this happening despite there being no evidence for her deserving this fate. Also her watchers just disappear in this chapter so I guess their presence in her life was just completely pointless. This may come as a surprise, but Theresa manages to get out with the stupidest solution ever and doesn’t die. This is the part where I should be celebrating her survival but all I can do is mourn the fact that she could have died but didn’t. If she did, the book would be over. Summary and Analysis: God, I really don’t want to summarize this chapter and point out things I hated in it but I will. This chapter was so overwhelmingly painful to read and mark down that I gave up towards the end and just started scribbling ‘No’ and ‘Why’ into the margins. Okay, rant over. Starting off, Theresa is on her way to go to the grocery store when a bunch of cars in front of her essentially make a barricade so she can’t get through. The people in the cars get out with their weapons drawn as a van pulls up behind her. Once more, Theresa’s omniscient knowledge kicks in and before the door to the van opens she already knows what the interior looks like. She gets into the van anyways without much of a fight and just willingly lets herself be kidnapped. They take her to a helicopter and fly for a long ass time. Eventually Theresa asks where they’re taking her and rather than telling her that it is classified information like they should, they basically tell Theresa that they’re taking her to an aircraft and that she’ll be killed. Rather than getting upset about this, the tears just well up in her eyes but she doesn’t break down into hysterics. As Theresa so eloquently puts it, “But I didn’t cry. I wasn’t a phony movie actress using hysterics to milk all the drama she could out of every moment. I was a real person and I didn’t give a damn what these kidnappers thought (pgs 57-58).” Theresa once more assumes emotions, and states that she must have impressed her kidnappers and won their admiration by not breaking down into hysterics. This is where she also guesses that they’re Navy SEAL despite having absolutely no proof of them being in that part of the army as of yet. Blah blah blah, Theresa decides to ‘wax poetic’ though she’s not being poetic at all and it’s just Boutin trying to fill in space so he can make his book longer. Somehow this chapter is even more boring and annoying than chapter 3 and shit is supposed to be happening here. I suppose Boutin is trying to make it intense, but it comes off as long winded and any sense of action of anxiety that may have been there is gone. In-between the long and boring moments of Theresa just observing things, she asks how she’s going to die and they tell her that she’s going to be loaded onto a plane with an atomic bomb. This is a problem for a lot of reasons, actually, and I’ll put them in a list for you: 1. This is a stupidly expensive way to kill someone 2. Theresa never stood trial for this and its not as thought it could have flown under the radar either. There is a shit ton of money being funneled into an atomic bomb and a plane that wouldn’t go unnoticed in the records. 3. Theresa’s watchers never showed up once despite having watched her grow up and seeing that she would never harm a fly. Yet here she has been declared a danger to national security. 4. All of the men who are escorting her to her death have no proof that she has done anything to be a threat to national security. As far as they’re aware, she’s an innocent eighteen year old girl. 5. The way that they’re going to kill her is cruel, inhumane, and excessive. Never in my life could I see anyone letting a president get away with ordering a death sentence like this. 6. Theresa never fucking stood trial for this shit. This wouldn’t just fly under the radar with congress. Believe it or not, but the President of the United States doesn’t have enough power to just order someone dead because they believe them to be a threat. Theresa would have to go through a trial first. I could see a coup happening in the United States before anyone ever let anything like this happen. These tend to be my problems with a majority of the chapter. To get into more specifics, Theresa says that she needs to think of a way to get out of this, but we never see her elaborate on a plan nor do we ever become clued in that she has come up with an idea. Instead, we, the reader, see her do some nonsensical bullshit. When they take her to an empty cafeteria to have her last meal, Theresa takes an empty garbage bag and fills it with exactly 11 coke bottles that at the time confused the living shit out of me. As it turns out, she’s going to empty out these coke bottles and shove them into her jumpsuit so she’ll be buoyant when she jumps from the plane before it can blow her up. This is some kind of bullshit five-minute crafts solution. It’s a stupid one and never in a million years could I ever see this working. Theresa also decides to reflect on her life and comes to the conclusion that her life as not significant and was incredibly boring. How wonderful for that the reader has to reader that when we could have come to that conclusion ourselves. We also learn that Theresa has had ‘no illnesses’ which seems like utter bullshit to me, but alright, go off Boutin. She also had a ‘mean’ dog growl at her once and suddenly she now has absolutely no love for dogs. I’ll let you interpret that one however you want. The night before she’s going to be executed, Theresa decides to reflect on her life thus far with Steve. This could have been a bittersweet moment where we truly get something emotion filled and with fond memories that we didn’t see. It’s not a bad idea to have her reflect on her loved one during what should be a very emotional time, yet all we do is get a recap of his experience with her last chapter. It’s boring and inspires no emotion from the reader. We could have learned something about Steve and how Theresa sees him and yet we don’t learn anything. What we do learn however, is that Theresa somehow has shit tons of knowledge about aircraft despite this never being mentioned before in the book. I don’t think she actually is supposed to be an aircraft nerd, I think that Boutin just forgot about that and started to write far too much that he learned about planes so he could share the information with everyone. It’s more confusing than not in the actual text though and draws away from the story, not that there was much to begin with. Also, somehow, refueling in flight will snap your neck if you don’t brace right according to Boutin. I did some light research and no, no it will not. Despite this, Boutin goes on for about two pages about how Theresa has to brace so it doesn’t snap her neck when they refuel mid-flight on their way to take her another boat so she can get on the plane with the bomb on it. Jesus christ the next few pages are just absolute hell. Theresa lands on boat. Captain of boat brought women onto top of boat. Thought the one being executed would be man and deserved to see women before he died. Strongly implies women are objects for men to look at again. One woman takes out her phone. She asks Theresa if she has anything she’d like to say. Dis bitch. Dis. fuckin. bitch. “I once read a famous quote by the Shawnee Indian Chief Tecumseh about singing a death song and going out like a hero. I had rewritten it for a more universal use, never dreaming that I’d use it myself so soon. ‘If people grieve your passing rejoice in the good you did and die like a hero going home. I feel good about who I was.’ (pg 68)” Not only is pulling your phone out to record someone who is about to be executed highly against probably all policies, but also, just... fuckin... if this situation were to ever happen in real life, this would be an absolute shit show of a situation. People are breaking rules left and right, nobody is obeying any sort of code of ethics or any kind of rules that were laid out for them. It’s just stupid. All of this chapter is just plain stupid and the logic is terrible. One of the people gives Theresa thermals because it’s going to be cold when she’s flying up and they insist that she gets oxygen and wears a mask. They do all of this for her despite the fact that in the end she’s going to get blown up and none of it matters. Nothing fucking matters in this book. After this though Theresa fucking jumps from the plane once it has taken off and is at an altitude of 54,140. The impact on the water alone would have been enough to kill her and yet it doesn’t. She just passes out when she hits in and then wakes back up. Now is when she starts to get cold and she passes out again. The entire time that the plane is climbing into the air and she’s falling before she hits the water is supposed to be an intense and action-packed scene. I get that’s what Boutin is trying to do in this last part of the chapter, but it doesn’t come across that way. It’s dragged out. It’s wordy and Theresa thinks way too much about other things for it to feel like it is supposed to be as intense as I think Boutin wanted it to be. It’s poorly written to put it simply, which really sucks because it’s the climax of the entire chapter and the most intense moment out of anything leading up to this point. End Alright that is the end of chapter 3 and 4. I don’t know when 5 to whatever chapter I decide is worth it will come out, but hopefully sooner rather than later so I can finish with this book. Chances are I’ll post a review for a different book in-between this one and the next so look out for that. I’ve got a few absolutely terrible books on their way that I’ll be receiving over the next month. The first one out of the batch I plan to review is someone’s fan fiction that they decided to publish called Insanity: Jeff the Killer simply because it’s 77 pages and after flipping through it, it’s already better than some of the shit I’ve read lately. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed and please feel free to follow and look out for more reviews of books. I hope I’m actually getting better at this review thing! Please feel free to leave any feedback and things you would like!

#empress theresa #chapter 3 #chapter 4 #bad book #bad book review #review #this was hell #someone please kill me #when will it end

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eurosong · 5 years

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Undo my ESC ‘19 (semi-final two)

Good morning, folks, and welcome to part two of Undo my ESC, the feature where I look at the year’s songs and make a change – as small as altering a minor detail like a lyric or a small staging decision, or as big as going for a completely different national final song! Again, it’s just my opinion and is often delivered in jest. Generally speaking, there are fewer things that need drastic changing in this semi-final, but there are always exceptions...

Armenia: When I first heard this song, I was a bit non-plussed. Cut to a few days later, and there was a constant stream of “walking out, aooooo” in my head. I fear that it’s a song that takes a while to win people over – and that it doesn’t help matters that it’s difficult to completely understand what Srbuk is singing. I’d be tempted to shift the verses into Armenian.

Ireland: I was underwhelmed initially by this effort, but it ended up charming me with its low-key nostalgia. It seems like Björkman has done his level best to kill of Ireland’s chances, and RTÉ have done the rest with the garish, Liechtenstein comics meet 50s Americana staging. I’d change this to something a bit more low-key and elegant.

Moldova: As if to detox from 2 years of crazy staging and outlandish songs, Moldova have sent something incredibly dull and beige, which now they’re trying to cover up by using a decade-old Ukrainian gimmick. There were better songs in their national final, particularly “Sub pămint,” a rocky-folky effort with a lot more to hold my interest than “Stay.”

Switzerland: The Swiss were another country to abandon their national final – no real surprise after the years of mediocre entries it produced. I’d take Stones, Apollo and even Last of our kind over the cringeworthy, self-satisfied Justin Timberlake meets Despacito meets Fuego infernal blend that was “She got me.” I’m going to have a laugh with this one and have it so that Switzerland accept “Sister”, which would have been a passable Swiss entry, instead of rejecting it and having it end up in Germany where it screwed a perfectly good national final.

Latvia: Latvia, like its northern neighbour, Estonia, have gone from having one of the most promising and avant-garde national finals to one that has lost its shine, albeit not só much as Eesti Laul did. Credit where credit is due, they picked by far the best of a lacklustre bunch for me – a lovely, understated, saudadic effort. I wouldn’t change much about it at all.

Romania: Whilst it seemed that almost everybody and their mongoose wanted either the creepy poperatics of Laura “No to marriage equality” Bretan or fueclone #382 from Bella Santiago, by far the song that intrigued me the most was “On a Sunday.” I’m glad this delectable and dark tune won and couldn’t be happier for Ester, who was such a lovely person when we met. What I would change, if I could, would be the bizarre voting system that led to her victory – I’d have had her win by a clear margin in the public vote so as not to be the unfair recipient of hate for the way her song was elected winner. I’d also ensure the oddities on stage with her, pretending to play instruments, were relegated far out of view!

Denmark: Speaking of unpopular opinions, I also didn’t think much of “League of light”, a song so dull that the fact that it incorporated Greenlandic still didn’t quit its beigeness. I found the nicest song of the night to have been “Love is forever”, though I would replace the song’s English lyrics with Danish ones, teach Leonora how not to stare into the viewer’s soul and cause an existential crisis, and trim some of the tweeest excesses away such as the sashaying on the top of that massive chair.

Sweden: Another year, another edition of Melodifestivalen where the all-powerful juries have a real fear of anyone without the Y chromosone representing Sweden. “Too late for love”, at least, breaks the chain of self-satisfied boys singing empty pop songs. Instead, we have a barely soulful soul song sung by a more mature man. I would have gone for “Torn” or “Not with me” any day, though.

Austria: Austria’s labyrinthine internal selection came up with a little-known electro artist and I didn’t have the highest expectations, but I was intrigued. It ended up being an unexpected highlight, a true pearl of emotion and exquisite vocals. I don’t know what PÆNDA’s staging will be, but at the minute, I wouldn’t change anything except for her pronunciation of you as “Hugh/hue”!

Croatia: Oh, Croatia. Returning to a national final after Serbia and Montenegro did last year, and having enjoyed Beovizija and Montevizija respectively, I had hopes. Maybe not high hopes, but medium hopes. It was a collection of dated songs, bizarre songs, and then the eventual winner was both bizarre and dated: a screaming angel shrieking out a maudlin ballad that would have been dated even in the early 90s. I don’t have much of a horse in this race – I think my personal favourite was “Tebi pripadam”, which was harmless but pleasant, but I might go for the colourful “Brutalero” as the most likely to make an impact in Tel Aviv.

Malta: Malta bringing something interesting to ESC is one of the Four Horsemen of the Europocalypse, but before the other three come, I’m living for it. I worry how well a young balladeer with static performances will adapt to the sass and sizzle of Chameleon, but for the moment, I wouldn’t change anything other than remove the letters that overshadow the wild and colourful MV.

Lithuania: Lithuania’s NF is another for which life is too short to follow, especially since it takes the best part of 3 months to come up with – well, songs like this. One wonders how something can be both weird and dull, but this is, in turns. As pretty much the majority of folk rewriting this, I guess I would opt for “Light on” instead, though I’d be tempted by the quirky fun of “Mažulė.”

Russia: I can’t begrudge Sergej’s return to try to win after he found himself losing at the juries’ hand in 2016. I won’t even join those criticising him for not bringing another “banger” and instead returning with something a bit more solemn and musically complex. It’s not in my favourites but there’s not much I’d change, other than make the tune a little less repetitive.

Albania: Albania had another good Festival i Këngës – one of my favourite NFs in keeping an orchestra and maintaining national language throughout. My pick of all the songs to win was Ktheju tokës, and I wouldn’t change a thing about this powerful cri de cœur, except, perhaps, change it so that the second verse had different lyrics and was not just a repeat of the initial verse.

Norway: One of the absolute scandals of the season for me. In the red corner, we had one of the best composers to have represented Norway in the past 20 years with a sweeping, moving, classical tune, “En livredd mann”. In the blooo corner, we had a “what if Aqua moved to the woods, discovered they had animal spirits, thought they could joik and created this forgotten b-side in 1998?” Somehow, the latter won, but I feel the former really ought to have.

Netherlands: Though I cannot understand the fuss about this compared to other downtempo songs that I see being forgotten at best, slated at worst, it’s a decent track. I’d change the video so that it didn’t hinge so dramatically on gratuitous nudity, so that we could see who’s praising this for the music and who’s just in for a good looking lad’s bare arse.

Macedonia: It’s a nice, sincere effort from Macedonia – it feels a bit of a step back from me from the experimentation in the past two entries, but at the same time, I think it has a better chance of doing well than them. Not sure what I would change, other than the video. It’s very melodramatic and reminds me of an even more extra version of Bebe’s “Ella”; no small achievement given how extra that is.

Azerbaijan: I’m no great fan of AZ at this contest, but for the second time in 3 years (let’s try to forget the disaster that was “Delete my heart”), they’ve brought a decent song with some local character. My change would be to forget about the overproduced official music track and go instead for the delightfully understated unplugged performance, where Çingiz’ voice and the poignancy of the text come to the fore.

And the automatic qualifiers of this semi:

Germany: Because of my mischievious change for Switzerland, Germany would be free of the non-sisters perversely called Sisters and would have dodged the hole that they keep falling into – including unexperienced wild card artists in the national final that folk vote for out of sympathy, landing them in or near the bottom for several years, except last year, the one time they didn’t. There were plenty of good songs in the German national final, making the choice of S!!$Ŧ4ZZZ! even more perverse. I really enjoyed “The day I loved you most”, but, despite a somewhat dodgy live, I’d have to give the nod instead to the atmospheric, brooding “Surprise.”

Italy: This song and its artist are utter perfection to me. I wouldn’t change a single second. Unfortunately, Eurovision’s rather arbitrary 3 minute rule means that I would have to excise several seconds from the original. Mahmood’s actual solution seems to have been getting rid of the repetition of “[sai già] come va, come va, come va”, which for me sounds odd and wrecks the flow. I’d instead probably remove the “non ho tempo per chiarire, perché solo ora so cosa sei” line. It’d still be a change I wouldn’t ideally make, but I feel it’d be a bit less abrupt.

UK: The UK came onto the scene this year with a massive fanfare about a new format where YOU DECIDE in song duels which version of a song was better. Except, as it transpired, You the Punter didn’t decide – a dubiously qualified trio of “““experts””” did instead. The whole element of intrigue of the new format – finding out which version of a song is best – was taken away from the viewer and in doing so, all they got to decide between was 3 songs, 1 version of each. In the process, they eliminated the best version of “Bigger than us” – opting for the bombastic, X factor winner version by Michael Rice instead of the low-key but likeable country version by Holly Tandy. I’d have picked that instead. I’d have also not gone for that stupid format and instead tried to find at least 6 decent songs instead of 2 versions of 3 mediocre ones.

BONUS ROUND!

Ukraine: When I was doing SF1, I forgot that another country should have entered that semi who were under my imaginary purview. I’m talking Ukraine, of course, whose broadcasters instigated the scandal of the year by humiliating its artists with political questions on live TV, and then basically forced the winner to nót represent Ukraine by giving her a scandalous contact that didn’t offer any help with the financial burden of going to Israel and putting on a show, would shackle her to patently unreasonable terms, forbade her from speaking out of turn or improvising on stage, and threatened her with massive fines for the slightest unauthorised change. Part of me really wants to say that I’d deal with the mess by ensuring that Tayanna (who should have won in 2018 with Lelja) wouldn’t withdraw, thus leading to the inclusion of Maruv at the last minute who ended up winning. But no – a bigger wrong must be righted and, even though her bizarre burlesque is not to my taste, I would have undone poor Maruv’s poor treatment and let her go to ESC with “Siren song” like the majority of voters wanted.

#eurovision #esc 2019 #eurovision song contest #opinion #esc #eurovision 2019

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surveys-at-your-service · 5 years

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Survey #195

i’m fighting to stay up and see the blood moon but i am already ready to fail at 9:30 lmao.

What’s the first website you go to when you log onto the computer? Usually KM. Does your house/apartment have a bathtub or just showers? It's both. Where are your birthmarks? On my right forearm and the left side of my stomach. When’s the last time you found something unexpectedly? The closest occasion to come to mind was when I was inches from crawling into fox intestines... yeah. The grass was just high enough to hide them until I was RIGHT there. What do you call your grandparents? Grammy. What color was the last scarf you wore? Idr the last time I wore one. I never do. Is there at least one ex that you can still trust? Girt. Are there any celebrities who live fairly near you? Not to my knowledge, and it's very unlikely. Have you ever gotten love and infatuation confused? Maybe? When and where was the last time you took a picture of yourself? Months ago. Is there anything that you want to do, but you won’t do because you’re too afraid? Skydive. Who was the last person to yell at you? Mom. What’s the longest amount of time that you’ve spent away from your home? We were technically homeless from I think early February '17 to some time in April (we all "lived" with people I'm immensely thankful for), so that time. Did the last movie you watched have any emotional affect on you? No. What motivates you to go to school? I absolutely refuse to live my own independent life as I've known it so far with serious financial instability that, since being a teenager and truly understanding, has made me want to rip my hair out. Don't for a single moment be unappreciative of knowing you're having a home next month, a working car, insurance, and I'll just stop before this ruins my mood. When was the last time you heard someone talking about you? With certainty, Mom and Nicole, but that was months ago. Are you embarrassed to bring people into your bedroom? No, I like my bedroom, just not the fact how tiny it is. When was the last children’s birthday party you attended? My nephew's. Are you good at reading other people’s body language? I think so. If you’re sick, do you go to school or do you stay home usually? I'm not in that position now, but when I was in school, uh yeah, I begged Mom to let me stay home. Honestly I could just barely be feeling sick and I'd try to stay home. Yeah, I loved middle-high school. Shit, I think I gave Mom trouble in elementary, too. Does chicken noodle soup really make you feel any better? I wouldn't know, I don't like it. What’s one meal that you like to eat whilst sick? A meal, idk, and it also depends on what kind of sickness we're talking about... but with anything, I never eat much or anything heavy. Have you ever set out to ruin someone else’s day? No. Well, I don't really know if I count that impulsive "guess who's going to the ER again" shit, just because I don't remember if that was a motive to just ruin his day, and it also wasn't planned? But I know I intended it to hurt initially at least because I wanted to know he cared, so... Make your own judgment on this one. What was the name of the last board game that you played? I rarely play 'em because I just don't tend to enjoy them almost at all. I don't recall, but I'm sure it was something with Girt; we usually play them when he's here. Do you like to give people a taste of their own medicine? No. Well, if I don't dish it out. I don't believe in karma, but I think it's normal to have a "how does it feel now?" reaction when someone experiences the wrong they've given to others. How was the service at the last restaurant you visited? I don't recall. In a car, air conditioning or roll the windows down? I strongly prefer AC. What type of personality do you find most annoying? Over-the-top judgmental and condescending, but especially egotistical. Do you give any consideration to what’s said in your horoscope? Absolutely zero, and I admittedly find ignorance and gullibility in you if you do. I'm generally super, super open-minded, but. Having faith in the horoscope is a weak point there. Have you ever done cocaine? Wow no. Has anyone ever called you a whore? I don't believe so, excluding jokes with friends and such. Are you the oldest child? The youngest? In the middle? Only child? The middle of my "full" siblings, second-youngest if you count them all. Has anyone ever told you that you have a cute nose? I actually think so? When was the last time you wrestled? Probably with Jason playfully, so years ago. Do you like your first name? I do. Whose car were you last in? Mom's. Have you ever thought about getting your nose pierced? It has been twice. First time, the damn hole closed while I was in the hospital (I had to take them all out, and four piercings total closed, yay), so I got it redone. What was the last reason you went to the doctor? Therapy. What can’t you wait for? Going back to school or getting a job I don't hate. Have your parents ever smoked pot? I don't think so. Do you like scary movies, what was the last one you watched? With who? Yes. Last year's Halloween with Mom. Is there someone you know you should hate but you can’t? I believe I have enough reason to hate Colleen, but I don't think I feel that strongly enough to, especially as yes, she did wonderful things for me too, but I can't forget the many reasons of why I questioned our friendship. I think I just strongly dislike her. Do you take walks often? I can't thanks to my damn knees mixed with my current, lovely sweating situation. I can't walk here anyway, we live on the side of a decently busy street. Do you like Subway? Sure. When’s the last time you said you were fine, but really weren’t? Idk, I've learned to not do that. If your boyfriend or girlfriend cheated on you, would you take them back? No. Has someone ever called you at midnight on your birthday? Maybe? I know at least texted. What is your favorite fruit? Strawberries. Are you fascinated by outer space? I'd love to see a person say no to this. What’s a fun website you recommend? Nothing surprising or new... Do you answer your phone when it’s a number you don’t recognize? Sometimes. Through VR, the person working with me has really emphasized that I have to learn to when you're out trying to get a job and such with how you'll be receiving calls. Do you like spontaneity? It really depends, but in most situations, I think no. Do you have dreams that you’re not giving up on? I absolutely refuse to. Do you have hope for the future? Some days. Not as much as usual of the late. Are you optimistic? No, I'm a realist. Do you think your hair looks better up or down? It's too short to be put up. Do you like bare trees or green-leaved trees better? Autumn trees. Between those two, probably bare, I guess. Do you love your hometown? Yeah, having the Bloods gang try to break into your house, having eggs thrown at your window, drugs being easy to access, and former criminals walking right down the streets, yeah, it was great. Do you dream of decorating a house someday? Well yeah. It wouldn't feel like home if it wasn't personalized. What’s your opinion on people who go hunting for sport? I hate you and your barbarous ass more than I care to describe. :) Have you ever been on a rollercoaster that actually scared you? Never been on one in the first place. Out of these colors, which appeals most to you: orange, blue, or green? I don't like green much, but I love orange and pastel blue... eh, I dunno what to pick. Is there anything you’re saving up for? A shitload of things. Know anyone with a really annoying laugh? FUCKING MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Has anyone in your family fought in any of the wars? I learned recently my grampa was in the navy for I believe two wars. Idr on Mom's side. Would you make any changes to your current bedroom? Ugh, change the color of these walls, please. Has a stray dog ever tried to bite you? No. When riding a bus, do you prefer to sit up front, down back or the middle? I haven't been on a bus in years, but back when I went home with Jason, we sat in the back with a few of his friends. If it was of my own volition now, uh. Probably the middle. Are you normally a person to tell people off? No, but BOY will I if you give me a damn good reason, particularly if the person has hurt a loved one. Do you currently have any bug bites? No. Have you ever gone to see a movie just to make fun of it? No. When you listen to a new song, do you usually play it over and over? y e s Ever been to a REAL metal show? Not yet. How much time do you spend on the computer? Better question is how much time am I not. How do you feel about Motorhead? Loads of respect for our late Lemmy as an icon in the metal community, but I don't know many of their songs. Like every human being at least, "Ace of Spades" I love and is a BANGER. I'm actually not a big fan of Lemmy's voice, but I can overlook the singing for the overall sound of the song, for example, Megadeth for me. What words or phrases do you tend to overuse the most? "Fuck," "shook," "rip," "fite me," and "don't @ me," lol. I am an adult y'all. Is there anything in particular that you’re shy about? Above all, talking about things in particular that I really enjoy/am passionate about, RP being the main one. You will probably never see me more uncomfortable than when explaining/talking about that with 99% of people. Classic rock love ballads: totally cheesy or totally awesome? GIMME. Are you more kinky or conservative? Well I wouldn't really know, I've only ever done "normal" things. I don't think you'd know unless you tried something. What color is your pillowcase? Both are brown. What’s the weirdest way you’ve ever pulled a muscle? Uhhhh. I don't know. Would you consider yourself rebellious? I both do and don't for varying reasons. What’s your favorite symbol? (i.e. the pentagram, the cross, etc.) I'll just consider "real" ones, as my first contenders were all from fictional media, lmao. I genuinely like pentagrams, especially when designed in cool ways. What methods are most effective for you when you’re trying to relax? Deep, rhythmic breathing. I recommend it to absolutely anyone in an anxiety attack or something of the like. I believe it's actually proven to work, and at least to some degree, when I do it correctly and long enough, it works miracles. Here's a really helpful gif I trained myself with: https://thumbs.mic.com/MTc0NWZkOWM5YSMvYnhwRHF6Y2JLcUVuOVZGNUV5d1BST3Q0TU1ZPS9maXQtaW4vNzYweDAvZmlsdGVyczpub191cHNjYWxlKCk6cXVhbGl0eSg4MCk6bm9fdXBzY2FsZSgpOmZvcm1hdChqcGVnKS9odHRwOi8vaW1hZ2VzLm1pYy5jb20vZnh1NWxjNGh2d2RseXdwYmdobDU2YnV2ZGp1a2VqbXd5YnhpZXYxanRmaGlvZGNhcWtpaXR5d2N5NWFlc2dlNy5naWY.gif Are you any good at making the infamous puppy face? I wouldn't know; I probably haven't done that since playing around with Jason years ago... if I even did then, and I've changed a lot physically. Would you rather date your opposite, your 'twin’, or someone in between? In-between. Are you a moaner, a screamer, or totally silent? Moaner that tried to be really quiet because I was so paranoid we'd either be heard or I'd be too loud and miss someone coming home or something lmao. I was so scared of that happening that I always decided we had to stop if I was starting to feel like screaming. What documentary topics interest you most? Wildlife. Is there currently someone you want to get closer to? A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE. Do you take any medications that make you nauseous? Not anymore, anyway. When I started Latuda, it was rough sometimes, but I've been on it long enough to where it no longer bothers me. Do you ever make up your own words? No. Do you have any nicknames that are actually true about you? No. How many videos do you have favorited on your YouTube account? I believe the max where I believe it has to remove old ones lmao. I used to favorite like, any video I liked, but now I use it true to term. When did you have your last 'facepalm’ moment? I did that not long ago, but I don't remember why. Has a boyfriend or girlfriend ever nicknamed your, erm, 'privates’? No, and I don't particularly want anyone to. Do you know anyone who has carpal tunnel syndrome? Myself, actually. I knew I would develop it eventually with how much I've typed since before I was even a teen. My mom has it, too. Do you like raisins? NONONO When did you first kiss the last person you kissed? June last year. What are some of your favorite cities you’ve been to? Literally the only serious "city" I've been to is Chicago, which was great. Would you allow your children to date prior to 16? (assuming you want any) Don't want kids, but hypothetically, it would depend on their maturity level. What’s something about adult life you were never warned of or prepared for? Uhhh idk, but mostly because it's not like I act like a "real" adult... No job, no car, no real adult decisions to make, and Mom handles anything else I can think of. Did your parents teach you proper table manners when you were growing up? As kids, yeah, common sense ones and not putting your elbows on the table. Which I find super stupid and haven't done in years. I only rarely put a napkin on my lap, really just if my grandma's here or I'm eating something actually messy. Which app on your phone do you tend to get the most notifications from? Pinterest, and never for something I care about. I need to turn them off. What is the minimum age to obtain a driver’s license in your state/country? 16. If you won the lottery, do you think any of your family members would ask you to give them some of your money? I'm torn between Mom or not for various reasons on both ends... but I'd help her out regardless. What is the craziest thing you’ve seen happen at your workplace? N/A Do you own any home automation gadgets like wifi thermostats or wifi bulbs? I don't think so? What is something you gave up on after many failed attempts? Dark Souls lmao. What would you do if your ex contacted you? I. Don't really know. I know for sure I'd be closed-off as fuck, examining every blink the dude did. I'd maybe be open to having an acquaintance-level "friendship," but that's it, and I don't know if I could ever stop being aloof. Last time you had anal sex? (if ever) Never, doesn't sound appealing to me. Ever tasted a flavored condom? No. Are your parents wealthy? Lol no. Dad's I believe middle class, but Mom? Have you ever asked someone out? Yeah. What products do you use in the shower? Shampoo, body wash, a facial cleanser. Do you like Swedish Fish? Noooo, they've always been one candy I just don't like. What movie can you watch over and over, and it will never get old? Idk, I don't really re-watch movies anyway. What was the best movie you’ve ever seen in theaters? Idk. Have you ever eaten with both fork and spoon, at the same time? I don't believe so. Have you ever watched a needle go into your own skin? I always do when I'm able to. I like to know exactly when it happens. Have you ever seen someone get a piercing/tattoo? Yeah. Do you know someone that is mute, deaf or blind? Ashley's legally blind in one eye, I believe her right. Have you ever spent more than two weeks in a wheelchair? I've never been confined to one. Does weed smell good? Or no? Nooooo no no. Have you ever regretted letting someone go? Megan. Well, did I really "let her go," idk. How long was your longest make out? Like, all night on/off. Who made you laugh last? JackSepticEye. I'm watching like, every YTuber I like play the demo of the RE2 remaster. HYPE for that game. Never played the original, so seeing it new and realistic as hell will be nice, plus I'm a hoe for Leon. Ever liked someone who treated you like crap? Was the way Jason treated me after the break-up justified, idk. Which is harder, walking away from somebody you love or coming back to somebody who has hurt you? Walking away. What’s one question you hate being asked? Thankfully no one who doesn't need to know asks, but don't ask for my weight please. Did you make a wish on 11-11-11 at 11:11? No. Has anything exciting been going on in your life? Ha ha. What’s the last question you’ve been asked? (Not counting the survey.) Uhhhhhhh. Something from Mom, idr. Do you know any neat card tricks? No. Have you ever had a dream of someone you know harming you? Dad, in a lot before and a long time after the divorce, and I actually had another recently where I woke up and screamed. Idk why I had it, considering my dad and I are good. Do you have nice legs? I absolutely hate my legs. Do you collect postcards? I don't even go anywhere to, my friend. What kind of flooring does your house accommodate? Wood, carpet, and tile. Do you look good in shorts? I WOULDN'T DARE WEAR SHORTS. I hate my legs, remember??? Do your parents ever try to tell you what or what not to wear? Sometimes when we go out to certain places, Mom claims whatever I'm wearing isn't "formal (enough)," but I sincerely don't care in most cases. Have you ever held a tarantula? Yes, a rose-haired female. She was cool. <3 Do you have a dog tag necklace? No. Has a boyfriend’s brother ever hit on you? No. Who would you pick if you had to pick a celebrity (female) to kiss? In a case where we're both single, uhhhh, fuck. Maybe Suzy Hanson because goddamn she is a goddess inside and out I stan a queen. Now what about male? Same rules as above, be fuckin' prepared Fischfuck, he gettin' more than a kiss lads 'n lassies. Do you enjoy folk music? No. Does it make you nervous when you see people throw their children in the air to catch ‘em? To a degree. Do you own a locket? No. Have you ever seen a manatee in person? (they’re adorable) No. Mom swam with them a looooong time back, before she had me or my sisters I think, and I am ENVIOUS. Does anyone get your hand-me-downs? Not anymore. Does your mom still give you an Easter basket on Easter? She didn't last year for I believe the first time. What kind of dressing would you like on your salad? Inject the Olive Garden dressing into my veins. Have you ever stolen anything without intent? (walking out of the store with something in your hand, etc…)? I don't believe so. Are you good at Sudoku? I haven't played that in years. I used to be. Have you ever stayed in an unhealthy relationship just because it was easier than ending things? No. If you were diagnosed with a genetic disorder, would you still have biological children despite risking passing the disorder on to them? I don't want kids, but hypothetically, I guess it would depend on the disorder. What's the longest song you know all the words to? Ohhh not sure. I could look on my iPod, but don't feel like it. What is the greatest source of anxiety for you? My totally stagnant life. What's something you could endlessly rant about? Ha, so much... At this current time, probably the cancer that is the anti-vaxxer community. What's something you could passionately talk about for hours? Mark, meerkats, and Silent Hill. Do your parents still live in the same house they raised you in? No. Do you know anyone who got pregnant as a teen and dumped the baby on their parents to raise? Probably. What would you do if your own teenaged child did that? Again, don't want 'em, but I'll be hypothetical. I would be fucking irate, and quite honestly, I'd probably end up putting it up for adoption if her ass tried that. Maybe my answer would be different if I actually had a daughter and thus the connection to her own child, but idk. It's hard to answer this question when you don't want kids. What's a place you have a strong emotional connection to? My hometown. We essentially never drive past it, but seeing my childhood home gives me this nostalgic-as-fuck feeling. What is something that you feel you are destined for? I don't believe in destiny. If you could form only one thing with your mind whenever you wanted, what would it be and why? Money, for obvious reasons. If you could control any form of liquid, which one would you want to control and why? (liquid water, frozen water, mist, blood, sap, etc) Blood would of course be coolest, but uh. Liquid water would probably be most useful. If you could have the power of any animal (you don’t transform into the animal, just obtain its abilities), what animal would you pick? A bird, I guess. Would you be willing to merge/fuse with someone else if you got cool powers to go along with it? No.

#survey #quiz #questions #random

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hoyoungy · 6 years

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001. Sanctioned | Jun

genre: comedy, mentions of sex, college/roommates au, friends with benefits au | jun x fem!reader summary: dating does not come easy to apartment 417. sex is even worse. well, maybe it was just you. it seems like everyone you know is able to get laid, get a date - hell, even a hug! you look sad and desperate as you wallow in your dry spell, so when your roommates soonyoung, mingyu, and minghao try to be your wingmen on a saturday night, you end up signing a no-strings-attached contract with a very familiar, but very much willing face word count: 2839 a/n: .... i know i literally just said i didn’t want to post this soon...... yet here i am..... im sorry..... warnings include swearing, alcohol, mentions of sex, dialogue-heavy, and platonic relationships

part 002

“I think I’m gonna be celibate,” you said as you plopped down on the couch next to Soonyoung. You just wasted the past couple of days talking to this guy on Tinder and you just found out he was about to graduate… high school. You would think college would be the prime time for you to find a hookup through a free dating app, but boy, were you wrong. Probably because people your age were being competent adults who didn’t need an app to talk to someone.

“You said that last week,” Soonyoung said, not looking up from his textbook on the coffee table. He knew this routine all too well.

“But I mean it this time.”

“Didn’t you also say that last week?”

“I’m sure I did.”

“Did something happen to that Felix guy on Tinder?”

“He was so young it felt illegal,” you groaned.

“Like, Chan young?”

“Younger.”

“Jesus Christ, you cradle-robber.”

“Shut up, I know, ok! It’s not my fault, he totally lied about his age!”

“I don’t know, _____, you’re not getting any younger. Who knows, maybe young guys could be your new thing? It seems to be working. I know a few people! For example, Mingyu -”

“Soonyoung, I will not begin my cradle-robbing career with Mingyu, of all people.”

“Did someone say cradle-robbing and my name in the same sentence? Is there an older woman in need?” you both heard Mingyu say as he walked through the front door. He tossed his backpack near the collection of shoes in the corner before grabbing a snack in the kitchen like he always did when he came home.

“Ugh, I can just feel my panties drying up every time you speak.”

“Words can hurt, you know.”

“Are we making fun of Mingyu again?” Minghao said as he left his room to join you all.

“I literally just got home, can’t I have a snack first?” he pouted.

“Guys, it’s 4:00 PM, which means it’s my hour to complain! If we aren’t going to follow the schedule, then this is anarchy.” You referred to the poorly-drawn clock on the dry erase board that hung in the kitchen. Every hour that struck 11 or 4, AM or PM, was your time to complain about anything and everything, and the rest of the time was divided amongst the rest of the roommates. Your complaining got so out of hand that the boys decided to punish you by giving you set hours in a day and you were sure to use up every damn second.

“Sorry, Mingyu just makes it so easy,” Minghao snorted. “So what’s up?”

“What’s up is that I haven’t had sex in six months.”

“I am eating, you penis-repellant,” Mingyu scolded with cheeks full of food.

“My God, six months? I thought six days was bad… What happened with that Sungjin guy you brought home a couple of months ago?” Soonyoung asked.

“He ended up, um… Crying…”

“About what!?”

“Bro, I don’t even know, I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Yikes, ok. How about Sehun from Accounting?”

“Passed out when we got home.”

“Jin from the bar?”

“Strictly a cuddler.”

“Uh, Gymhead Youngjae?”

“Pulled a muscle before the foreplay started.”

“Steven the exchange student!?”

“See, it was going well, but the language barrier was kind of a big thing -”

“Good lord, you really are a penis repellant,” Soonyoung sighed. “You’re hopeless.”

“Couldn’t even get with Steven the exchange student,” Mingyu tisked.

“Guys, what do I do ~ !?” You threw your face into the nearest pillow. The years of your youth were dwindling down with each passing second and all you wanted to do was to have some fun, but these past six months have amounted to nothing.

You couldn’t blame anyone else but yourself, though. You’ve been single your entire college career - like, never had a boyfriend, but have gone on dates and had hookups and it was all by choice. These were the best, stressless four years of your entire life. You didn’t wanted to bother with your never-ending fear of commitment, but it was starting to take a real toll on your needs. If you just sucked it up and got a boyfriend, you wouldn’t be looking like a desperate mess.

“Let’s go out tonight,” Mingyu suggested. “It’s a Saturday night, midterms are over, we’ll be each other’s wingman, and I heard Jun’s throwing a banger ~”

“Jun!?” you screeched. “Isn’t his place like, super nice?”

“Yeah, his rent is ridiculous, but that’s how all foreign exchange students are.” All at once, you, Mingyu, and Soonyoung glared at a cowering Minghao who wore his Gucci slip ons. “C’mon, we’ll get all gussied up and have fun and - oh! Let’s all match!”

“Why…”

“Uh, because we’re a squad? Duh?”

“Fine, but I only wear black when I go out. It’s slimming.”

“Agreed, it makes my cheeks look not as squishy,” Soonyoung said.

“And it makes my orange hair stick out,” Minghao nodded.

“Ugh, you’re all so boring. Black it is. And we’re leaving promptly at 10:30 PM or his infamous concoction of Moon Juice, trademark is gonna run out.”

“Guys, can you be real with me and judge my outfit?” you asked as you stepped out from your room. The other three were ready to go, sitting in the living room. They all looked in your direction with wide eyes when you came out in an all black outfit that looked too hard to breathe in. “Be honest, does this scream ‘I’m desperate, please have sex with me’ ?”

“Your shoes sort of whisper ‘I’m both desperate and old’, but the outfit is yelling into a microphone saying ‘I am ready to drop to my knees any second’,” Minghao nodded as a matter-of-factly.

“That has to be the nicest thing you have ever said to me,” you smiled. “Ok, let’s get drunk and get laid ~!”

“We sound so sad right now,” Soonyoung sighed, closing the door behind him.

“So what’s the game plan? Is there an outline? An itinerary? Syllabus, maybe? Examples from previous students last semester?”

“All I know is Mingyu’s in charge.”

“Hell yeah, I’m in charge. And the plan is that there is no plan.”

“What, how could there be no plan?” you asked.

“You can’t make plans to get laid, that takes the whole fun out of the equation! See, we’re probably going to be, like, the best looking people there, and that means we have to be the ones playing hard to get.”

“That’s the exact opposite of what I’m trying to be.”

“Lucky for you, you won’t have to try hard because you kind of make yourself hard to get already when your standards are impossibly high.”

“They are not impossibly high!”

“Didn’t you turn down a guy because he wore man-flops?”

“Yeah, but -”

“And that one guy who wore really low v-necks?” Minghao chimed.

“Ok, well -”

“Can’t forget the one guy in our Stats class who wrote with 1.0 mm pens and pencils -”

“That is a completely valid reason, Soonyoung, and you know it! No one older than ten writes with such a large diameter!” you pouted. “Ok, I get it, I’m hard to get, but why is it when I’m trying to be easy to get, I still end up in bed alone?”

“Because you go for the guys who are also naturally hard to get! That’s the number one biggest mistake we beautiful people make all the time.”

“So you want her to bring home some ugly dude whose standards are as low as a sex doll with a fleshlight installed?” Soonyoung snorted.

“No, she just has to learn to play smart and pick out the guys like us - guys that only look like we’re playing hard to get.”

“Translation, Mingyu wants to have sex with you.”

“That is also true, but we signed a No Conflict-of-Interest contract, so I begrudgingly abide by it.”

“I almost forgot about that one. We have way too many contracts.” You sighed as the four of you arrived in front of Jun’s apartment - no, loft. If it was on the very top floor of a high-rise, you’d consider it a penthouse, it was that big. The door was tall and wide, made of some steel maybe? Iron? It was the most beautiful door you’ve ever seen, like it came out of a dream apartment catalog under the industrial themed homes, right next to the rustic section.

When Mingyu opened the door, there were so many people inside that even Mingyu couldn’t see past two rows of people.

“What the hell, it’s only 10:45! Why are there so many people here!? Minghao, call him ~!”

“Way ahead of you - yah, Hyung, we just got here!” Minghao yelled over the phone. “We’ll try to get to the windows. Bring four cups of juice while you’re at it!”

The four of you squeezed through the tight crowd with Minghao taking the lead. You took the opportunity to look at potential targets, but there was way too much going on to even focus on that. Jun had lots of plants and neon signs in his loft that you felt like you were in a music video set in California by some Soundcloud DJ. They really added to his cool, rich boy ambiance, except for the one guy taking a piss in one of the plant pots.

“See anyone you like yet?” Soonyoung asked once the four of you found an empty space to chill out in.

“I feel like I don’t eat enough avocado toast and arugula to get with anyone here…” you groaned. “Also, I don’t think my prescription is bad enough? This isn’t the pregame to a poetry slam, is it?”

“Why do you always ruin everything?”

“It’s the cynicism in me.”

“Found you!” Jun slipped through in front of you pinching four red cups filled with pink liquid. After handing each of you a cup, he casually wrapped his arm around your shoulder, pressing his cheek to the top of your head. “Ah, I missed you guys ~”

“Are you drunk?” you teased.

“No, I’m drunk.”

“Good lord…”

“The host isn’t supposed to be drunk!” Minghao scolded. “You do this every time and regret it because your place gets trashed!”

“It’s fine, I scheduled the cleaning crew to come at six tomorrow morning!” Jun giggled, squeezing your shoulders tightly. “I am having a great time, are you having a great time, _____?”

“I always have a good time drinking Moon Juice.” The drink touched your lips and you immediately cringed, regretting taking such a large gulp. It tasted much stronger than the first time he ever made it when you all were eighteen - was it supposed to burn this badly going down? “Holy shit, Jun, what’s in this!?”

“Lots of Everclear. I thought the new recipe was appropriate.”

“Good, she needs more of it.” Mingyu tilted your cup upwards, forcing you to gulp more down. “C’mon, you need more liquid courage before we start.”

“Start what?”

“Our hunt. It’ll end up being a scavenge if we continue at this pace.”

“Ooh, a hunt! I want to participate,”

“Wow, ok I am definitely feeling it,” you muttered, trying not to spit out the liquid heat. “I am feel - ing it…”

“Good, now go talk to that guy over there who’s been eyeing you since you walked in.” Mingyu gently shoved you towards a shy-smiling stranger across the way and you could feel your flirty instincts mix with the alcohol.

Let the hunt begin.

“Four hours,” you sighed. “I flirted for four hours and I got nothing!”

You were the only one left in Jun’s apartment, ‘helping’ him by drinking the rest of the Moon Juice so that it doesn’t go to waste and fueling your self-hatred. The guys left earlier, walking away much luckier than you and leaving you here to rot in your misery. Jun sat beside you with a cup of his own in his hands, listening to you rant for the last thirty minutes.

“I mean, I know I’m not the sexiest woman in the world, but I like to think that I’m kind of up there on the looker-scale, you know? Am I wrong, Jun?”

“Honestly, those guys are blind, _____.”

“Thank you!”

“Both theoretically and literally. Some of them are legally blind.”

“Oh…”

“Yeah…”

You sighed loudly again, kicking an empty cup that was on the floor in front of your feet. You tilted your head roughly to face Jun who only scowled at the mess everyone made. It was probably the alcohol talking, but in all your years of knowing Jun, you never previously appreciated how handsome he was as much as you are right now. His bone structure was so perfect and skin so clear and hair ends so kept together that you hated him for it.

“Stop looking at me like that, it’s embarrassing,” he chuckled.

“You’re just so damn perfect and I hate you.”

“See, if you were this charming earlier, you might have had someone to take home tonight! Why are you trying so hard, anyways?”

“Don’t laugh at me, ok?”

“No promises.”

“I haven’t had sex in six months.”

“Oh… Wow…” he whistled quietly, holding in his laugh. “I’m so sorry… Are you ok? Is there, like, something wrong with you, like did you have surgery or something -”

“Don’t pity me!”

“I’m not, I’m genuinely concerned for you! Do you at least play with yourself -”

“Shut up, for the love of God, don’t finish that sentence -”

“- or use toys, because if you don’t, I know a guy that sells customized ones and the quality is amazing -”

“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to scream.”

“Ok, ok,” he grinned. He playfully ruffled your hair when you kept the pout on your face. “Glad to see you’re still the same cute orientation leader that I met my sophomore year.”

“And you’re still the same reckless foreign exchange student that breaks the hearts of hundreds of young girls.”

“You flatter me too much.”

In the span of that short banter you and Jun shared, the two of you ended up with little-to-no space between each other on the couch. Your head fit comfortably on his broad shoulder and his soft hand felt warm as it rubbed your bare inner-thigh affectionately. His hand travelled a little higher with each stroke, sparking your interest and your core.

You knew exactly where this was headed.

“So, Jun…” you began awkwardly. “You wanna, like… you know ~”

“Good lord, is this how you’ve been asking guys to have sex with you this whole time!?” he asked. “No wonder they’ve all said no.”

“No…! I was totally cool about it when I asked…!”

“Prove it,” Jun challenged, sitting up to face you properly. “Show me how you ask to have sex.”

“Can’t you just be normal and carry me bridal-style to your room and, like, ruin me? Why do you have to test me!?”

“C’mon, _____, you know I’m not normal. I’m also trying to help you for future encounters. What if this is where your problem starts! Are you willing to risk that possibility?” Jun chuckled as you vigorously shook your head. “Good. Now show me how you ask, or we’re not doing it.”

“Ugh, you’re so weird!” you groaned, preparing your game-face reluctantly. “Ok, fine. Jun, will you ~ do the… do… with me.”

“Oh, my God, you are hopeless.”

“I am completely hopeless!” You buried your crying face into Jun’s strong, toned, and unexplainably exposed chest as he rubbed your back sincerely. “I need help!”

“Yeah, you do.”

“Jun, you need to help me.”

“Absolutely not -”

“Please, you are literally my only hope! Everyone in the apartment has done nothing to help me!”

“I’d much rather take your previous offer by just having sex with you instead,” he declared

“I mean, I assumed we were doing that anyways, but it’s not like you and I are going to keep it up after that.”

“Why not?” Jun’s smirking face leaned in close to yours so that the tips of your noses almost touched. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“Are you proposing what I think you’re proposing? Because I don’t play games when it comes to deals, especially of this kind, Jun, so you better not be joking -”

“Holy shit, _____, you talk too much.”

After cutting you off, he aggressively pressed his lips to yours. He showed you that he wasn’t going to hold back tonight by shoving his tongue in your mouth and crawling on top of you on the couch. Even though you saw this coming, it didn’t stop your skin from feeling like fire wherever his hands touched you. The both of you were definitely still drunk and you both knew it when your hands messily explored each other’s bodies and struggled to remove each other’s clothes.

“Should we go to your room?” you asked breathlessly as Jun nibbled on the sensitive spot on your neck.

“Mm, no,” he muttered between kisses. “I don’t think I could wait that long.”

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thisaintascenereviews · 6 years

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Album Review by Bradley Christensen Discrepancies – The Awakening (Deluxe Reissue) Record Label: InVogue Release Date: March 23 2018

The biggest trend in metalcore the last four years, give or take, has been nu-metal coming back. You know, the late 90s and early 00s style of metal that also took elements of hip-hop, rap-rock/metal, and to a less extent, funk-rock/metal. Nu-metal has a really bad reputation, but let’s be real here – the genre had some real gems. Bands like Disturbed, System Of A Down, Mudvayne, Flaw, Spineshank, Slipknot, and many other bands came out of it. A lot of them are pretty dated, but I think people give it a bad rap, thanks to a band like Limp Bizkit. I’ve listened to an album from them, and it wasn’t half bad, but Fred Durst is not a good vocalist at all, nor a good lyricist, and he should go away. It’s unfair to discredit a whole style of music, let alone remember it, for a couple of bad apples in the entire genre, no? I mean, every era of music has had some pretty bad music that we tend to just forget about. There was bad music during every era of music, but we just tend to remember the good stuff from before the 00s, because the Internet wasn’t a thing yet. At its core, though, I can get the disdain for nu-metal, because it’s most often performed by whiny, cringy, and untalented white guys that think they can rap, even though they really can’t, so it ends up being embarrassing for everyone involved. Nu-metal was basically for suburban white guys, usually teens or early 20s, that liked metal, but didn’t want to admit they liked hip-hop, so they settled for the next best thing. It’s got a bad reputation for a reason, but I don’t think it’s totally warranted. A lot of great stuff came out, like I said, and bad music has always existed. I mean, if you really think about it, nu-metal of the early 00s is similar to metalcore / crabcore the mid-00s. In terms of metal, the next fad / trend came along, and it was bands like Of Mice & Men, Attack Attack, Asking Alexandria, and the like.

Similarly to nu-metal, some of those bands have either disappeared completely, changed their sound, or keep doing their thing to their dedicated fanbase, but a lot of people look at it with disdain. I can totally understand it, especially those that never grew up with it, and didn’t necessarily see its appeal, but even people that either grew up with nu-metal or crabcore (maybe they grew up with both), tend to mock them or disassociate from them. I mean, I can understand that to a degree, because people tend to be embarrassed of what they used to like, but I look back on crabcore with fondness in a sense. Looking back at an album like Attack Attack’s debut record, 2008’s Someday Came Suddenly, it’s an album that could only have come out in 2008. It’s an album that’s oddly dated and timeless all at once, but it’s also a lot of fun. I mean, you can say the same thing for nu-metal, too, at least when it’s done well. It’s a genre that’s a ton of fun, energetic, and both dated and timeless at the same time. A lot of these bands / albums are ones that only could have come out in the early 00s, and they’re a product of their time, but they’re so much of a product that they become timeless in a sense. I’m not surprised that nu-metalcore would become a thing, because nostalgia is such a huge moneymaker / influencer in media today, whether it’s rebooting movie franchises, TV shows, or even bands coming back from the dead to release new music. Nu-metalcore is a genre that makes sense, especially when you look at the people making it. A lot of musicians were kids during the early 00s, and they grew up on nu-metal / hard-rock, so you can hear that influence in their stuff.

Austin Carlile, the former frontman of Of Mice & Men talked about how he grew up on Deftones, Chevelle, and Breaking Benjamin, so he wanted to incorporate their sounds into their music, especially with 2014’s Restoring Force, but bands like Issues, My Ticket Home, Cane Hill, and many others have been taking this idea and running with it. I listen to a few of these bands, since metalcore isn’t quite my cup of tea anymore (I tend to like bands that are a bit heavier, though, and are more on the “metal” spectrum, at least), but every now and again, I find a metalcore band that I find to be really interesting. Nu-metalcore tends to mainly rely on nu-metal instrumentation within its sound, having a very groovy sound with a funky tone to the guitarwork at times, but what they don’t have are, well, rappers. A lot of nu-metal bands had vocalists that rapped, and sometimes that’s all they did; they didn’t sing, scream, or anything else. They just rapped. Those types of bands are becoming less prominent, but a few of them happen to come out of the woodwork every now and again. Last year I talked about BackWordz and Fire From The Gods, two bands that utilized rappers in their sound, but I found BackWordz to be more interesting, whether it was for their vocalist being better, the lyrics being more interesting, or the overall sound being more diverse. Regardless, they utilized more hip-hop in their sound, and that’s the kind of nu-metalcore that I’ve been enjoying most, since you don’t see it as much. Recently I was just hanging out on Facebook, and sometimes I’ll scroll through the videos section, but I found the band Discrepancies, which are signed to InVogue Records. I haven’t kept up with InVogue in a hot minute, but the caption said something about combining hip-hop and rock, so I was curious, but I didn’t expect for the song to be really, really solid nu-metalcore / rap-metal.

I guess the band had released their latest LP, The Awakening, a couple of years ago, but InVogue reissued the album a couple of bonus tracks, one of them being a new song (the one that I was listening to, “Get Hype”), but I liked the album enough to check out the whole album. Despite it coming out a couple of years ago, originally, I’m going to count it as a new album, at least in 2018, because this is the first time a lot of people have heard of them, such as myself, so I want to talk about them, especially because this album is really, really damn good. I’ve been listening to the album for the last week, give or take, and it’s a wonderful record. It’s not the most groundbreaking, unique, or off the wall album I’ve heard, but that’s how it’s been for a lot of these, since these types of bands don’t necessarily break the mold, but the thing with them, however, is that they do it really well. That’s been the running theme with a lot of these reviews, because these albums are ones that aren’t necessarily breaking the mold in any way, shape, or form, but they do it well. There are a lot of elements that make this album worthwhile, and that makes the replay value really high. Part of that is how diverse this record is, because not only do they utilize rapping in their sound, they’ve got clean vocals, harsh vocals, breakdowns, catchy hooks, and groovy guitarwork. This band takes every aspect of nu-metalcore and takes advantage of it. There’s never a dull moment on this album, and what makes things better is that it all sounds great. I love the rapped vocals a lot, as they are actual bars being spat, the clean vocals have a lot of range, and the harsh vocals are surprisingly good, too. The hooks are catchy, memorable, and interesting, and the instrumentation is a mix between groovy, accessible, and heavy, since some breakdowns tend to show up here and there.

If you’re into bands like Of Mice & Men, Issues, Cane Hill, The Plot In You, Bring Me The Horizon, BackWordz, Fire From The Gods, or any number of nu-metalcore bands out there, Discrepancies is a band that will totally be on your radar. They should be, anyway, because these guys have the talent to be huge. The only thing that I didn’t mention, and I wanted to talk about it briefly, were the lyrics, because they’re another aspect that I really like. Most of the time, they do come off as rather generic “inspirational” songs about rising up, overcoming obstacles, and keeping hope alive (there’s a song called “Keep Hope Alive,” too, but it’s really solid), but there are some very socially aware songs about police brutality and racism, too, which you don’t hear from bands like this, so I’m all for hearing that. Those moments don’t happen a lot, as this band isn’t overtly political, but it’s interesting to hear. Nonetheless, this band is really talented, interesting, and enjoyable. They do have some songs that are meant to be fun, energetic, and “bangers,” too, if you will, such as “Rock The Show,” and the newer song, “Get Hype,” like I mentioned earlier. The other bonus track on this album is an acoustic version of another song on the album, “Not Alone.” What’s cool about this version is that it’s pretty much the same track, but it’s got acoustic guitar instead of electric, so all the same elements are there. That’s how you do an acoustic version, too, but this whole album is great. I can see this being one of my favorite albums of the year. When we get to June, I know I plan on revisiting a lot of these albums, and taking a look at the albums that would make a mid-year list, and this one just might make it on there, albeit quite high, too. It’s an album that I’ve been coming back to a lot, and for good reason, especially with how energetic, fun, interesting, and enjoyable it is. If you’re into any of the bands that I mentioned earlier, you owe it to yourself to check out this band, as well as this album, because it’s some top notch stuff.

#discrepancies #the awakening #get hype #invogue records #invogue #nu-metalcore #nu-metal #rap-rock #rap-metal #rage against the machine #of mice & men #issues #backwordz #fire from the gods

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thesinglesjukebox · 6 years

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LOONA / ODD EYE CIRCLE - GIRL FRONT [8.12] Next up, a frenzied, fizzy mystery...

Mo Kim: As it nears the end of its eighteen-month rollout, the LOONA project has grown from a series of self-contained solo releases into a universe-bending mythos which grows more complex by the second, left for fans to piece together via close analysis of meticulously-arranged videos (often with cameos), promotional graphics, press releases, and cryptic URLs referencing Mobius strips. It's to the credit of the group, however, that the music has remained its foundation: whether revealing Choerry's ability to jump between dimensions via a well-placed drop in "Love Cherry Motion" or making a 180 from the sweeter concepts of the first few members with KimLip's sultry "Eclipse," Blockberry Creative has been just as ambitious with their songs as they have with every other dimension of their unfolding multimedia narrative. Even if you didn't know anything about LOONA or Odd Eye Circle (its second subunit), "Girl Front" would still knock you off your feet like a late-summer breeze. Its Max Martin-esque melange of synthlines and sticky beats (with a generous sampling of contemporary sonic trends, especially the ominous trap-tinged coda following each chorus) distills driving down the 101 in Los Angeles with your windows down into as perfect a road trip song as I've heard. Yet there's something about the surrounding context that takes the drama of a budding romance and blows it up to inter-dimensional proportions. As the girls trade lines on the chorus about a budding romance that "makes things hotter" and "makes them draw closer," a massive mix of beat-em-up synths and hard-hitting beats wallops you with the force of an asteroid: one feels as if they could be singing about their own impact. The verses filter in bits of plucky guitar and sunny piano chords that the production leaves sounding just a touch haunted, like the cassette player which opens and closes the video. Even the one moment the song lets up, in a bridge that registers with the clarity of a daybreak, turns its wistful gaze back on us in what may be my favorite musical moment of 2017: the three members of Odd Eye Circle, finally united after four months of twists and teasers, stare lovingly into a tri-colored moon in the sky, tinged with each of their representative colors (red, blue, and purple). Composers Ollipop and Hayley Aitken cruelly let the swelling synth melody that's been looping in the background for the entire song step to the forefront for just three measures before killing it with a well-placed record scratch. On screen, the girls turn in unison and break the fourth wall, staring right into your souls: if you think this is the end, think again. Instead of easy resolution, they leave us in their final chorus with a promise: "I'll say I love you first." I'm always left wondering, at the end, what is really there. I question the irony of becoming infatuated with a song about infatuation, about how the "love" in "love song" can work like gravity, pulling you towards becoming the person you've fallen for. Maybe I spent most of 2017 buried in LOONA because, in the simplest terms, it tells a story of possibility: a girl can become any concept she puts on; can find her place in the music and the mythology; can stitch together the worlds she occupies. Return to the title of "Girl Front"; "Front" because, as the theory goes, Mobius strips enchant you in loops you circle with purpose but without end; "Front" because an empowered girl makes it happen herself. The cassette player, a signpost for our nostalgia, refuses to give us an answer, rewinding instead, and in an year that constantly challenged me to think through my place in the world, the message feels clear: you're getting closer. Keep listening. [10]

Maxwell Cavaseno: As the LOONAverse proceeds far off into its cosmic spiral, their seemingly esoteric design evolves against tunes that feel more and more plunging away from the preceding singles and their reaches for star power into something more star-struck. "Girl Front" is a galloping rush of enthusiasm and excitement as Choerry, Kim Lip and JinSoul eagerly manage to pitch infatuation like fastballs offset by those real clunker 'drops' aiming for I guess some sort of 'hipness' that ever since "Eclipse" the poor girls have been burdened with having to appeal to (which is ever overwhelmingly pointed on fellow LOONAffiliate Yves' "new" but that's another tale), and tend to detract from the record. But the winding melody on the chorus' "woo" or the sudden shift into the dubstep-stomp along for Kim Lip on the second verse are the moments when "Girl Front" can not only sound urgent but utterly world-departing. [8]

Ryo Miyauchi: For a single not-so-slickly tucking in self-reference, it makes sense the production also picks the the best bits from each of the summer LOONAs' solo singles: the devilish sweetness of "Love Cherry Motion," the zigzagging of "Singing in the Rain," the breathtaking grace of "Eclipse." The trio get upstaged by the production despite their best efforts to introduce their individual personalities, but really, what a dazzling beat to get lost in. [6]

Leonel Manzanares: K-Pop that sounds like it takes serious cues from the #weirdsoundcloud scene. The post-chorus breaks could feel at home on a de-constructed club mix, and the synth risers, in the transition from the bridge to the final hook, could make Myles Dunhill green with envy. LOONA was the most interesting Korean project of 2017, and their brilliance lies not only in their versatility but in the quality of the execution. They've given each of their members their own sonic and visual little universe, and each release has been scarily consistent. I have big expectations for them in 2018. [8]

Edward Okulicz: How this song turns on a dime so frequently from amazing K-pop banger, to different kind of amazing K-pop banger, to a part that convinces you the whole thing is going to turn into a god damned trap song suggests a complete mastery and love of pop as an artform. I don't think listening to it could possibly be as fun as it was making it, but it's probably pretty close. [9]

Nortey Dowuona: Glittering, shiny synths and light, puffy eyed bass spread out with blank droning synths and flat drums that become rigid and stuffy around the side. Plus the singing by Loona and the Odd Eye Circle seems both too light and yet too heavy. [6]

Alex Clifton: The best bubblegum pop feels innocuous at first, but comes out of nowhere to hit you square in the brain. "Girl Front" is sparkling and light overall, but that chorus is a knockout and is definitely going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. It's the kind of song I know I would have played to death when I was fifteen and unable to talk to most people I liked, but I also like it at twenty-five because it gives me the sugary rush that I need from pop music. I've not been following LOONA's formation entirely, but if this is how good their subunits are, I'm ready to be wowed by the whole band in 2018. [8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Shortly after the release of Odd Eye Circle's "Sweet Crazy Love," Digipedi director Seong Wonmo noted that he had intentionally included Korean-language signs in its music video. K-pop always looked to the pop culture of the West, he said, studying and imitating it in numerous ways. As a director, there was a sense that he shouldn't let Hangul appear in any frame--it would, after all, only make the content seem more "foreign." But it's 2017, and with K-pop's ever-expanding global presence, Seong finally felt comfortable with doing just that (note that this was ten years into the career of an already-legendary figure of the industry). When I read his comments, I thought about where I was ten years ago, and how much I related to what he was saying. As one of five Asians in an otherwise all-White high school, I had made subconscious efforts to be "just one of the (White) guys." But as I started learning about K-pop, I also started to take some pride in being Korean. I wouldn't dare tell my White friends about Wonder Girls or Big Bang, but I would tell them about some Korean music that seemed less embarrassing to mention. I will never forget, for example, how excited I was to show off my copy of Seo Taiji's 7th Issue to a friend--as we sat in class, I watched as he examined the album's unique packaging, and I eagerly awaited his opinions on the album's pop punk/emo songs. Years later, I'm constantly gushing about Korean music to non-Koreans, and K-pop has played an enormous role in helping me come to terms with--and eventually love--my Korean-American identity. That Seong specifically decided to show Hangul in a LOONA video is appropriate. More than any other group this year, they represented the best of what the K-pop industry had to offer in terms of engaging pop songs and their promotion. Subunit Odd Eye Circle's music was especially noteworthy; their mini album featured the incredible Art Angels-indebted "Loonatic" and an R&B song that most boy bands would kill for. The best of the bunch was "Girl Front," the lead single that took everything good about the members' solo tracks and morphed it into something more ambitious. At its core, it's a chipper pop song about being infatuated with someone, but what sets it apart is the degree to which every bit of instrumentation captures the manic frenzy of wanting to tell someone you love them. Producer Ollipop was wise to bury the arpeggiating synths low in the mix, allowing them to mimic the fluttering hearts that characterize such situations. What ties everything together, though, is the chorus. The girls initially state that they're "cool," emphasizing it with a wavering vocal melody that hops along briskly. It's immediately followed by a sultry coo that's meant to resemble the sound of their heart--an admittance of how they're actually feeling. It's considerably smoother than what preceded it, and shamelessly long. But they're not denying how they feel anymore, and they'll happily let their crush consume their thoughts. What makes "Girl Front" so heartening is that it isn't content with things ending there; this is a song that's about mustering up the strength to confess to someone that you love them. And as the song progresses, there's an "opening up" of sounds to reflect this. The first verse has flickering synths that are halted by a bass guitar, as well as a vocal melody akin to those in the chorus that abruptly ends. But in the second verse, relatively "natural"-sounding keys stand in place of their punchy counterparts. There's also a sleek mid-verse shift that registers as sensual, and it all leads into the girls shouting "woo!" before entering the chorus again. By the time "Girl Front" ends, they declare their intent to express their feelings to this person directly. We don't know if they actually will, but things look hopeful. Sometimes, the best thing you can do to keep moving forward--to get yourself to do things that seem impossible--is to constantly remind yourself of the things that make you happy. In "Girl Front," it's an overflow of desire for this person that helps them reach a point where they can say "I Love You." It turns out that listening to K-pop was a way for me to eventually say the same thing to myself. [10]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

#LOONA #Odd Eye Circle #Girl Front #TSJ Best of 2017

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andrewuttaro · 4 years

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New Look Sabres: GM 35 - TOR - WHY NOT?

5-3 Regulation Loss

This is a confluence of events that gets you thinking about what kind of Sports City Buffalo is. The Buffalo Bills just locked up their first ten-win season since the year the Buffalo Sabres were last in the Stanley Cup Final. That sealed a playoff appearance this NFL season, the second such appearance this century. The last team the Sabres overcame to go to that 1999 Stanley Cup Final is none other than the Toronto Maple Leafs. Time is a flat circle but this all still feels very new. Buffalo has supported their teams loyally through thick and thin but mostly thin. Times like these feel like the reward. I’m not saying the Buffalo Sabres are due to go to the Stanley Cup Final but us holding the fort through this beyond shitty decade of hockey deserves some catharsis too. Spare a moment to think about how Buffalo is often regarded as a City free agents don’t want to come to. It feels bad but look at the Taylor Hall trade. New Jersey had him, got an MVP season out of him, but has now ultimately lost him. There are far fewer guys in Sabres history who were here for a short time and left. Yeah, there’s Drury, Briere and a handful of others but we don’t suffer from the same things the big popular cities suffer from. In those big markets you don’t have the attachment. They just leave whenever the contracts don’t line up. Sure that happens everywhere, but certainly a lot less in the frozen hellscapes nobody wants to visit like Buffalo. Just food for thought I guess. In the bigger, richer frozen hellscape up the highway, the new Toronto Maple Leafs, the Big Four Leafs if you will, have been good for nearly four years now. That’s begun to feel normal but in spite of that seeming inevitability it is the Sabres who are higher in the standings today. A rough start preceding a Head Coaching change still holds back the team everyone though was a Stanley Cup contender before the season began. National TV and the good taste of Sunday Night Football in our mouths this game was tantalizing opportunity.

Despite a high forechecking start for the visitors the Leafs struck first. Fredrik Gauthier benefited from a Brandon Montour turnover and ripped off a quick one past Linus Ullmark. In spite of the early 1-0 lead for the Leafs, Buffalo continued with an aggressive attack and very rarely too far away from the puck. The problem is they didn’t get many shots on goal, only five total for the whole first period. Most of the Sabres shots were after the twelve-minute mark. New Toronto Maple Leafs Coach Sheldon Keefe played around with line matchups and started juggling the Auston Matthews line away from the Eichel line. That and floating an extra winger seemed to get Buffalo lodged in their zone for uncomfortably long periods of time. Linus Ullmark had a lot of work in the first period. He was dancing with the best of them and robbed John Tavares before robbing Tyson Barrie. Like when I say robbed, Barrie’s jaw literally dropped. Ideally though you want to be the team taking the shots, not the one needing your goalie to have a big night. In the first period the Leafs were the ones shooting. The second period went… well worse. What do you call a horny white dude with a streak of hair on his upper lip? A 1970s pornstar… No: Auston Matthew. His scoring streak was done and the best porn stache Glendale, Arizona has seen in decades decided to whip it out when Jack Eichel is in the house!

A frantic zone entry preceded Morgan Rielly shooting a quick assist over to Matthews who fired it quicker than Ullmark could get over, 2-0 Leafs. What followed afterward for Buffalo was not the best hockey. Uh, no sir, the shooting was better than the first period by purely a shots on goal metric, but something just wasn’t clicking. In some respects the visitors just kind of… well flailed. There was a decent two-on-rush the Sabres got, that mind you was Conor Sheary and Jimmy Vesey, that just stopped dead in its tracks for no reason. Sheary just stopped to dead to play target practice. He did not aim well. When Auston Matthews scored the second time it was a rush done properly and a defensive scheme from Buffalo that just saw nobody try to stop anyone from doing anything. Rasmus Dahlin was in the net behind Ullmark like he didn’t know where to go! 3-0 Leafs and I got to say this was the first time since mid-November it looked like this team was down on itself. Ralph Krueger must have said what the astute observer of the NHL was thinking in the second intermission: this isn’t 2017, y’all have no reason to get down on yourselves playing THIS Leafs team. Stop it. Buck up and go get em. Go get em they did.

If you have a cursory understanding of the Toronto Maple Leafs Hockey Club you may know they just love throwing away leads. Funny thing in this season of giving is that the Buffalo Sabres Hockey Club loves late game comebacks. The Sabres won the Thanksgiving Playoffs last year doing it! The carry over from a John Tavares holding penalty from the last period gave the Sabres the man advantage in the early going and they took some momentum from it. Jack Eichel sets up Dahlin at the point and he launches one all the way home past Fredrik Andersen. Buffalo is on the board down 3-1 now and you better watch out because when the Sabres score powerplay goals they play with reckless abandon. Suddenly this game was a track meet back and forth. On one of those crazy rushes Dmytro Timashov beat Ullmark short side to extend the Leafs lead 4-1. A couple plays later Toronto almost scores and the puck is quickly rotated out of the defensive zone to Eichel already off down the ice in the opposite direction outrunning Justin Holl. Eichel puts it top shelf because FUCK Toronto! Get out of the way of my fucking yuletide spirit! Technically Eichel’s point streak was already continued by an assist on the Dahlin goal but yummy yummy in my tummy, give me banger against the Leafs, thanks Jack! The crazy pace did slow down a little after that unfortunately. I’ll be honest, it’s been a crazy week for my wife and I, so we were eyes deep in Kate McKinnon impressions at this point. Nonetheless the look of a comeback was brewing.

Kyle Okposo scored a rebound tap in sneaky shit and suddenly it’s a one goal game 4-3 with a little over five minutes left in regulation! Steve Dangle’s heart doctor isn’t going to like the look of this one at the next appointment! When Okposo scores it triggers one or both of two things: toxic hockey bros’ tweets about his concussion history or a big dick goal scoring streaks in comeback games. In this case it was both. The Sabres laid it on thick like some warm Canadian maple syrup at a holiday breakfast. I could hear the suburban hockey dads gently whisper “grind it out” into the crisp winter air like angels getting their wings. Unfortunately it was just not to be tonight in the center of the universe. After Ullmark was pulled all it took was one poor pass by Marcus Johansson to spring Ilya Mikheyev on the empty netter insurance goal. That was basically it and this one ended 5-3 in regulation. Those are the worst kind of losses: the ones in regulation… against the Leafs. Wah wah. That was all she wrote. Unlike Saturday’s overtime loss to the Islanders, a loss you almost get up out of your chair at home and clap for, last night’s loss was just… bleh. A regular grinch who stole Christmas.

Now the totally understandable surge of tweets begging for the reunion of Jack and Jeff that unfolded after this game felt like they were forgetting Victor Olofsson. I suppose we do need to see what he can do without Jack centering his line for a prolonged sample size, sure. But that’s not really what you might be apt to take coming out of this game. Like we’ve felt since before fucking Memorial Day: a trade is due here. One top six winger pushes this team to a place where they have some sustainability on the scoring front. This trade has to happen. I would hate it being for a center at this point though those are harder to get! Johansson has done a fine job in the 2C role, but we all know eventually he has to go back to wing, right? We sent Casey Mittelstadt down to Rochester. Johansson was visibly struggling in this game and its hard not to see how that contributed to his game-ending mistake. One more guy, Jason. I know you got some deals on deck. Take them off the back-burner and do them now. Give us a Christmas present. Even with this loss the Sabres are in a divisional playoff spot ahead of the Leafs. Perhaps the Sabres are higher up on the pecking order than they deserve but how about not? Why not this team? Why not go for the playoffs this year? I know you have a long-range plan looking toward the summer, Jason, but come on, these guys can make the playoffs with just a tiny bit more help. At this rate Jack might just drag them there; don’t make him do that. Send in reinforcements.

Now off to a Philadelphia Flyers team flying high on Gritty’s white dust tomorrow. Sure, that looks like a tough game but allow me to introduce you to a new thought. Us Sabres fans are always waiting for the wheels to come off. We look for it and when it happens we feel satisfied in that we predicted it would happen with the same old Sabres. But what if there was another question fans could ask that was less negative all the time. Here’s a clue: I’ve already asked it in this postgame. Instead of predicting how the wheels will come off here’s a new question to ask: WHY NOT? It’s better shouted than spoken. WHY NOT? Why not this team this season? Why not playoffs? Why not us? We’ve learned to ask this question with the Buffalo Bills this season as they’ve put together a nice record and made their playoffs. Let’s start asking it with the Sabres. Why not the Buffalo Sabres? Why not us? Well, how about you like, share and comment on this blog. The Bills making the playoffs give the Sabres a little cover for now. We’re a bit less grumpy about a loss to the Leafs than we normally would be, eh? I’m here for it. Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. Tre White using his alma mater slot to say “Tre White Goalie Academy” has to put a smile on Carter Hutton’s face, right? Don’t we think Hutton could use some smiles these days?

#buffalo sabres #hockey #blog #NHL #Toronto Maple Leafs

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LOUD No. 168 - Justice Interview [Text Version]

(This is a text version of the full PDF-based translation that I have done, for mobile readers and non-PDF suited environments. The cover and advertisement included in the same magazine are treated in a separate post. Please enjoy!)

Justice - since they gained notice in 2004 with their essential party anthem, Justice VS Simian 'Never Be Alone (We Are Your Friends)', they enjoyed much fame as the leading unit of the new generation of French electronic music. In Japan, as soon as their EP Waters of Nazareth ('06) had debuted, their rocking musical and fashion sense soon brought them into the glory of the limelight. Last year, they released their debut album † (Cross) which subsequently gave rise to club hits such as 'D.A.N.C.E.', 'Phantom Pt. II', 'DVNO' and 'Stress'; this year, they visited Japan for Summer Sonic in August and GAN-BAN NIGHT in October, again demonstrating their incredible popularity.

Now, under the directing efforts of Romain Gavras and So-Me, they have announced the release of their first filmed work, A Cross the Universe. This monumental work couples their American tour that took place in the spring of 2008, captured in a sixty-minute documentary film (DVD), as well as the full seventy-five minutes of their their San Francisco live performance (CD). As Justice themselves have stated, the film is 'an excellent example of what happens when dozens of men get into trouble for a straight month'; Justice and the Ed Banger crew are depicted with brutal honesty throughout. Such is A Cross the Universe, the work that captured without reservations all kinds of happenings. In this interview, we spoke to Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé of Justice about the mysteries birthed by the work, as well as what they could mean.

— First, please tell us about the documentary! What were your reasons for setting your North American tour as the backdrop of the film? Xavier de Rosnay: The first reason was that we'd never filmed anything over such a long period before. Like, for example, for a whole year... The American leg of the tour happened to take place over twenty days, so we thought we'd be able to film that in an aptly compact way. And the second reason was that every time we went back and forth between the USA and Canada, we could experience all of the four seasons. Unthinkable in almost any other country.

— That's true. Xavier: This tour began in the West Coast of America, and it felt like spring there - but cross the border to Canada and we were right in the middle of winter! It was so cold! Then we moved towards the East Coast and then it felt summery all around. You move around just a little, and everything down to the season and the surroundings change - how could we not film that? Even in Europe the scenery barely changes throughout the year.

— I knew it! Xavier: And I guess we were... kind of anticipating something big to happen? You know, just because it was America? That feeling was strong in both of us. We supposed that if we were going to film this, we might as well choose a location where a lot of things were bound to happen.

— The documentary truly did end in a rather rock-and-roll fashion, it felt that the behind-the-scenes aspect of the tour was laid out bare. This may be a rather direct question, but wasn't it overtaxing a little, showing off your darker sides, or were you genuinely all right with it? Xavier: I see what you mean, and yeah, we were. (Laughter.) And in addition to that, the parts where we limited ourselves... I mean, I guess... they did exist... Basically, no scene in this documentary was forced. It was filmed according to the meaning and value of what was actually there. So anything that was repetitive was edited some, but otherwise we showed it all, whether we were unsightly at the time, miserable, or being complete idiots. The terrible habits we showed in the documentary might well have been, uh, illegal... Gaspard Augé: Ahahahaha. Xavier: But right now it's 2008, and from the present perspective, I don't think there's a problem.

— It's an attitude that still suits your appearance in the work [A Cross the Universe] immensely. Xavier: Thanks a lot. Though we did have to follow regulations some. Like, for example, we had to edit out everything that showed an alcohol brand name. There’s a regulation that says that any scene or footage depicting alcoholic beverages have to be blurred out; but honestly, I never heard of anything so ridiculous. If you saw a video where somebody was drinking a thing, and if it was all blurred out, wouldn’t it be more obvious upon watching it that they were consuming alcohol?

— You're right. (Laughter) Xavier: And also, there was the rule that you couldn't show a woman's nipples. But seriously! Who goes through life without ever seeing a nipple? If you blur that out, you'd be like 'oh my God, these are nipples, all right!' for sure; isn't that more lewd? (Laughter) And if you blurred out a woman's panties, it'd probably look like she wasn't wearing any. It's a real paradox, that. Censoring such things make them more grotesque than if you'd just let them be!

With the Cross

— Returning to the topic at hand, what ideas did the mutual director of the project - Romain Gavras - contribute to the making of this work? Xavier: He was the director, if anything it's us who tossed small ideas towards him. Of course we participated in the production, but this documentary wasn't produced in a pre-structured way. Romain and So-Me had a bunch of videos and images they took of the tour, and we connected them afterwards to craft the scenario [for the documentary].

— I see! Xavier: The work led them to create some interesting methods of operation, which might have meant that Justice wasn't at the forefront of things. There's a lot showing the tour manager - you know, the gun maniac - and the tour bus driver, and that was their idea. Romain and So-Me were the ones who decided to film them, so they did. And as a result, I think the documentary ended up a lot more entertaining than it could have been.

— It wouldn't have been as entertaining without the driver or the tour manager, no! Xavier: That's sort of why the camera wasn't on us a lot of the time. (Laughter) And during our live performances, Romain was always next to the stage and So-Me always in the innermost parts of the venue. The differences in camera angle from them both, as well as what they chose to focus on, really helped to lend a new depth to the work.

— In addition to that, the title A Cross the Universe seems to be a homage to the Beatles' Across the Universe. Whose idea was the title? Gaspard: From yours truly. A Cross the Universe seemed like the most fitting title to what happens in this documentary. Xavier: Having such a simple and effective title is what helped to complete this documentary, no lie. What's the most memorable thing in live Justice performances, it has to be the cross. And we - ourselves and our staff - sure are roaming the universe with a cross in tow!

— Did Gaspard also come up with the stage structure as well? The cross, the martial amps - the hard rock-esque atmosphere? Gaspard: That's different. We came up with that together. But as you said, that stage set was inspired by the hard rock feel of the seventies. We had some help regarding the theatrical light effects from a fellow member of staff who'd actually worked in theatre, as well. I think that restorative, monotononous mood was exactly right for our overall image. Xavier: Everyone seems to think that Gaspard's in charge of the metal and I'm in charge of the disco and pop, but that's not the case. As Justice, every idea we produce is something that the two of us discussed together beforehand. There's no one factor that only one of us is in charge of.

The Evolving Live Sound of Justice

— Please tell us about the live CD, which is also at the heart of the film. The live CD gives the feeling that what you play live is very different to what is on the original album ([Cross]). Xavier: That's right.

— How do you feel that Justice's sound has evolved through your live performances? Xavier: Eh... how our musicality's evolved over time, you can probably tell at sight from all the grey hairs we've got. We can barely goddamned breathe nowadays! Gaspard: Hahahaha! Xavier: Or all the hidden kids we fathered all across the universe... (Laughter) Things like musicality are influenced by our spiritual world, too, most certainly... I mean, we're forgetting how to speak French. For real, it's all growing dim. All those things are probably reflected in our live sound in some way.

— Back to the serious discussion. (Laughter) How much ad-libbing is there on average in your live sets? Xavier: Almost none, we barely touch it nowadays. This tour's taken eighteen months in total, and for the first few months, we sought the best format for our performance through trial and error, but around halfway through we felt deep in our hearts that we'd completed the best set we could possibly make right now. And we've played that arrangement ever since.

— Why is that? Xavier: We're a team: the sound engineer, the lighting staff, everyone moves as one. Someone ad-libbing in that scenario would break down everything we worked so hard for, wouldn't they? Our live performances, therefore, are all based around the thought - how complete can we make it? And if you think about it, someone who saw us live in Tokyo today is unlikely to see us live again in Berlin tomorrow. That's just a part of it, but we're always trying to make each performance the best that we can.

— I see. So what's on the CD must be the best set you've played until now! If this is so, where was it recorded? Xavier: The San Francisco live. From March to September this year we've recorded something like seventy to eighty live performances, but only the five or six recordings that we thought were the best made it through. It's a far more perfect set than the one done in Summer Sonic this year, by the way. Festivals, you can't skimp out on.

— What was your favourite thing about the San Francisco performance? Xavier: We made a few little mistakes here and there, but I think we had the most excellent chemistry with the audience there. We recorded this performance with the mic stood in the audience section, that was completely intentional. You know, the weirdly bootleg-like feel. By the way, we actually thought that the live performance in Belgium was the absolute best for us personally - but the audience was so loud that none of that could make it into the CD! (Laughter) They were screaming, like, 'kyaaaa~' for over fifteen minutes straight...

— What a shame! Then, before we bring this to a close, please tell us about your future plans! Are you working on any new songs? Gaspard: Nah. Xavier: We were busy editing [A Cross the Universe] as soon as the tour was over, after all.

— Are you taking a break for a while? Xavier: Nah, it's not about that. We've had our break, as you might have guessed from the film - while we were touring, it was exactly like being in holiday, all the time. (Laughter) I feel as we've mucked around for an entire year and a half, to be honest with you. Thanks to that, we're actually geared up to put some genuine work in at the moment!

Disclaimer: The original text of this interview and associated material, given by Justice and printed in LOUD Magazine in 2008, is not copyrighted by this blog nor by the author of this post. Therefore, the original Japanese text will not be distributed here. The author claims ownership of the wording of this translation, which does not deny nor seek to possess the existence of other translations. This translation may be subject to changes in the future.

#justice (band)#xavier de rosnay #gaspard augé #gaspard auge #a cross the universe #loud magazine #loud 168 #loud no. 168 #text version #luminatranslations #edmtranslations #interview translations

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