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fatesundress · 7 months

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⭑ life of the party. tom riddle x reader

summary. when one game is ruined, another begins.

tags. explicitly fem afab reader, smut with as minimal plot as i can physically allow myself, minors SCRAMMM, loosely implied hogwarts university au as always, flirting via mutually assured jealousy, impeccable communication skills, established relationship, the guy the reader is talking to gets annoyed she doesn’t want him but he doesn’t do anything, religious undertones that might have accidentally become overtones, party setting (background drinking & general degeneracy), probably the meanest tom i’ll ever write and i still tried making him nice because lots of heavy jealousy tropes are misogynistic icks fo me, fingering, piv, a little degradation but that's life, fawwwk the weeknd but the song this is based on is so sexy, etc

note. Me writing this: nightguard: ON, religious themes: RIFE, shame: ABOUNDING. i am so embarrassed by this. have i mentioned smut doesn’t come naturally to me? i don’t even know how i got here. i’m on heelys at the proverbial skatepark and everyone else apprenticed under tony hawk. Do you understand? ok.

word count. 4.5k

request. yes!

He is what he is. Stoic, sacred, silent and then verbose. You knew he had his fixations before you knew him at all — no one made top of every class without a shadow of obsession to contrast the glint of their excellence — but you could not anticipate how that obsession might translate when applied to a person. You’re not sure he had either.

He is what he is. The muggle world taught him religion and in it he learned only the tenor of devotion. When his fingers take your jaw, trace slow at the stripes of your thighs, steady your hips from under you and hold tight, there’s reverence in it. His kisses don’t wane with the months gone by; they soften with purpose. They rouse with hunger. His eyes don’t waver. Should a good man gaze upon his altar? Should he smile like sin when he gets on his knees?

He does.

Tom Riddle is what he is and you solemnise in equal part.

You don’t come to these things often, taken aback by the sight of the Slytherin common room in ribbons and banners tattered within the first hour of the night. Bottles glow green in the lake-light on every available surface, scattered about the place and spilled in sticky puddles.

You’re a wallflower tonight, though not for lack of options. You observe from a comfortable distance the drunken antics of new adults, free to carry their liquor in hand rather than hidden away in pockets and pillowcases. There’s something vaguely entertaining about it, intoxicating where someone else might mind their business and actually get intoxicated, but you see no harm done. Whispers fall on your ears before the rumours make their rounds, couples slink away in the darkness where someone in the crowd might not notice, and the night’s first instance of someone hurrying up the stairs in tears comes barrelling right past you. You invent a story for why to keep yourself busy.

It’s all just buzz.

Now, if you don’t come often, he certainly doesn’t.

Tonight, he has, and for reasons explicable but few, you’ve found yourselves on opposite sides of the room.

It began on the green couch by the window with a chess set spilled across the velvet — a bet you made with him upon arrival; you find wizard’s chess trite, Tom finds it feckless, but it makes for a good challenge.

What else could convince a man so perpetually controlled to pour himself a drink? And you imagine, from his perspective: what else could convince a woman so determined to outwit him?

It’s for no nefarious reason — to slight him or see him stumble — but because you love the fractions of relief that colour him, soften him, temper him. It’s because he loves you in every shade, in every pliancy, in each and every fervour. But mostly it’s because you love kindly to best him, and he loves mirthfully to best you.

So you play. The game is slow and teasing, hard to see in the ripples of the lake, and toppled over in the final moves (which you’ll insist you were winning) by the same swaying body that spills its drink down the front of your dress. And so you’re up, brushing your index finger over the corner of Tom’s sudden scowl. You whisper like a joke not to kill anyone but he’s so quick to look like he might that you consider repeating yourself with more conviction.

You poke at the spot where his jaw is tense. “I’ll be right back.”

Drying liquor from lace is a matter of precision even with magic, and this is half-gelatinous like someone raided the kitchen’s supply of jelly and steeped it in something offensively alcoholic. You utilise the clearer light of the Slytherin girl’s lavatory, wetting your dress before evaporating the water from it. There’s the matter then of transforming the stained fabric back to its original colour, and you huff in the mirror at having a game you thought you didn’t care much for ruined so close to its end.

You care about Tom, though. The omphalos of your issue resides there.

(It is fair to say most of your issues reside there.)

With only minutes gone by, the common room crowd looks doubled when you return, and though you wade through you’re pushed back like debris caught in a tide, the bodies more stubborn rubble than you. So you retreat, stand flush at the wall with your arms crossed, and wait for Tom’s eyes to land on yours. To, perhaps, open your mind and let him in, tell him exhaustedly from afar that the game is at rest and you’re ready to leave.

But even he’s hard to find in the bodies unified in breath, flux like a big set of lungs — and nothing about Tom blurs into the background.

So you wait. You wallflower. You pour yourself a drink.

The moment stretches on longer than anticipated, and after many detached observations of the room, someone else finds you instead. He’s tall, blond to Tom's inkwell black, kissed by summer sun even as autumn soothes its blister. Your gaze wavers back to him a few times though his own is uncertain for all its focus. He seems to be waiting for you to stop, perhaps for the silhouette of someone else to slip by and prove you were looking at them instead. When no one else comes, he traverses the crowd with a straightened inch of pride, stepping through new colours until he’s close enough to you that the light settles emerald-black and you can see the great chasm of his beauty up close.

His freckles are carefully dusted, his structure strong, all squarish, rugged lines and shades of August.

The chasm is not a lack of allure, per se, it’s just a lack of him. One man’s August to your adherent’s December, the intention of his warmth, a thing that does not come to him like everything else but that he makes and makes and mends when it lapses because he does not want to see you cold. The singular reward of a rarity like that.

“Hi," you say, glancing over a broad shoulder.

“Evening," he responds. He takes you in with a look of (unappreciated) appreciation. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“No, we haven’t.”

He extends a hand. “Oliver Belby.”

“Pleasure.”

You don't offer much in the way of conversation. He’ll vie for your attention regardless of how much of it you offer. So you lean against the wall where the buzz of sound prickles your hair, let him talk, let his hand come up to rest beside your head, and you find Tom.

He’s right where you left him, a new clearing in the crowd making space for your eyes to meet.

His are ice even at a distance. As if you proselytise — as if you could — kneel for another man or let one kneel before you, all of your trysts together faithless.

They aren’t. He must know they aren’t.

But you put yourself here and standing at the target of his gaze has never been marred by the severity of it.

You decide then; when one game is ruined, another begins.

In truth, you can’t deny the element of theatrics in the way Tom denies everyone but you: his soft, penitent smile, the apologetic cant of his head, how his eyes can find you in any crowd and whoever is clinging onto his every word that night will follow his gaze and deflate when they discover you at the end of it. Sometimes it’s harsh. Final. He lacks the patience of pretence.

Sometimes, the week is dull. Sometimes, the whoever is undeterred. Sometimes you’ve pushed him here.

No — You’ve never done that before. This is new.

So it’s one of those weeks, and one of those whoevers, on an anomaly you may as well have directed the encounter yourself, and Tom is half-indulgent as he forces his eyes away and you force yours to stay.

You watch him from across the room as the woman drapes herself across the arm of his chair. There's a furious blush on her cheeks even in the dark, a pretty disarray to her shoulder-length hair, skirts pleated over knees she faces toward him. She smiles and offers him a glass of something, and you know for certain Tom understands this game because he accepts it, eyes flicking back to you as he swirls the glass in contest.

To that you take an inappreciable sip of your own.

“ — Which is why no one has even attempted to kill one in decades. And capturing one is another thing entirely. My mother works with the Greeks on occasion, and the nearest she came to a den was in the twenties. If she had gone any nearer I wouldn’t be here.”

“Hm?” You look back at the man in front of you. His lips glisten with having licked them between every phrase.

“The manticores,” he says, undeterred.

“Right. Five-X beasts, aren’t they?”

“That’s what I said. I heard from one of my mother’s colleagues that — ”

The woman is whispering something in Tom’s ear, her hair on his cheek. He’s looking at you as if you had said the words. You don't shy away when Oliver leans in to whisper too. It's a strange, fractured language. Too intimate while too detached. Whispers from across the room, desire from another in the place of desire for each other. But the strangeness should not surprise you anymore. This is Tom: beautiful and wicked and the one you chose.

“ — And Nundus are worse. Deadliest creature there is — ”

She’s laughing about something, the woman. Half-reserved, she’s angled toward the party despite her leaning on his shoulder and the dissipating inches of distance.

“ — They stalk in silence. Think of the size of one, right? They’re apex predators… so commanding and still they could be in front of you one instant and gone the next.”

You engage with detached interest. “Really?”

And now Oliver barricades your view, his other hand coming to rest on your other shoulder.

“Do we have any classes together?”

You blink up at him. “No.”

“No, right,” he says, eyes darting to your lips. “I’d remember you.”

His hand comes up to cup your cheek, and you wonder if for some men one-sided discussions of class five beasts qualify as foreplay.

You place a hand on his chest, eyebrows raised and half a startled smile curled.

“You’re not going to kiss me," you inform him.

His face falls, but with it, at least, does his hand.

“Did you hear me?"

“It’s loud,” he decides suddenly. “Can we go somewhere else?”

You’re not sure you believe that.

You duck under an arm and search the crowd again. The woman is on the arm of the chair looking thoroughly dismayed, and for good reason —

Tom is gone.

Your breath is caught.

“This isn’t… You’re not going to…?”

You flash Oliver with a glare. “So you did hear me.”

He makes a pathetically sad face, and you think: it’s a wonder he made it this far when his courtship evidently hinges on the subject of his affection not listening to a word out of his mouth.

“Goodnight, Oliver,” you say tersely.

“What was that for, then?” he asks, and it comes out practically whined.

“That was talking.”

“But you’re —”

“Belby.”

He is what he is. It shouldn’t surprise you when he appears beside you all fatal rage on a quiet lead, narrowly fixed to you.

Tom’s cold is his median temperature, yes, but in moments like this it’s as much for you as his handmade warmth. He’d pluck the fingers off a boy like Oliver. The digits would string eaves like icicles.

Oliver is looking between you and Tom like something terrible has dawned on him, hands urged to his pockets to soothe the flames your unveiled ties to a man seemingly singed him with.

“Riddle — Mate, I didn’t… I didn’t know she was…”

Tom’s voice is flat, edged with something that makes his monotony sound merciful. “Pity. If only you knew as much as you talked.”

Oliver’s mouth opens and closes and opens again, but wisely he settles on silence instead of excuses, and wastes no time fleeing slowly into the crowd.

The instant he's stolen by the wave Tom's eyes are on yours and they’re molten. You move to say something but his patience was for show — he’s dragging you by the arm out of the common room and into one of the dungeon's empty classrooms without giving you the chance.

“Tom —" You start to protest, mouth twisted in a scowl. “Tom, you're being —"

He shuts the door behind you and locks it with such delicacy your breath catches at the question of how badly he's holding himself back right now.

“I'm being what?"

“You're…" It's hard to formulate an answer when he's like this. “It was a game. Don’t pretend you weren’t playing too."

Tom inches in, chest rising with angry breaths. “A game, was it? Did he know that?"

“Did she?” you hiss.

“It certainly became apparent when she was discarded so that I might retrieve you.”

“It was as apparent to Belby, judging by the way he was left gawking.”

“And with great restraint I let him. A mercy I didn’t take his eyes so he was left without the ability.”

You roll your eyes. “Oh, now I understand; the problem wasn’t the game, it’s that I played it better than you.”

He looks at you for a long time before casting a silencing charm on the room.

Oh.

Oh — your heart barrels off somewhere. You’re without it for a moment, breathless in the wake of the implication of a spell like that.

“Tom," you say politically, “It was hardly a matter of rescuing.”

He nods imperceptibly. “No, it wasn’t.”

“So we’re in agreement.”

He hums a non-answer.

Each step he takes forward, you take back. It's a peculiar way to have a conversation, but part of the game, you suppose.

Interesting he’s still playing.

You still gasp when you inevitably hit the wall, hands going to the carved edge of a windowsill.

“You’re terrible when you win,” he whispers. His lips brush your ear.

You shudder, mouth dry as you press against his shoulder. “You’re worse when you lose.”

His mouth drags down your jaw but he refuses to kiss you, still withholding something, still holding back in some terrible, electrifying way. Instead one of his hands starts to dip down your side. You shiver as he grazes the skin of your breast, exposed by the cut of your dress, and continues down your waist. His mouth traces your bare shoulder as his tongue makes a slow pass, skin beneath leaping at his careful ministrations.

With long, slender fingers he's pulling your dress off button by button, torturously slow, and you feel mocked to have cleaned it earlier. You feel foolish to have left knowing the night would have ended like this regardless.

“Tom,” you say. His name is followed by staggered breaths. Your fingers are clutching the windowsill.

The air is thick as he watches you, flesh exposed by each undone catch. And still he will not kiss you, even as his lips trail along your collarbone and you start to tug instinctively at his belt. He makes the barest sound of disapproval and spins you to face the window, your hands urged on instinct to press against the glass.

“Tom...”

He hikes your dress up your thighs. It clings to your hips, a meagre two buttons left attached to keep it from falling.

Your wand clatters as his fingers work the clasp of your bra and his teeth skim your shoulder, leaving little bites he laves at softly with his tongue. You shudder, arching into him, searching for friction. His touch traverses the shape of you and stops feather-light between your legs.

“Tom —”

“Quiet," he admonishes, a little tut.

Your skin jumps at the caress of his fingers tracing deceptively timid up your thighs, like he hasn’t done this before, like it’s care and not punishment. His favourite oxymoron: the gentlest torture, the cruelest succour.

His index draws upon the lace of your underwear and tugs it aside with a tenderness that makes you gasp. Is there a way to press harder to the glass without breaking it? Is there ever enough to grab onto when he gets like this — so singularly focused on ruining you?

One of your hands latches onto the arm half-disappeared in your skirts instead, clinging steadfast to the white of its sleeve, your body swaying as if at sea. He keeps you steady, but this is his crown achievement: that he is all there is that can do it when you’re so singularly focused on being ruined by him.

The sinews of his forearm work imperceptibly under your fingers as he appreciates the newly unfettered flesh, two digits sliding between your legs, and he makes a satisfied sound against your shoulder at the wetness he finds there.

You’re swallowing air with a moan stuck in your throat; too dry, you realise, and feel like you’re choking when he starts to move, gripping his arm somehow tighter.

As a rule, you know how much he loves this, but it’s tenfold under his jealousy and you think deliriously, probably wrongly, that for how much he enjoys pushing you you enjoy pushing him to get here. You’re his and he’s yours, there’s no doubt in it — but what he can reduce you to — this desperate creature, writhing and panting, trying in vain to satiate herself with a simple finger — this is the translation; the fruition of his fixations put to a person rather than a subject. This is what it is to be his.

Tom’s mouth opens in a smile at your throat, and there it feels more like bared teeth, a smile that is as animal as it is pretty.

And still he whispers with all the affection of a lover, your name peppered between kisses.

His fingers inch inside you and curl. You’re wedged in the perfect balance of his discrepancy; your disciple and your devil. He worships you in white. He ruins you in it too.

Now his name comes out in a babble, wet, half-drooled. A nip pinches the little space beneath your ear and you clutch impossibly harder to his wrist, your free hand squeaking down the window pane as you grind on his palm. He crooks his fingers against a spot that has you seeing stars, thumb pressed to your clit in a subtle motion, and you feel yourself tip off into an unknown he aquaints you with often. In a blurry, flickering moment, the light gleams somewhere beyond the stained hues of the window. And that should be it. The edge is at your heels and you should be falling. But the sinful press of him at your back commands you to lurch against him, and when you moan for more he pulls his fingers free.

You stumble weakly into his chest, startled.

“What… What?”

“Ask me for it,” he says, his voice hoarse, markedly wanton in spite of himself. But there is hunger and there is greed. There’s a sacrificial lamb and there’s a hunted one— there’s religion and there’s Tom. He invents something that demands greater devotion.

And the sound of leather rasping serge and metal clinking metal reels your conscience in. There are no stars. There’s just him. His belt is coming undone.

“Tom.” You swallow. “I told you —”

“And I want you to ask.” He cups your jaw in his hand, thumb tracing your lower lip. “Nicely.”

Your mouth opens for him and you shiver, pressing further back for contact he doesn’t allow. Instead another small tut is whispered at your neck, relinquished to a kiss.

His finger brushes your teeth when you speak. “I want you.”

You feel him shake his head and you all but whine.

“I want you inside, Tom — need you — please.”

“Please?” he echoes mockingly.

“Please,” you say in an uneven voice, and when your tongue grazes his thumb he eases it further into your mouth with an appeased hum.

And so his zipper comes down and you hold your breath with the weight of your dress at your hips.

He pushes inside you with minimal pause, slow still, to relish the way your little pants hitch, stop, and shudder out in a broken moan; the way your breath is guided by his rhythm, how you’re shaped by him, fitted around him. You careen forward and your palms flatten on the window, trembling at the first thrust. Your fingers quiver down the glass.

Tom pulls you into him on the second, patience abandoned. His lips chase your pulse. His grip on your jaw tightens as his thumb pops free with a string of spit. He nudges deeper at a new angle, your body forced as far as it can lean back, gasping heavenward when your head falls helplessly onto his shoulder.

It’s profane. Your ears almost dull to the sound of his hips snapping against yours, the obscenity of your skin on what he offers of his, but you waver between earth and something else, brought back to him by the torturous sight of the edge he stole you from. Always brought back to him.

He’s gripping your jaw in one hand as he pushes deeper, and your fingers are lost for purchase on his forearms, trembling to hold onto something.

When he pulls out of you at your brink again, you practically cry out. But you understand when he spins you around again, hiking you up against the windowsill, your shoulders hitting the cool glass with a gasp you barely register in the fog of your desperation. His eyes are dilated to midnight rings. The weight of his desire is frightening. The insistence to claim you better yet.

He wastes no time before slamming into you again, pausing at the hilt to watch your eyebrows wrench together before resuming his pace. When your mouth falls open, he swallows the noise that tries to come out of it.

It doesn’t feel like a kiss. It feels like the prolusion to a bite.

His fervour is all the reminder of how you got here in the first place; the teeth, the force, the grip on your waist. There’s a rough sound he makes in your mouth that you taste more than you hear. The vibration of him is everywhere. You’re too hot and it only occurs to you because your fingers are clawing at fabric instead of skin that he’s fully dressed and your last button has finally snapped, lace pooled on the classroom floor as he fucks you. The thought is consigned to oblivion as quickly as it came. It doesn't matter.

You're clutching at his shoulders, the nape of his neck — trying to kiss him back, but you feel torn in two by the intensity of his ministrations, a low, immolating pressure building in your abdomen. He’s proving something with you, and his is a relentless, unending appetite. You don't really stand a chance. You think you've known that from the start.

Tom is all-consuming. Tom is a force of nature, a whirlwind that sweeps over you. He leaves you breathless and somehow needing more as he wraps his hand around the small of your back and seizes you in place.

Still you find yourself wanting to be held tighter.

“T-Tom —" you sob through the kiss but he doesn't give you enough air to do it. He pushes harder, a rasp at the back of his throat, some carnal thing. He’s not withholding your release now; he’s spurring you towards it.

When he withdraws his lips from yours, his brows are furrowed in concentration. There’s a fine lustre of sweat on his forehead, stray curls pulled across dark, wicked eyes. The sight of him alone is condemnable, but it isn’t for you.

He likes to watch you like this. When your moans dissolve to the torn syllable of his name, again and again. The veneration. Your choked litanies.

You give them to him.

Sleeves drawn up by your body’s baser instinct for skin, you’ve carved a canvas of praise into his arms, marked up to his elbows where your fingers had jerked upward to rake at his back. This time, when you find the cliffside, nothing stops you from teetering off its edge. Flames dance across your skin in an explosion, your collar damp and bitten, your waist in Tom’s vice-like grip. One hard thrust and you’re falling.

The stars are blinding. You decide then they were made by him.

Your head lulls back as shocks of pleasure course through your body, the coil snapped, the hard shape of him inside you demanding impossibly for more. You stumble through the light, vision blurred, praying and praying and praying. His grip comes to find your jaw again.

You keen, addled through the ecstasy, barely conscious of the way his panted breaths hitch at the sight of you in his hands, soft-eyed and puddy.

He always comes apart soon after you, but it happens rarely that your body is so taut on the wire of rapture that his twitching inside you takes you with him.

This time it does.

You sink against him, thighs numb and wet, one hand slipping dumbly from his figure and swiping across condensation-foggy glass. The second orgasm is an aftershock of the first. It’s slow. It feels like being caught from the last fall. You land in Tom’s arms and they’re holding you through whitened knuckles. His eyelashes flutter, ink-dipped twines of quills, and he steals the shaky sigh from your mouth by pressing it to his.

You kiss lazily and softly. The room feels sheeted in static. The electricity lingers on both of you.

It’s hard not to fall against the window when he slides out of you. You slump on quivering legs into his chest instead, heaving, spend trickling down your legs.

Tom holds you close, adjusting his trousers before sinking down to settle you on his lap. He wipes the sweat from your face and presses his lips to the feverish skin it plastered. Forehead, cheeks, nose, chin, whispers of your name down your jaw like a prayer answered. Your eyelids flutter shut and he kisses you there, too. His lashes tickle.

You love him more than you worship him. You think he likes that more.

He grabs your forsaken dress from the floor and slips it over your bare shoulders, summoning the snapped button back in place before he begins to meticulously clasp the rest together again. His mouth leaves a path at the skin under each one before it closes, and you hum in dizzy gratitude.

“That was,” you say in a very worn voice, “a terrible way to reinforce not making you jealous.”

He glares at you from one of the lowermost buttons and you giggle sleepily, curling a hand into his hair. “Don’t look at me like that. You liked it too.”

He leans back up at that, tipping your chin with his fingers, gaze darting over the wrecked state of you with a pleased gleam in his eyes. “You liked it? What a modest interpretation.”

Now it’s your turn to glare.

He is what he is — pursuit of buttons forgotten as you’re laid down on the moonlit floor to be reminded just how much you liked it.

taglist. @lyis @indimoss @poddzi @esolean @d1anna @maripositanoctruna @mentally-in-northern-italy @ronniemaximoff1234 @moobell55 @jaerang @ramayantika @saltwaterbythesea @acube07 @togenabi @adazito @kitcat334 @blaurghhh @shutupfinn @jaymeeshayden @lilu842 @leaosee @garfunkelworld @definitely-not-captain-america @multiplefandomstan @mangoesareorange [ note: inexplicably, a bunch of my tags aren't working. i tried to fix it but if you didn’t get a notif i’m sorry! ]

#tom riddle #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle x you #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle smut #tom marvolo riddle #voldemort #voldemort x reader #tom riddle imagine #tom riddle oneshot #tom riddle fic #tom riddle fanfiction #harry potter fanfiction #wizarding world

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goldenamaranthe-blog · 1 month

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Band AU: Hazbin Hotel

Because there's always a band AU.

-666 News Broadcast Theme Plays through the dive bar cafe from the small, flickering TV in the corner-

Katie Killjoy: Breaking News in the Pop industry today! Our sunshine and rainbows, Mandy Moore wannabe, and Princess of Hell, Charlotte Morningstar, has come out with a new music video to help promote a brand new album that appears to have been conjured up seemingly overnight.

Angel: Hey, Vagina! (Elbows Vaggie) Ain't that your girl crush from the open band night down at Husk's Casino two months ago?

Vaggie: (chokes on her coffee) What?! Turn it up, Jackass!

Angel: (steals the remote from across the bartop and turns up the TV)

Tom Trench: And, boy howdy, this makeover is on par with most Disney child stars diving off the deep end!

Katie Killjoy: (spears a pen through Tom's hand) No one gives a shit Tom.

Tom Trench: MY HAND!!!

Katie Killjoy: Spectators and fans of our usually diabetically sweet princess feel that this sudden shift is caused by her breakup with Seviathan Von Eldritch just last month, ending the royal arranged engagement, after he mentioned how she refused to "put out" before marriage in an interview with Hell's High Class Weekly.

Vaggie: (bristles) The douchebag....

Katie Killjoy: Let's watch as our lovely princess makes her breakdown public.

-Screen shifts to Charlie holding a mic in one hand while picking a guitar in another, wearing 2000's Avril Lavigne glam rock attire (hot pink, baggy cargo pants, black leather studded belt, rainbow converse, black leather wrist bands, grey tank top with two black goats faced just the right way so their curved horns make a heart and tied together with a rainbow knot, and a black and red stripped tie) Razzle and Dazzle are playing drums and bass-

Charlie: Don't you know that IIIIIIIII- (flips off the camera and sticks out her tongue while mouthing "Fuck you, Seviathan" as the song reaches its climax) I don't give a daaaaaaaamn about you!!! I won't give it up, not for you!!! I'm not gonna cry about some stupid guy. A guy who thinks he's all that!

Vaggie: Whoa! (Big smiles like when Adam got stabbed) Get it, Charlie!

Katie Killjoy: (as the screen returns to normal) Other songs on the album include "Behind These Crimson Eyes", "The Dick Who Blocked His Own Shot", "Smack a Bitch", "Since U Been Gone", and the gay community's rabid favorite "Dear Vaggie"-

Angel: (sucking down his third popsicle for breakfast) What now?

Vaggie: WHAT?!?!?!?!

Katie Killjoy: -The obviously plagiarized parody of "Cool for the Summer" by Demi Lovato has unsubtle lesbian and bisexual overtones that specifically mentions Vaggie "the Steel Vagina". The lead singer and guitarist of the Power/Grunge Metal band, Fallen Angels

Angel: (wheezes as he laughs breathlessly and falls off his stool)

Vaggie: (steaming) Angel!!! ¡Eres un chupapollas, hijo de puta! Why would you tell the news that was my name?!

Angel: (ugly walrus gasps and giggles) Because it's better than I ever dreamed!!!!

Katie Killjoy: Fans of both artists are absolutely frothing at the mouth to see what Vaggie's response will be.

Tom Trench: Frothing at the mouth and other orifices, if you catch my drift. (Gets a pen slammed into his balls) GaaAhaHaaaaHaha!

Katie Killjoy: More on this story tonight at eleven.

Vaggie:

Angel: Soooooo~ Whatcha wanna doooooo~?

Vaggie: We're going to Tune Town, getting a copy of that album-

Angel: Ooooooooh-hohohoooooh~ I can visit dat nice glory hole they got there.

Vaggie: -THEN!!! We are going back to the apartment and making a response single.

Angel: Do you know what you even want to put in it?

Vaggie: (slipping on her jacket) I'll figure it out after listening to the album!

#hazbin hotel #incorrect hazbin hotel quotes #band au #pop star charlie #metal band vaggie #metal drummer angel #chaggie #seviathan von eldritch #charlie morningstar #avril lavigne 2000s fashion was peak fashion for me #I Dont Give by Avril Lavigne #vaggie #tom trench #angel dust #big brother angel #angel and vaggie are roommates and bamd members #katie killjoy #so many song references #breakup empowerment

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wolfwafflez · 1 month

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The best highlights from my Huskerdust playlist, since it's on Apple Music and most people have Spotify. XD These are some I feel are SPOT ON. Let me know what you think and feel free to add!

Husk:

“Fortune Favors” by Royal Republic

“Take It from An Old Man” by the cast of Waitress (Broadway)

“I Drink Alone” by George Thornogood & the Destroyers

“I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love With You” by Tom Waits

“Demon Kitty Rag” by Katzenjammer

“Fake” by Mystery Skulls

“Golden Hour” by JVKE

“Gambling Man” by The Overtones

“Come in Mr. Lonely" by Jerry Dyke

“I Like Me Better" by Lauv

Angel:

“GLAM!” by Allie X

“Thank Me Later” by Anna of the North

“These Drugs” by Baby Queen

“That Man” by Caro Emerald

“So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” by Caroline Polachek

“Jacket” by Carsie Blanton

“Talk Too Much” by COIN

“I Touch Myself” by Divinyls

“Dead and Lovely” by Tom Waits

“Pink in the Night” by Mitski

The two of them:

“Reasons I Drink” by Alanis Morissette

“Stuck in the Middle With You” by Stealers Wheel

“Us” by Carlie Hanson

“Last Night on Earth” by Delta Goodrem

“Like Whiskey” by Dixon Dallas

“Buzzin’ Like You” by Emily Brooke

“May I Have This Dance” by Francis and the Lights

“Trustfall” by Pink

“Freak Show” by Ingrid Michaelson

“Love song” by Lana Del Rey

#hazbin hotel #playlist #angelhusk #huskerdust #angel dust #hazbin hotel husk #the brainrot is real

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canonmisogynyvictimstournament · 6 months

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PROPAGANDA

STARFIRE (DC COMICS) (CW: Sex Trafficking)

1.) She is frequently put down in the og 80s comics due to being more expressive and open with her emotions, and ever since the og she has frequently been painted as just eyecandy (ignoring her sexual trauma) when her character is so incredibly complex. Special mention goes to red hood and the outlaws (2011) (written by a sexual harasser) for just terrible stand out awful reasons which will be seen in the below photos and her 2015 solo for combining her vapid portrayal there with her cartoon quirkiness to culminate in a trash comic that is just her basically being the born sexy yesterday trope.

2.) 2011 reboot, in RHATO she was turned into a walking fetish by retconning most parts of her character and erasing all personality displayed in the past 30 years of comics. in that iteration she is only interested in sex and is dehumanised and ‘exotic’. she ‘forgot’ all her past relationships because she doesn’t care about them only sex. her only purpose in that book is as a powerhouse and a sex/love interest for one of the male characters who view her as a trophy because she used to date someone he dislikes (in this continuity) let’s also not forget that she was first created just to be a love interest and although she did grow into a hood character at some point, she is treated horribly time and time again by writers because of conflicting ships. she’s written as a ‘vixen’ as opposed to another ‘good girl’ female character who is shipped with the same guy in canon

3.) Her original characterization was fairly decent, however it still had her stuck in relationships with men that weren’t very good for her and had overtones of racism with how she was written. Post that her characterization was slowly chipped away at, some writers with harder sledgehammers than others, culminating in current writing where she’s dismissed as “just a fling” to her original counterpart (Dick Grayson) to prop up a different ship (Dick Grayson/Barbara Gordon) and frequently has been used as eye candy in other comics. Simply open the first comic of Red Hood and the Outlaws, which obliterated her personality to make her associate/be subservient to the Red Hood, and you’ll find plenty of panels of her appearing simply for eye candy in the boobs and butt pose for absolutely no reason. This is not the only time she’s been used to cater to the male gaze (I’d argue even in her original context that was part of her appeal) but in this comic she essentially has no personality beyond “i want sex” as her memory of all past events has been erased. She’s essentially just a tool for her male counterparts in the comic to bounce off of, and eye candy to bring more male readers in. She does eventually get more storylines later on, but that doesn’t excuse the bad writing she was put through. Her own solo series also cashes in on her sex appeal, by infantilizing at the same time as drawing her in skimpy outfits + more boobs and butt poses galore to go for the “born sexy yesterday” misogynistic trope.

BUMBLE (WARRIOR CATS) (CW: Domestic Abuse)

1.) Back with another Warriors submission, I bet you’ll be getting a lot from other people too LMAO. Bumble is a kittypet (housecat) who befriends the male protagonist Gray Wing’s girlfriend, Turtle Tail, and lets her stay in her house. This gets Gray Wing all pissy because he’s controlling of Turtle Tail and shares most of the wild/clan cat’s proclivity for looking down upon kittypets. Turtle Tail gets pregnant by another kittypet, Tom, who tries to control her by hiding the fact that humans take away kittens after they’re born. Eventually Bumble comes clean about it so Turtle Tail returns to the forest. Some time later, Bumble is found in the forest seeking refuge because Tom has been physically abusing her, scratching her where the humans can’t see. So, she’s CANONICALLY ACKNOWLEDGED as a domestic abuse victim (unlike Squirrelflight who meets all the textbook signs but the narrative and authors deny it). How do you think our good guy protagonists, i.e. Gray Wing “The Wise” and Turtle Tail, respond to an abuse victim seeking refuge? They tell Bumble to go home, thinking to themselves that she’s fat and soft and therefore would be useless in their group. Bumble stands up for herself and asks to speak with the leaders of the group. One of them asks if Bumble could just get along with Tom better (bro???) and when Bumble says it’s not within her control, the leader suggests being nicer to the humans instead. Another rival leader butts in and verbally abuses Bumble again by ripping into how fat and lazy and useless she would be. Despite Turtle Tail having been friends with Bumble and Bumble had helped her through her own hard times, to Gray Wing’s approval Turtle Tail chooses not to intervene as Bumble is forcibly escorted back to her abuser. But that’s not all. Later Bumble is found in the forest maimed and dying, and it seems likely that Gray Wing’s brother Clear Sky, a male with a long history of violence, is the culprit. Rather than mourn the dying innocent cat, Gray Wing’s primary concern is how other cats might be mean to Clear Sky if they think he’s a murderer, and reassures himself that refusing to help Bumble in her time of need was still the right decision.

2.) I have no idea how she managed to be written so horrifically from an abuse victim and woman (/she-cat I guess) standpoint but here we are. Okay so my memory is a bit fuzzy but basically Bumble was a character in Dawn of the Clans and a close friend to Turtle Tail, a major character, as well as a character who lived close to Tom, an abusive dickhead of a cat. Bumble was largely depicted as just a really sweet cat. Turtle Tail was very briefly the mate of Turtle Tail, but once she got pregnant, he became super violent towards both her and our gal Bumble. Tom actively hid the fact that, once her kits were old enough, Turtle Tail’s kits would probably be taken from her, and made Bumble keep quiet about this too, but Bumble eventually told Turtle Tail the truth, Turtle Tail left and Tom became extremely violent towards Bumble because of this, and was extremely abusive towards her. Eventually, Bumble ran away from him to where Turtle Tail and co were and begged to stay, since the wilderness as a whole was genuinely more safe than being around Tom was. Naturally, this meant kitty xenophobia from cats who had only arrived in that area recently, because everybody was insistent than, since she was a kittypet/house cat, things wouldn’t work out, and even her friend Turtle Tail denied her on this, insisted she was too soft to live in the wild and only sent her towards a cat Bumble wanted to convince because she was absolutely certain she’d be denied. Also our good old protagonist Gray Wing got to spend this scene being all upset about this soft cat wanting to join them to escape an abuser and was all bitter about the fact that Turtle Tail lived with her for a short period of time, and he also got to have a sweet romantic moment with Turtle Tail after denying an abuse victim an escape from her abuser. Also as much as I like Tall Shadow usually she sucked ass in the following scene because she was essentially telling Bumble to go find a way to make peace with Tom as if she was not the one being abused (Bumble pointed out that Tom was the one who would need to make peace for it to happen, not her) and that she should just make life better by going back to being a housecat and being spoiled despite the fact that she was actively at risk with her owners because of Tom. Then she leaves after being threatened by several cats there and is called soft on the way out. The next time she appears she is literally dying, and her death is just a plot device to create a stupid little mystery which is solved in a very stupid way. Also her abuser does continue to be a shithead and for some reason is fully permitted to kidnap his own children but he also gets a heroic death and the only reason I will not rant more about him is because this is too long already. Long story short Bumble deserves the world and everybody who decided not to let her escape her abuser just because they thought she was soft sucks

3.) Is nice to the group of starving, feral wild cats that left the mountains so their friends and family could have more food to eat and befriends one of them to the point of opening her home to her after she leaves the group because the guy she likes is too dumb to notice she likes him and keeps falling for his brother’s love interests.

Unfortunately, because Bumble is a house cat who lives in a house with people and not a Wild and Free cat, this is a grave and horrible crime (luring a wild cat into the safety and comforts of domesticity) and is villainized for the rest of the arc, including for things wildly out of her control

I.E.

Her owners taking in an aggressive male cat that bullies and abuses the two female cats already living there

When Bumble’s friend leaves and goes back to the wild cats, Bumble leaves her home (as the abuse as has gotten worse) to see if she could either get help or have her friend return so the abuse isn’t as bad again)

Bumble eventually dies in the wild because the feral cats all hate her for ‘stealing’ their friend and tricking her into becoming a kittypet for awhile and refuse to help Bumble adjust to wild life or even teaching her how to hunt.

They are littl e to no hard feelings at her death beyond ‘good riddance’ but the aggressive tomcat that chased her out of her home is later regarded with good feelings and regret at such a ‘good, heroic cat’ passing when he dies despite him literally never doing a good or kind thing in his life and actually causing trouble for the wild cats right before dying

#polls #round 4 #week 7 #new #cw sex trafficking #cw domestic abuse

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theageoftheunderstatement · 2 years

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Alex Turner’s Interview with Rumore Magazine, October Issue 2022

Written by Stefania Ianne, translated by PaoloMasia4 on Twitter

I stand before Alex Turner, smartly casual, in a hotel suite in East London. The place has a retro charm, is filled with memorabilia, and, in the context of a city full of contradictions, is positioned in the midst of the tenements that characterize a historically working-class neighborhood. This is the first time I've interviewed Alex, and even though the Arctic Monkeys are at the height of their career, it's comforting to discover him full of enthusiasm for his work, focused on his musical world, a guy who hasn't lost his northern identity - the Sheffield accent still shines through in his cadence - or his sense of humor. Nor has he lost the little boy still in him or, at first glance, himself, despite the fame he has achieved (fellow citizen Jarvis Cocker is the obvious comparison: both achieved success previously unimaginable for someone from that city). I am summoned for the interview somewhat cryptically, like "be ready for that day, you can't talk to anyone about it until we tell you." The Arctic Monkeys have been preparing a new record in great secrecy, and by mid July very few of us know about it. The title is not even known. No one knows that the band is rehearsing for the tour within walking distance of the hotel where I meet Alex. I get my third day of interviews: only a couple of journalists each morning, so it doesn't get too nervous.

The Car, the record at that time still secret, is being announced now as I write these words, at the end of August. The only new notes, those of I Ain't Quite Where I Think I Am, could be heard at a concert in Istanbul a few days ago. Fans either suspected something, or prayed for something to happen, and eventually someone must have spoken, rumors must have circulated until they became deafening, so the band broke the silence. The album comes out on October 21, all the songs were written by Alex and produced by James Ford. On only a couple of tracks the credits are shared: with Jamie Cook for Sculptures Of Anything Goes, and with Tom Rowley, Sheffield musician and longtime friend, for Jet Skies On the Moat and Mr. Schwartz.

Just before the interview, they show me a preview of the cover image and video for the first single, directed by Alex himself, There'd Better Be A Mirrorball. This is the only information released by management. It is not much, but they allow us to listen to the record in full. The working title? Suffolk Punch. Of course, it was recorded half in Suffolk, on a historic estate, and half at La Frette, a studio near Paris where the Arctic Monkeys had completed Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino, also frequented by such sacred monsters as Nick Cave and Marianne Faithfull. The Car has a retro feel to it, even the video has a flou effect. Alex appears as Alain Delon. The music has funky overtones and is imbued with a cinematic vein; much irony in the words, unexpected orchestral arrangement, the guitars scratching in the few moments when they surface. Is it perhaps a result of maturity? Trying to solve the puzzle that seems to be building Alex's personality is challenging.

From what transpires in online interviews he always has a sardonic expression on his face, as if he studies his interlocutors with a hint of skepticism. This is how he looks at me as I set up two microphones on the coffee table, asking him if he minds, terrified that the first one will act up. It's not a problem, he tells me of hearing about a reporter who compromised an interview with Altman because of a problem with the recorder. 'Imagine', he tells me, 'Robert Altman.' And so we start with the interview, quietly, with a bit of small talk to break the ice. As he answers my questions Alex seems almost possessed by what might be called an ocean of words. His answers are always precise and to the point, though I manage to wring at least a couple of spontaneous smiles out of him. Alex chooses his words carefully, you get the impression you can hear him thinking, often seeming to get lost in his thoughts, trying to put into words and stem the maze of ideas, thoughts and sounds that populates his mind. As we begin, Alex seems fascinated by the locked windows overlooking the tenements: 'it's all very English,' he tells me. 'It's locked but if you can still get out on the balcony you don't disturb the neighbors.'

Yes, perhaps they mean: don't do anything obscene! It's typically London, the juxtaposition between the luxury hotel and the surrounding tenements.

That's right, and then within walking distance you have a park, a huge outdoor space where you have a chance to create a mental space that can make you forget you're in the city. I started to appreciate parks recently, I used to underestimate them. But actually all that space, all those trees, give you the feeling that you can reset everything. Apparently it's the color, the green, that has this great calming power.

I read that all the greenery in London is due to William Morris, a Victorian design genius. Today not everyone remembers his struggle to take parks out of the clutches of speculators who wanted to build everywhere. Sorry I'm digressing. Let's talk about you instead.

If we must!

Your new record is ready, at this very moment it has not yet been announced, there is a lot of secrecy. Do you feel ready? How do you feel about the new songs?

It is very strange for me, the main feeling is that it is finally happening, and I am very slowly losing control, I am letting go. I feel like I’ve been working on this for an infinite amount of time, and now we’re almost ready to play on a stage again, we’re trying to figure out how to play these new songs live, and it’s only now that I'm starting to talk about them with other people that I’m realizing that I can understand them more deeply, I’m learning them. In a general sense I am very positive, but it is very difficult to let go.

I know you are a perfectionist, you work a lot on your lyrics and music, you write and rewrite, it is never good the first time. Do you fit into this description? And how much does your immediate musical instinct count when you compose?

It is true that I am constantly rewriting and modifying the initial idea several times, but although the process is long and laborious, at first instinct is essential to preserve the original idea. Instinct guides me when I have to decide whether to rewrite a part or it tells me not to be too cerebral, not to overthink it.

You have to try to find a balance between the two components.

Yes, but maybe it is not possible to do that, you can only try. At the same time I like the idea of doing something that can be completed within a week. A project, something you can experiment on.

And have you ever done that?

No, although.... no, I don't think so. Maybe there is some song among all the ones recorded in the last 15 years that somehow came instinctively, no famous songs though.

I don't think there is a mathematical formula for creating hits. You guys have never limited yourselves to the formula that brought you success, you have never repeated yourselves, you are constantly evolving. It seems to me that this is something natural, not forced. You started very young and are still growing as a band. And is your audience growing with you?

That remains to be seen. I guess I'm reluctant at the thought of having to admit that I’m growing up (he laughs, nda). But I guess sooner or later I will be forced to accept it. It may even be fun as an idea. There’s a lot of irony in the new record, there’s an unserious element to it, I like to think that our records communicate the idea of maturation but I hope that doesn’t mean we’ve become difficult to listen to. Maybe this process of evolution, this maturation, is helping me understand when I need to listen to my instincts. It’s helping me understand when I’ve created tunes in more to my mood of the moment, allowing me to explore. If it didn’t, we would probably go back. But even if I wanted to do that, even if I wanted to make a record that sounds like the ones we were making ten years ago, I don’t think I could. And even if sometimes, maybe on a free afternoon, I tried, I perceive the same invariable trajectory in me: after the initial excitement, due to the fact that I’m reminded of that period of my life, the excitement fades very quickly, like a soap bubble, and all that’s left is a guitar riff that sounds like a caricature, an imitation. After that there is nothing else, nothing left to work on, nothing left to process. Whereas the sound we create in the moment speaks to me, conveys something, fills me with possibilities.

It is a familiar feeling that you describe, but if it helps I can assure you that your last two records, although musically more complex than your beginnings, are still enjoyable. Let's talk about rock'n'roll instead. Are you still a rock band? What does it mean to be a rock band in the second decade of the 21st century?

Yes, there is no doubt about it. I'm half serious right now.

I was wondering how you would respond because certainly many people consider you a typical rock band, and perhaps consider Tranquility Base & Casino, your previous record...

... a mistake!

I would say more of a fluke, a temporary detour. Many are probably hoping with the new record to finally have the real Arctic Monkeys. For me, however, it is an evolution, and after listening to The Car it seems to me, as you said, that there is no turning back.

I definitely haven't found a way back yet. You see, I've spent the last few weeks rehearsing with the band, we are preparing for new concerts, and I can assure you that when we play together live we are definitely a rock band. So on the one hand there's definitely this live power, and on the other hand there's what I want to do on the records.

Are you editing the songs from a live perspective? How are you integrating them into the rest of the set?

I think they're going to work, we're rehearsing two songs. This question was discussed on the previous record, we were wondering how we could integrate the new songs into the set list. At first it was difficult to transpose the songs for the stage.... I say stage like you're doing a damn Broadway show (laughs, nda).

Why not?

Yes, indeed. That would be a surprise. I was saying, at the end of the tour of the last record, after going through that whole process, we realized that the songs we were playing live had leveled out, had equalized, and had integrated harmoniously into the show. Because when you go through the filter of the live show, especially if you’ve been doing it for such a long period of your life, 15 years or something, you can't play I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor the same way you did when you were a 17-year-old novice anymore: the vocals don’t sound the same anymore, and my arms would get tired doing the song that way. But really you don’t even notice the change, you don’t wake up one morning and say ‘we’re going to play it that way now,’ although maybe in some cases the choice is conscious. It is a gradual process. In the end, however, the songs have a life of their own after the record is released, they continue to evolve over time with millimeter adjustments. In short, it happens with all songs, and as it happened with the songs on the previous record, the same will naturally happen with the new songs.

You are preparing for the new tour, I know you are starting with some festivals around the world before releasing the record. What will you do with the new songs, will you still keep them secret or will you start playing some of them?

Maybe we will try to play a couple of them, but for the most part we will play old songs.

Matt Helders, your drummer, had announced more than a year ago that you were busy with the beginning stages of writing a new album. Did you start working on it at that time then?

Maybe the year before, in fact the first song I wrote for this album was probably in 2018, it was summer. I'm talking about the very first musical ideas.

So they are not the result of the pandemic.

Not entirely, no. I think the pandemic period mostly gave me time to think thoughtfully, I allowed myself a moment of reflection, but the composition of the pieces was well underway by the time... (pauses to think about it, nda).

Everything stopped.

Yes, exactly.

It seems to me that all the creative people spent the pandemic writing and composing, and quite a few records are coming out now because many people preferred to wait until things normalized a little bit. In your case, how did it go? Did the forced hiatus or the distance between the various band members affect the final result?

We have actually been living in distant places for a long time. But when we get together we stay together. This time it was not possible to meet up until last summer, when we started playing together in the middle of the English countryside, in Butley Priory, in Suffolk. Almost all the parts of the band were recorded there, I then recorded my vocal parts and some overdubs in France, in La Frette, but I had been working on the composition much earlier. I think that long break gave us time to experiment and explore all the possibilities and then realize that maybe it would be better to go back to the initial idea, however, it left us more time to figure out what was the most natural path.

And where did the concept of The Car come from? How did the car become the dominant theme of the record?

Yes, this time it is the car, in the previous disk the moon... The decision to give that title came from a couple of considerations: first of all, I realized that the automobile recurred in the lyrics, but more importantly there was this image, which then became the cover of the record. It’s a photograph taken by Matt, our drummer. When I saw it we are talking about a few years ago, I had a very strong feeling that it would become the cover of one of our albums. And The Car was the perfect title for the photograph as well. I saw a lot of things in that image, an expression of Matt’s creativity as well. I can’t say why such a thing moves us or affects us in such a special way, but that one affected me so much, and I don’t think it’s because I know Matt. And from a technical point of view it is perfect, Matt is very talented and photography is an art that he has been exploring over the last ten years. I think he’s very good at it, and that image conveys something deep to me. Somehow I see Matt in that picture.

So it was the image that inspired the record, the initial starting point?

I think so, in some ways it was. If you already have an idea of the way you are going to present something visually you feel better, you feel freer because you got what you wanted in the initial stages instead of reducing to the last minute. For example in the case of the previous record I found myself right up to the last minute trying to improvise cardboard models for the record cover. But probably getting something concluded in itself in the early stages of the record gave me the freedom to explore that concept.

Speaking of the visual part of the project the first video clip you directed, that was your first experience as a director, wasn't it? How did it go? I must say that your music and the whole record are very cinematic. And the video is very melancholic.

Yes, I spent most of the sessions, last summer, with the camera in my hand.

Is that the same camera that we see in the video for Four Out Of Five?

It's very similar, that was a Bolex and it belonged to the cinematographer who shot the video. I don't have a Bolex but mine is a 16 mm as well. To get back to your question, I have to say that in a way I spent a lot of time thinking about the songs before I got into sessions with the band. It is not as simple as I am about to describe it.... Or maybe it is as simple as that, I don’t know. But thinking back on it now, after working on the songs, after continuing to write and rewrite, chiseling until the last minute, until it was time to go into the studio, as soon as we started the sessions I picked up the video camera and started filming everybody. Then they all left and I went to La Frette to work on the music again, to record parts. But the time with the group I feel like I spent most of it with the camera in my hand. And it's not because I had just recently become interested in video; in fact, it’s been quite a while since I started using Super 8. It probably became one of my obsessions. And I didn’t start filming with any specific intention, it just seemed like a natural thing to do the moment we all saw each other again, I started filming everyday trivialities, us leaving a room, things like that. And then it all turned into something else again, the video clip of the song.

You seem to be fascinated with analog technology. Maybe because digital sound gives the impression of flattening the music a bit? How do you approach technology, are you looking for a somewhat retro sound? Or are you fascinated by the environment in which you record, its history? What is your reason for returning to La Frette?

As far as La Frette is concerned, certainly I am fascinated by the place. They have a nice set up but it's not about the technology they provide that you return there, it's mostly about the place, the people and the vibe it gives off. If we talk about instrumentation, when I record solo, yes, I am very attracted to the analog format.

When you start composing from a piano or an acoustic guitar for example?

Yes yes, or bass guitar, although actually it is the drums that is the instrument that helps me the most. I like to sit at the drums and think about the words, which may sound strange. But sometimes the distraction triggered by randomly playing the instrument, or the sound of the tape rewinding in the tape machine ... I feel that in the moment you wait for the tape to rewind, in that very important little analog time window, you can process it. At the same time when we composed the string parts we used a midi controller, a Midi Grid, and spent a lot of time on the computer. At one point in the past I said to myself that everything should absolutely be analog, but today I realize that things have changed. I’m definitely not analog when it comes to editing video. I haven’t yet gotten tangled up with cutting and pasting reels, although I really like the idea.

I guess technology gives us the freedom to choose the technique or medium that allows us to focus on the process in order to achieve the desired effect.

Yes, I think it does. And as far as the flatness of digital sound compared to analog sound, I think it all depends on the instrumentation and who processes the sound. Some people produce incredible sounds on the computer.

And how do you listen to the music you like?

Let’s say I've been taking a break, but now that we're going back to traveling I think I'll be able to carve out the space and time to put my headphones on and listen to some music digitally. When I'm at home I listen to records.

It seems to me that The Car continues the discourse of Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino. The sound on the surface seems controlled, measured, restrained, and at the same time there are orchestral arrangements that seem to go in an opposite direction. Were there specific musical or cinematic influences in that regard? There is something that brings to mind 70′ TV series on the one hand, and on the other hand there is an almost Beatlesque classicism.

Yes, of course. I’ve definitely brought up David Axelrod in the past, I've often talked about his influence on my music, and it shines through here as well. As far as classics go, there’s a Nat King Cole song, Where Did Everybody Go, that seems perfect for film, even though I don’t think it’s part of any soundtrack, and it has this element of theatricality, of drama, literally, that I really like, I think in addition to echoing in the lyrics this thing also comes through in our sound. The idea is kind of to have a narrator who is aware of his own role, aware of the fact that he is on a record. Take the movie ‘8 e mezzo’ by Fellini, that movie is about a director looking for inspiration, and a theme for the movie he has to make. That idea has always fascinated me. Actually the film is not really about that, it’s a bit of an excuse that allows Fellini to explore other ideas. I think there is a little bit of that in our album, though.

So you're telling me that this idea of ‘record within a record,’ this Fellinian element, implies the presence of an external narrator's point? Or is it actually a personal record?

I think it's a little bit of both.

Or maybe you prefer to leave it to the interpretation of the listener?

I think it has to be that way, there is no choice. But at the same time I’m not trying to hide: you can be in tune with your emotions and what you’re trying to express without the record necessarily becoming a diary. Yes, a record can be both, you can separate yourself from your idea. The presence of a narrative voice probably allows you to reveal yourself more than you imagine. It is possible.

And to what extent do you think success, being famous, is changing you? In what ways do you try to protect yourself and your friends - the band was born from a group of very close friends, right? - from the more toxic consequences of notoriety?

I think the fact that we are such close friends, in a way we are family, helps me cope with everything.

It is a relationship that has remained unchanged over time, therefore.

Yes I think so, without a doubt, and not only that: it gives me the confidence, the security and the encouragement I need to grow artistically, creatively.

Even though you live mostly in the United States, are you still in touch with your place of origin, Sheffield? I know that during the worst phase of the pandemic you were very active raising funds to help small venues like the Leadmill. I guess you know that it is in danger of closing permanently; it must have been a very important place for the city.

I haven't been to Sheffield for a long time, but I'm going back there just in these days, I'm looking forward to it. I had heard about the Leadmill, yes. Absolutely yes, it was a key place, we saw an endless number of bands there as teenagers. It was the first place I crowdsurfed, as a spectator or maybe even from the stage.

#interview #translation #arctic monkeys #alex turner #the car era #rumore magazine 2022 #saving the full text here because i love this interview a lot #his thoughts about songwriting and performing in all the recent interviews are enjoyable to read #and i love how he talked about finding the balance between following the instinct and constantly rewriting here #also it's the first interview where he talked about the name and cover of the new album in detail #and the fact that he had the feeling that matt's photo would become the cover of one of their albums a few years ago is lovely

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meme-streets · 8 months

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gbu playlists director's commentary

@trifoliate-undergrowth asked and now i am going to give the full track by track breakdown + general commentary because i have been waiting for someone to give me an excuse

(be warned before opening, this is long as hell)

overview

ended up making all of them 21 songs long–no particular reason for the number, it just worked out that way. i didn't originally intend for playlist times to matter, but when i realizes blondie's and tuco's could fit onto a cd, i fiddled with angel eyes's to cut down the length as well (specifically by dropping "riders on the storm" and replacing it with "people are strange"). i do definitely intend to burn these at some point; i'm thinking i'm going to start them each with the respective character's variant of the main theme and end them with the quotes i put in the descriptions. i structured blondie and tuco's by starting and ending each with a townes van zandt song. i had originally intended to do the same with angel eyes, but i couldn't find any townes songs i liked for him; i briefly considered starting and ending with the johnny cash songs instead, but i didn't like how that would've flowed, so i discarded the idea entirely. my main priority was getting things to flow musically well, but i did want certain themes in certain places.

breakdown: il buono

"where i lead me", townes van zandt: the opening verse especially. “where i lead me, i will follow / where i need me, i will call me / i’m no fool, i’ll be ready / god knows i will be / and in the meantime make a little money / and buy a little mercy.” really this is a blondie/tuco or even general gbu song, especially “or you can clench your fist, shake your head, and head to the country / i got no doubt about it, friends, that’s where they’ll find me” as tuco tracking blondie down for revenge. i felt the vibe suited blondie best.

"elements and things," tony joe white: mostly my joking reference to the clint squint with “i would, but the sun’s in my eyes.” that said, the music itself has the right vibe for him–makes me imagine him riding through the countryside–and the grandeur of it seems to suit him. “you lay back and think about things,” too.

“the changeling,” the doors: “i’ve had money, and i’ve had none, but i’ve never been so broke that i couldn’t leave town.” and also, blondie as a changeling, impossible to know or define or pin down.

“call me the breeze,” jj cale: a desert breeze, untethered, tied down to nothing? “i ain’t got me nobody, i ain’t carryin’ me no load”? that’s blondie to a tee (or he’d like it to be, anyway).

“spoonful,” willie dixon: a parallel with tuco, who has the howlin’ wolf version. “could be a spoonful of water, to save you from the desert sand / but one spoon of lead from my 45 will save you from another man.” this version strikes me as a little more romantic/sincere with the piano and dixon’s crooning vocals, and it also doesn’t mention gold like the wolf version, something i think blondie cares less about by the end.

“walk away,” tom waits: walking away, aka blondie’s favorite pastime. “i always get out of the trouble i’m in.” also, “a yellow dog knows when he has sinned” reminds me of him abandoning tuco and then being marched through the desert for it.

“secret intention,” the william loveday intention: blondie at sad hill specifically. the religious overtones of both song and scene especially. the ritual of it all. the treachery.

“dancing with mr. d,” the rolling stones: another sad hill song. it opens with “down in the graveyard where we have our tryst,” for god’s sake. playing with blondie as an otherworldly and sinister figure. “he never smiles, his mouth merely twists.” not entirely true of him, but evocative.

“calling card,” rory gallagher: “whatever you do, brother, don’t show that hurt.” i almost put this on tuco’s before ultimately switching it to blondie; he strikes me as being lonely deep down, and determined not to let on. if you like, think of it as him advising tuco.

“the spy,” the doors: “i know the words you want to hear / i know your deepest, secret fear.” finding out tuco’s secret(s). also, “a spy in the house of love” just feels right for blondie.

“fire of love,” jody reynolds: “the sun beats down with its fiery glow / knows i won’t see my love no more / i’m sorry for the things that i’ve done / forgive me dear, my only one.” the desert! also, the general idea of being burned/hurt by love strikes me as appropriate. i think it hurts him, in a way, that he loves tuco.

“waiting for the sun,” the doors: mostly vibes, but the image of “it’s time to live in the scattered sun” reminded me of him for some reason, and the “waiting for you to come along / waiting for you to hear my song / waiting for you to tell me what went wrong” made me think of him and tuco (every gun makes its own tune, the ending).

“written in your hair,” robert lester folsom: this one is mostly vibes, and also something something buried gold/golden hair, but also “you can’t do a thing if you ain’t there” reminds me of him.

“don’t let me be misunderstood,” the animals: pretty self explanatory; he’s cruel perhaps without always wanting to be. also, “no one alive can always be an angel / when things go wrong i seem to be bad” reminiscent of the missed shot and his subsequent ditching tuco in the desert. a sort of apology.

“all along the watchtower,” bob dylan: a very blondie & tuco song to me. the second verse especially. “there are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke / but you and i, we've been through that, and this is not our fate / so let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.” tuco’s near hangings and blondie’s near death in the desert (but you and i we’ve been through that), and the exchange of the secret at the bridge (so let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late); ironically, blondie lies.

“hunger child blues,” townes van zandt: one of THE top blondie songs to me. i almost ended with this one for the “do you think that you know my name?” but it didn’t flow well. it’s ethereal, and a little threatening, like him.

“(ghost) riders in the sky,” johnny cash: also on sentenza’s, who has the ronnie dawson cover. i wanted to lean into the supernatural aspect, and “cowboy, change your ways today, or with us you will ride” felt apt. i actually liked the dawson version better for blondie but the cash version flows very well musically.

“wand’rin’ star,” lee marvin: from paint your wagon. if the title itself isn’t convincing enough, “i’ve never seen a sight that didn’t look better looking back.”

“don’t fence me in,” clint eastwood: pretty self explanatory. had to pick the clint cover for obvious reasons.

“state trooper,” bruce springsteen: “maybe you got a kid, maybe you got a pretty wife / the only thing that i got’s been botherin’ me my whole life” immediately makes me think of him. as does “hi-ho, silver-o, deliver me from nowhere” and the echoing cries at the end. the crushing loneliness of the open road.

“snake song,” townes van zandt: the other top blondie song to me. “you can’t hold me, i’m too slippery / i do no sleepin’, i get lonely / you can touch me if you want to / but i got poison, i just might bite you.” that’s blondie, baby. the line “lie in circles on the sunlight” is also very evocative and “i’ll be there when you start sinkin’” reminds me of the ending.

breakdown: il brutto

"lungs", townes van zandt: another general gbu song, but “salvation sat and crossed herself and called the devil partner” makes me think of him and pablo. “jesus was an only sun and love his only concept / strangers cry in foreign tongues and dirty up the doorstep” makes me think of his relationship with blondie, given their weird interplay as jesus and judas at various points. as a bonus, “seal the river at its mouth, take the water prisoner / fill the sky with screams and cries, bathe in fiery answer” gives me branston bridge vibes also.

"wanted dead or alive," warren zevon: pretty self explanatory just from the title, but i thought "all i'm trying to do is find a peaceful place / but they say i have an outlaw's face" is particularly apt. that, and the parallel of "fifteen states" to tuco being wanted in fifteen counties.

“do it again,” steely dan: “but the hangman isn’t hangin’, so they put you on the street.” any song with a noose in it is a tuco song to me, especially if said noose is escaped, but the rest of the lyrics fit well too–revenge, trouble with the law, water in the desert, seduction and lost love (the wives!), gambling, making money.

“black widow blues,” townes van zandt: “i got the hands, pretty lady, gonna make you grieve / and the lovin’ gonna make you mine.” a specific kind of drifting, hedonistic romanticism that suits him, i think. something something a wife in every town.

“ventilator blues,” the rolling stones: “when you’re trapped and circled with no second chance / code of livin’ is your gun in hand / can’t be browed by beatin’, can’t be cowed by words / messed by cheatin’, ain’t gon’ ever learn.” the line about “everybody's trying to step on their creator” and the opening verse about being agitated and beat down.

“goin’ out west,” tom waits: “they got some money out there, they’re giving it away” and “all my friends say i’m ugly, i got a masculine face.” i feel like the braggadocio and the musical sound of it suits him.

“highway chile,” jimi hendrix: “now you’d probably call him a tramp, but i think it goes a little deeper than that”–tuco calls himself a tramp on the wagon. “ain’t seen a bed in so long it’s a sin.”

“born under a real bad sign,” albert king: pretty self explanatory. “if it wasn’t for real bad luck, i wouldn’t have no luck at all.” that’s tuco, baby. i used king’s original over the cream cover namely because of the line “i can’t read, never learned how to write.”

“laundromat,” rory gallagher: “what do you think of that? / i’m sleepin’ down at the laundromat” and the line about “come and meet my friends, they’ll be with me to the end” reminds me of his “if you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?” scene

“who do you love,” townes van zandt: the morbid, boastful lyrics and themes of seduction suited tuco very well imo. i love bo diddley but i picked the townes cover as i felt it fit better musically.

“brown eyed handsome man,” chuck berry: the braggadocio and the romanticization of brown eyes fits already, but the line about the judge’s wife setting a man free especially caught my attention, because it seems like it would happen to tuco (or he’d make up a story about it, anyway).

“hate street dialogue,” rodríguez: the song’s about growing up in inner city detroit, but it fits well, i think, with tuco’s line “where we come from, if one did not want to die in poverty, one became a priest or a bandit.” also, “i’ve tasted hate street’s hanging tree.”

“snake mountain blues,” townes van zandt: the general lost love, “no one to care for me” thing, but also: “and it’s goodbye to this yellow-headed misery i’ve known.” remind you of anyone?

“should’ve learnt my lesson,” rory gallagher: never learning, and “my first mistake was when i thought that you’d be true / now i realize that was a foolish thing to do” as everything with blondie. “when you don’t fit, you know that’s the time to move.” “you must be prepared to lose if you choose to toss the dice.”

“just a bum,” michael hurley: a wistful, romantic take on the life of a hedonistic drifter. “just a tramp / call me what you like / see me travelin’ down the pike / and singin’ love songs / sittin’ by the fireside dreamin’ all night / makin’ love drunk in a meadow ‘neath the pale moonlight / travelin’ over land like a natural born man.”

“paper mountain man,” linda perhacs: the chorus, the line about “sewn by the love many ladies’ hands” and “you like delicate ladies with real fine skin / you’ll touch ‘em but you’ll never love / that’s the way you’ve always been,” the line about curly hair. “heavy-booted walk tappin’ low funk blues” also feels fitting for reasons i can’t quite describe.

“spoonful,” howlin’ wolf: also on blondie’s, who has the willie dixon version. this version mentions gold, which is apt, and i think the mentions of being satisfied with just a little love work more ironically here than for blondie. something about all this strife over a little wealth (before the gold comes along anyway...)

“driftin’ blues,” lowell fulson: “well i’m drifting and i’m drifting like a ship out to sea / ain’t got nobody in this world to care for me.” need i say more?

“get behind the mule,” tom waits: one of the best suited songs for him, imo. “i’m diggin' all the way to china with a silver spoon while the hangman fumbles with the noose”–sad hill! but also, the idea of “you've got to get behind the mule in the morning and plow” is about how it goes for him. he's just got to endure. blondie leaves him in the desert seventy miles from town and tells him to manage it, so he does. what else is he supposed to do?

“dirge,” bob dylan: this is the other peak tuco song for me. the verse that starts “can’t recall a useful thing” which i made a web weave out of, but also, “i’ve paid the pride of solitude, but at least i’m out of debt.”

“rake,” townes van zandt: i wanted to end on kind of a grim note because there’s something very tragic about tuco as a character to me. he ends the movie alive and with the gold, yes, but humiliated and abandoned by his partner. reminds me of his relationship with pablo, too: “have you accomplished anything but evil?” his drifting and hedonism can only take him so far before his past catches up with him eventually.

breakdown: il cattivo

"dead before dawn", vaguess: “please burn my rotting flesh / and don’t give me a grave / buy yourself something nice / with the money that you save / cause i’ll be gone”. sad hill!

"sinister purpose," ccr: THE angel eyes song to me. “burn away the goodness, you and i remain / did you see the last war? well here i am again.” specifically, angel eyes to blondie.

"big in japan," tom waits: this one's all about the "i've got the [blank], but not the [blank]" structure. as in, the cemetery, but not the grave–which could go for all of them, but i felt this fit sentenza best given he's trying to get both of these things; tortures it out of and forces a partnership on blondie since he suspects torture won't work on him. that, and the "i've got the whole damn nation on its knees."

"people are strange," the doors: a time-constrained replacement for "riders on the storm," which i felt would’ve really suited him with the sinisterness of it and the thing about the drifting killer. regardless, i think the idea of being cruel and apart from other people as a self-reinforcing cycle feels pretty fitting.

"thirteen," johnny cash: a song about a nameless killer. “bad luck wind been blowin' at my back / i was born to bring trouble to wherever i'm at” and “the list of lives i’ve broken reach from here to hell.”

"sympathy for the devil," the rolling stones: a song about a sophisticated devil? come on, that’s angel eyes for sure. i think “so if you meet me have some courtesy / have some sympathy and some taste / use all your well-learned politesse / or i’ll lay your sole to waste” is very fitting especially.

"whistlin’ past the graveyard," tom waits: this could've gone for any of the trio, honestly, but i picked angel eyes as this specific brand of sinister, supernatural braggadocio seemed to suit him best.

"i’m the devil," the william loveday intention: i feel like this one’s just self explanatory, to be honest.

"old judge jones," les dudek: one of my early adds; his (italian) name’s sentenza, after all, so i’m a sucker for pairing him with any song about judges/judgment. “old judge jones never gave a man a break / on his hanging tree the leaves don’t shake.”

"the snake," al wilson: the theme of accepting someone else’s help and then crossing them because “you knew darn well i was a snake before you brought me in” feels very right for him. something with how he betrays tuco. hell, this could be a blondie song too.

"money talks," jj cale: “you’d be surprised with the friends you can buy with small change.” the goons he hires.

"dead man, dead man," bob dylan: a tuco’s-eye-view of angel eyes, specifically. the lines about “the glamor and the bright lights and the politics of sin,” “the tuxedo that you’re wearing, the flower in your lapel,” and the choruses with lines like “pretending that you’re so smart” and “what are you trying to prove?”–all his false sophistication and arrogance covering that he’s just another lowdown coward.

"hoist that rag," tom waits: the horrors of war (specifically, the prison camp stuff).

"wolf teeth," jd mcpherson: “i leave a little magic every place i go” (the inhuman vibes of him) and “leave a little blood so the grass can’t grow.”

"rotten to the core," the builders and the butchers: while i initially listened to this song assuming it was about a guy who sucked, it’s about seeing the world as an inherently cruel and dangerous place–which, funnily enough, i think also fits pretty well. case in point, when he tries to justify his brutality to that prison camp official by claiming they have to have “respect.”

"bad seed sown," the bellfuries: “the kinda people hip to my kind of evil / are few and far between / it lurks, it lies, it feeds on cries / it’s sophisticated and mean.” self explanatory. additionally, “there won’t be omens or signs / just a smile and a line / then the swing of the axe”–betraying tuco.

"love of hate," st. john green: sad hill. this one’s partly just vibes. “shall die alone, without privilege of a stone” does fit nicely.

"riders in the sky," ronnie dawson: also on blondie’s, who has the johnny cash version, so i ended up using this for angel eyes. blondie may have changed his ways, but angel eyes doesn’t, and he strikes me as the type not to stay dead and buried. i just like the idea of him as a ghost.

"god’s gonna cut you down," johnny cash: the delicious irony of sentenza as a figure of judgment, and of him being then cut down by blondie (golden haired angel).

"the werewolf song," michael hurley: a slightly softer, sentimental take on the violence, if that makes any sense. vibes mostly. i wonder if he ever gets lonely.

"death don’t have no mercy (live)," hot tuna: reminds me very strongly of his intro at stevens’s place; “he comes to your house and he won’t stay long / you look in the bed and somebody will be gone.” felt this was a good, grim note to end on, and i felt the hot tuna cover fit very well musically.

#the good the bad and the ugly #dollars trilogy

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sjsmith56 · 3 months

Text

A Call to War - Chapter 35, Lord Buchanan

Summary: Word comes of the beginning of the war and everyone prepares to leave, waiting only for the arrival of Quin from his honeymoon.

Length: 4.4 K

Characters: Lord and Lady Buchanan, Tom, Bren, Rhodes

Warnings: angst, fear of losing a loved one, further proof of Duke John Walker not being honourable.

<<Chapter 34

🦅 🏰

After a wedding breakfast with several close friends Quin and his bride went into seclusion. The location was kept secret but the King admitted to Buchanan that a luxurious tent had been erected beside Angel Falls and guards posted at all the paths leading to the falls to keep the curious out. Meals would be delivered by one trusted servant and left for the couple to eat as they pleased. Buchanan remembered with fondness his and Ileana's brief sojourn there before being accosted by Prince Loke's men.

In Quin's absence the training took on a more serious tone as Buchanan divided the 1500 into almost equal parts and they engaged in mock battles with each other using wooden swords and padded staffs for close quarter fighting. In his talks with Lord Fury, Buchanan had learned much about the Duke's war experiences and the strategies he would likely employ. There was no question he would be a formidable opponent. He was still concerned about the lawless ones and when the coffee pedlar who had warned King Thorn appeared at the palace Buchanan brought him to the planning tent to share his knowledge of them and the other noblemen who had joined the Duke's forces.

At night, though he was tired both physically and mentally from the day's training Buchanan was devoted to Ileana. He always ate his evening meal with her, then sat in close contact talking about their time together. Their lovemaking took on sensuous overtones of lingering kisses and touches, more to satisfy the need of being together in the few days left before the force's departure. On the night before Quin's return to the palace was expected, a bird's piercing cry was heard outside and the King's falconer rushed to the doorway of Buchanan's tent to say a messenger falcon had been spotted nearby. Trained to find their recipient by the smell of the token they carried it was necessary for Lord Buchanan to step outside so his scent would circulate through the air. Quickly he dressed and left Ileana in their bed with a kiss.

He stood in the middle of the congregated tents of the force and gazed up into the night sky. Suddenly the sound of wings alerted him that the bird had found him and he extended his gloved arm and hand from his body. The exhausted creature landed on his hand then carefully walked up his arm placing its head nearer to his. Satisfied that the scent of the man matched the scent of the token it gave a cry and the falconer was able to grasp it and remove the message and the token from its leg. He handed them to Lord Buchanan then retreated with the prized bird to feed it and nurse it back to health for its next long journey. Bren came close with the battery light, watching as Buchanan opened the scroll. He called his three commanders into his tent, looking at all of them with gravitas.

"The war has started," said Buchanan. "Early this morning before the sun even rose, trebuchets began pounding King David's palace. The Duke doesn’t even respect the rules of engagement to wait until sunrise and send an announcement to begin hostilities. The king sent the messenger falcon at that time. Get the men prepared; allow them to go to the chapel or the brothel as I care not how a man prepares for death as long as he is ready for it. Break out the Prince's badges and make sure each of your companies fly his banner. I expect the Prince to have received this message as well. He likely will arrive here within a few hours of sunrise. Prepare to leave by noon."

All three commanders nodded at the receipt of their orders, leaving the tent to share the news with their men. Buchanan looked at the tapestry that marked the entrance to his sleeping quarters, fully aware that Ileana heard it all. With a heavy heart he entered the tented room and found her weeping silently. Sitting on her side of the bed, he gathered her into his arms stroking her hair and back. He never said a word because he knew they wouldn't comfort her. Then quietly he lifted her face to his and kissed her, while gazing into her eyes.

"I must inform Queen Camilla of this development." Ileana turned her face from his as he spoke. "My wife, please, allow me to tell a Queen that her King is engaged in battle. As the general of her son's forces it is part of my duty. As Quin's foster father it is my duty. As an honourable man it is my duty."

"Go then," she replied in barely a whisper. "Then do your duty to me, your wife."

She turned away again, refusing to look at him or speak with him. With a sigh he left her there then strode into the palace and knocked politely at Queen Camilla's suite. A servant answered, assuring him the Queen was awake. She did come out in her night dress and gown, standing regally as he delivered his news.

"I'm sorry to intrude upon your privacy at this hour, your Majesty," said Buchanan. "I have received the messenger falcon that the war has begun with a trebuchet assault against the palace. That was early this morning. The Prince has likely received the same message and I expect his return by mid morning. We plan to leave at noon."

"Thank you, Lord Buchanan," she said calmly. "Now please return to your wife as she likely needs comfort from you this night."

He bowed and left the room then hurried to King Steven's suite. The door was opened before he raised his hand, revealing his foster brother who ushered Buchanan in quickly.

"The falconer told me of the arrival of the messenger falcon," he said. "Has it started?"

"Aye, this morning," replied Buchanan. "A trebuchet attack against his palace before sunrise. I hope to leave by noon tomorrow."

"The Duke talks of traditions being restored, but doesn’t follow the most basic of them in his own dealings," said Steven, scornfully. His tone softened as he regarded his friend. "Go see to your wife. She needs you this night. We will see you off tomorrow, brother."

They clasped arms then Buchanan hurried back to his tent. The lights were out as he undressed in the dark. As he put his sleep shirt on he heard muffled words from Ileana.

"What is it?" he asked, while he got under the covers, reaching for her.

"Forget the sleep shirt," she said, lifting her head from under the covers. "I have."

Reaching his hand further under the covers he felt her warm skin instead of her night chemise. With a smile he removed his sleep shirt and embraced his wife with loving passion, thanking her for marrying him. Though her face was still wet from her tears she sought out his mouth with hers and kissed him with ferocity.

"I couldn't stay upset," she whispered when he pulled away, "not when it could be months before I saw you again. James, I'm sorry."

"Nay, love," he whispered back. "It is a terrible thing I do, to leave you now, and go off to war. I'm sure in your world it has happened as well but it is still a difficult thing for a man to do to the one who is his reason for living."

"Then love me tonight as if you were leaving forever," she whispered into his ear. "For this shall have to carry me through some difficult times."

Reaching for the battery light Buchanan turned it on and looked longingly at his wife in their bed. "Then I would see you as we join," he replied softly, "so your face in the throes of our passion would be imprinted in my thoughts forever."

They knelt before each other then embraced, kissing each other with abandon. Outside their tent the shadow of their lovemaking was visible so the guards stepped further away and requested passers by take a different route to their tent. Although the sounds of their great love were heard it wasn't acceptable for the display to be seen. An hour later when the light was turned off again the guards resumed their original positions keeping watch for their Lord and his Lady. In the morning they reported that all was well to the Watch Commander.

As he awakened in the morning light Buchanan watched his wife as he raised himself onto one elbow. Her chestnut hair was tousled and he gently ran his fingers through the tresses. Her eyes were still closed, displaying her dark eyelashes against the creaminess of her skin. On her ears he saw she was wearing the earrings he had given her during their courtship with the love rune spell on them. She must have awakened during the night to put them on in the dark.

"Remember me, I remember you," he whispered. "Love me, I love you. Always, my Ileana."

Quietly he left the bed and entered his dressing area where Tom was ready with his travel leathers. Silently the young man helped him dress, not speaking until he handed Buchanan his scabbard.

"My Lord, are you certain that you will not need me for this journey?" asked Tom earnestly. "I feel I am shirking my duty staying behind."

"I am certain," said Buchanan firmly. "Your place is at the castle, watching over my wife, as you did during the last asteroid pass. I will manage to change into my battle leathers by myself. In an hour I will return to breakfast with my Lady wife. Until then I will be with my commanders."

He left the tent and Tom looked towards the bedroom area, hearing the sounds of crying coming from it, and feeling sick for the distress Lady Buchanan was feeling at that moment. With a sigh he left the tent to get the water for Lady Buchanan's bath as Beth went to comfort their mistress. Others were at the bathing house, waiting for the hot water for their Lords and Masters as well. Many commented on what a fine morning it was, surely an omen for a good campaign. Tom grew more dissatisfied by the moment and when he had filled the small bath to its proper level, advising Beth it was ready, he sought out Bren, one of Buchanan's commanders. He was in the command tent with Lord Buchanan, his two counterparts and all the sub-commanders in attendance. Tom watched through the open flap of the tent, waiting for the moment when they were dismissed to their breakfast meal before he approached Bren. The older commander noticed the young man and finally turned to him, as it was not the first time the dresser had approached him.

"Young Tom," he stated, looking down at the shorter and slighter man. "He refused you again, did he not?"

"Aye," said Tom, "but I know in my bones that my place is with him. I have done all the training you requested of me and have mastered most of it. I am not afraid and I know that I can contribute. There is something I must do for him and I can't do it if I am back at the castle."

Bren looked at the young dresser sternly. Just days after his arrival at Buchanan's estate the young man had approached him, requesting to be allowed to train in the fighting arts with the other soldiers and recruits. It was unusual but Tom had explained that his appetite for it had been whetted during the defence of the castle from the extremists wishing to destroy the radios within. Since that time Bren had doubted that was the real reason but Tom's determination to be by Buchanan's side had struck a chord with him. It reminded him of his own longstanding devotion to Lady Falcon and her sister, Baroness Romanoff.

"Very well," he said finally. "I will provide you with a horse and battle gear, including the Prince's patch. You will be in my company but you must stay out of Lord Buchanan's way until that time when you are needed. If he catches you, then you are on your own in explaining your presence. Seek me out in the hour before noon."

Tom gave the old soldier a big smile and ran back to Buchanan's tent to prepare and serve the breakfast. Beth had just finished helping Lady Buchanan dress and joined him in the preparation area. She noticed his jubilant face and looked at him with alarm.

"You're going, aren't you?" she said. "You talked Bren into it."

"Aye," replied Tom. "You won't say anything either, will you my love?"

He put his hand on hers, and gently touched her hair. "No, I won't, Tom," she replied, pulling her hand away. "But we shouldn't have joined last night. What if I am with child? Who will marry me then?"

"I will," said Tom, pulling a crucifix from around his neck. "This is my troth to you, Elizabeth Redmond. It was given to me by my mother and is the most precious of my possessions. When I return we will marry and if you are with child I will claim it openly as my own."

He placed the chain around her neck and kissed her tenderly then touched her face gently. She nodded and they both returned to their duties to serve the breakfast. Both Lord and Lady Buchanan were conciliatory with each other, neither wanting this last meal together to be undertaken in sadness or anger. Just as they finished it was announced that the Prince and his bride had returned, making their first stop at Lord Buchanan's tent.

"You received the message, sir?" asked Quin, holding Isabella's hand tightly in his own. "It arrived shortly before we retired last night. I would have come but the guards said it would not be safe to travel through the forest until this morning."

"Aye, I received it," said Buchanan. "I have prepared everyone to leave at noon. If we travel at a good pace we can clear the forest before nightfall and be well set up for the next day's ride. Your mother, the Queen, is aware of the plan."

Quin nodded. "Very well," he said. "I will venture into the castle, say my goodbyes to my family then return to prepare to ride at noon."

Together the young couple made haste towards the castle leaving Buchanan and Ileana alone. Tom brought Buchanan's saddle bags, already packed with his battle leathers, ammunition, nightshirt, and rations. Ileana reached into the pocket of her dress and brought out the jewelled crucifix Buchanan had given her before they married. He took it in his hand and looked at it fondly.

"Take this and wear it or at least keep it on you," she said.

"I already carry a talisman of you," he replied, reaching inside his shirt and pulling out the black lace from the skirt she wore when she woke up in Greenwood Forest. "I have kept it next to my heart always. But I will carry this as well."

He placed it around his neck and kissed her tenderly. Magnus was brought to the tent and although he stood quietly enough as Buchanan loaded the saddlebags, it was evident the great horse knew that a call to action had been made. His whole body seemed poised to charge into a gallop at his master’s command. Ileana ran back inside the tent, coming back with two halves of an apple. She offered the first half to Magnus then leaned her head close to the large head of the horse.

"You promise me you'll keep him safe," she whispered, her mouth close to his ear as he bent his head towards her.

The great horse nickered gently at her and pushed into her shoulder. Giving him the second half of the apple she leaned into Magnus' neck and put her arms around him before stepping back. Buchanan clasped her hand with his and together they led Magnus out to the staging area where others were also gathering. The three commanders and 15 sub commanders were also present as was Sir Archer Barton and his company of archers. Soon Quin Torres appeared in his travel leathers, holding his saddle bags, with Isabella at his side. He loaded his saddle bags then kissed her with great feeling as Buchanan kissed Ileana in a similar fashion. Well back in the group of soldiers in Bren's company Tom looked to see if Beth would come out and when he saw her smiled, knowing in his heart that she was worth returning home to. As the order was given he went over what the Scarlet Sorceress had charged him to do. According to her it would be the only way Lord Buchanan could return home alive. For Tom that was worth the possibility that he might be killed. He looked to the young prince as he mounted his horse then stood on top of the saddle so that all might see him. That horse stood perfectly still as Quin addressed the force. Even with his young age, it was evident that the prince had the blood of a warrior and commander flowing in his veins.

"I look out on an army of 1500 men, and women," he said loudly in a voice that all could hear. "Some may not return but that is the price a soldier is willing to pay. That is the price I am willing to pay that I offer my life to protect my father's kingdom from a man who would be a tyrant endangering everyone. All of you have volunteered and that has humbled me that you would follow an untested boy, for I am but 18, into war. But we do have a general that many of you have served with, and three battle tested commanders that you trust, and 15 sub commanders that you know. If ever you question your commitment to me then think of your commitment to these others who have also agreed to be part of this force. Think of your commitment to the soldier standing next to you for you are all comrades in arms. Without further delay I bid you all to mount up and unfurl the banners of the North Star and Coyote."

He smoothly dropped himself into the saddle to the smiles of Buchanan and the three commanders. There had been no consultation on his speech to the assembled before they left but his words rang true and the soldiers mounted their horses with purpose. As they rode past the palace all of the nobility watched from the parapet, many of them saluting their own soldiers who formed part of the force. It took some time before they all passed but eventually the palace was left behind them and they were truly on their way. Quin looked to Buchanan, at his side.

"Thank you for what you told me about women," he said so only Buchanan could hear him. "We both were nervous but we talked through it. The wedding night and the honeymoon will stay with me forever. Truly, we are well matched and think alike on so many things."

"I am glad to hear it," said Buchanan. "Now that you have spent time at Angel Falls do you prefer it or Bridal Falls?"

"They are both special places to me," replied Quin. "I won't pick one over the other. This country is truly beautiful but now I find myself longing for the plains of the northern part of my father's kingdom, and the desert of the southern part. I just hope there is still something left of it when we get there."

The look on Quin's face was one Buchanan had seen before, years ago when King Steven had finally amassed an army to go up against the Mad Titan. Buchanan had been but a soldier then, now he was a general, helping another young prince to fulfill his destiny. Preferring to think of it as a good omen Buchanan suggested they pick up the pace to get out of the forest before nightfall and Quin agreed, both of them urging their horses faster.

Back at the palace Ileana retreated inside the tent to calm herself. Rhodes requested entry and sat before her as she rested on a chair. Already, he was concerned at how a light seemed to have been extinguished within her with the departure of Lord Buchanan.

"Would you like to leave immediately M’Lady, or on the morrow?" he asked. "The King has offered some soldiers to escort us back. If we break camp now it will be still be dark when we arrive so I would counsel to leave in the morning."

"Morning is fine," she replied, a little distracted. "Rhodes, you've been there for the training. What are their chances?"

"As good as any force," he said. "The recruits were eager and took instruction well from the veterans. It will be a good balance. The addition of Thorn's 250 experienced soldiers will be a great addition overall. M’Lord is a seasoned soldier and well respected by many. He will return. I have faith in that, M’Lady."

Ileana smiled slightly and thanked Rhodes. He left to coordinate the logistics of breaking down their tents in the morning. She sat with her hands clasped over her belly, trying not to let the fear that slunk in the shadows of her mind, sink its claws into her. A servant from the palace appeared with an invitation from the Queen to spend the rest of the afternoon and dinner in her presence. Accepting the invitation she stood and walked outside through the now empty encampment. Without the 1500 soldiers it seemed like a ghost town to her and she found the hairs on the back of her neck raising at the eeriness of it all. Part of her wished she had told Rhodes to leave immediately. When she entered the Queen's private reception room Peg came immediately to her.

"How are you holding up?" she asked, as she put her arm around Ileana's shoulders. "This is different than when he went to battle against Prince Loke. This is much more intense, even for me. I can't imagine what you're feeling right now."

"I'm in limbo," said Ileana. "There's nothing else that describes it. I'm sad, afraid and I just can't seem to be interested in anything."

"Stay here with us," said Peg. "We can send for Livia."

"No, I'm going back tomorrow," said Ileana. "I need to feel at home and I promised James I would manage the estate in his absence. I can't go back on that now. Have you seen the sorceress?"

"No, she hasn't been around much," answered Peg, sounding a little puzzled. "I thought for sure she would be around for the wedding as she does like a party but she seems to have gone into retreat."

"How is Isabella holding up?" asked Ileana. "Three days with Quin isn't enough. I know I only had the wedding night but we were together before that."

"She's brave," said Peg. "They're staying here for a couple of days then will return to her estate with the Queen and the Princesses. My girls adore them and I think the feeling is mutual. Those four girls have never had such freedom as they've had here. We may have let that genie out of the bottle. I have to give Queen Camilla credit. She could have kept them cooped up in her suite but she's been open to them experiencing life as we know it. I think she looks forward to changing things in their kingdom."

Ileana smiled and for the remainder of the afternoon they spoke of many things. Occasionally they were joined by King Steven, and even Queen Camilla herself who felt much the same as Ileana did. When dinner was announced it was a casual affair and the conversation was kept on things other than the war. When it was over Ileana excused herself to return to the tent, wanting some time to herself. Before she reached there Rhodes came to her.

"M’Lady, I have looked everywhere for Tom and he is nowhere to be found," he said. "I have asked your dresser Beth where he is and she won't answer. She just cries and clutches at her crucifix. You must talk to her."

Ileana entered the tent and found Beth seated on one of the chairs in the reception area. She waved Rhodes away although he stayed close by outside the tent.

"Beth, do you know where Tom is?" asked Ileana calmly.

"Yes, M'Lady," replied Beth in a frightened voice. "He made me promise not to tell until it was a certain time."

"He made you promise," restated Ileana. "Where is he?" Beth looked at Ileana again as she clutched at the crucifix that her mistress suddenly realized belonged to Tom. "Beth, tell me the truth, now."

"He has gone with the company," she said. "He kept begging Lord Buchanan to go with him. He's been training as a soldier on his off times without either of you knowing."

"Why would Tom just go and not say anything?" asked Ileana, still trying to remain calm.

"He was shown a vision," stammered Beth. "If he wasn't with Lord Buchanan at a certain time then M'Lord would die. Tom has to help him so he lives and returns to you."

"Why are you wearing Tom's crucifix?" asked Ileana gently. "Is it a token of his love for you?"

Beth nodded her head wordlessly. "We joined last night, in my bed," she said. "He gave me this and pledged to marry me upon his return. If I carry his child he said he would openly claim the child as his. We have resisted feeling this way, M'Lady but with him set on leaving I just ...."

Beth burst into tears again and Ileana held her. She couldn't be angry at Tom if he believed that strongly that he could save James from death then she would take him at his word. But she was concerned that he hadn't married Beth before he left as it wouldn't have taken long with Erasmus still in the castle. She would protect the young woman as best she could if Beth was pregnant. It raised one more question. If the Sorceress shared the vision with Tom why hadn't she told Ileana about it? Where was she?

Chapter 36>>

Series Masterlist

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#bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #buckybarnes original female character #medieval bucky #bucky barnes au #james buchanan barnes au #call to war #duty #joaquin torres

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thislovintime · 2 years

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CSNY rehearsing for Woodstock at Peter Tork’s house (photo © Tom Gundelfinger O’Neal/Reelin In The Years Photo Archive, 1969 - information and image via Morrison Hotel Gallery); Peter Tork and Stephen Stills, photographed by Nurit Wilde.

“I liked Peter right away. I thought he was a really nice guy. He was very warm and very open and willing to talk and communicate and so forth. I knew him before I ever saw him perform. But Pete has had a great effect on the way I perform. The way he used to move, the way he used his accent, his whole attitude toward the theater, the entire theater, gave him a great basis from which to work. [...] For quite a time we hung out together and did a lot of things together. My roommate, John Hopkins, Peter and I decided we were each bored with singing by ourselves and decided to sing together. So we formed a trio—Peter played banjo and John and I played guitar and it was really neat. [...] We all got bored after a while with the trio, so John went to Long Island to teach guitar. Peter went back to Connecticut a couple of times and then to Venezuela with his family. I tried to get a rock and roll band together and if Peter had been around then, who knows, he might have been in it! [...] The quality I respect, more than anything else in Peter, is his honesty. More than any person I know, Peter gives of himself. If you have a problem you can always depend on him for some kind of answer or some kind of suggestion, no matter what it is. He doesn’t worry about offending you, because he just wants to be honest. To me, that’s being a true friend.“ - Stephen Stills, Tiger Beat, June & July 1967

“[David] Crosby kidnapped me from a hotel we were staying at on Wilshire Boulevard and took me to a party at Peter Tork’s house in the Hollywood Hills.

Peter was winding down his service with the Monkees and was very much a part of the scene. His parties were legendary, days-on-end affairs with great Sunset Strip and Laurel Canyon characters, plenty of music, sex, dope, the whole enchilada. I was looking forward to checking it out. Plus there was someone there Croz wanted me to meet. The house was at the top of the Hills overlooking the city. We banged on the front door, the usual cloud of smoke drifted out, and suddenly we were in a living room filled with all sorts of people jamming. My eye went right to a kid pounding the shit out of the piano, playing a fabulous boogie with Brazilian overtones. ‘Wow! Who’s that?’ I asked, half listening, not wanting to miss a note. David smiled. ‘That’s the guy I want you to meet — that’s Stills.’” - Graham Nash, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life (2013)

“The Mayan was a two-masted Alden schooner built in 1947 that Croz had bought in 1967 with $22,500 borrowed from Peter Tork.” - Graham Nash, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life (2013)

“[J]ust everybody tried to take advantage of the Monkees and then turned their backs when they began to slip: I saw Peter do a real lot of things for Steve Stills but there was a time when Peter wasn’t allowed on Stills’ property when the Rolling Stones were visiting. Poor Peter, he bought David Crosby a boat and stuff but they all bled him dry with peace signs and bullshit.” - Lynne Randell, quoted in Monkeemania: The True Story of The Monkees (1997)

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qqueenofhades · 1 year

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Hello, loving your writing and every day headcanons. I was wondering what are your thoughts about Bi Hob possible being canon or if you think is mostly fanon? I never thought of it explicitely in the comics but in the show some things Ferdinand did makes me like the idea of Hob discovering or exploring his sexuality. I love this thinking that you can't be an immortal being and simply be straight.

First off, thank you for the break from politics! I appreciate it. (Appreciate all my politics anons too, but y'know. Pace yourself.)

Second, I think that Bi Hob is at least implicitly canon, though not (yet? they say hopefully) explicitly so. IIRC, Ferdinand Kingsley has just been like "of course it's a queer relationship," he posted tons of Dreamling memes on his social media when the show first aired, he and Tom Sturridge were eyefucking each other so much that I had to ask within ten minutes of my first watch (knowing nothing about Sandman) if they were gonna be a thing, and a member of the writing team has confirmed that they leaned into the romantic Dreamling overtones. So it's not just a case where fandom sees two attractive dudes and ships them together regardless of whether text/subtext is meant to reinforce that, but something that was definitely and consciously acted/written in a particular way. We will have to see how or if they build on that for s2, but it was already made a WHOLE lot more Latently Homosexual than the comics, and deliberately so.

(Also: No. No, you just can't live forever and be vanilla straight. Not even remotely possible.)

#anonymous #ask

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dustedmagazine · 4 months

Text

Joris Rühl — Feuilles (Umlaut)

Photo by Eric Sneed

French clarinetist Joris Rühl has worked in a variety of composed and improvised contexts with musicians like Michel Donéda, Xavier Charles, Ninh Lê Quan, Eve Risser, Axel Dörner and as a member of Orchestra Onceim. But by my count, Feuilles (leaves in French) is the first release centered around his compositions. Over the course of 50 minutes a group of like-minded musicians including the composer on clarinet, clarinetist Xavier Charles, Jonas Kocher on accordion and Toma Gouband on percussion navigate their way through the patiently modulating open-form composition. Rühl’s orchestration maximizes the full range of microtonalities, rich overtones and burred timbres of paired clarinets, Kocher’s command of the accordion’s reedy shimmers and half-stopped wheezes, and Gouband’s expansive, delicate palette of drums, percussion and abraded surfaces activated with mallets, stones, branches and other found materials.

The release is accompanied by four video excerpts from the recording session, revealing some of the strategies employed. The two clarinetists sit across from each other enveloping the exacting textures and timbres of Gouband’s gestural activities and Kocher’s hushed, organ-like harmonics and open-bellows hisses groans and gusts. Watching Gouband as he thoughtfully chooses from his table of drum sticks, leafy branches, array of smooth and coarsely textured stones to activate bells, tuned bowls, cymbals and a large floor tom and transverse bass drum is transfixing. These clips provide an intimate sense of the balance of form and freedom as the four traverse Rühl’s score.

But on to the recording itself. The piece begins with hushed harmonics colored by the micro abrasions of rubbed stones and the resonant sounding of a beaten drum. The four patiently let the sound accrue over the course of the first eight minutes of the piece, letting densities subtly ebb and flow. The introduction of pattering percussion and the gently welling of accordion chords signals a shift toward a more active section of the piece as dynamics build. Skirling clarinets pierce the calm like oscillating sine tones, morphing into buzzing overtones and whistling harmonics that settle in to lower registers buoyed by low end accordion. And then things break into counterpoint honking clarinet lines cascading against thundering drum resonances. The piece progresses with a section of atonal hocketed lines transitioning to sputtered percussive reed pops, key clicks and metallic crumples resolving into long tones that quaver against each other. Here, hints of tonality provide an effective contrast to what has proceeded. As the piece moves toward its final section, densities gather around the lower registers of the instruments and the pacing slows to mirror the hushed opening moments of the piece. Rühl’s compositional form and the masterful reading by the members of the group weaves all of these morphing elements into an engulfing variegated whole.

Michael Rosenstein

#Joris Rühl #feuilles #umlaut #michael rosenstein #albumreview #dusted magazine #xavier charles #jonas kocher #toma gouband #contemporary composition #improvisation

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bpdcarmyberzatto · 2 years

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I genuinely, wholeheartedly would enjoy sitting down with mr cult man himself tom cruise and asking him about if he purposely kept putting gay subtext and overtones on maverick despite the many women he’s forced into relationships with in the movies

#cao posts #like it cannot be a coincidence especially not in tgm he’s had 30 years to take in perceptions of mavgoose and icemav

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liliththeblackmage · 6 months

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Sanguivore, some thoughts

I made a post on here about a year ago about seeing Creeper play a headline show at London’s Roundhouse, a show which brought an end to the era of their last album, Sex Death and the Infinite Void, and an end to their time with American creativity devouring label Roadrunner. it also came with a new song Ghost Brigade to set the tone of the new era and hold fans over for a full release at some point in the future.

This show came at a really interesting time for my relationship with the band, I had been falling out of love with them slowly but surely since the end of their first album cycle back in 2018. A combination of a disappointing ending to the album cycle and very disappointing second album cycle, my tastes changing and a several unpleasant experiences with other fans lead to me being very ready to bookend my fandom of this band with a show, something I’ve done with other bands in the past. Luckily the show went some way to revitalizing my appreciation for them.

In the intervening 11 months, I’ve seen them close out a packed stage at an even more packed Slam Dunk festival, heard Ghost Brigade live and followed the announcement of their third album titled Sanguiovore. A darker, heavier project produced by Grammy award winning Tom Dalgety.

I wanted to collect my feelings on the record as I went through it, a sort of first impressions / general thoughts, mostly focused on the writing and production as that's where my interests generally lie in discussing music.

Further than Forever I really felt like this song struggled to justify its length, its 9 minutes purely because Meatloaf and Steinman did 9 minute songs so we should too. I had to listen to this track several times to fully get my thoughts together on it, and it felt exhausting to get to the end of every time. Despite that the track had some really cool musical motifs and despite it being a pastiche of Steinman, a lot of Creepers uniqueness shows through. There are definitely parts of this song that could have done with ADT or actual double tracking.

Cry To Heaven The Production of this track is really is what makes this track work, if the snare was even a tiny bit less punchy, or the synth less full, it would be all the worse for it. in terms of composition it takes a lot of its moves from Floodland era Sisters Of Mercy, its cheesy yes, but the performances really sell it, everything in terms of the performance is on point, and its very much held up by that production, I genuinely think that no other producer they have worked with could have made this song work. They manage to pull of a unironic up a fifth key change with as straight face, which is an achievement in itself.

Sacred Blasphemy Sonicly this is they’ve come so far to anything they’ve released previously, its got the AFI punkyness with a hint of Revenge era My Chem in it, but its still shown through the lens of this project, with its moody goth overtones. Will stays in a lower register for nearly all of the song, which seems to be a trend in this record. its a very short track, but it hits all the right notes despite that, in the same way AFI’s Sacrifice Theory on The Art of Drowning does. This track makes heavy use of double tracking for both vocals and guitar and it really adds to the atmosphere of the track. This the first track where their new drummer gets to flex their chops over the previous drummers much more wooden performances.

The Balled of Spook and Mercy A slower number, which is appreciated after the last one. The first track to really talk about the narrative in detail. Once again pulling from the Steinman playbook in terms of composition, performance and production, though there are elements of Murray Gold in the track composition, reminding me a lot of his early work on Dr Who. Lyrically, I struggle to place it, it reminds me a lot of folk and country songs that are more of a story with a backing track than a song. The guitar solo interlaced with a harpsichord reminds me a lot of Mike Oldfield for some reason.

Lovers Led Astray I got notes of surf rock in the main guitar motif. In a crude way of describing it, its sounds like the B52s decided to try and make a goth project. (have been reliably been informed this is what The Cramps sound like). I wish in terms of production it leaned into it more, the thick marshal amp sound does it a slight disservice. I really enjoy that the band have embraced synthesizers on the latest record. I think this is my favourite track, purely because of how weird it is. If you want a track that sounds like Judas Priest and Andrew Eldritch made a surf song, this is it.

Teenage Sacrifice This song is a perfect love letter to 80s metal, without losing sight of the tone of the rest of the project. It is VERY apparent that the producer worked with Ghost on some of their best work on this track, pulling out some of the same stellar production choices here that he did on Prequelle. I do wish there was a bit more too the verses musically, as their sparseness does leave you to focus on the lyrics, which are passable without being anything special, a common issue of classic metal which is usually overlooked because the tracks dont slow down to let you think about them.

Chapel Gates The Punk influences return with a vengeance, if Teenage sacrifice was Creeper do Judas Priest, this is Creeper do The Damned. it also has small amounts of the surf influence in it again which is a welcome addition to me. This song has one of the catchiest and most enjoyable choruses and I think this one is going to be a lot of fun to hear live. Much like Sacred Blasphemy it really lets their new drummer show off his skills with a set of complicated fills which would have been unheard of in previous tracks

The Abyss The Abyss is a short musical intro for the next track.

Black Heaven A wonderfully moody goth track, lots of 80s goth and post punk influence, from the slightly off kilter disco adjacent drum beat in the verse (again showing off their new drummers skills here), to the reverb drenched subtractive synths in the background and the minimalist motifs in the first 2/3rds of the song, the bridge and ending of the song drift back into something that fits the rest of the record more, with a ripping melodic guitar solo and layer upon layer of vocals gently taking the song to its end point with a ethereal repeated vocal part

More Than Death The final track on the record, in keeping with their previous releases its a piano and vocal lead ballad. Its certainly their most hopeful of their album closers, compared to Eternity In Your Arms’ I choose To Live and Sex Death and the Infinite Void’s All My Friend. This comes at a cost I believe, those two tracks were written from an incredibly genuine place, barely attached to the narrative of the previous tracks, commenting on the state of the band and the health of its main writers. This track, at first glance anyway, feels artificial in comparison, going through the lyrical motions of a Steinman ballad. In spite of this it is a very enjoyable closer and I think will make an appropriate song to end a set with.

I think my biggest criticism of the album is the lyricism, now lyrics have never really been the biggest strong suit of the band, this is album is no different, I think it sticks out a lot more here because the rest of the composition is so good, whereas the quality of lyrics haven’t really developed much since their singers previous bands early releases.

Overall this album represents a return to form not seen since the 2016 EP ‘The Stranger’ (potentially earlier depending on who you ask). Creeper have embraced what worked about their early work while being able to experiment with new sounds and styles on this record, leading to their best Album by a mile. it’s cheesy yes, but they lean into it in a way that makes this the musical equivalent of a hammer horror film.

#Creeper #sanguivore #Punk #goth #music #new music #metal

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