#and now i get to catch up on the mcr posts. now this is the gay lifestyle babey

[eyelessfaces]

I don't love you like I did yesterday

poe dameron x reader

summary: it’s not because he, poe dameron, gives you more attention and affection than your own boyfriend ever will that you are in love with him — loosely inspired by this post.

warnings: angst, complicated relationships, love triangle?, mentions of marriage, break up, refusing a proposal, internal conflict, doubting your relationship, emotional infidelity? if that's a thing, alcohol consumption. reader wears a dress at some point

tags: f!reader, I don't wanna spoil too much and don't read this if you don't want to be but; mutual pining, love confessions, he fell first AND harder, fluff and,, more

word count: 5.6k

yes. mcr lyrics as a title. in 2024. I know. but don't look at me the lyrics strangely fit so,,

masterlist | taglist | ao3

updates blog: @eyelessupdates

You don’t love him; you are almost sure of that. 

It’s not because you laugh at every single one of his stupid, lame jokes made just for you to laugh and because you blush everytime you catch him staring at you from across the room that you love him. 

It’s not because he, Poe Dameron, gives you more attention and affection than your own boyfriend ever will that you are in love with him.

It’s not because your boyfriend blames you for being too close to him that you are.

It’s not because you wish it would have been Poe down on one knee proposing to you that it is the reason you told Kass you’re not ready for this yet.

And it’s not because you question your situation every single night that it means you have to change anything about it. You should be happy with Kass. You are.

Yet, you wish you were certain of all of that.

It has been two days already, and the guilt keeps eating away at you, like a bacteria gnawing at your feelings, particularly starving for the reasonable part of you that knows you said no for your own well being. 

Kass makes it worse; the dark glances thrown at you whenever you bump into each other during the day and his lame excuses to ditch you whenever you want to talk to him make you feel like a monster, and though you know that it is exactly the way he wants you to feel, you can’t help it.

The situation is hard to swallow and bury deep in the back of your mind when you’re out on missions, and though you rarely ever get distracted because you know how important attention and concentration is in your job, the whirlwind of thoughts has been floating over the surface, and your focus has been off, you know it. And you’re not the only one who knows it.

Your head turns when you feel a light nudge at your arm, having dismissed Poe’s presence in your peripheral vision due to your distraction. His eyebrows raise when you look at him, and he gazes at you like the mist of your thoughts is still present over your face and he wants to shake you awake.

“You alright?” he asks before you look back at your squadron wrapping the mission equipment, setting it back in the ships.

“Yeah,” you breathe out, burying your hands in your pockets. You should feel alright. The mission went well despite your clear lack of attention, and you’ve given your life to the Resistance at this point, so you should be thankful that you succeed in most things you do in its name, right now even, considering the situation.

Poe looks down on the floor, kicking away a small rock there that dribbles down the hill. “You've always been an awful liar” he mutters under his breath, not buying it. 

“Right” you scoff, your head dropping to shake it. He looks back up at you and you can feel his insistent gaze upon you, which eventually makes you break. “I don’t wanna bother you with my stupid problems” 

He snorts, “Come on, you know I’m always here to listen to your stupid problems” he says playfully, nudging your arm with his elbow again. “That are often not that stupid actually” he adds. 

There’s a silence settling between the both of you, and right before Poe aborts and figures you don’t wanna talk about it, you sigh. “Kass proposed.”

“Oh” the sound slips from his mouth, and accurately represents his surprise, his voice dropping a bit from the shock. He doesn’t know what to say, not really. This situation would have been on the list of things he would have never expected or even considered to happen. 

This eventuality had never, ever occurred to him somehow, not yet, and now, all at once, the fear creeps in and becomes real; he is going to have to watch you get married, going to have to sit there amongst guests, he’s going to have to watch you be happy with someone else than him.

But he wants you to be happy, with or without him, so he will watch. It isn’t like he has the choice, anyways.

He lightly clears his throat, trying to dismiss the tight knot starting to form there, and smiles. The worst thing about it is the fact that it is genuine, he is truly happy for you. You deserve this.

Maybe Kass doesn’t, though. He doesn't deserve you. You’re too good for a half assed mechanic like him that, from a professional point of view, fucks up too often to still be there; but from what Poe hears around, it tends to be the same on other levels than just the professional one.

“Well, that’s great! Congrats,” his half cheerful voice wavers a little, but you don’t seem to notice as your lips form a polite smile that slightly turns perplexed, uncomfortable. “What’s wrong about that” he asks now, concerned when he sees your frown. 

Your teeth graze your bottom lip. “I said no.”

“Oh” he watches as you raise your eyebrows, nodding. “I’m sorry” he adds. “I mean–”

“Yeah” you exhale.

“Why?”

That is the real question. Why? Why wouldn’t you want to marry your boyfriend you are supposed to be in love with? Why did you feel so awful at the feeling of his hand over yours when he shot the question?

“I don’t–” you start, thoughts running around your head. You’re not really sure about what you want to say, you’re not even precisely sure why you said no. There were so many reasons, but you couldn’t pick the exact one. “I think I’m not ready.”

Poe doesn't say anything. You stay there upon the small hill you watch your respective teams from. They’re almost done putting everything back.

You think you want to cry. You’re not really sure why. You think you want to dig a hole in that hill and stay hidden there for the rest of time.

“Poe, I don't think I wanna spend the rest of my life with him.” you mutter, looking ahead as if your confession would make you feel less guilty if you didn’t look your friend in the eye. “Is that wrong?” you ask as you turn to him. 

“Yeah, well I don’t blame you” he scoffs, and you do too, knowing how Poe feels about Kass. 

You should have known, it should have been a sign. Poe is kind, compassionate, and when he doesn’t like someone, it is because he has reasons to.

“That’s not wrong.” he continues, his tone serious now. “It would have been wrong if you said yes even though you knew damn well you didn’t want to marry him” he nods. “It's not the end of the galaxy if you said no. He'll get over it”

“Yeah” you sigh. “He keeps acting like it's my fault”

“Really?” he asks, raising an eyebrow in astoundment. He shouldn’t be surprised.

“Yeah. He avoids me and sends me death glares like I murdered his family or something” you snort, realizing the stupidity of it all now that you say it out loud. Kass has always been somehow childish, but this exceeds everything you could expect from him.

“Wow okay” Poe shakes his head, a small exhale of desperation escaping his mouth before he speaks again. “Well, you know how I feel about him, sweetheart.”

“I know” you confirm, sending him a weak smile. He answers you with a pinched one, and as your squad finishes their tasks and starts to gather together, Poe reaches out and squeezes your shoulder reassuringly before turning to join them.

He turns back to you quickly, “You know what? My squadron is having drinks on Coruscant tonight to have some fun before we leave for the week. You should join us” 

You nod and watch him go, and feel the need to take one fat fucking breath before eventually joining everyone else.

—

Even though it is almost dry by now, the stain over your dress is still ridiculously visible. If the girl that had spilled it over you earlier hadn’t profusely apologized for it you would have most likely have had a go at her because of the awful mental state you were in – you were yourself surprised to notice how blatantly dismissive and weary you had been of that incident – it had been nothing compared to the past few days you just had. 

Poe looks over at you, your gaze planted onto your glass of Black Hole as your fingers absentmindedly drum against the table; your choice of drink says it all, and though you might want to get properly drunk, Poe is strictly against it if it means you plan on moping all night long. He finishes his drink, planting a hand over your shoulder as he leans closer to you.

“Wanna go dance now?” Poe shouts in your ear, trying to overlap the loud music blasting. You scoff and shake your head, “I’m not really in the mood”

“That's exactly why we need to,” he affirms with his usual charismatic grin as he takes a hold of your hand and pulls you to the middle of the room anyway. “Come on!” you give in when you realize he’s not really asking, dragging you through the crowd. “You know I'm leaving tomorrow morning, you owe me a dance”

“Okay” you laugh as you put your hands over his shoulders, his coming to rest at either side of your waist. 

You move stiffly at first, your eyes rolling playfully when Poe gives way more energy into it than you do, and despite yourself, you start to smile, and make an effort to match his energy.

Poe spins you around, his movements confident as he tries to cheer you up. "Just follow my lead, okay?" he says, his voice warm and encouraging. He twirls you under his arm smoothly, and you can’t help but laugh as he dips you dramatically, catching you with ease; he’s intimidatingly close to your face before he leans to your ear. “See? I’m not an awful dancer”

“Is there even something you’re not good at at this point,” you rhetorically ask as you both stand straight again, the movement making your head spin a little because of the alcohol. 

“Following orders, probably” he jokes, still swaying with you. You laugh and let your forehead rest over his shoulder, your eyes shutting as you take a deep breath; it might have been the only moment in those past few days where you genuinely let go of all your worries.

“Hey, we should go outside, it’s hot in here. And loud” Poe proposes as you both still sway, his hand gently cradling your back.

“Sure” you nod with a smile. “Wait– I’ll join you there, I’m gonna get us drinks”

There’s a grin plastered over his face and a glint in his eyes as he glances at you when you join him outside, your drinks in hands. The cool night air is a welcome change from the overwhelming warmth inside the cantina.

“What?” you scoff, looking down at yourself, trying to figure out the reason behind his amused expression.

“Nothing” he shrugs off, taking his drink from you, but not before you catch the way his eyes linger on you.

“It’s the stain, isn’t it” you whine and sigh as you pull at the fabric of your dress to observe it. “Didn’t realize it looked that stupid”

He giggles as his mouth is still full of his drink. “It’s stylish” he admits with a cheeky grin.

You scoff and roll your eyes, your giggle fading as you both take a sip of your drinks, the silence between you comfortable as the muffled hum of the cantina’s activity buzzes just behind you. Then, out of nowhere, just as you’re about to talk again, Poe breathes out your name, his expression changing, becoming more serious as you glance at him expectantly.

“I’m in love with you.” he blurts out, like words are falling out of his mouth from being held there for too long. 

You huff out a laugh. “No,” you laugh, the taste of your drink still warm in your throat. You frown a bit when you notice he doesn't waver, doesn't flinch, doesn't drop his expression to admit this is some kind of joke now that he knows it's not working on you. 

“Yes I am” he declares, as serious as he is when he needs to be in his job.

You chuckle, still not fully believing what he's saying. “Are you drunk Poe?” 

“Wha– no– no I’m not” he frowns, his eyebrows knitting together in earnest. “I mean it. I'm in love with you.” he affirms, his eyes searching yours with a seriousness that makes your heart skip a beat.

You pause, taken aback by the tone of his voice – he's sincere, he's not playing around. “You can’t.”

“I know.” he declares with a nod, his gaze never leaving yours. “I just couldn’t keep it to myself anymore” he admits as his expression softens. “I don’t want this to ruin our relationship” he says, his voice calmer now. “And I know you can’t feel the same” he nods, “And that’s okay.” 

You pinch your lips together. You're not sure what to say. You nod eventually, acknowledging it all, processing his declaration. “Well” you say finally, your voice barely louder than a whisper. “I, uh, I’ll go get another drink.”

Your glass is still mostly full.

Poe nods, swallowing with difficulty as he watches you turn and head back inside.

The sounds of laughter as you enter the cantina again make you sick to your stomach.

—

This went awful. He didn’t expect any less. He didn’t expect anything in the first place; his impulsiveness finally got the best of him.

Having to swallow it down and play it like it didn’t happen felt more humbling than every time he has had to admit he made a mistake. Jessika’s story about the maintenance issues with her X-wing is slowly starting to blur, and Poe isn’t even sure she’s still on that topic of that – at this point – one sided discussion, as he can’t help but glance over at you, talking to Karé until he eventually realizes you aren’t there with him anymore. 

“Poe!” Jessika scolds him, making him turn back to her. She sighs, “You’re not even listening”

“Sorry” he apologizes, looking around the room to figure out if you’re still there. “I gotta go, keep that story for later” he nods, patting her shoulder before turning away.

“I just finished telling it,” she huffs out in disbelief, Poe’s repeated apology fading with the music as he disappears through the crowd.

You’re not in the cantina, not anymore. Karé tells him you went out for fresh air, and he finds you on the flight of stairs on the side of the building, hidden from everyone.

"I was looking for you," he halts– you're crying; you're there, sitting on the stairs, looking up from where you were hiding your face in your hands crying. "What's wrong?" he asks, his voice wavering with surprise; he thought you were having a good night despite everything, having fun with Karé, he thought he had been able to make you forget about your problems for a moment. But no, and he obviously knows what’s wrong, because he managed to fuck it all up by confessing his feelings for you without thinking about it twice.

You pinch your lips, trying to repress new tears as you wipe away the ones rolling down your face. "Nothing," you mumble, shaking your head. "It's alright."

Poe sighs softly, walking up to you and sitting down with you. 

He softly nudges your shoulder with his own, “You're rocking that stain,” he says, a small grin over his face. “For what it’s worth, you could even rock a First Order suit, so,” he smiles as he watches you laugh between sniffles. “You don't have to worry about that.”

He sighs, and his tone grows more serious. "I'm sorry I said everything I said. I shouldn't have burdened you with my feelings" he admits. His voice is filled with regret. He should have kept that for himself, for now anyway. “I was caught up in the moment and I didn’t realize it would hurt you more. It was stupid. It was unfair to you." his voice weakens. He looks back at your face. You blink your tears away silently. “I do realize it was possibly the worst moment I could choose to tell you this” 

Poe gently wipes your tears away, before they can reach the bottom of your face.

“I don’t expect anything back from you, you don’t have to worry about that. This doesn’t have to change anything about us”

He kisses your cheek before leaving.

—

If you had to point out positive points about your indirect fight with Kass following his proposal, the fact that you weren’t living with him would be one of them.

The silence in your quarters alone was surely more bearable than the silence that would fill the space if he were there with you, you were sure of that.

And even if it’s been three days already since you rejected his proposal, you have barely talked to him despite going out of your way to try to; he has been hurt by your rejection, and he is keen on making you understand.

You can’t help but wonder if you would have been happier if you had said yes; maybe it would have been easier and maybe you wouldn’t feel so bad even though you still wouldn’t want to marry him, even if it is exactly the way Kass wants you to feel. Maybe saying yes would have been the right decision, after all, and maybe you would be set about your feelings for good with the prospect that you would allegedly spend the rest of your life with him.

Then there's Poe, his words. 

Poe and his words that keep rolling around your head over and over again no matter what you’re doing and no matter what time of the day it is; those about the confession of his love towards you, and those that assured you that Kass would get over your rejection, that it’s not the end of everything, not the end of your relationship with him even if right now, it seems like a deadlock. 

And almost as if it was staged, Kass steps through your door.

“Hey,” he speaks, hands in his pockets. You repeat the same thing quietly, looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to say anything, apologize maybe. He looks around your place before chuckling, pointing and walking over to the table. “It’s just– I forgot my gloves last time I came here and I need them”

“Oh, so that’s it.” you snort darkly, following him close. 

“Yeah, that’s it.” he mutters nonchalantly as he picks up the pair. “What do you even mean” he frowns as he turns back at you, shoving his gloves in his jacket pocket. 

“I mean you've been avoiding me all week and you think it's okay to casually come here just to pick up your stupid pair of gloves?”

“Well, they’re still mine, so” he shrugs. “And again, what do you want me to do” 

You frown. “I don’t know, maybe apologize for your attitude for these past few days first. You’ve been childish”

“I’m childish? You’re the one who’s not ready for marriage.”

You chuckle in disbelief, “Yeah well, I’m sorry for not wanting assured long term with someone that behaves the way you do.” you say, looking at him in the eyes though you would rather be looking everywhere but here at the moment. 

“You know,” you start, readjusting your position onto your feet. “I’ve been wondering, asking myself all of those questions, what was wrong with me for rejecting you.” he looks at you, hand still stuck in his pocket, waiting for you to make your point.

“And that’s what you wanted, right? But the one thing I really asked myself was ‘Why did he even propose’, because you don’t even care that much about me, so I don’t understand” you shake your head. “You shouldn’t have asked the question if you weren’t ready for the other answer”

He sighs, eyebrows raising slightly as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, I shouldn’t have asked at all, you’re right.” he scoffs. “I realized that, and I should have realized when we started to drift away” you frown softly, waiting for him to continue. You’re not sure what he truly means beyond that. “I asked you to marry me to be sure”

“Sure of what”

He chuckles and huffs out your name like what he means to say is evident; “You’re in love with Poe” his eyes soften, his expression relaxing as yours hardens. “Don’t try to tell me otherwise or I’ll go crazy” he laughs nervously.

“Look, I get it. He looks pretty damn close to perfect. But you should have done something about it. I shouldn’t have been the one to realize it.” he says. You sigh softly, taken aback. “This is why I’ve been avoiding you. To try to come to terms with it. Accept it.” 

Knowing this is the reason Kass proposed somehow makes it simultaneously better and worse. But he’s right; he’s fucking right, you’re in love with Poe and that is exactly why you were crying on those stairs the night before Poe left for his mission, maybe it is time to face it for good and to stop trying to convince yourself that you’re just confused because of everything that has been happening in your relationship lately.

“I’m sorry” your voice is poisoned by guilt. If it feels awful for you, it must be even worse for him. He scratches his forehead awkwardly, not really knowing what to say to you. “I tried to deny it to keep it fair for you. But I think you’re right.” admitting it to him, the man you’re supposed to be with and have feelings for feels even worse than having to realize it yourself. “I’m sorry Kass.”

Kass pinches his lips in a defeated smile, “I can’t hold you back.” he huffs out in evidence. “He is too” he adds after a pause. “In love with you, I mean. It’s so blatantly obvious” 

You scoff, shaking your head. “I know” 

“So you can work this out” he declares with a weak smile. “I won’t be an asshole about it” he mumbles. “I should be angry but I’ve tried to accept it for a while.”

You nod, somehow grateful he is so understanding, feeling sorry that it’s been so transparent for him for so long. Not everyone would let it play like this. "Thank you, Kass."

He nods in return before sighing deeply, the weight of the past few days lifting slightly from his shoulders. “I wish you well. I mean it”

You nod again, tears welling up in your eyes. “You too.”

Your heart tightens when his look lingers over you before he turns away and exits your quarters; both relief and guilt weigh over you, and the silence that fills your room now feels much different than before.

—

You don’t love him; you are sure of that. It feels wrong and even though you still feel some sort of affection towards him, you’re not sure you can be friends anymore given how you left things off.

On the other side, when Poe hops off his X-Wing ladder after a week of being away, you don't know how to act around him anymore. You don’t know if you should go ahead and tell him everything you’ve ever wanted to tell him or if you should just pick the opposite option and avoid him as much as possible to try to ease your conscience a little. 

And you do. You busy yourself with work as much as possible, avoiding running into him as much as possible, but eventually, he doesn’t really give you a choice. 

“Are we okay? You didn’t even welcome me back. It’s been four days” it hasn’t even been twenty seconds since the meeting ended; the meeting you spent all your time trying to focus on instead of him. 

His stupid flight suit is opened in a way that reveals his gray tank top and lets the chain around his neck slightly peek, and suddenly nothing about the First Order supply depot infiltration matters anymore. 

“We are. I was busy” you affirm – you’re technically not lying. Though you were keeping yourself busy on purpose.

“I bet you were”

You frown. “Hey what do you m–”

“Kass talked to me.” he dodges. 

“Oh” your voice drops, the idea of that scene so unnatural. “What did he say”

He shrugs slightly. “I think you know” 

That’s a good thing they talked, somehow, no matter how much the idea terrifies you. It lifts a weight off your shoulders to know you won’t have to explain to Poe how you left things off with Kass, because you would almost rather get interrogated by the First Order than have to think about it again. “He was pretty mature about it, I’ll give him credit for that.” Poe affirms with a grin, causing you to huff out a laugh. “He also said he's resigning from the Resistance. ‘Says it has nothing to do with you, he's been thinking about it for a while” he nods with a pinch of his lips.

“Oh, okay” your eyebrows raise in surprise. “Well, ships will suddenly do better magically” 

He snorts. “I’m just glad I never let him take care of mine. I think Jess was complaining about that the other day” you laugh, and he smiles at you endearingly as he watches you. “So, are we okay?” he asks more seriously, though a faint smile lingers over his face.

“Yeah, yeah, we are.” you nod, weakly smiling back at him. “It’s just been a rough couple of weeks” you admit as he gives you an empathetic smile in response.

“I know what I want but I don’t know if I’m ready,” you eventually declare cautiously, not wanting to hurt him or make him feel like you're trying to push him away. “It has all gone so fast and I think I want things to slow down a bit.” he nods understandingly before being obliged to turn when someone in the briefing room calls his name; he holds his hand up to have them wait and rests that same hand over your shoulder when he turns back to you, his gaze holding yours.

“Look– I don’t want you to jump right into this if you’re not a hundred percent sure about it.”  he declares with as much conviction he has when he fights for what’s right.

“This is my thing– to jump head first into everything. That's why I acted the way I did the other night. And it was stupid considering the situation and some part of you probably hates me for it somehow so you have to be smarter about this” he insists. “And I know you will be. And even if it’s in one week or one year or five, I can handle it”

“Okay,” you mutter feebly, his firm gaze over you making your stomach flutter.

He turns back and glances at the person who was calling for him earlier, turning back to you. He hesitates, looking like he wants to say more but is unsure if he should.

“Alright. I got stuff to take care of” he eventually says with a faint sigh, like being teared out of that conversation with you physically hurts him.

“Okay Commander” you grin teasingly. He smiles and kisses the top of your head, your hand instinctively resting over his arm despite your decision to maintain some distance for the moment. 

"You know where to find me if you need anything," he says quietly, his hand lingering on your shoulder for a moment longer before he steps away.

You’re still not sure what you really want as you watch him walk away, sending easy smiles to his peers as he reviews details with them for the next mission. 

You think about it all over again, as you remain here in the back of the room, leaning against the wall; the way he looked at you, the understanding in his eyes, his patience and willingness to wait – it all seems so easy with him that jumping right in suddenly doesn’t make you so afraid anymore.

—

The sky isn’t particularly clear tonight. One could have picked a more scenic place to come rest to, one where clouds wouldn’t be covering D’Qar’s two moons like a thin, old veil ripped to shreds.

Poe turns at the unexpected sound of boots ruffling against the grass, a small smile growing over his face when you grunt softly as you sit down next to him.

“You lied when you said I’d know where to find you, because I’ve looked for you everywhere before finally finding you out there” you sigh softly, drawing a laugh out of him, his eyes crinkling softly.

He shrugs, “You still found me, so I technically didn't lie” he says with a smile.

“You've got a point,” you huff out, settling beside him. The air is cool, cooler than it has been those past few days. You can’t help your lips turning into a smile as Poe's face softly glows in the faint light of both moons, his gaze gentle as he looks over at you.

His eyes twinkle with amusement when he talks again, interrupted when you shift to press your lips to his, his words quickly lost on both of you. His voice fades into a small sigh against your mouth as his hand immediately, almost instinctively cups the side of your face. Your hands grip the lapel of his shirt tightly, gently pulling him closer to deepen the kiss; Poe’s chuckle vibrates against your lips as you pull away, a slight flush visible over his cheeks.

“What is this?” he asks amused, the look of surprise genuine over his face. This goes against everything you told him you wanted with him for now.

“This is me being smarter about this, being the bigger person.” you affirm in an attempt to sound confident, but you’re still slightly out of breath, your heart racing.

Poe looks at you with a teasing, feigned impressed expression before he goes in and kisses you back, the press of his lips soft yet firm against yours. 

Everything around you seems to fade away as you make out for a beat, losing yourselves in this, the soft breeze of the evening tickling both of your faces though your face heats up even more when his thumb traces your cheek.

When he finally pulls back, Poe's hand is quick to find your own, his fingers fiddling and lacing with yours, his gaze on you still intense. “So much for going slow, huh?”

You chuckle, “Yeah, fuck that” you reply with a grin, feeling lighter than you have in weeks.

You both fall silent for a while; it is rare for Poe Dameron to not run his mouth for longer than a few minutes, but the back and forth of his thumb over your hand and your head leaning over his shoulder seems to be enough for him at this moment.

You shatter the silence the moment the question crosses your mind. “What would you have done if I actually married him?”

He takes a deep breath, like the weight of the question takes a toll on him.

He smirks, “This would have probably made me join the First Order” he jokes in an attempt to lighten the mood. You huff out a laugh. 

“Honestly?” he asks, his tone serious now. He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t really know. What would have been the best option? The least worst? “I don’t know. But I would have skipped the wedding for sure.” you softly smile at him with a look of compassion, momentarily rendered speechless by his revelation. 

He pinches his lips in a weak, beaten smile as he clearly pictures the scene in his mind again, just the way he did when you announced to him that Kass had proposed before eventually telling him you had refused. “Sorry. it would have hurt my poor loverboy heart way too much” he scoffs light heartedly though it’s barely a joke, just the truth.

“Well, next time I get married you’ll be the first person I invite” you promise with a light nudge at him, your hand reassuringly squeezing his.

“Next time huh?” he retorts with a playful smile, one that you mirror before the gentle push of his lips renders you breathless again. “Not if I invite you first sweetheart,” he jokes with one last kiss, your laugh barely audible.

Poe’s thumb traces circles on the back of your hand when he notices your gaze is there now, a faint smile remaining over your face. “Hey” he calls, urging you to look up at him. “One day at the time, okay?” he cocks his head forward, his voice barely above a whisper. “We don’t have to figure everything out right now.”

There’s no rush with him, no doubt, just the certainty that whatever happens, it will seem like the easier thing in the world; 

Because you love him; you are sure of that.

—

any and every comment is greatly appreciated!!

star wars taglist: @lockleysgrl @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction @alexxavicry @mystinky-butt @anightshift @whatthefishh @dameronshandholder @campingwiththecharmings @mintgreen24 @spider-starry @jakecockley @cocodiem @spxctorsslxt @friedwings @luxisluxurious @stvnnie @dowbastan @il0vebeingdelulu @hammerhead96 @unear7hly @pigeonmama

also tagging people who seemed interested in this from the post related to this, please ignore me if you actually don't care<3 @lotusbxtch @piptoost @klillaah @lounilu @moonpascal

[newtthetranswriter]

He Would Want You To Be Happy

(Art by me, it is also being posted to day over on my main blog)

Summary: Nacht was never a fan of his birthday for obvious reasons. Asta wants to celebrate it and after Yami foils Y/n’s plan to keep it a secret, Y/n needs to comfort and talk some sense into the Shadow mage.

Word count: 4314

Paring: Nacht Faust x Gn! Reader

Warnings: Talk about Morgen's death and Nacht’s self deprecation, talk of smoking and cigarettes, possibly ooc Nacht, possibly grammar or spelling mistakes

A/n: just wanted to say Happy Birthday to Nacht, the moody mage who would love MCR if he ever listened to it. Any way If you couldn’t tell this is just something i wrote for Nacht from Black Clovers Birthday. It’s a little angsty and a little fluffy, but I hope y’all enjoy. Anyways, have a great day and Remember to hydrate or diedrate. (we wouldn’t want y’all ending up like Morgen now would we.)

    I’ve known for a long time that Nacht hates his birthday, and like every year before now I was planning to ignore it like I agreed when I first heard his reason for not liking it. Sadly it seemed that not all of the Bulls were aware of Nacht’s past and well Asta being Asta, started pestering me about when the Vice Captain’s birthday was. I had tried to just focus on going on missions and ignoring the young man, but damn is he persistent. His pestering lasted from the moment I left mine and Nacht’s room in the morning to when I went back to bed, of course he wouldn’t pester me when the Shadow mage was around but it was near non-stop.

    All of this led to now. It’s two days before Nacht’s birthday, and all I wanted was for Asta to get hung up on something else. I was sitting in the dining hall just enjoying my breakfast with the rest of the squad, minus Nacht as he was off doing who knows what, when Asta rushed into the room. Trying to hide my groan, I tried to focus on my food.

    “Oh, Y/n you’re still here. Now, please tell me?” He said vaguely, knowing I already knew what he was asking of me. His vague question caught the interest of everyone else in the room. The whole squad quickly turned to look at me, curious to what the magicless boy wanted.

    I sighed before responding as quickly and with as little information as possible. “Asta, I’ve told you a thousand times already, it’s not happening.” Ignoring the looks of my squadmates I continued eating.

    I felt as Asta moved closer to where I sat, clearly trying to catch my gaze and attempting to persuade me with puppy dog eyes. “Come on, Y/n. You’re the only person here who would know, please?” Like clockwork, Asta was back to begging. “Ooooo what if I promise to do all your chores for a month?” And now he’s one to poorly thought out bribery.

    Apparently Asta’s poor offer finally piqued Yami’s interest. “Hey kid, you already do all the chores around here. And what are you asking them? From the sounds of it they’ve told you no quite a few times.” Yami spoke, pulling Asta’s attention away from me.

    Like an alarm went off in his empty head, Asta quickly spoke. “I just realized you probably know the answer to my question too.” He quickly moved to be standing next to where Yami sat. The Captain raised his eyebrow as if prompting the boy to go on. “Well I was wondering when is Vice Captain Nacht’s birthday? I’ve been asking Y/n because their his partner and I figured they’d know it but they refuse to tell me anything about it. And just now I remembered that you have known the Vice Captain for a long time.” Asta rambled on.

    Yami let out a laugh before responding. “Nacht’s birthday is April 30th, but why do you want to know?” The Captain answered without even acknowledging my signals to shut up.

    “That’s in two days!! Anyway I wanted to know so we could do something to celebrate his first birthday back in the Clover Kingdom and with the Squad.” Asta explained.

    “I don’t think that’s a great idea Asta. There’s a reason -” I tried to explain before Yami cut me off. 

    “That’s a great idea. Go for it kid.” The Captain encouraged with a laugh as Charmy, Vanessa and Gordon started offering ideas on what the party should be about.

    While the majority of the squad was excited to have a party, whether they cared about the reason or not, I quickly left the table. Hoping to find a way for Nacht to not have to deal with the rambunctious squad on a day he normally likes to be left alone on. Before I could get very far Yami stopped me. “Come on Y/n, you know Nacht needs to loosen up a bit, and a birthday party is perfect.” 

   “You know that’s not what will happen, you also know why I wouldn’t tell Asta in the first place. Now if you’ll excuse me I have things I have to do.” I said in a rather aggressive whisper. It’s true that Nacht could stand to lighten up, but something just feels wrong about all this. Especially Yami encouraging it, he knows what Morgen’s death did to Nacht. Trying not to focus too much on what I was going to do two days from now, I started to get ready for the rest of the day.

   Luckily by the time Nacht returned to the base that night everyone had stopped talking about the surprise party they were planning. Unfortunately, Nacht is a very perspective person and quickly picked up on the fact that something was off. Being the only person he truly trusted, he quickly approached me. “What happened while I was out?” He asked voice never changing from his normal level tone.

   I took a moment to finalize my thoughts on what was being planned by our insane squadmates. “Nothing much, just Luck stole some of Magna’s food again and the resulting ‘fight’ has left everyone tired.” It wasn’t a complete lie. Luck did steal Magna’s food again and the fight lasted most of the afternoon leaving everyone annoyed with the duo. Even though Nacht was well aware of the chaos the two caused, it was clear from the way he squinted his eyes at me that he didn’t fully believe what I was saying. 

  “Okay, let’s head to bed. If everyone is finally this quiet we may actually be able to sleep a decent amount tonight.” I let out a sigh of relief accepting the hand he offered, glad that he wasn’t going to press further on the subject.

Time skip to April 30th

  I had accepted that no matter what I did, Nacht would have to deal with what the rest of the squad had planned. If he gets upset about it then so be it, I tried to prevent it and even warned Yami that it was a bad Idea and he knew it. I just hope Nacht believes that I did in fact try to stop it. Okay and maybe there is a part of me that hopes he is okay with it and actually has a good time.

  Anyway the morning was the same as always, except for Yami making Nacht stay at the base because he had a so-called ‘emergency captain’s meeting’ to attend and wanted Nacht to make sure no one blew up the base. With the fact that Nacht was forced to stay back at the base, breakfast was quieter than it normally is. Most of the squad tried to hide their plans for the evening and the others had already left the base to get what supplies they had been trusted to get.

  The rest of the day was pretty much the same, everyone quietly trying to bring in food or decorations for the planned party without disturbing the Vice Captain. Which was admittedly harder said than done as Nacht decided he was going to sit in the living room of the base reading and occasionally chatting with Gimodelo. You might also be wondering what I was doing during this time, and well the answer is simple. I’ve been trying to make sure neither Nacht or his Devil actually figure out what's happening before everything is ready, while also trying to act normal.

   Turns out I’m not the best actor, as just after Vanessa walked through with yet another crate of booze, Nacht decided to speak up. “I know what you’re doing and I’m not participating in any of it.” I just looked at him shocked. “Don’t try and hide it. I sent Plumede to check on things here the other day while I was out and they informed me that the others plan on throwing a party.” He explained, voice never changing from its normal tone. 

   I took a moment to think of how to respond, finally deciding to stick with my original plan for when he found out. “I tried to tell them it was a bad idea, but you know how Yami is. He likes to mess with you and I bet him encouraging Asta and the rest to go through with a big party is just another one of his plans to get under your skin.” I started to explain, expecting a sigh or comment about how much he dislikes Yami, but when I looked back at him, he was frozen. His face mostly still showed no emotion but his eyes were slightly wide, like he just remembered something important. “Nacht? Are you okay? I am truly sorry I know how difficult today can be for you. I really did try to keep Asta from finding out but again Yami likes to cause trouble and he wouldn’t listen to me.”

  It was silent for a few moments before Nacht stood up and turned towards the door. However before he could reach it, Asta busted through the door. “Oh, Vice Captain, I was just coming to get you. I also wanted to say Happy birthday.” Asta spoke, not receiving any response from the quiet mage, who just kept walking to the door. “Uh Y/n, is everything okay with the Vice captain?” Asta asked as he watched Nacht leave, not even bothering to acknowledge his squadmates trying to get his attention.

  “No Asta, nothings okay. This is why I didn’t want to tell you his birthday.” I said quickly before going after Nacht. “Nacht wait a second please. Talk to me.” I called after the tall man, unfortunately it seemed he was unreachable at the moment. As I finally made it out of the hideout about to reach out for him, Nacht used his magic to slip into the shadows and disappear. Dropping my extended arm, I stayed in my spot for a moment just staring at the shadow my boyfriend had used as an escape route.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the rest of the squad coming to find out where Nacht had run off too. “Is everything alright? The Vice captain looked upset.” It was Finral who spoke first. His question was followed by a chorus of ‘is he okay?’s and ‘what happened?’s .

  I sighed before deciding it was probably best to just explain what I know. “First, I don’t know if everything is alright, I’ve never seen Nacht like that. Second, what happened was Asta pushing to find out Nacht’s birthday after being told to drop it multiple times.” My voice was a bit harsher than intended but I was worried that Nacht wasn’t going to come back.

  When I turned to the group I could tell everyone was confused, well almost everyone. Noelle on the other hand decided to voice her thoughts on the matter. “So, what you’re saying is that Nacht stormed off because Asta found out about his birthday? That’s just dumb, what’s the big deal? People who care about him want to celebrate him so he should be happy.” While her statement was harsh it was reasonable.

  “It’s not the fact that people want to celebrate his birthday. It’s the fact that it’s his birthday.” I started to explain. “He’s never liked his birthday, when he was younger it was because he would constantly be compared to his younger twin. But around two years before I met him, his brother died and now his birthday just serves as a reminder of what he lost. When we met and I asked about his birthday, he made it clear that he doesn’t celebrate it or want to acknowledge it in any way. I agreed and that’s why I didn't want to tell Asta, I didn’t want him to make a big show and upset Nacht. But fucking Yami had to open his dumb mouth and try and cause trouble.” I rambled out, trying to explain why Nacht was upset.

  I watched as most of the squad nodded in understanding, with a few mumbles of ‘sorry’s. Once again Noelle decided to speak up more than the rest. “Okay he lost his brother, but wouldn’t his brother want him to be happy with friends instead of alone brooding somewhere?” Again valid point.

  Sighing, I responded to the royal. “While I agree with you on that, Nacht has never been the kind to think like that. He’s pessimistic, and it’s hard to get through to him on things like this. Anyway, you all enjoy the food and stuff you prepared. I'm going to wait for Nacht to get back.” WIth that I headed inside, leaving the rest of the Bulls outside with the barbeques they had set up in front of the base.

  At around 8pm, the doors to the base opened. Hearing the creak I sat up straight hoping it was Nacht, but unfortunately I was greeted by the distinct mana of Yami. I groaned before going back to waiting in silence. Sadly Yami had other plans. “You know you should go talk to him.”He said, voice gruff as always but with a hint of concern for his old friend.

  “Why do you care? You’re the one who told everyone his birthday and said he just needs to loosen up.” I said, giving him a glare before looking back to where my hands rested in my lap. “Besides, where would I even look for him?” I said quietly.

   I heard Yami huff as he sat next to me on the couch. “I’d bet he’s probably in the same place I found him on the first birthday after Morgen’s death.” I turned slightly, raising a brow at him. “I’m trying to say he went to sit and wallow at Morgen’s grave. It’s where I found him multiple times before he met you.” Yami explained. “Also, the idiots told me what you said about me wanting to cause trouble for Nacht, and while it’s not entirely a lie, I just wanted Nacht to realize he can finally be happy.” With that Yami stood up leaving me to think on what he said.

  Deciding that both Yami and Noelle had a point. Nacht does need to realize that it’s okay to be happy and enjoy his birthday with the people who care about him. After thinking about what I was going to say, I left to go get my boyfriend and hopefully talk some sense into him.

  I had visited Morgen’s grave before so I knew exactly where to go, and after my conversation with Yami it was no surprise to see the cloaked figure sitting near the headstone. What was a surprise though was the distinct smell of cigarettes wafting from the shadow mage. Before I could say anything I heard the sound of Gimodelo talking, and decided to listen for a moment.

  “Mister Nacht, why are you out here alone? Y/n is probably worried after you left without a word.” The small imp said to his friend. While Gimodelo doesn't like most people other than Nacht himself, he’s always been kind to me so it was no surprise he was worried about my feelings on the situation. “Also when did you start smoking again? Y/n won’t like that.”

  “Be quite Gimodelo, Y/n won’t mind because Y/n won’t know. Now buzz off.” With the command to buzz off the imp disappeared. I should have been upset by the wording but all I could focus on was how broken his voice sounded.

  Deciding Nacht had enough time to brood alone, I moved to stand next to his sitting form. “You know, if you really are smoking again you’re going to start smelling like Yami and neither of us want that.” I said hoping to lighten his mood even if only a little bit.

  Instead of responding Nacht just kept staring at the headstone in front of him. “Nacht, It’s okay to be sad and miss Morgen. But you can’t just storm off because your friends want to celebrate your birthday.” I started. “I’m sorry they found out about it, but after talking with everyone I realized something and you need to realize it too. Morgen would want you to be happy and have fun, not spend your birthday alone and upset.” As I spoke I lowered myself to the ground, quickly grabbing the pack of cigarettes from the ground beside him and stuffing it in my pocket so he couldn’t light another.

  I had expected him to say something along the lines of being fine with ignoring his birthday, but what he actually said surprised me. “I forgot it was my birthday.” Hearing that I looked at him confused. “I spent so long in the Spade Kingdom focused on stopping the Dark Triad that I never noticed my birthday had passed. When I figured out everyone was setting up for a party, I thought it was one of Yami’s usual plans to make me bond with the group, but then you mentioned it being for my birthday and it all rushed back.” It was no secret that Nacht spent years trying to help the neighboring country but I had no idea he was focused enough to forget his least favorite day of the year. 

  “I trust that you tried to keep Asta from finding out and that it was Yami’s doing, so don’t think I’m upset with you. I’m more upset with myself. It’s my fault Morgen had so many birthdays ripped from him. It should have been me, I should be the one buried under this stone, not him.” Nacht had voiced how much he blames himself for Morgen’s death many times before, and each time it was the same. “Morgen would be so much better at this and he would have been better for you.” Okay, blaming himself and wishing he was dead is nothing new, but suggesting Morgen to be a better choice for me is completely different from past conversations on the topic.

  Before Nacht could continue, I decided I had enough. “Nacht Faust, I have heard all of this from you before, and each time I’ve told you the same thing. It’s not your fault your family led you down a questionable path, and it’s not your fault Morgen stepped in to stop you. Suggesting Morgen would have handled your death better than you are handling his a decade later is bullshit. I may not have met Morgen but if he was as caring and kind as you and Yami have told me, he would probably be doing exactly what you’re doing right now. And as for saying he would be better for me, that’s a lie. I fell in love with you. I love how you’re blunt and don’t let others' emotions affect you, I love how even though you act like you hate the Black Bulls, you still stick with us. I love how you put your own life on pause to prevent Psychopaths in another country from destroying the world. I love you for you, so stop putting yourself down over something that happened in the past and think about all the good you have done since then.” I rambled on, hoping to get my point across.

  “Like I said before, you have people here now who care about you and want to take the day to celebrate you. You should be happy and having fun. Again I may not have known him but Morgen loved you enough not to tell the rest of the Magic Knights at the time about your devils and instead risked his life to save yours. Morgen would have wanted you to enjoy each day and I bet he would have been overjoyed to hear you found people who love and accept you.” I finished leaning my head on his shoulder. The whole time I spoke to him, his eyes were set on the gravestone in front of him, but it was clear from the way his shoulders relaxed and the sigh he let out that he listened and understood.

  We sat like that for a while, just sitting in silence thinking. It was Nacht who broke the silence first. “Thank you. I know I can be difficult to deal with. And I’m sorry for just walking out and not talking to you. Also you’re right, Morgen would have been overjoyed that I found you, and the Bulls even if I hate to admit it.” It was strange hearing him admit that he found some where he belonged, but I couldn’t hold back the smile.

   “Okay so now that you’re done wallowing, how about we head back to the hideout and hope that Charmy and Asta haven’t eaten all the food.” I said, raising my head looking at him. He turned and gave a gentle smile with a nod. “Good let’s go. Also be ready to come back here with me tomorrow.” I informed him as we stood up, earning a confused look from the shadow mage. “Every year on May 1st I bring Morgen flowers for his birthday.” I explained watching as Nacht’s face went from confusion to shock to thankfulness.

   “Thank you.” Was all he said before taking my hand, and activating his magic to transport us back to base.

   When we arrived it was clear the rest of the Bulls were still enjoying the food and free time Yami had given them for the evening. Our arrival didn’t go unnoticed, because as soon as we emerged from the shadows Asta basically bounced over to us. “Vice Captain Nacht, I’m sorry I upset you and didn’t listen to Y/n when they told me no.” Asta apologized quickly.

   Before Asta could start rambling too much, Nacht silenced him by simply raising his hand at the boy. “It’s okay Asta. I just need to come to terms with a few things and Y/n helped me with that. Now if there’s any left I would like to eat and possibly chat with you all.” Nacht explained to the boy, but directed the last sentence to the rest of the Squad who were watching the conversation.

   It was clear everyone was stunned by Nacht saying he would like to actually join them. Unsurprisingly Vanessa was the first of the group to speak up. “Of course Vice Captain, how about you start off with a nice drink?” She said slinging her hand over her shoulder waving a beer in Nacht’s face. Seeing Vanessa offer Nacht a drink everyone else started to approach him. Offering food, asking to talk with him, or in Luck’s case asking to fight him.

  As the night progressed it was nice to watch as Nacht relaxed and actually spent time with the Black Bulls. It was clear that he had finally accepted that this was his family and that they would always have each other's backs.

  “You know I don’t think I’ve seen him smile this much since before I joined the Magic Knights.”It was Yami who walked up beside me.

  I smiled as I reached into my pocket handing him the pack of cigarettes I had taken from Nacht earlier in the night. “Before you ask, no I didn’t buy them for you, our dear self deprecating friend over there had them when I found him. I figured it’s probably best to give them to you so he doesn’t fall all the way back into that habit, and I know you won’t let the money go to waste.” Yami was about to respond when Nacht joined us, wrapping his arm around my waist pulling me to his side. “Nuh uh, I was nice earlier because you were upset but now that you’re functioning like a person again Imma make this clear. One no hugs, cuddles or kisses until you have bathed at least twice to remove the smell of the five cigarettes you smoked from your person. Two If I ever catch you with one again I’ll make sure cigarettes are the thing that kills you, as I’ll stuff the whole pack, wrapper and all down your throat.” I said pushing the mage away, and going to join Vanessa in trying to get Zora and Grey to stop hiding in corners.

  As I walked away from the Captains I could hear Yami cackling as he slapped Nacht in the back. “You messed up buying these, didn’t you buddy?” The Captain of the Black Bulls laugh could be heard for miles as he watched Nacht’s face go from shock at my comment to murderous intent at Yami’s.

  Turning to the boy’s one last time, triggering yet another laughing fit from the dark magic user, I made one final comment. “You also owe Gimodelo an apology for telling him to buzz off.” With that I turned to start dragging a cowering Grey from under one of the tables set up outside.

  By the time everyone called it a night, it was nearly 2am. As me and Nacht got ready to settle in for the night, I couldn’t help but smile, earning a quizzical glance from the mage sitting in front of me. “I’m just glad to see you relax and get along with everyone.” I said, placing a kiss to the top of his head as I helped brush his freshly washed hair. He just gave a quick nod before relaxing into my touch, having long since expressed how he enjoyed when I brushed his hair saying it helped him relax. After finishing with Nacht’s hair, we both moved to lay down. Sharing brief good nights, we both quickly fell asleep, at peace with our minds and looking forward to facing the future with our large chosen family.

[notquiterobin]

Into/explanation/boundaries post:

So into/explanation first: This is a DC rp blog with an oc of mine! If you don’t like things like that, just don’t interact with it, if you do that’s great! Feel free to interact through reblogs, comments, or asks! So going into the actual character:

Alexandra Catherine Todd-Wayne:

- Daughter of Willis and Catherine Todd

- Younger sister/sibling of Jason Todd (6 years younger)

- Adopted by Bruce Wayne at age 5 with Jason

- 16 years old

- Ace lesbian and Demigirl

- Aspired to be Robin when she was younger, is now a non-Batman-approved vigilante named Corvid (as a lot of corvids are preditors of robins, plus it’s the name I usually use online/lh)

- Generally keeps the non-killing rule as Corvid, but is a bit more harsh then some of the other bats

- Has similar goals to the robins (improving Gotham, keeping down crime, and generally keeping people safe) but after Jason’s death no longer wanted the moniker

- General appearance stuff: | 16 | 5,1 | blue eyes | black hair | human | has a few scars but notably one on the side of her left cheek |

- closest to Jason, but still very close to most other members of the batfamily

- In true bat fashion is usually very closed off about trauma and other emotional issues

- Nicknames: Alex (name they usually go by), Allie (mainly used when they were younger, so mostly used by Jason, Dick, Barbara, or Bruce), Lexie (less used, still open to it)

- lmk if I forgot anything important

Boundaries section:

Dni’s:

- Homophobes

- Transphobes

- Ableist’s (I’m disabled, a lot of that will reflect in any character I write or make)

- Racists

- Zionism

- Terf’s

- BATCEST. (I do not care how you try to rationalize it, I don’t want to see any Dick/Jason, Bruce/any of his children, Alfred/any of his grandkids. Any Dick/Tim, Jason/Tim, or Damian/Tim. Just no batcest okay?

- I’m dyslexic, if you find spelling mistakes please just ignore them unless they completely change the meaning of the scentence, autocorrect can’t catch everything

About me:

So if you got this far, hi! I’m Raven/Corvid (Corvid is mostly an online name but Raven is my name),

I got by primarily They/Them pronouns, I’m an aroace (maybe oriented? Let’s just say questioning/lh) Non-Binary teenager,

and I am a minor so please keep that in mind (I’m fine with any ages on here just keep it in mind that I’m under 18),

I’m disabled (not gonna put out my whole medical history but shortly put: chronic pain, t1d, autism & adhd, c!ptsd, dyslexia)

I’m a pretty longtime DC lover (on and off since I was 5), mostly Batman and Batman adjacent stuff, hellblazer, green arrow, young justice, and teen titans

Al Ghul lover, seriously I love them sm

Very into music (specifically Hole, Nirvana, Babes in Toyland, Big theif, Fiona apple, Mcr, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Bandhees, The cure, Ghost, Green Day, Alex G, and Elliott Smith)

^ also if you think Courtney killed Kurt fuck off, seriously I’m not going to argue with you, either don’t bring it up or just go away

Closing stuff:

Absolutely feel free to interact with this weather in character or not, I’d love any questions or asks it just may sometimes take me a second to get used to them

list of my other blogs: @not-a-robin, @dr-pamela-isley, @cassandra-e-sandsmark

[thermodynamic-comedian]

i am asking you about the things you have to say

thank you THANK YOU

georgie barker listens to they might be giants. melanie king listens to mcr. helen richardson listens to tv girl. the only natural solution is they should all kiss

the magnus archives intro sounds like it's luring you in. it's making you pay attention, it's catching your interest. don't you want to know what happens next? don't you want to keep listening? the magnus protocol intro sounds like a descent. like a warning. you're not supposed to be here. you've already gone too far. and now it knows you're listening. and now you can't turn back.

i have one more excellent post idea that i am saving up because i want it to be its own post BUT i have decided that once i get out of work today is officially over SO you won't have to wait long!!

[tyforthevnm]

Interview: frnkiero andthe cellabration

By: Kelly Gonsalves for Pop Break

Posted on September 3, 2014 

When he was just a teenager, Frank Iero began having pangs of pain in his stomach after eating. Soon after he learned from his doctors that he has a “bacterial overgrowth of the lower intestine,” which, among many other symptoms, causes the stomach to send signals to the body that it’s in pain while it’s digesting food. The end result: a lifetime of nausea, medication, steroid treatment and stomachaches.

“I think anytime you’re dealing with pain management […], it makes everything difficult,” Iero tells me. “If you’re constantly nauseous and just not well, it kind of zaps your – especially your creative side – but it kind of zaps your whole personality. If you don’t feel well, you don’t want to do anything.”

But while the reaction of most might be to crawl under the covers, sulk and never get out of bed for the rest of eternity – and the former My Chemical Romance guitarist admits he used to fall into this spell of despair all the time as well – Iero soon found a way to channel that pain into something else.

“I found for me, being creative and writing songs or writing short stories or creating something or poetry or something like that – if it came out good, if I enjoyed it, I could kind of ride that creative high for at least a day or two. And I felt normal again,” he says. “I would have to force myself to do something productive, and then it made me forget about myself.”

Last week, Iero released his first solo album, stomachaches., a compilation of 12 songs written almost two years ago during one of his worst bouts with his digestive condition. Toward the end of 2012, the multi-instrumentalist began creating music in a makeshift studio in his basement as a means of diverting his attention away from his physical ailments. He recorded most of them in early 2013, just as My Chemical Romance was winding down. The songs, he says, were never meant to be heard by another soul other than himself, let alone to be actually released for public consumption.

After MCR finally called it quits in March 2013, Iero’s focus turned to Death Spells, a two-man project with former MCR touring keyboardist James Dewees that had been brewing for almost a year. Death Spells did some touring, and those solo songs written in the basement saw the stage every now and then just for kicks. It was around this time people started telling Iero he should think about talking to labels.

It all came together this June, when he announced his signing to Staple Records. His new solo project, frnkiero andthe cellabration, was born.

“Everything’s different,” he says. “It’s strange. With this, it was written because over the time as I felt terrible, I would go downstairs, and I would just write, you know? There wasn’t a deadline. There wasn’t a record. There wasn’t a label. No one knew I was doing anything.”

And he has every reason to “cellabrate” – it’s a real success story when you think about it. After all the push and pull, Iero has a tangible product to show for it all. The experience has definitely been “rewarding,” he tells me, despite all the physical turmoil that inspired the album.

“I think now my life has changed enough, you know, having kids and all,” he says. “I kind of wanted to show them that you can take a bad thing and turn it into something positive if you put your mind to it. And that was, for me, taking a defiant stand against it. If you’re not going to go away, then I’m at least going to get something out of you.”

The bold spirit is very characteristic of the punk rocker – one look at the music video for thecellabration’s single “.weighted.” tells you the man is not faint of heart in the least. (Spoiler alert: It gets real ugly real fast.)

But what does catch me a little off guard is the softness found in the underbelly of everything he says. He is gentler than expected, both in his tone and in his perspective toward the world. His children, for instance, repeatedly come up in our conversation. When I ask about his upcoming tour with Taking Back Sunday and The Used, his excitement to show off his new work is mixed in with some nervousness about leaving his family behind.

“I think the hardest part to come to grips with is that when you’re away for so long, it’s hard – it sounds stupid – but it’s hard to remember that life doesn’t stop at home,” he says. “Like you go away and two years later you come back, and your loved ones are older, and things have changed. They’re like strangers. It fucks with your head, you know?”

His three kids are now old enough to miss him, to say “come home.” It scares him, he says with a half-hearted chuckle.

Still, it’s something he almost needs to do, he says. His creative outlets – browsing through his personal website reveals the man’s talents rest not only in music but in poetry, photography, short stories, to name a few – are what keeps him sane. These artistic expressions are what keep him in the state of mind he needs to be in to do the things he needs to do.

“I’ve started to realize that in order for me to be the person I wanna be, the dad I wanna be, the husband I wanna be, I need to satisfy this creative side because that keeps me level. And then I can ride that level and be happy,” he says. “So that’s where I’m at. The only thing now is trying to find that happy medium.”

—

frnkiero andthe cellabration will perform at the Gamechanger World in Howell, NJ, on September 6. Click here for tickets.

[caffernnn]

as a folie a deux stan, would you share your thoughts & feelings about the album

A chance to ramble about one of my all-time faves?? ooOOO SAY LESS MY FRIEND ♥️🧸💛

I think Folie finding a place in my heart was a perfect storm — I’m a new fan falling into obsession with FOB during my mid-teens, and they’re starting to get into the hayday of the post-hiatus SR&R era. So of course, I’m looking through wiki pages, poking through fan pages, seeing interviews here and there (doing research for my sophomore year’s mandatory big research essay, and also satisfying my need to Know Everything™️ ), and I start wondering about how hiatus happened. What’s up with Folie? Why is it listed as not being well-received by fans and painful for the band (at that time)?

It becomes this situation where you’re handing 16-year-old me this misfit outcast album, one with bears on the cover (I’m predictable and easy to please shhhh) and an openly experimental vibe set apart from their previous work (more collaborative iirc, the four of them drawing on stuff they were inspired by to try new things). Pair that outcast magnetism (impulse to show love to wounded birds and rejected things) with lyrics that speak to the liminal space I existed in with my own adolescent identity (lyrics speaking to madness in complex dependent relationships, to not knowing yourself, to wanting to know yourself, to wanting to know the world, to trying to figure out morals and love and worth amidst your missteps and lost sense of self and unspeakable depression), and I was sunk. Listened to some YouTube video rip of the full album (or playlists that also included pavlove and lullabye) to fall asleep at night, while showering, really whenever I had a chance in my downtime (since I didn’t have headphones and listened to more of the futct/ioh/sr&r hit singles when with friends). Something about Pete’s devastating lyrical angst and Patrick/Joe/Andy’s artistry and the heavy feelings surrounding the album (from the minor bits the fans/public know about the time and the stories weaved throughout the album) started hitting in a specific way that had me imprinting on Folie and the band like a baby bird. Yeah, I started having that feeling of being understood by music with other bands (MCR, Paramore, P!atD, classic emo trinity stuff) along with some of the more pop punk stuff I was already into (PtV, ATL, you know the era), but for whatever reason, Folie maintained its place as my heart and soul album (along with Soul Punk for PStump-related reasons, but we’re not talking about her right now 🏃🏻‍♀️)

We’d be here all night if I tried to list favorite songs or lyrics, but I can ramble a bit about what hit me most when I started going “oh yeah, this is my album” as a teen:

I mean like, of course, right? “What a Catch, Donnie” is the pinnacle ballad, from all the lyrical callbacks and cameo features to the somber/hopeful music video, plus the interviews out there noting the song as lyrically important to the band. I think you can find stuff from back in that era (‘08-‘09) talking about it as almost a “swan song,” a final message that’s as close as you’ll get to personal convictions in a less-autobiographical album. For me, it felt like a love letter to their past selves in the unstoppable march forward in time. It felt like grief, the kind that comes with change and it’s inevitable losses, but it also felt like hope. Imagine not seeing goodness within you, not recognizing yourself, feeling stranded and pushed by the tides and not sure where you’ll end up. Then, imagine finding a lifeline through hanging on to someone else with the same type of stormy muddled mind, finding them and becoming their looking glass, their mirror, their guide — helping someone apathetic and listless find a spark again after giving up on themselves. It makes you wonder if you’ll find clarity through connection too, if you’ll be saved over and over again by people who see you and make sense of it all, or maybe don’t make it all better/comprehensible but care for you anyway. It became an anthem for me to hang onto my friends and budding new interests to help make me feel whole and keep going at a time where everything felt overwhelming and impossibly complicated (the curse of being 15/16/etc). Something about learning about hiatus, learning about the peaks and valleys of the band, looking at it all while having the fortune of knowing they find their ways back to each other to create more music and memories and get to keep growing together — that was big for me in a way I couldn’t articulate at the time but still felt deeply. We can be lost, but still found; flawed, but still loved. That’s important to hear when you’re stumbling through those early formative years, and important to be reminded of when we stumble through evolving our identities again and again and again.

There’s a lot of nostalgic love for the album now that I’ve held onto it for a decade, but it’s still so fun to revisit and holds up for me amidst all of the new music I listen to now. SM(f)S wriggled it’s way into my heart this past year and sits in there holding onto Folie’s hand, speaking on heavy themes and channeling that same motivation to experiment and create a legacy through music. Getting to see FOB live this year (!!!) playing Folie songs live (!!!!!) and eventually revisiting the whole album throughout the duration of tourdust (!!!!!!!) was an amazing experience, and it’s great to see Folie get her flowers in the many years since her release. Happy 15 years, Folie!! 🩵🐻💙

[undinegeist]

idk what this is, to be honest. I’ve had it written for a minute, got around to rereading and fixing today at random, thought it was decent enough to post. I suppose we can say it could be a series.

And now, a bit of background? This is (I guess) a made-up MCR tour in which Y/N is the guitarist for G Way’s (fictional) wife’s band.

- 1 - 2 -

a small but important disclaimer: I get why this storyline might suggest a connection to Lindsay but this is purely something that came out of my brain; I’m not here to comment on their relationship, and anything here that resonates with something in their real life is unintentional, even if this did start loosely based on Gerard Way’s life as it’s known publicly.

-xx- G -xx-

It starts with Lana and her band; I’m catching up to them in New Orleans.

They’re opening for us on the new tour; we left everything, our house, our kid, the relative sanity of staying in one place…I’m still not okay about it, but when she insisted we needed the money, I really couldn’t argue.

Lana wanted a new guitarist; after the mess with the last one, I’d hoped it’d be a girl. And it was.

They’d started the tour on their own; I’d had to stay home, looking for someone to babysit, eventually convincing my parents to come down and stay with Hayley, though Lana yelled at me for it, said it shouldn’t have been them, that we should have found someone else…I couldn’t tell her we couldn’t afford to.

The first time I saw Y/N was late one night when I slipped in to watch their show.

I’d been away so long, I hadn’t heard anything, hadn’t heard of the mess that had already been made, hadn’t realized anything was wrong.

She comes down from the stage sometime around the middle of the set, seething, hair all over her face, hiding her eyes, the only giveaway to her anger the way she flies off, down, almost tripping on the stairs.

I steady her, instinctively. “Are you okay?”

She’s still, for what feels like forever and no time at all, but then she’s gone without a sound, like she was never there, and I spend the rest of the set worrying about it.

-xx-

“Lan, what happened up there?” I know I shouldn’t ask her this the moment she’s coming off the stage, but I can’t stop thinking of that kid.

She sighs, rolls her eyes. “Nothing. Y/N’s just an annoying little bitch, can’t be normal to save her fucking life…”

“She’s just a kid. Don’t you remember what it was like?”

I’d wanted to run from the stage so many times; when I felt overwhelmed, when things went wrong, when the high took me down, made me feel like I was about to die, the lights so bright I could barely see, barely breathe…it was never easy.

“She’s not that deep, Gerard. She’s just trying to fuck with me because we had a fight last week. I should just fucking fire her…”

“Would you have liked me to fire you?” The words are out before I can think them through, sharper than I should be, inviting a fight; we’re still at the venue, why the fuck don’t I ever think?

Sometimes, I wish I’d fired her then; I try not to, hate that I still think that way, that everything is so hard even now, that I’m not better, even after all this time…that I’m probably never going to be better.

I do something I shouldn’t; turn and leave, realizing I don’t want to do this now, don’t have to do this now…knowing she can’t follow me, because she has to greet fans.

-xx-

I’ve already got my own room, separate from Lana’s, and that’s where I’m headed; blow off some steam before she gets back, to either torment me for the little scene back at the venue or drag me out to dinner…most likely, though? It’ll be both, and I’ll wish I hadn’t come…the rest of the guys are only joining us right before our first concert.

I see that girl then, still wearing the clothes from the show, lying on her back on a loveseat in the lobby, guitar on the floor, reading.

I know it’s a bad idea, but I turn and go her way, thinking I need to check on her, but also that I have no idea what happened tonight, and I should probably find out; Lana will never tell me now.

“Hey.”

She starts, sits up in a flash, dropping the book, but then recovers. “Hey.”

“Would you mind if I talked to you for a minute?”

She shakes her head, slides sideways to give me room; I pick up her book, look it over…a rockstar book.

I bite my lip on a smirk, thinking I get where her look comes from; I had that phase, where I wasn’t entirely sure what I was up to, so I borrowed and borrowed until it fit…to eventually become me.

“So…is this your favorite?”

She’s wary, but after a moment, she relaxes slightly. “One of. Why?”

“No reason, it’s just interesting. What else do you like?”

“Anything.”

“Really?”

“The more you know, the better.”

She straightens slightly, less on guard. “I’m sorry I didn’t…I’m sorry I ran away like that, earlier…I’m not all that good at being human.”

“I don’t think anyone really is. What happened, though?”

She sighs. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Last week somewhere, Lana did something and I went off, we had a fight, and then tonight, it just…I felt like I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t have left in the middle of the set either, but sometimes I just can’t control myself…”

I bite my tongue on the admission that Lana can’t do that, either. “It happens.”

She laughs, too bitter for someone so young. “Yeah, but so what? I’m not supposed to let my feelings get in the way.”

“Feelings are always in the way.”

This makes her look back at me, silent now, and I’m thinking I hope she doesn’t go, when all hell breaks lose…Lana, coming at the two of us, still dressed as she’d been at the venue, no discretion, despite my always telling her to not draw attention to herself between shows…about to do even more of that.

“What the fuck are you doing here?!”

“Lan, calm down.” I hold her back, though we’re too close already, people are staring, why doesn’t she ever think of what this looks like?

“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down! This little bitch ruined my set, yet still has the gall to sit here talking to you…”

“I was sitting here talking to her…Lana, please, don’t do this.”

The last thing we need is a scandal a week before the tour.

“Don’t get in my way, Gerard! This isn’t any of your fucking business…”

I’m so distracted, she slips off me when Y/N goes for the elevators.

“Aren’t you going to apologize to me?”

They’re in each others’ faces, I might as well be invisible.

“For not playing along with your bullshit?”

“You’re a stupid little slut…you’re nothing.”

“At least that makes me not you.”

Lana doesn’t follow; everyone’s staring, some people with their phones out, filming every second…then Lana’s moving back to me, and I know she wants me on her side, but I can’t, won’t…not again.

I’ve done that too often, to my detriment, to hers too, because I give her too much.

“I don’t want her here, Gee. We need to…”

“We don’t need to anything. You said this wasn’t my problem, so it isn’t…deal with it yourself.”

“Where are you going?!”

“Nowhere.”

-xx-

[thekidsarentalright]

can you briefly catch me up on what's happening between mcr and fob fans bc I've only gone to fob university forever

hfjrnfkrfnd i have also only gone to fob university forever but unfortunately see mcr things anyways. someone made a shitty post insulting patricks appearance basically saying he looks like he’d be bad at sex (revolutionary to say a non-conventionally attractive fat man would be bad at sex!!), people began calling that person out for the fatphobic implications of their post (it’s since been deleted lol) and they doubled down say it was “just a joke” and that patrick never even looked fat to them. another person then made another shitty post (also since deleted lmao) essentially implying that patrick isn’t even fat and is “normal”. they begun getting called out and doubled down saying being fat is normal and fob fans are the ones in the wrong for saying he’s fat, when no one ever said fat wasn’t normal, just that patrick is a fat man who experiences fatphobia.

tldr; mcr fans who hate fob got tired of being racist towards pete apparently and are now using patrick as a punching bad for literally no reason bc causing drama about fob is easier for them than just keeping fob out of their mouths forever <3

[gerardpilled]

i really appreciate your post about late bloomers, and i appreciate hearing from your other anons too. its something im struggling with a lot rn, as a 21 year old who only *very* recently began to even consider seriously pursuing a romantic and/or sexual relationship, and now has no idea where to start. its very alienating to feel like you're a step (or five) behind everyone else and that you'll never catch up, so it's reassuring to hear that it's *not* just me, and there's actually plenty of other people out there with similar experiences. so, yeah. thanks.

I’m so happy a lot of people seemed to get something out of it <3 there were a ton more asks from people in a similar situation but I didn’t want to flood the dash considering it’s not really mcr related 😭

[khashanakalashtar]

Rules: Pick ten of your fics, scroll to somewhere in the middle, pick a chunk of lines, and share it! Then tag ten people, if you’d like.

I got all the way through this thinking I was pretending I’d been tagged by @theleakypen and then realized that ve didn’t post this verself, ve reblogged it from @shadaras, (which explains why I don’t recognize any of the fics, duh) so I guess I’m pretending I was tagged by shadaras, who will likely never see this bc I can’t tag him. and tagging @the-lincyclopedia, @softanimalgoose, @alasse-irena, @songofsunset, @bookwyrmling, @lemonlushff, @faiasakura, @theflowergirl, @eldritchw1tch, and LUNY AND CLEM WHY CAN’T I TAG YOU so you’re each counting as half a tag. and Puck if you want to play consider yourself tagged. :p it’s so nice to have more than three people to tag in these things.

I tried to get a good distribution of fics from my Check Please days (2018) on. Some of these are Khashana classics, others deserved better. Whether I could find a good clump of lines near the middle heavily factored in as well.

Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach, MDZS, 8k, Wangxian, rated T, written for WWX’s Birthday Gift Exchange Oct 2022

“You look beautiful,” Lan Zhan murmurs. Wei Ying lets out a sob and covers her mouth with one hand. Not quite sure of her welcome, Lan Zhan raises her arms, and Wei Ying flings herself into them. She tries to turn her face away to keep Lan Zhan dry, but Lan Zhan catches her and turns her so her face is nestled into the side of Lan Zhan’s neck.

“I’m getting you all damp, Lan Zhan,” murmurs Wei Ying.

“Let me absorb,” Lan Zhan whispers back, and Wei Ying clings.

Can’t Be Anyone But You, MDZS, 1.8k, Wangxian, rated T, written in early 2022

He had to look away to summon the face to say the last part, but then he chanced a quick glance back at Lan Zhan’s face, which confirmed nothing.

“You love me,” he said, and his voice broke slightly. “You love me, and so it isn’t called ‘Wei Ying, so help me I am going to make you copy the rules for eternity if you don’t shut up.’”

When the Day Met the Night, MDZS, 8k, Wangxian, rated E, written in late 2021

Lan Zhan won’t look at him, face still red, glaring a hole into the opposite wall now Huaisang’s disappeared.

Sucks to be him. Wei Ying is a pro at being annoying and has, as previously established, very little shame.

“Have you been holding out on me, Lan Zhan?” he asks, raising his voice to normal talking-at-a-party level. “Do you bring people home and tie them up in bed? Has he walked in on it? Did I awaken something in you?”

Fragile Lives/Shattered Dreams, ATLA, 11k, rated T, Zutara that turns into Zukka, written for the ATLA 18+ Big Bang 2021

“What do the Water Tribes think of—of men who like men? The way they’re supposed to like women?” He stared at a patch of snow, feeling his cheeks heat and watching Sokka out of the corner of his eye.

Sokka paused and looked up. “I wouldn’t say supposed to,” he said. “But I know what you mean. We celebrate it.”

Zuko’s mouth dropped open. That was one answer he had absolutely not considered. Celebrate? Not hate, not tolerate, not even accept, but celebrate?

Retribution, ATLA, 8k, rated T, gen with minor Jetko and Sukki, written in early 2021

He leaves early for work and sticks his head into Jet’s coffee shop.  

“What’s up, Mr. MCR Reunion Tour?”

Zuko makes the executive decision to ignore that baffling comment entirely and walks up to the counter. Jet arches an eyebrow at him. Zuko fists a hand in his lapels, drags Jet forward over the counter, and kisses him on the lips firmly.

He keeps it quick and chaste, and when he releases Jet, he has the pleasure of seeing him speechless. Zuko smirks at him and leaves before Jet can find his voice again.

(yes this counts as minor Jetko as it’s the sum total of the time it shows up at all in the 8k, lol)

Throw destiny out with the bathwater, I make my own path; Supernatural, 1.2k, rated T, Destiel, post-finale fix-it in late 2020

Besides, Jack isn’t coming.

“Sammy,” he tries again. “What’s the point of free will if he’s just going to come down and save us every time we get in a tight spot?”

“What’s the point of sacrificing myself to save your life if you’re going to get yourself killed days later by accident?” says Cas from somewhere outside Dean’s field of vision.

All My Underdogs, Check, Please!, 16k, rated E, PBJ, written in mid-2020

“How did you get together?”

“Met at the Olympics,” said Kent between bites of grilled cheese. “Bonded over his dad being Bad Bob Zimmermann and my mom being Gina Jackson. Fucked. Then I won the bronze, came out to my mother, announced I was quitting competitive figure skating, and ran away to live with the Zimmermanns for five months.”

“Oh my Lord,” said Bitty, abandoning all pretense of eating. “That is the most extra thing I have ever heard.”

Disrespect, ATLA, 2k, rated T, gen, written in mid-2020

Toph is sitting next to him, on the other side of the couch with her earbuds in, listening to her economics textbook. Zuko sets his laptop on the floor, every motion deliberate and decided, and scoots across the center of the couch. She hears him coming and lifts her arm to let him snuggle up under. With her other hand, she pauses her phone.

“You okay, Sparky?”

He sighs, feeling himself on a precipice. He shakes his head where it’s pressed against her shoulder.

Around him, the quiet of four people studying hardens into actual silence.

Daiquiris and Celtic Knots, Check Please!, 6k, rated M, Kent/Snowy, written for Fandom Trumps Hate 2019

“Did you find parking okay?”

“Oh, I didn’t bother getting a rental. Took an Uber.”

Jakub makes a face at him. “Take a taxi next time.”

“What have you got against Uber?” Kent pulls up a barstool and accepts a glass of wine.

“I’m union,” says Jakub flatly. “So are you. Take a taxi.”

I Need Direction to Perfection (is there room for one more), Check Please!, 28k, rated E, PBJ, written in 2018

“He’s your husband,” said Kent.

“Again, not cheating,” said Jack. He frowned. “Do you not want to say no?”

Kent glanced at him and looked away quickly again, eyes big. He said nothing.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” said Kent. “I have no idea what I’m feeling except there’s too fucking much of it.”

[heartsick-honeybee]

@skye707 tagged me! Hopefully that means I'll catch a stray Riddler..

CMON Arkhamverse, fingers crossed! Jkjk.

Ten of my favorite movies in no particular order!

This was hard af actually because as soon as I read it I forgot every movie ive ever seen. Suddenly, all cinema ceased to exist. Thanks brain.

That being said I did my best as-per my recollection and am probably missing things I quite love. Woopsie.

Rules: post 10 of your favorite movies and tag 10 people.

#1: Fantasia (1941)

This one has been my favorite since I was 2 years old. Beautiful art, Disney, and Classical music. It's just a win.

#2: The Phantom of the Opera (2005)

This is all of nothing like the book and my 15 year old emo ass really wanted Christine to go with the phantom despite all the red flags.

Now that I'm an adult I think they'd have been a lovely poly couple, and Erik needs counselling. That being said it's still one of my top favorite movies ever.. Who knew Emmy Rossom and Gerard Butler could SING?

I still love to play it and sing every word, the absolute chagrin of my daughter.

#3: Queen of the Damned (2002):

Anne Rice, Vampires, a soundtrack that quite possibly shaped my entire music taste for life--

This movie is honestly terrible, but in a SO bad its GOOD way. Cult classic 100%.

For an emo 12 year old in the early 2000's this was the best shit EVER, right there beside MCR.

#4: Pride and Prejudice (2005):

SOMETHING ABOUT ME: I love books. I love THIS book. and I love this movie based on this book. -- Mr. Darcy, you are a charmer.

#5: Yellow Submarine (1968):

Another one that's been a top favorite since I was only 2 years old.

I grew up on Beatles, and before I was emo (Around 9 years old) I had a hippy phase where I only wore tie-die and listened to 60s music, with Beatles being my top. This throws me back to them days every time.

#6: Minority Report (2002)

Let's get this out of the way first: Tom Cruise is batshit crazy as a person. I completely acknowledge this. That being said I think this movie is very well done and has a very valid moral that can forever apply to society and social justice as a whole.

It also had a very short run TV Mini series in 2015 (Without Cruise) that was a continuation/sequel of the movie, which I ABSOLUTELY loved just as much. There is only 10 episodes and I was SO sad it was cancelled

#7: Encanto (2021)

By far the newest one on this list.

Good music.

I'm in love with a 50yr old RAT man.

What else can I say?

#8: Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

Another book turned movie,

ANYTHING Shakespeare is always iconic, but I think this version is absolutely my favorite. Perfect casting, perfect acting, and Dr. Willson from House is one of the main characters! (You may also recognize Professor Trelawney and Professor Lockhart from Harry Potter as your two main characters. <3 When HP first came out I can tell you I was SO excited for something different than what everyone else was because It was awesome to see them together in the same movie again, for me, since I loved this farrrrr first.

#9: 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

a 90s classic, and ALSO a modern adaptation of another Shakespeare story: The Taming of the Shrew.

It's was very well done, modernizing (For the time) while still sticking to the story. Great cast, great acting, and an icon of the 1990s despite being a story of the 1590s.

I think this movie hit home in a way that other modern Shakespeare adaptations (Such as Romeo + Juliet (1996) and She's the Man 2006)) Missed the mark on. (Although, did you remember Channing Tatum was in that? I didn't! Haha.)

#10: Digimon: The Movie (2000)

Why? I can't tell you why. When this came out was at the height of me being super into Digimon. The art is different from the show in a way that I just vibe with. The entire movie just has a VIBE to it and it brings back good memories. ALL THE GOOD VIBES.

Honorable Mentions:

Counting these as ONE:

Batman (1989) Batman Returns(1992) Batman Forever (1995) Batman & Robin (1997)

SO despite having 3 different Batmans and only two being directed by Tim Burton, these movies ARE supposed to go together.

They are hokey, and for the most part I consider them a comedic AU, HOWEVER, that will never override a few things:

Firstly, these movies are what got me into Batman and Batverse originally, before the animated series came out.

Secondly, the animated series came out BECAUSE of these movies, and was at least loosely based on them (Which is why Selina was blonde in TAS, to tie in, though they later rectified that in TNBA)

And three, the ENTIRE aesthetic of the movie AND the musical scores being by Danny Elfman are their own works of absolute art that I will ALWAYS appreciate.

@caesariawrites @pharoahkittylover @arttimeoccasionallyimtired @just-an-enby-lemon @finzphoenix @geislieb @coffeeandconundrums @ednyxmatic @sh4pes-4nd-colors @spookyvoid

[lago-morpha]

the way my brain works is so intensely auditorial when I learned some people don't have a monologue it absolutely blew my mind. I literally would not be able to function without a monologue, it's how I think, me writing this text post is me typing out my internal monologue overlayed over some background music, while I wait for my texting to catch up to where my monologue is (the current background is famous last words mcr btw I just got to the part where the chorus gets good). This is obvious when you catch the bad ADHD evident from my need to include constant Bonus Information, or the fact that my beautiful tumblrina girlblogs are identical to stream of consciousness writing (or they would be if I didn't go back and edit and revise or add information, like I am doing right now funnily enough, often because I forget people aren't in my head and I have to define variables). I can have and follow long conversations in my head (sorry I'd give a numerical estimate but I could write another story about how bad I am at quantifying estimates numerically) to an impressive level

I think I was trying to make a point but I'm psychotic and the disorganized thoughts are making it too hard to keep writing this so I'm just going to send post

[wavernot4love]

i've definitely said something like this before but holy crap dude, ls dunes have quite literally changed the trajectory of my life, and every time i see them, it feels like they've done the same for so many people there. i just want to, post-thursday's toronto show, talk a little about how special this band is (this is probably gonna get long).

i've come to care about this band so goddamn much in, well, definitely the 11 months since they first announced themselves, but even moreso the 8 months since past lives dropped & i saw them for the first time @ dunesday toronto '22.

for a little recap of my dunes origin story, as a 22 y/o i grew up in the mid 2010s scene, right? so most of the bands i knew n loved growing up were those & i had never truly done a deep dive into a lot of 2000s/even early 2010s stuff. of course, the biggest, most accessible bands that started during that time were an exception, people like fob, or ptv, or, well, mcr. and a lot of other bands' biggest songs, etc.

so one part of my thought process the day dunes got announced was "woah new frank band? cool, let's see who's in it!" and that's what made me click into the first article i saw.

and the other part: like i kinda alluded to, i'm very active in the scene, i love going to shows & getting involved and i am truly trying to make it my life even moreso (via live music photograohy n design stuff, and hopefully eventually music stuff?). point is, late last july i signed up to volunteer @ a scene fest kinda in my area, my home here in upstate ny, at the time i hadn't been to many shows alone before so i was kinda nervous about heading two hours away by myself, on top of not really knowing what i was gonna be doing volunteerwise, but something pushed me to decide to go through w it. and this thing had the most random (/pos) assortment of the scene. from big metalcore outfits to modern faces of emo/pop punk/post hardcore to localish hardcore, you get the idea. i had a blast & got to watch a ton of sets.

anyways, near the end of the day some dude i'd definitely heard of by name and was aware was some big dude in the scene from some band (my phone was dead so it was killing me i couldn't look that up hhhh), was about to play a solo set so i figured i'd drop by and catch a bit. i was hanging outside of that stage and suddenly bro started playing and i thought "damn, this dude seems cool" then, naturally, weaved my way into the crowd, watched his full hourish long set since he was the last on that stage, and thought, "damn, this dude is cool." besides his music, i remember admiring the way he talked w the crowd, and then after, the way he stood around and chatted extensively with every last person like they were an old friend (i just kinda stood off to the side in my "staff" shirt watching and probably smiling, figuring i'd let dude's genuine fans have their moment... little did i know). anyways, naturally i'm talking about anthony here, and that night when i got home i looked him up and saw he was from circa & saosin and had a Revelation since of course being in the scene i knew about those bands, and i basically vowed to get into bro's music. and, well, safe to say i found a way less than a month later when i opened that article and saw he was singing in a new band with the guitarist of one of the bands that's meant the most to me for the longest (spoiler: i lost my mind when i saw he was the singer in a "YES! this dude" kinda way).

anyways, since then i'd argue my love for mcr somehow grew (i like to think that's because a lot of my love for music relies on connection & community, more on that later), i (specifically surrounding seeing them @ adjacent) have been getting into thursday & coheed, and, of course, last december i got hugely into tsoaf n traveled 2 see them in january, come february i discovered saosin, & thanks to a rec from a kind person outside the dunes show the other night, i'm now becoming irreversibly attached to circa as well. these people's music has changed my goddamn life, and it's all bands i'd never really looked into before despite of course being aware of them. and that is special.

also, at no other show (and shows in general are my favorite place in the world) have i experienced quite the level of community (random but something i've specifically noticed @ dunes & tsoaf & anthony's solo shows is that circa fans are SO nice?) i do at dunes shows. i've been alone every time i've seen them, but never felt less lonely. the show quite literally ended and i immediately had multiple people yelling (/pos) things at me about my midtown shirt, coming up to talk to me in general, and hell, even I had absolutely no problem going up to people with total confidence to chat, something i usually shake in my boots over. we had a freakin campfire style singalong going. i got to talk to people about traveling for shows who do the same with their time, hell, this was the first time i ever got to ramble in person about my love for tsoaf to someone that actually knew what the hell i was talking about. i spoke to people from all over, both physically and from different parts of the scene and yet we had all ended up right here. stuff feels like the embodiment of the dunes whole "lost souls found" thing, dude.

ls dunes gave me the opportunity twice now to chat with somebody (frank) whose music has been with me for the entire going on ten years since i got into the scene. something that wouldn't really (understandably) be possible at an mcr show. and we've reached the point as of thursday's show that i don't feel nervous going up to him anymore either, we entirely just had a pretty long, chill conversation and goofed off a little and i will never take that for granted. i mean that in a "historically interactions with folks in bands i look up to in this scene have meant the world to me because, like i mentioned earlier, my love for music stems from a community "scene" based idea that we're all just people passionate about this stuff" way.

and of course, the shows themselves, but i'm not sure i can accurately describe those, it's something you need to experience for yourself. i have considered toronto1 my favorite show i've been to ever since it happened, and i have been going to shows since 2014. these dudes have chemistry like no other, and you just get the sense watching them that they were born to do this together. and don't get me started on anthony's crowd interaction stuff. he has become one of my favorite frontpeople (if not my genuine favorite) over this past year. no one does it like that dude does.

anyways, i don't know that i've ever felt quite this way about any band before, which seems crazy for me becayse i care deeply about so many bands. ls dunes is special. all i know is i legitimately have not stopped thinking about the dunes since the toronto show thursday, to the point of being kinda perpetually shaky & endlessly needing to remind myself it's okay, they're not going away yet, i still have one more show in pittsburgh this thursday. i truly hope i can talk to the other dudes (especially anthony since i feel like so much of this lore involves him) and tell them some of this then, and maybe meet some of you, too (i'll definitely be getting there early & also sticking around after)!

and no matter what, i can't wait for this show, and all the shows to come, man. so there's the complete wavernot4love recap, well, so far.

[revvethasmythh]

In response to your Fearne/Chetney song post: Consider this ask an opportunity to pick any playlists you have and ramble about them, I absolutely love discovering new music through playlists!

yes EXCELLENT thank you!!

okay to keep myself on task so I don't just ramble for like 5k words, I'm going to treat this a top 10 list and this is going to specifically be for my widobrave playlist because she is my baby and I've been working on her for a long time and you know what? the wb tag deserves a little love. I'm going to try to spotlight different songs than I talked about before, too, for diversity's sake

this is absolutely going to get long, so I'll put the rest under the cut.

1: I And Love And You, The Avett Brothers

oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. What is there to say that the song does not say itself? There are a few ways I think this song could be interpreted depending on how you're reading the lyrics, but the line "that woman she got eyes that shine/like a pair of stolen polished dimes" is so fucking good and so Veth this will always be a top song for me. Also need to shout out the "the dream's the catch/the world's the cage" line in this one, because that has always made me think back to Heart in a Cage--I consider them related in my own personal widobrave lyrical thematic universe. Verdict: The vibes are excellent. The Avett brothers always pull through for me

2. Summertime, MCR

obviously this was going to show up in wb song list for me because I named one of my fics after this song! I've always associated summer with wb anyway, but the additional layer of the summer camp and that being a time they specifically spend together in post-canon makes it even better. "You can run away with me any time you want" also follows through on the "runaway" theme that they've both had on their separate playlists (Runaway by Yeah Yeah Yeahs on Caleb's first playlist and Runaway Pt. 1 (Love Has Limits) by Colony House on the Veth playlist).

3. Who Will I Hold, The Avett Brothers

I am screaming and crying and throwing up every time this song comes on. Listen to their one-on-one talk in episode 121 and then listen to this song. The lyrics are so remarkably accurate, it's a thing to behold. "I'm bracing for loneliness, I know it's coming/Now, who will I hold when you're gone?"

4. Hand Over Heart, Gin Wigmore

Melancholy and loving and again incredibly accurate lyrics from "and promise me, day and night/you'll always be my best friend" to "you got the magic to light up the stars/it's like the world is spinning just for you."

5. Not Alone, Shawn James

Very tender song that resonates a lot with wb, and also so very reminiscent of what Veth told Caleb in the finale with the line "Listen close and hear/I want you to let go of your fear/You can find love/Let go of your strife and get what you want out of your life." Like, I think there's a gifset out there somewhere where she basically just says this to Caleb.

6. I Will Follow Him, Peggy March

Okay so this one IS from the first Nott playlist, but I don't see it talked about very much and tbh if you're listening to it from the pov of having seen the end of the campaign, this one just hits different. Shoutout to the "he'll always be my true love" lyric. Like WHAT. The way that song was on an official CR playlist and no one ever talks about it, I'm--

7. Head Full Of Doubt/Road Full Of Promise, The Avett Brothers

A third Avett Brothers song, you say?? Why yes, indeed. Their songs just really hit for this ship with me. I consider this song to mostly be a Veth song, revolving a lot around Veth's self-doubt issues, but if we're following Rosie's Lyrical Thematic Universe (RLTU), this lyric, "There was a dream and one day I could see it/Like a bird in a cage I broke in and demanded that somebody free it" stands out a lot. Like the song progression of Heart in a Cage -> I And Love And You -> Head Full Of Doubt/Road Full Of Promise is what I'm getting at here. "Oh, the heart beats in its cage" to "The dream's the catch/The world's the cage" to "Like a bird in a cage I broke in a demanded that somebody free it." The caged bird thing is HUGE thematically with me and which I think is really funny because it's literally just ME out here with these hyper specific themes and motifs going on. But I love it, I think it works great for them

8. If U Stayed, ZZ Ward

You come to this song for pure angst and pure angsty only. If you want to feel angsty about the fact that they're non-canon, this is the song for you.

9. December Song, Birdtalker (of Blue Healer fame) and Joy Williams (of Trouble With Wanting fame)

"Friend your heart has been far away from mine/There's no one to blame but that wicked stalwart time/And as the year marches steady to its end/Oh, my heart is longing to be close to yours again"

I've been wanting to write a post-canon holiday themed piece based around this song for AGES. the details aren't perfectly accurate, but the vibes are very much there.

10. Lead to Light, Nico Vega

No song list/playlist of mine is ever complete without at least ONE Nico Vega song. The themes of, well, "I will drop anything for you" ring very true, but my favorite line is the bridge: "Oh my love, you know you are a teacher/But you don't know I can be a teacher, too." I appreciate it on one level as inherently suggestive, but extremely literal in the case of late widobrave with Veth opening up her camp to teach adventurers, especially since she had said she wasn't a good teacher sometime in the early campaign.

Honorable Mentions:

1: So Sorry Mama, Whitney Duncan

The details of this song do not match up with canon, HOWEVER, I am 100% certain Veth (lover of monsters and of bad boys) has had at least one, if not more, fantasies re: Caleb that sound exactly like this. So I'm including it because I am sure that she'd had this vision at least once in a dream

2. If We Were Vampires, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

I'll admit this one is highly specific to me, which is why it's in the honorable mentions section, because I'm pulling a lot of the themes of this song for the post-canon wb piece I'm working on right now. It's also just a very bittersweet, tender song that is so, so good about loving someone for as long as you can and making those days count

A bonus Veth-specific honorable mention:

Whiskey Fever by Dorothy. It's not all that deep of a song rec, but it's pretty accurate and it slaps. This song fucking slaps.

A bonus Caleb-specific honorable mention:

Innocent by Taylor Swift. Never thought I'd choose a T. Swift song for him, but it so eerily accurate to his story. Could double a wb song, but I largely relate it to Caleb due to its subject matter.

if anyone was actually curious, I'll just add the full playlist here for perusal sake because there's A LOT more on there, these are just my personal favorites:

[player-1]

Welp, besides going absolutely bananas on the Chaos Quartet getting the glowup they deserve, looks like I misjudged who created them in the first place. Whoops 😅

Nevertheless, the little context clues just scream the idea of Metta pulling the strings as inconspicuously as possible to bring Vaithe/Vados out of the woodwork of the Pixekai program...Indirectly, of course, that's just his motif at this point. If you don't want to watch the video to catch up, here's a little rundown of the Chaos timeline (using Luke as the MC name because it's canon in my heart and in the official Nexomon channel):

TL;DR: While the Abyssals DLC explains how Amelie created Vados by finding an ancient Micromon dex in the Frozen Tundra, it inadvertently reveals Metta's future plan of reviving the relics of N1 and Micromon past for Nexomon 3; and the Micromon fans should rise from the dead since Leah might come back to control the Chaos Quartet as she did once before and become Malk 2.0.

-About a decade before Luke's birth (25-ish years ago), the Guild (ie. Amelie and Logan) find a trove of tech from the Frozen Tundra containing the Micromon database ("The MALK blueprints" aka. 154 horribly displaced 'mons at their disposal). Micromon/MCR 150-154 contain the Chaos siblings [Gurgita, Fulmina, Anima, Agita, and Vaithe]. -10 years later, Luke/Solus is born and the Greater Dragons go crazy, destroying their initial lab at Drake Isles and destroying the data of 149 MCRs; Amelie and Logan only managed to recover the last five, although most of the original data was heavily damaged from the rampage. The two then travel to Precursor Mountain (previous, and future, stomping ground of the Abyssal Tyrants) and split the data between two labs; Amelie working on Fulmina, Agita and Vaithe while Logan takes Gurgita and Anima. Logan hides in a lab deep in the mountain where a strange spatial anomaly already present in the area creates an endless maze and disorients anyone that tries to traverse it (Amelie is rightfully pissed off about it). -About a year later, the Renegades start hatching their Tyrants and wreck havoc on the world to try and become King of Monsters, causing Amelie to panic and prioritize completing Vaithe/Vados over the Chaos Quartet. They split the data and Logan just plops the disc for Anima on his desk back at Cadium as a "souvenir". They finish Vados just around the time of the main story (now I believe that this scene might be the exact moment when Vados was completed/activated; honing onto Luke way too fast for comfort and rightfully freaking him out, though it would've been interesting to see some kind of reaction from Coco or the others as well). -In the present time of the Abyssal DLC (post-game mind you), Luke stumbles upon Amelie's old lab and recover the first Chaos disc (Fulmina); plunging headfirst into a rabbit hole that inevitably releases four digi-gods of the Micromon past into the far flung future of 1,015 years later. Of course, for science!

Now with that added context, it makes a bit more sense on the revival side since it's easy to assume (in N:E time) that all of them were bipedal with the data they salvaged...Still, what an upgrade it was! :D

Move over Dracozolt/vish and Arctozolt/vish, this is how you butcher ancient mons right! But it says as much that while Chaos Quartet were the only ones that were damaged, Vados was restored and looked relatively the same...Well, Amelie was so adamant on bringing the Colossus of Light into the real world with all his bells and whistles attached (with the terrifying bonus of giving him an evolution on top of it all).

All in all, the main question here is how Amelie and Logan were able to recover such a priceless time capsule of Micromon data in the first place? While Logan mentioned finding them in the Frozen Tundra, I have a feeling that there are only two places they could've found it: Omnicron's Tomb or Nexolord/Metta's old house in N1. And getting the Micromon database in its entirety, I'm pretty sure that Metta either had an M-Linker from Malk or took possession of it after N1; but I love the idea that they only called it the "MALK database" since he literally wrote his name on the dex for keepsake (and the same applies for the Chaos/CHAOS Quartet). Case in point, the amount of people that know the existence of the Pixekai program in Extinction's time are slim to none; Metta, the N1 protagonist, Atlas, and Vados himself (depends if he remembers his MCR times or not). And obviously with Metta having direct access to Micromon from Malk (and/or the M-Linker), who's to say that he kept the data safe until they brought back another set of monstrosities that shouldn't exist in the first place. If he's smart enough to fix a resurrection machine on the edge of destruction and drop off the grid after near-death two times in the N1 timeline, he's definitely smart enough to possibly make a copy of Micromon or Pixekai to use for his future plot... And while I'm on a roll with the Metta revival theory, on top of holding onto priceless Pixekai data, he would definitely still have a Nexopad to boot, leading to the revival of a bunch of wonderful iterations of N1 (and or MCR) mons before Amelie and Logan even set foot on the mountain: • Abbadog (N 183) -> Abbadog (NX 382) • Arctivore (N 183) -> Arctivore (NX 383) • Bogarp (N 180) -> Bogarp (NX 384) •Dustuf (MCR) -> Broshield (N 153) -> Broshield (NX 385) •Hoosdom (MCR 105) -> Wiselie (N 156) -> Wiselie (NX 401) •Fropip (N 11) -> Frominence (NX 409) • Hobyn (N 3) -> Mauradin (NX 407) • Molotail (MCR 66) -> Trondle (N 162) -> Trondle (NX 397) • Mollucess (MCR 140) -> Gemeen (N 95) -> Gemeen (NX 406) • Ashgon (MCR 62) -> Tephragon (N 101) -> Tephragon (NX 408) And many many many more...

While listing the examples above, the reoccurring theme is that each revived Nexomon keeps their original name from the N1 era, even if they clearly have a major upgrade or appearance change (in contrast to the first iteration of revived Nexomon in the main story). The few Nexomon that received a different name are Frominence and Mauradin since they are an additional evo from their previous incarnation. And even if it rightfully pissed Ziegler off when over a thousand clearly extinct Nexomon were somehow resurrected from the Netherworld, he (predictably) blames Luke for it since the magic signature is practically identical to his power of Life (Even Deena confirms that her siblings (and herself) aren't capable of this scheme to this extent). But, you know, they lived on the mountain before he showed up; and with the added hassle of Venefelis somehow "holding onto" the access energy to consistently revive his Abyssal siblings out of spite and vengeance alone... Everything about Precursor Mountain just leaves a Metta-sized footprint on his upcoming plots and everyone in the Guild is too stressed out about the Abyssals coming back until the Primordial Tyrants (and/or Vados) get a whole lot of whiplash when they finally figure out the true culprit of this whole fiasco. But to make this absolutely long story short, Metta was reviving an entire Nexomon army from the past (and Digi-World) on a uncharted mountain right under everyone's noses and plans to psychologically torment his nephew for centuries to come until he gets the throne since being Nexolord just didn't scratch that itch anymore.

Oh right, I also needed to explain why Leah might come back... -She's the only one who can control the Chaos Quartet (as explained in my previous post). -While Malk might've destroyed Pixekai to escape into the real world (albeit in temporal limbo), the key point is him updating Pixekai from 1.0 to 2.0; presumably reformatting Micromon's story to exclude him. So who's to say that Leah is still alive in the program since all that she wants is to live a better life in the real world... -Oh yeah, and have you seen her mask? She would become Metta's replacement Overseer after Glacia in a heartbeat.

While I don't exactly know how many hurdles Metta will jump through for Nexomon 3 and whether or not Leah will come back for real, the continuity is way too easy to see if anyone had the chance to look back to Micromon (and here's the full playlist in case anyone wants to catch up on potential foreshadowing).

Nevertheless, Moga/Vewo Interactive has been going strong on tying loose ends in all three games so far; so who's to say that Metta's going to throw down hard with ancient Nexomon and Micromon at his disposal in Nexomon 3, and he might as well have another helping hand that is both a genius of their time, digital just like Malk, and has a heart as cold as ice like Glacia...And if we somehow get to see Zeth and Cyborg come back from the woodwork too, I'll be happy. :)

[akwardlyuncool]

Are Back Here Again?!

So in the most rude way possible When Were Young Fest has decided to announce the lineup for their 2023 date. And I’m not being facetious when I say rude, because the 2022 dates haven’t even happened yet and they’re already about to start the pre-sale for the next one. We don’t know how well or rather how absolutely terrible this year’s is going to be, but hey why not just ride off on the cloud of imaginary good vibes. I have no doubt in my mind that my and other folk’s anxiety will soon pop off if it hasn’t already, this is just the beginning. We’ve seen what outdoor festivals with big names like this have looked like this year (look up MCR at Riot Fest!) and tell me this isn’t asking for more trouble, that is if When We Young Year 1 lives to even tell the tale.

Now I don’t want to spend this whole post yelling with my WARNING SIGN, mainly because you can read my 2022 WWWY Fest post that I did back in January if you want more in depth reasons why I think this is a terrible idea. No, today I’m going to cry.

If you’ve followed me for a decent amount of time or had a musical conversation with me, you know that my two favorite bands are Green Day and Relient K. My dream tour is a double headline featuring both of them and I get to pick the setlist. (Remember it’s dreamland and in my fantasy I get two kinda opposite bands on the same stage and I get to pick the setlist.) If you’ve listened to those two bands, you’d know that they might wind up on the same “elder emo/pop-punk” playlist, but the idea of them being on the same tour isn’t likely. Warped Tour made some lineups like that happen, however even Warped Tour had it’s modern limitations. When We Were Young decided to make that happen. The catch is however, that it’s still flying in dreamland for me.

If this was happening in my state that be one thing, however convincing other 30 somethings who have kids and jobs and other important day to day stuff going on, would be hella rough and that’s not including the expense of it all. Basically the chances of me getting to be able to go (I’m not doing The Vegas by myself) are very slim to none and I just want to be sad about that for a while lol. Actual personal dream tours are a very rare sighting and part of me just wishes I could be happy that this is even taking place at all, but it’s posing difficult. I eventually got over this years festival because it all seemed to good to be true and a bodily hazard, but this new one is gonna take a minute.

That being said and not to knock the current lineup, but the 2023 roster is substantially better. I say that because there’s too much of my super core here to say I’d take Set It Off, who I absolutely love, over the original line up of Something Corporate. There are I believe 6 bands on that lineup that have made some of my favorite albums of all time, which is un-heard of, even for the most dedicated of Pop-Punk fans, to see in any given tour.  Again there’s red flag and shock here. Will come back after 2022′s festival is over and see if dreams came true or if all of our suspicions were grossly correct.

So Once Again I’m Gonna List Off The Top 10 Bands I’d See If Magic Were To Happen and I Get To Go:

Green Day

They are my favorite band and I have yet to see them live, so a priority they will be.

Relient k

I will do whatever it takes to make seeing them and Green Day in one day happen.

Something Corporate

Good Charlotte

Gym Class Heroes

YellowCard

They would be higher, however I’ve gotten to see them at Warped Tour, so I can prioritize a few other bands first. (Even if I was in the back for that show.)

Simple Plan

Again all my favorite bands from 2004 in one day would be a dream.

Bowling For Soup

Sum 41

The Academy Is...

I don’t talk about how much I enjoy The Academy Is... enough and would very much like to see them live.

PS: Just reading that list is making my brain explode. Like it can’t compute that anyone would get to see even a fraction of those bands live, in a single day. Maddness.

.

.

Also to fight here instead of Twitter, here are 2 “hot takes:”

One, not to knock anyone’s music tastes, but if you saw this lineup and were most excited for 5SOS, the ticket you don’t have should be revoked. You can not sit at the adult table this evening as you are obviously not an adult.

Two, if you’re comparing 2022′s headliners to bands simply on the 2023 lineup and not headlining you need to sit all the way down. ATL and NFG are not the headliners, they have not downgraded.