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a-froger-epic · 4 years

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Interview with a Queen “groupie”

Cross-posted to AO3. I encourage you to leave any comments you have there.

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I compiled this interview following a long email exchange with J, a very sweet lady who went to Ealing Art School between 1972 and 1974. She knew all four members of Queen personally and was part of their larger circle of friends.

First off, you may find this hard to believe. I don’t blame you. But I assure you I’m not pulling your leg. As well as the pictures I share in this post, I have seen current pictures of J (which I will not share to protect her privacy). There is no indication as far as I am aware that she isn’t who she says she is.

Nastally, hold up. How exactly did you find this lady?

She found me. It turns out that she has been following my story Dawn of Aquarius for quite some time. The story is set in 1969. A lot of research about the era went into it, because I wanted to portray that time period - and Freddie’s and Roger’s surroundings - as accurately and realistically as I possibly could. That was what drew J in. She tells me it brought back a lot of memories for her. One of the reasons I love DoA so much is the nostalgia, she says, which genuinely means the world to me. Eventually, she talked to me in the comment section. Of course, I freaked out!

And then, I asked her for an interview, to which she replied: I will give it a go, but you must remember that I am 65 and there were great drugs in the 70s, and at 16, away from home, I had a lot!

And so...

Here’s what is IMPORTANT TO KEEP IN MIND when you read this interview.

These are one woman’s 50-year-old memories and subjective impressions. J has been incredibly kind to let me pick her brain, trying to recall everything as best as she can. In her own words:

Just remember that when I answer the questions, it is from a 16-year-old who is 9 years younger than Freddie and a little girl with no family and friends in a strange country trying to fit in. The only reason I was there, was because some hippie thought I had a unique art style.

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J as a teenager.

[I have edited the interview together from our long, and somewhat messy at times, email exchange. Typos have been fixed and some punctuation added for clarity, but I have not changed anything J has written to me. Again, bear in mind these are personal opinions and impressions.]

So, J, how did you end up at Ealing Art School in 1972 and what was it like?

This was the painting done for the Australian school-leaving certificate.

It placed first and gave me a scholarship. I could pick France, the USA or England. As a dual citizen of the UK, the choice was easy. The scholarship paid for board and fees, so had to be and sell whatever for spending money.

This picture is from the dorm. We all had a 10pm curfew and a very thick rule book that, I am proud to say, I broke every one of them, one by one. The rooms were on the 1st and 2nd floor. We were on the first floor, rooms one side and admin staff the other end. We had two bathrooms for 18 girls. One of them had two baths. The walls were your standard half wall, so it was a given that if you had a bath you run the risk of having a bucket of cold water dropped on you. Downstairs was the kitchen and lounge room.

I want to ask you a few things about life in London in the early 70s, to get a picture of what it was really like. For example, was there alcohol at the music gigs you went to?

If it was a school, church or community hall, no. If it was a pub, yes.

Did you and your friends drink as much then as young people tend to drink now when you all went out?

No, we didn't. I think it had a lot to do with money. We didn't have the disposable income, and it was unheard of to still be living at home with the parents after the age of 20.

Was weed and LSD as big and easily accessible as depictions of the 60s and 70s would have us believe?

The drugs! Got to have drugs. Pot (weed) was easy to grow, very cheap. Used to smoke it in bongs rather than joints, more bang for your buck. Trips [LSD] were cheap, I think. About 2 pounds and you were on the high for over 24 hours with no sleep. My drug of choice was hash. Either the oil or the block. It was a nice high, but you could not function well. But if you listen to the music of the time it really does reflect what it was like, to have a group of friends over for a session. Having said all that the most outlandish and shocking drug I ever saw anyone use was the birth control pill. Didn't you have to hide that stuff away?!

Can you tell us some 70s slang that isn’t really in use anymore? What in the world does “ultra-blagging” mean? (As written in a letter penned by Freddie to his friend Celine in 1969.)

Abso-bloody-lootely!

Man, I thought I was the bees knees to be on a scholarship in London. But that didn't stop me from jigging or having a skive day. They were the days that I blagged my way into a pub, had too many lagers and ended up chundering in the gutter. That was how you knew your night was ace. I would get a right bollocking if anyone found out. It would be a bugger when all that you could find at a car boot sale was chavtastic, but sometimes you could be Jammy Dodger and tickety-boo you find something brilliant. Bob's your uncle. Anyways, I need to see a man about a dog.

[It seems to me that J uses a bit of Australian slang here, like chundering, which makes sense because she is, after all, Australian. She also provided the translation:]

Cheers

It would be my honour.

I felt very privileged to be given a scholarship that let me study in England. But being so young and having no family to guide me, it was often tempting to not turn up or give a false excuse for being sick. (I had a lot of food poisoning). These would often happen if the night before I had been drinking beer and ended up vomiting outside the pub. But in my young mind that was a good night. If any of the teachers found me drinking I would be in a lot of trouble. Often I would have to say I was holding it for someone else. Not having much clothes with me, I would buy them second hand from church jumble sales or other students and, yes, Kensington market (the market). Some of the stuff would not be very tasteful or in good condition. But sometimes you would find something that was cheap and in good condition. I will stop this text now as I must go to the toilet.

PS: Ultrablagging sounds very Freddie. Blagging was used, but not ultra, meaning to persuade someone to do something or act better than you are. They were always rock stars.

Sincerely

[It was at this point that I realised I was talking to an absolute legend. She also told me then that the majority of her old photographs had sadly been lost when her house was flooded in 1988, including most of the photographs from her stay in London. Noooo! :(]

When you went out to dance, did you have only live music? Were there DJs yet?

You know, that is hard. We did not have a DJ. Sometimes there would be a band. Often we looked for places with a band or the jukebox. I think pubs closed at 10pm and some stayed open to 12 or 1, but public transport stopped at 9. So if you had not arranged a lift then you had to make the last bus. Most of the time we would be heading back to someone's place to get stoned and then crash there. In the morning you would have to work out where you were. When I got back to Australia, the discos were all the rage. They could have been in London too but it was not cool to like disco.

How many people would show up to Queen’s gigs when they played in pubs or at, for example, the Imperial College?

Depending on the location and the night: 10 to 1000!

So how did you first meet the Queen boys?

I was at the pub talking about a band we saw last week when Brian stuck his head into our booth telling us he knew a better one. Thinking about seeing them at the stall... Roger not often, Freddie quite a lot. Often on different stalls, I think that is why I can't remember the name. [The name of the stall. Other sources confirm that Freddie also worked at Alan Muir’s stall, for example, selling shoes.]

How well did you know them?

Just looking at your tumblr account. [she has had a look at my blog, where somebody asked if ‘groupie’ meant she had slept with the band] No, I never slept with the boys. I would not say I was a close friend, but I started at Ealing Art College in ‘72 and moved in the same circles. I loved the music and could be called one of the first groupies. I had to sneak into the pubs because I was 16. Roger always teased me for being so young. They all did seem to be one very large family, not just the band. It was a group of about twenty regulars, both male and female. Everyone knew that Fred was too gay to function. We were all at the gay rights march in London in 1972, had to run after the march. Lots of sharpies [Australian slang: youth gang, thugs] wanting to bash us. Back then I was in every protest that was going, student union rights, even the secretary protest. Just part of the times, stick it to Man or Woman. I left London in ‘74 for Australia, been here ever since and lost track of the boys but have never stopped being a fan.

What do you remember about them? How would you describe their personalities?

Don’t let the trolls hate me, but I did not like Brian. I found him to be rather full of himself. Space was a subject you never brought up around Brian or you would die of old age before he stopped talking. He was always the first to speak and start a conversation and then quickly passed you off to John, who was always tired and shy. Roger was also quite shy at times. He was very self-conscious of his looks, as he felt being pretty, nobody would take him seriously. Fred, well, he was not yet the big star, so I think he was working on his stage persona. When talking to groups at parties, he had the best stories of things that had happened to him or close friends. They were very funny and very descriptive. He was the life of the party. When he had a few to drink or was the centre of attention, he would take a cigarette out of the closest person’s hand and start smoking. Now remember this is the point of view of a 16-year-old girl that was a fish out of water, trying to fit in and not having much worldly experience.

It is said that Freddie and Roger were very stylish. How did they dress in everyday life?

Fred would do his hair and makeup to check the mail. Yes, he was always turned out, but so were a lot of people. Freddie did go over the top with hats, scarfs and jewellery. With Roger, it is a surprise he was able to have kids his jeans were that tight. And his shirts were always open unless he was in a jumper. I think it could have been so that you knew he was male, as it was the start of the unisex clothing. When I travelled out of London I realised it was a London thing. When I got back to Australia everyone thought I was a show-off.

There are some disagreements about how tall especially Freddie was. I know this is a difficult thing to try and remember accurately. But do you remember?

Freddie was taller than me but everyone was. Roger was shorter than Fred, but I never saw Roger in platform shoes. I did meet up with the band by chance at Sydney airport in 1984, said ‘hello’ but they did not remember me, or if they did then they did not say anything and I did not want to be a dork. At that time Fred was the same height as me (5ft 8in/1.72m), Roger was taller than me. It made me think at the time that he had a growth spurt! John was shorter than me and Brian has always been tall. [I have a feeling the platform shoes - or lack thereof - played a vital role here! Although 172cm for Freddie seems likely.]

You said everyone knew Freddie was “too gay to function”. Attitudes towards homosexuality have changed so much that it can be hard for us, now, to fathom what exactly people must have thought of him. Was it more of a joke that he was so camp? Was it something he would have been teased for? Also, he had a girlfriend. Did you ever meet Mary or the other girlfriends?

In 1972 a whole group of us - and I am pretty sure that Fred, Roger, Brian and Tim were there - were in a gay pride march. [Since then, J has found and showed me a picture of a boy she thought was Tim Staffel, and it wasn't, so Tim was most definitely not there. Whether Freddie, Roger and Brian really were there or if J is misremembering, who knows?] Us youth believed you could not choose who you fell in love with and if it was same sex, so what? However, if it was two girls then it was every guy’s duty to change her!

It was also a time that the gayer the guy was, the more the girls were interested. Also, if a guy was gay then you did not have to worry about him and he was a good person to take with you if you were going out drinking. However, the police, parents, teachers and anyone of authority were horrified and treated them badly. I did meet Mary a couple of times at pubs and once after a gig. This is just my opinion, but I found her a bitch. It could be that I was so young. It could be that I was very Australian. It could be that she felt threatened as my accent was a magnet to people around. And the boys (Queen) were no exception. Brian had a cousin in OZ and was always asking questions. I remember that my close group of friends thought that Mary made the perfect girlfriend for Fred as they were as fake as each other. Having said that about them, I often wonder if I would think the same now and if my perceptions were just because she would not give me the time of Day. Chrissy and Jo were a lot of fun.

This was before your time, but I read that Freddie's nickname at Ealing Art School was ‘Freddie Baby’. Any ideas how this came about? His showmanship or maybe personality traits?

I don't think so. There were an older crowd that would talk like that. I think the slang ‘baby’ was a 60’s thing, like groovy baby.

How long, roughly, did Roger and Freddie have their stall? I can't find anywhere when it closed down. What did it actually look like? Was it a sort of wooden stall type of thing? Or an actual room? What were some of the other things people sold at Kensington Market? Mostly clothes or all sorts?

The markets were little divided shops. The back was brick and the walls wood. I have been trying all day to remember the name. [Of the stall.] I think it was something hard to say. More often than not it would be Freddie's dad in the store. It was still open when I left. Roger and Freddie were both in the store on Saturdays and some Sundays. There was a girl, I think Jill, who was in the store more. And during the week it could be anyone. You name it and you could get it at the markets. Second hand or designer clothes, shoes, jewellery, pot and assortments. Hair cuts, food, bric-a-brac.

Wait, wait. What? Freddie’s dad? Really now?

Yeah, it was an older Indian man. so we just assumed it was his father. It was my understanding that he started the stall then the boys would work it as the whole markets were set up for younger people, but if needed he would work there. I don't think the boys would be able to pay the rent on their own. [I have since found out that the stall closed in late 1971, and Freddie continued to work at the Market until '74, for Alan Mair and possibly others. So the stall J witnessed wasn't their original stall - explaining all the different people she saw there - but she had no way of knowing that it wasn't.] They always had incense burning that was very big in the 70s. I still occasionally bring out the sticks, but it does not last like the candles and diffusers of today. If you could get in touch with Robert Daniels, he ran ChaChaDumDum it was the stall across from Freddie. He would know the dates.

[J says it’s this look, in a picture she happened across while looking at my tumblr] Yep, that is the one. It usually means that he does not believe or agree with something that was said and is working out how to respond, or he has lost the plot.

You mentioned Roger seemed shy to you at times. Was he also quite charming? We read a lot about what a chick magnet he was. Was this the impression you had?

My favorite subject! I had a thing for Roger. Everyone has a type and mine is the blue-eyed blond. Now, before you ask, was he brunet? No, he was a mouse/dirty blond. If it was summer he would have blond streaks mostly at the ends. He knew he was pretty and was always dressed in the latest fashion and had the current hairstyle. So, being my type I was constantly watching him. Everyone slept around during that time. I did not notice Roger doing it more or less. 80% of the time he was with Jo. Yes, he was a chick magnet, but he did not do the chasing. He was always very polite to everyone. If it ever looked like there would be any conflict he would be the first to leave it. It was not that he was a coward, just not into conflict. If he saw anyone that needed help he was right there, and often had to have Freddie's back. I never saw him in a fight. He could always talk his way out of things. He was also very patient and would listen for hours to other people talk. However, he would get this vacant look in his eyes at times.

And Freddie would either click his fingers, change the subject or just give up. I don’t think that Brian noticed, and it would be fair game for John, he would see how far he could push it. Roger liked to drink a fair bit and when drunk he would be hanging all over Jo. If she was not there then he missed Jo. If, however, he thought that he or his friends were not being respected, then look out! It was a verbal volcano heading your way. That is what happened to me one time. I was trying to talk with my friends close to where a drunken Roger was and I yelled at him to shut the hell up, you wannabe blond. We/I coped a mouthful back, all in the same sentence, that finished with: Sorry, I didn't realise you were on your rags (period)! I have to have the last word, so I told him the truth: I don’t get them yet! (I was a late starter.) He went so red in the face and called me JB [jail bait] from then.

You also mentioned Roger’s cat Ziggy having kittens. I read about this but never when exactly it was. Do you remember?

I think it was winter ‘73. I remember being cold when he was asking around the pub. [To find homes for the kittens, I gather.]

Is it quite strange reading fictional interpretations of real people you knew? When did you first find out there was Queen fanfic?

No, we used to make up stories about people all the time, a verbal fanfic. Was looking up Adam Lambert and came across the fanfics. Some had me in stitches! Others, like DoA, had me hooked.

Please, allow me to be a little self-indulgent at the end. What's one thing I got totally RIGHT in DoA?

All the Ibex stuff.

What's one thing I got totally WRONG in DoA?

Roger did not have a temper, and I don’t know what the go with his father was, but he would talk about him quite a bit and was always visiting his mum. [Absolutely fair, not only did I change the timeline of Roger’s parents divorce in DoA - for lack of information at the time - but also created a completely fictional narrative around it for the sake of storytelling.]

J, thank you so much for all this, sincerely. Can you tell me a little more about yourself? Are you still an artist?

I don't paint or draw any more. At the age of a 50 the doctors operated on an aneurysm or three, and now my eyesight is very bad, I have no fine motor skills and a tremor. I was married in January 1984 and have just celebrated our 37 year anniversary. I have one daughter who is 30 and two great, although tiring grandkids. A girl, 11, and one boy, 5. I have lived my life as the average middle class Australian with great memories. Talking with you has helped me a lot to remember a time when the world was mine for the taking. When I returned to OZ I started nursing, met my best friend, and we planned that once we graduated we would go back to London to study midwifery. But I fell in love instead.

J's wedding in 1984. As you can see, she found her own blue-eyed blond.

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Upon request, J has shared some of her past and present artwork with me.

These are from her time at Ealing Art School:

These were done later, back in Australia:

J: Did this just before Christmas as you had inspired me. It did not require fine motor skills!

So there you have it! I hope you found this little glimpse through a 16-year-old girl’s eyes as much of a fascinating read as I did. I urge everybody one more time to remember that J did not have to share any of this, and I think we all owe her a big thank you for delving into her memories. She is likely to see the responses on AO3, so I have comment moderation enabled there as I will not let anybody harass this lovely lady. The tumblr she created is @since72, but she isn’t really an active user and also very new to it all. Again, I can only urge everybody to be respectful.

If you have other burning question for J, feel free to leave them in the comments on AO3. I will either pass them on, or she may want to reply to them herself directly.

#Queen band #Freddie Mercury #Roger Taylor #John Deacon #Brian May #interview #i am so excited about this #so much into #information #JB

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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 4 years

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So I adore your character Frank. I mean Adore him with a capital A. I started reading your fics when I was like 13 or something and now I am 21 years old.

I re-read your fics for nostalgia's sake a few days ago and. . . I have to tell you that I think Frank was and is one of the most influential characters in my life.

I know he isn't a huge character, but Frank just set up my type of favorite character going forwards in life. Due to this fic, I have always gravitated to 'whipped' characters, to character whom really should be terror in and of themselves but have been rendered harmless towards or for a singlar person.

I might have any ways, but I KNOW Frank at least cemented this in me. He just. . . Has intrinsically interwoven himself into my psychic.

I have named my ocs after him, basied characters off of him, compared all my favorite characters to him. Hell. My girlfriend wanted to talk about baby names, and I suggested Frank in at least partially love for this character (It is also a family name, But your fic sweetened it additionally)

I mean this, completely truthfuly, that your oc Frank has been my favorite fictional character for many years. I hunger for Frank content like a starving man hungers for a bit of roast beef.

I love your other characters too.

Lilly? Superb.

Rabbit? Fancy.

Lenin and the many Toms? Thats what I'm talking about.

But Frank? Frank to me is special.

So. . . I was wondering if you could tell us a little more about Frank? In anyway I mean. Or perhaps not at all. Whatever you think is most appropriate.

Frank?

You’re not alone, I’ve gotten a lot of people who really like Frank and definitely wish he wasn’t such a minor character. That said, if Rabbit wasn’t my answer to South Park’s Towley then I feel like Frank would be. He’s great and all but he’s just... well, he’s not a main character.

But I have to say I’m very flattered by, well, all of this. First that you’ve stuck around for seven years (Jesus I’ve been here too long), that you reread my stuff, and that Frank has had such an influence in your life.

And with a plea like that I really can’t say no, can I?

So, first off, I’ve mentioned this off and on but I am writing an original fiction version of “Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus” and yes I know I’ve been saying it for years but I really am almost done with what will be the first novel at this point. With that, Frank is a much larger character in that story than the original fic, still secondary but an important secondary character. So, it’s a little weird for me to go back and talk about the fic version. But given I’d have to get into the whole world building of that we’re just going to go ahead and ignore that. Just dropping this that, if all goes well, we do get more Frank than usual.

As for Frank himself from the fic... Well, the thing is we don’t really know too much about HP vampires except that they’re kind of a joke and taken less seriously than even werewolves. I don’t think they have any magic in and of themselves (maybe weird vampire magic that doesn’t really stand up to a wizard with a wand) and are probably about the strength of Buffy vampires. They kind of got the short end of the stick. I imagine they’re all desperately poor, living off blood pops, and just passed out in Knockturn Alley or running around eating pedestrians in Albania. And this is pretty much Frank’s existence before Lily says, “I want to be a drug dealer! Help me vampire man!”

For Frank himself, a lot of what I’ve wanted to say about him can be found in the various side fics. “Lily and the Narcotics Emporium” from way back in the day has pretty much all my world building on him.

He’s not all that old really, I think I dated him around the 1800′s, and is desperately poor. He’s basically a starving, drugged out, mess in the 1940′s when Lily finds him in the literal gutter. As a result, Lily Riddle is the light of his life, she pulls him out of the pit of depression and poverty and gives him not only purpose but hope for his people’s future. He poisons and kills wizards all day, it’s great! This is how he kind of ends up in his yes-man/whipped position. I mean, Lily is also terrifying so that certainly helps, but it’s mostly fueled by this weird devotion/unending gratitude that Lily doesn’t know what to do with.

Further, Riddle Inc. is really Frank’s show. Lily has some ideas but it’s mostly him that does all the work and certainly keeps it going for DECADES in her absence. Which really makes it clear that he could have done all this by himself, pretty much any time he wanted, but he’ll never actually figure that out because Lily Riddle is great and would she like coffee today. So, Frank really should be the head of it himself, but he insists to everyone without directly saying it that he’s just the secretary. And everyone believes because, my god, does he act like it.

And I think my favorite part of Lily and Frank interacting is that Lily also has no idea what to do with all of this or why they’re even like this. Lily has no idea how important she is to Frank and just how much she changed his life. She’s starting to get an idea that drugs are bad and maybe she was a terrible influence on the wizarding world for half a century, but she really doesn’t understand just why Frank is her secretary. So every now and then he drops some “we are eternally grateful” type line and she sort of just stares because from her perspective he’s just always been around and of course she found him in the gutter. Where else would one pick up a Frank? That was very convenient.

That’s about all I’ve got off the top of my head. Anything anyone want to ask specifically about Frank?

#ask #lily and the art of being sisyphus #riddle incorporated #frank

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laceymorganwrites · 4 years

Text

On with the show

Word count: 2, 181

Pairing: Nikki Sixx!Kuroo x reader

Warnings: mentions of drug abuse, swearing, mentions of cheating and overall asshole behavior, description of childhood abuse, description of a disgusting apartment, mentions of sex

Taglist: @varia-venus

General taglist: @astrooliver

Tetsuro knew what he wanted. And he´d get it. No matter what.

He had been desperately trying to make it in the metal scene of Tokyo but to no avail. Rock n roll was dead, hard rock and anything remotely close to metal even more so.

It was unfair and he felt like a ghost. Tetsuro wanted to be seen. He wanted the acknowledgment of others to replace the void in his heart that came from the neglect in his childhood.

Well, it was more than just neglect, but he was way too sober to dive into that right now.

Growing up when pop and safe lyrics poisoned the radio stations and he wanted to rip out his hearing organs every fucking time, he felt like an outsider.

Maybe he was born into the wrong time. It was so unfair to him.

Nowadays everyone could do and be whatever they wanted, so everyone told him.

But in reality, nobody wanted heavy riffs, smashing drums or high pitched screams. Nobody cared about rock n roll anymore, it was dead. Sure modern artists tried and failed to revive it, but whatever shitty music they made, it was a fucking sin to compare it to rock.

Heavy didn´t mean autotune, heavy didn´t mean lyrics being written by twelve different people, heavy didn´t mean censored.

Everyone preferred staged and picture perfect boy groups, it made Tetsuro sick to his stomach. They could all suck it. He hated fake people so much, it made him rage.

Without any friends of his age, he snaked his way through various bands and played gigs in almost every club in Tokyo.

Tetsuro was a loner, a loser with an ego way out of perspective. He didn´t care that he couldn´t play bass, he did anyway. He wanted to be like his idols, wanted to be the savior of heavy music.

But all he was, was a little kid with too much free time.

Other kids his age would go to college at this point, not Tetsuro though.

He moved out of his dad´s place as soon as possible, his mom having divorced him back when he was in middle school, leaving him with scars and a broken home.

His dad was an asshole, emotionally manipulating and abusing him. Like any abuser, it wasn´t always bad. There were good times, he took him to all the concerts he wanted to go to. He didn´t yell at him when he found weed in his bag.

Instead he brought home so many women, Tetsuro couldn´t even remember their faces, let alone their names. Every day he was told what a slob and disappointment he was, why he had to make the life of his dad so hard, that it was no wonder his mom left.

Like a fucking idiot he went looking for her, only to be left with nothing but a broken heart.

So, he tried everything to gain the approval that he never got in his childhood from bad influences.

He quit school, worked his ass off to get a guitar and then auditioned for whatever band needed someone right now.

For about thirty minutes to an hour, he felt like someone important, like the rockstar he always wanted to be.

He felt invincible.

Still, no band ever stuck with him, they just kicked him out every time they found out he either fucked their sister or girlfriend, had consumed all of their alcohol and drugs or stole their money.

Tetsuro met Koutaro in a diner after he broke up with his most recent band.

Koutaro was a drummer for his own band at the time and fuck did he fit the job description.

His energy was off the charts and they hit it off instantly, soon their legacy as the terror twins was born.

And fuck did they own that name.

Tetsuro had plans, he wanted to be at the top of the rock n roll scene, wanted to have the band that everyone talked about, the band that sold out clubs every night.

And he´d have it.

He´d have it at the cost of losing everything.

They found Keishin through an ad online.

He was older than them, but very promising. ´Loud, rude, aggressive guitarist´, if that didn´t sound absolutely perfect.

Now, all they needed was a singer.

Yuuji didn´t have the ambitions that Tetsuro had, he was in a band to get laid.

He could sing good enough, but never went past the point of singing for a shitty cover band, why should he make an effort anyway?

Every night he could get all the girls he wanted and they were hanging on his every word.

He felt like a god.

At first he didn´t want to audition for the band, they were all losers who looked the part, fucking weirdos in platform boots, high heels and make up, not to mention the gruesome hair.

But then again, Koutaro did let him sleep in his van when Yuuji was kicked out by his parents…

The least he could do was go to one of their jam sessions.

He took his girlfriend at the time with him because she had a car and would drive him everywhere.

Yuuji didn´t earn much, the band was his only income, making him just one of many starving artists.

He wasn´t with her because he loved her and she knew it, she wasn´t either.

She was with him for the sex and the fame, he was with her cause she had money and would buy him things, mostly clothes.

When he arrived he was met with a bunch of losers and regretted everything.

The apartment was small, barely fitting all the instruments.

Tetsuro greeted Yuuji when he arrived, eyeing his girlfriend in an annoyed way, he hated entitled girls like her.

Everything about her screamed: ´I´m better than you´ and she didn´t hesitate to tell them that Yuuji only deserved the best band and that they sucked.

Most of the guys ignored that, Koutaro being too busy greeting Yuuji very loudly and bathing in nostalgia.

Keishin was tuning his guitar, not really paying attention. He told them beforehand that he was in it for the long haul and that he´d leave immediately if they weren´t up to his standards.

Yuuji´s girlfriend sat down on their dirty couch, eyeing them with a critical eye and crossing her arms.

As soon as the first note hit, it felt like magic.

Tetsuro couldn´t describe it in any other way, it was overwhelming and he felt a sense of euphoria, a distant feeling of happiness he never knew.

Everything fell into place, it just felt right.

It wasn´t long before their legacy was born, before Tokyo either hated or loved them.

And the band liked their haters more.

Yuuji and Koutaro moved in with Tetsuro in his tiny apartment, barely spacious enough to house only one person, let alone three.

But they didn´t have money, it was the only way.

Their place was a mess and soon to be the place to be when it came to parties.

Of course the noise complaints kept coming, as did the bills, but they never paid.

The apartment was infested with bugs and cockroaches, Koutaro made it a habit to burn them with hairspray and a lighter.

The fridge didn´t work, neither did the warm water. In fact hardly anything worked the way it should.

Their bathroom was a mess, as was their kitchen and living room.

The boys were too lazy to clean, not that they knew how to, or had the money to buy the utensils.

It was horrible.

When Tetsuro thought back on those times, a shudder overcame him.

How were they manage to survive those circumstances?

Drugs really did wonders…

He remembered not possessing a trash can and just throwing the trash out of the window in their backyard where it would eventually pile up and earn them more complaints.

Hell, their neighbors thought someone died there.

Fuck, they were such idiots and that wasn´t even the worst part.

The ´band house´ as they lovely called it even though it was really just an apartment that was way too small and dirty beyond anything, soon became the place to be when it was about parties.

All of it was so ironic.

They did absolutely everything to be cool, accepted and in the scene.

Including but by far not limited to: hosting parties with about 50 people in an apartment meant for one, Tetsuro setting his leather jacket on fire to prove how cool and edgy he was, Yuuji fucking literally everyone´s girlfriend and Koutaro making a girl squirt all over a fruit bowl that just appeared mysteriously some day.

They were a gang. A gang of fucking idiots.

And they were proud of it too…

Proud of fucking everything that they shouldn´t, then sticking their dicks in burritos to hide the smell of another woman from their girlfriends, proud of cheating and lying and being loud and rude and obnoxious.

They felt like the absolute kings, like the peak of the scene when icons were sniffing cocaine on their couch.

Idols they looked up to.

Idols that would hate them eventually.

Now that he had you in his arms it all felt so surreal to Tetsuro.

Everything that he did, it felt so… unfair in some way.

He didn´t deserve you, he pushed you away so many times after all, but you always stayed. You were persistent and stubborn.

Tetsuro was convinced you were the best thing in his life.

Fuck the band, fuck the fame, fuck the money, the fake friends, the drugs especially.

All he needed was you.

He couldn´t even remember how you two met, it was all a blur.

Were you a groupie in the beginning? He didn´t know.

What he did know is that you were always there, like some sort of angel.

Maybe you were.

Perhaps you were sent from heaven, or more likely hell, to escort him there.

Whatever it was, he was glad you were there.

If you weren´t, he´d be dead by now.

Actually, even with you, he should be dead.

Thinking back on his youth, he always felt sick to his core, they were such a bunch of idiotic losers.

What they did to the girls was unforgivable, hell, who the fuck had a routine when it came to fucking girls that were in a relationship?

They did.

They only had one bed in the apartment and they took turns, when they were done with one girl, another came through the window, already undressing.

And the worst thing was that they were proud of it, they felt like kings.

After all they recorded an album in four days, renting the cheapest studio they could find with money they stole.

It was a mess, but it was fun at the time.

That was before everything went to shit.

And it was already on the verge back then.

Tetsuro always wondered why you were even with him.

You knew damn well that he was never home, always touring and doing fuck knows what there.

Of course it wasn´t that bad anymore, but before you made things official, he was the biggest asshole one could imagine.

Even after you got together, he still was.

And still you stayed with him.

Did you simply feel responsible for him or was there something more? Did you stay because you always believed in the good in him?

It was a silly thought and yet it was all he had, all he wanted to believe himself.

Thinking that you thought there was good in him left made him feel better about himself.

Were you an angel on his shoulder or a distant dream?

A vision from his drugged up days that was so persistent it stayed throughout everything.

Tetsuro learned that thinking too much never led to good things, it mostly led to more self doubts.

However if he didn´t think about it, he thought he could never show his gratitude the right way.

After everything you´ve been through, after everything you fixed in him, he didn´t want to imagine a life without you.

You surpassed being a mere human, you were his savior, you were the one who called the ambulance all those years ago, the one he saw when he woke up and the one he saw after the second OD.

For him you were always there and he never questioned it, to be fair, he didn´t care about anything in his youth, it was all temporary to him.

Anything that wasn´t scared him, though he couldn´t help but be the edgy fuck that chased those fears, facing and fighting them. Though he´d much rather kiss you.

A faint smile painted his lips as he pulled you closer to him, doing just that, a satisfied hum leaving his lips.

Life like this was nice.

Life without drugs, without toxic people in it, a quiet life he never knew he always wanted.

Life with a love he never thought he deserved.

#haikyuu #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu oneshot #haikyuu scenario #haikyuu kuroo #kuroo x reader #kuroo tetsuro #kuroo imagine #kuroo oneshot #kuroo scenario #hq #hq imagine #hq oneshot #hq scenario #hq kuroo

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trebaolsmovingcastle · 5 years

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Also, this relates to stepping back in here, NOSTALGIA.

Nostalgia as we all know is a terrible thing, at least to me it is. I treat nostalgic thoughts and sentiments as being kinda like an addictive drug, extreme cautiously.

So in thinking ‘I have some time, I may as well see how Tumblr has been’ especially since my days are literally only divided between ‘working at self improvement/skills/education’ and ‘working at maintenance on the house’ it leaves a lot of time of just kinda...nothing, which could be filled with more labor, but...eh?

Anyway, when I go back to anything, like anything, from an album I like to a movie I enjoy I have recently developed this habit of going down an existential rabbit hole of ‘is this nostalgia’ and ‘is this poisoning my vision for the future?’

The idea being that if I go back to old things I take comfort in, am I going to end up rejecting new things, or setting up old things as better and thus trapping myself in nostalgic thinking that idealizes a mythic ‘good time’ from before the present. If I return to Tumblr because it is familiar and provided a space to think, write, and see interesting things, am I actually just running from my responsibilities to improve myself and take the initiative to attack problems I see around me head on? Am I stunting myself by returning to Tumblr, when I instead need to challenge myself further?

Between this and the concern about whether things have changed so much around here that I no longer know who half of you are via name changes, and whether the rest of the people I follow are now enemies of the state, it’s hard to tell whether coming back is actually a good idea.

#do people even write on here anymore?#or is it just like one continuous shit post generator?

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maddie-grove · 5 years

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The Top Twenty Books I Read in 2019

My main takeaways from the past year’s reading:

Sometimes you think something is happening because of magic, but then it turns out to have a non-magical explanation so weird that you find yourself saying, “You know what? I wish faeries or God were responsible for this. I’d honestly feel less disturbed.”

Stop bathing and changing your clothes and shaving for three years, three months, and three days. You’ll find out who your real friends are. I promise you that.

I want more books about bisexual ladies!!! Give them to me!!!

Anyway...

20. The Prodigal Duke by Theresa Romain (2017)

Childhood sweethearts Poppy Hayworth and Leo Billingsley were separated when his older brother, a duke, sent him away to make his fortune. Years later, the duke is dead, a financially successful Leo has come back to England to take his place, and Poppy has become a rope dancer at Vauxhall Gardens after a life-shattering event. New sparks are flying between them, but is love possible when so much else has changed? Leo and Poppy are believable and charming as old friends, Romain makes great use of obscure historical details from the oft-depicted Regency period, and I loved Leo’s difficult but caring elderly uncle.

19. Simple Jess by Pamela Morsi (1996)

Althea Winsloe, a young widow in 1900s Arkansas, has no interest in remarrying, but almost everyone in her small Ozarks community is pressuring her to remarry, and she still needs someone to help farm her land. Enter Jesse Best, a strong young man with cognitive disabilities who’s happy to take on the work. As he makes improvements to her farm and bonds with her three-year-old son, Althea gets to know him better and starts to see him in a new light. This earthy romance could’ve been a disaster, but instead it illustrates how people with disabilities are often...uh...simplified and de-sexualized in a way that denies them autonomy. Morsi has a similarly nuanced take on Althea and Jesse’s community, which is claustrophobic and supportive all at once.

18. Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli (2018)

Outspoken and insecure, bisexual high school senior Leah Burke is having a tough year. Her friend group is in turmoil, her single mom is seriously dating someone, and she’s caught between a sweet boy she’s not sure about and a pretty, perfect straight girl who couldn’t possibly be into her...right??? The sequel to the very cute Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, Leah on the Offbeat pulls a The Godfather: Part II with its messy protagonist, sweetly surprising romance, and masterful comic set piece involving the Atlanta American Girl Doll restaurant.

17. Copper Sun by Sharon M. Draper (2006)

Kidnapped from her home in eighteenth-century Ghana, fifteen-year-old Amari is sold into slavery and winds up on a South Carolina plantation, where she faces terrible cruelty but finds friends in an enslaved cook, her little son, and eventually a sulky white indentured servant around her age. When their master escalates his already-atrocious behavior, the three young people flee south to the Spanish Fort Mose in search of freedom. Draper’s complicated characters, vivid descriptions, and deft handling of heavy subjects makes for top-notch historical YA fiction.

16. A Prince on Paper by Alyssa Cole (2019)

After her controlling politician father was jailed for poisoning a bunch of people in their small, prosperous African country, Nya Jerami gained unprecedented freedom but also became the subject of vicious gossip. Johan von Braustein, the hard-partying stepson of a European monarch, wants to help her, partly because he sympathizes and partly because he has a crush, but she thinks he’s too frivolous and horny (if wildly attractive). After an embarrassing misunderstanding compels them to enter a fake engagement, though, she begins to wonder if there’s more to him. I’m not a huge fan of contemporary romance, but this novel has the perfect combination of heartfelt emotion, delicious melodrama, and adorable fluff.

15. One Perfect Rose by Mary Jo Putney (1997)

Stephen, the Duke of Ashburton, has always done the proper and responsible thing, but that all changes when he learns that he’s terminally ill. Wandering the countryside in the guise of an ordinary gentleman, he ends up joining an acting troupe and falling in love with Rosalind, the sensible adopted daughter of the two lead actors. Like another Regency romance on this list, this novel celebrates love in many forms: there’s the love story between Stephen and Rosalind, yes, but there’s also Rosalind’s loving relationship with her adopted family, the new bonds she forms with her long-lost blood relatives, the way her two families embrace the increasingly frightened Stephen, and the healing rifts between Stephen and his well-meaning but distant siblings. Stephen’s reconciliation with his mortality is also moving.

14. My One and Only Duke by Grace Burrowes (2018)

Facing a death sentence in Newgate, footman-turned-prosperous banker Quinton Wentworth decides to do one last good thing: marry Jane McGowan, a poor pregnant widow, so she and the baby will be financially set. Then he receives a pardon and a dukedom at the literal last minute, meaning that he and Jane have a more permanent arrangement than either intended. I fell in love with the kind-but-difficult protagonists almost at once, and with Burrowes’s gorgeous prose even faster.

13. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (2013)

It’s 1986, and comics-loving, post-punk-listening, half-Korean Park and bright, weird, constantly bullied Eleanor are just trying to get through high school in their rough Omaha neighborhood. He’s only grudgingly willing to let her share his bus seat at first, but this barely civil acquaintance slowly thaws into friendship and blossoms into love. Far from being the whimsical eighties-nostalgia-fest I expected, this is a bittersweet love story about two isolated young people who find love, belonging, and a chance for self-expression with each other in an often-hostile environment (a small miracle pre-Internet).

12. Shrill by Lindy West (2016)

In this memoir, Lindy West talks about the difficulties of being a fat woman, the thankless task of being vocally less-than-enthused about rape jokes, the joys of moving past self-doubt, and the very real possibility that Little John from Disney’s Robin Hood was played by “bear actor” Baloo, among other subjects. I was having a hard time during my last semester of law school this past spring, and this book’s giddy humor and inspiring messages really helped me in my hour of need.

11. Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood by Karina Longworth (2018)

In 1925, very young businessman Howard Hughes breezed into Hollywood with nothing but tons of family wealth, a soon-to-be-divorced wife, and a simple dream: make movies about fast planes and big bosoms. He got increasingly weird and reactionary over the next thirty years, then retired from public life. More a history of 1920s-1950s Hollywood than a biography, this book has the same sharp writing and in-depth film analysis that makes me love Longworth’s podcast You Must Remember This.

10. The Beguiled by Thomas Cullinan (1966)

In Civil-War-era Virginia, iron-willed Martha Farnsworth and her nervous younger sister try to run their nearly empty girls’ boarding school within earshot of a battlefield. When one girl finds Union soldier John McBurney injured in the woods, she brings him back to the house, where he exploits every conflict and secret among the eight girls and women (five students, two sisters, and one enslaved cook). Charming and manipulative, he nevertheless finds himself in over his head. Cullinan makes great use of the eight POVs and the deliciously claustrophobic setting; it’s fascinating to watch the power dynamics and allegiances shift from scene to scene.

9. A Gentleman Never Keeps Score by Cat Sebastian (2018)

Reserved tavern keeper Sam Fox wants to help out his brother’s sweetheart by finding and destroying a nude portrait she once sat for; disgraced gentleman Hartley Sedgwick isn’t sure what he wants after having his life ruined twice over, but he happened to inherit his house from the man who commissioned the painting...plus he’s not exactly reluctant to assist kind, handsome Sam in his quest. I wrote about this heart-melting romance two times last year; suffice it to say that it’s not only one of the best Regencies I’ve ever read, but also possibly the best romance I’ve ever read about the creation of a found family.

8. Frog Music by Emma Donoghue (2014)

Blanche Beunon, a French-born burlesque dancer in 1876 San Francisco, has a lot going on: her mooching boyfriend has turned on her, her sick baby is missing, and her cross-dressing, frog-hunting friend Jenny Bonnet was just shot dead right next to her. In the middle of a heat wave, a smallpox epidemic, and a little bit of mob violence, she must locate her son and solve Jenny’s murder. This is a glorious work of historical fiction; you can see, hear, smell, and feel the chaotic world of 1870s San Francisco, plus Blanche’s character arc is amazing.

7. The Patrick Melrose novels (Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother’s Milk, and At Last) by Edward St. Aubyn (1992, 1992, 1994, 2005, and 2012, respectively)

Born to an embittered English aristocrat and an idealistic American heiress, Patrick Melrose lives through his father’s sadistic abuse and his mother’s willful blindness (Never Mind), does a truly staggering amount of drugs in early adulthood (Bad News), and makes a good-faith effort at leading a normal life (Some Hope). Years later, the life he’s built with his wife and two sons is threatened by his alcoholism and reemerging resentment of his mother (Mother’s Milk), but there may be a chance to salvage something (At Last). Despite the suffering and cruelty on display, these novels were the farthest thing from a dismaying experience, thanks to the sharp characterization, grim humor, and great sense of setting. Also, I love little Robert Melrose, an anxious eldest child after my own heart.

6. The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope (1974)

In 1550s England, no-nonsense Kate Sutton is exiled to the Perilous Gard, a remote castle occupied by suspicious characters, including the lord’s guilt-ridden younger brother Christopher. Troubled by the holes she sees in the story of the tragedy that haunts him, she does some problem-solving and ends up in a world of weird shit. Cleverly plotted, deliciously spooky, and featuring an all-time-great heroine, this book was an absolute treat. The beautiful Richard Cuffari illustrations in my edition didn’t hurt, either.

5. An Unconditional Freedom by Alyssa Cole (2019)

Daniel Cumberland, a free black man from New England traumatized from being sold into slavery, and Janeta Sanchez, a mixed-race Cuban-Floridian lady from a white Confederate family, have been sent on a mission to the Deep South by the Loyal League, a pro-Union spy organization. Initially hostile to everyone (but particularly to somewhat naive Janeta), Daniel warms to his colleague, but will her secrets, his shattered faith in justice, and the various dangers they face prevent them from falling in love? Nah. Alyssa Cole’s historical romances deliver both on the history and the romance, and this is one of her strongest entries.

4. The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite (2019)

Heartbroken by the death of her father and the marriage of her ex-girlfriend, Lucy Muchelney decides she needs a change of scenery and takes a live-in position translating a French astronomy text for Catherine St. Day, the recently widowed Countess of Moth. Catherine, used to putting her interests on hold for an uncaring spouse, is intrigued by this awkward, independent lady. I’ve read f/f romances before, but this sparkling Regency was the first to really blow me away with its fun banter, neat historical details, and perfect sexual tension.

3. The Wager by Donna Jo Napoli (2010)

After losing his entire fortune to a tidal wave, Sicilian nineteen-year-old Don Giovanni de la Fortuna sinks into poverty and near-starvation. Then Devil makes him an offer: all the money he wants for as long as he lives if he doesn’t bathe, cut his hair, shave, or change his clothes for three years, three months, and three days. This fairy-tale retelling is an extraordinarily moving fable about someone who learns to acknowledge his own suffering, recognize it in others, and extend compassion to all.

2. Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell (2013)

In this collection, Russell weaves strange tales of silkworm-women hybrids in Japan, seagulls who collect objects from the past and future, and, yes, vampires in the lemon grove. She also posits the very important question: “What if most (but not all) U.S. presidents were reincarnated as horses in the same stable and had a lot of drama going on?” My favorite stories were “Proving Up” (about a nineteenth-century Nebraska boy who encounters death and horror on the prairie), “The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis” (about a disadvantaged high school student who discovers an effigy of the even more hapless boy he tormented), and “The Barn at the End of the Term” (the horse-president story).

1. The Wonder by Emma Donoghue (2016)

Lib Wright, an Englishwoman who has floundered since her days working for Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, is hired to observe Anna O’Donnell, an eleven-year-old Irish girl famous for not eating for four straight months. With a jaundiced attitude towards the Irish and Catholicism, Lib is confident that she’ll quickly expose Anna as a fraud, but she finds herself liking the girl and getting increasingly drawn into the disturbing mystery of her fast. Like The Perilous Gard, this novel masterfully plays with the possibility of the supernatural, then introduces a technically mundane explanation that’s somehow much more eerie. Donoghue balances the horror and waste that surrounds Anna, though, with the clear, bright prose and the moving relationship that develops between her and Lib, who grows beyond her narrow-mindedness and emotional numbness. I stayed up half the night to finish this novel, which cemented Emma Donoghue’s status as my new favorite author.

#books #reading #top twenty

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rhiezus · 5 years

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Reputation As Our Ships

Ready For It?

For starters, this album takes a heavy road into Julie and Valak’s relationship that came out of the blue between us one night, exactly like they are. However, I had to admit the first time I was listening to this song I thought about Zeev and Eleanor, but well, I might just have been crazy or a little right, who knows? Anyways is totally Julie and Valak, even the music video, there is something about the song... The strong bass and stuff, it’s uGH tHEm!

“ I, I, I see how this is gon' go Touch me and you'll never be alone I-Island breeze and lights down low No one has to know [...]”

The “no one has to know” part. Also this description from genius: “Touch me, and you’ll never be alone” might be in reference to the trappings of Taylor’s fame; the paparazzi follow her everywhere, so they would inevitably follow her boyfriend, too. Talk about dispatch, am I right?

“In the middle of the night, in my dreams You should see the things we do, baby In the middle of the night in my dreams I know I'm gonna be with you, so I take my time”

I love how genius mention that she talks about sex for the most part of this song, which recalls the fact that Julie and Valak relationship was built through her losing her virginity with him. The part when she sings “let the games begin”, it was like Julie knew it was a whole puzzle but she did it anyway because she was looking for an excuse not expecting that Valak would become much more than it one day. Also, the “i know im gonna be with you, so i take my time”, is truly the feeling which leads them to get marry, they just knew they would be together, so why waste time?

End Game

Who we kidding? We all know this is Linlin and Mingyu, again it has something to do with the vibe of the song too. Like there is she singing and then a bunch of rappers... UgH! Please ONG concerts give a collab May-b rapping line feat Xiulin with this song so I can die happy. aNYwAYs, my mind was also associating this song to Nayoung and Keun, am I crazy? Maybe? No? It’s lyrics time to tell that.

“We do the most, I'm in the Ghost like I'm whippin’ a boat I got a reputation, girl that don't precede me (Yeah) I'm one call away whenever you need me (Yeah) I'm in a G5 (Yeah), come to the A-Side (Yeah)”

The “one call away” kind of guy from Samara.

“I don’t wanna hurt you, I just wanna be Drinking on a beach with you all over me I know what they all say (I know what they all say) But I ain't tryna play”

Literally dying from the “beach” part because both Mingyu and Keun are from Jeju.

“Even when we’d argue, we'd not do it for long And you understand the good and bad end up in the song For all your beautiful traits, and the way you do it with ease For all my flaws, paranoia, and insecurities”

Oh my god, this song just couldn’t get any worse... “end up in the song”.

I Did Something Bad

Okay, hold up. This is Chihye. I could say Julie too because all of the drama, but honestly, is Chihye she has her fair load of bad stuff she did and I don’t see her as the type who regrets any of it, so this title is hers.

“They say I did something bad Then why's it feel so good? They say I did something bad But why's it feel so good? Most fun I ever had And I'd do it over and over and over again if I could It just felt so good, good”

Literally, no remorse and it can sound bad to think of my character that way but honestly, she is just messed up in the head, so... Whatever.

“This is how the world works You gotta leave before you get left”

I mean... Shut up.

Don’t Blame Me

Haha, this one is for you Hansol and Chan-u. I just couldn’t think of anyone else though, it has something to do with the vibe of the song again... I mean, these two have a little trouble in the head mostly *read chihye hansol’s mom above rs* and well, dead parents... So, just a little bit of affection is enough to crack their heads, so, this is to those dark times.

“Don't blame me, love made me crazy If it doesn't, you ain't doin' it right Lord, save me, my drug is my baby I'll be usin' for the rest of my life”

Am I right? Wait up there is more:

“And baby, for you, I would fall from grace Just to touch your face If you walk away, I'd beg you on my knees to stay”

Okay, genius doesn’t say anything about this but since they both gay I’m taking the hint that “beg you on my knees” could be a reference to oral sex, k? Leave me alone to think about it.

“I get so high, oh! Every time you're, every time you're lovin' me You're lovin' me Trip of my life, oh! [...]”

The “so high”, oh jesus. Also the part when she says “I once was poison ivy, but now I'm your daisy” sounds so much like a Hansol lyrics because he is always talking about flowers and relationships *see fresh roses*.

Delicate

Okay, hear me out... I never in a million years expected this ship that just came to my mind, like never and I listened to this song like a dozen times (actually 29 according to lastfm, but before i had a lastfm i would listen in youtube so... a dozen), but I just thought that the vibe and the lyrics... Sounds so much like Jinah and Bokyum. And what is shooking is that it’s also another total random ship... Ruy and Hai. Listen up:

“This ain't for the best My reputation's never been worse, so You must like me for me… We can't make Any promises now, can we, babe? But you can make me a drink”

First, for Jinah is totally about her reputation of being a prostitute ha, it’s like, she never really had a real relationship for real before Bokyum and she takes her time with her feelings after Jeju. And in the other hand, Ruy is just madly in love with Hai but he can’t bear to say it because it will scare him away so... Both delicate.

“Dive bar on the East Side, where you at? Phone lights up my nightstand in the black Come here, you can meet me in the back Dark jeans and your Nikes, look at you”

Starting with Jinah and Bokyum, in my mind when they first hooked up in Jeju they went to this lowkey bar by a corner next to the beach... And that’s when it all happened. But for the most part, this is straight-up Ruy and Hai’s relationship so it’s even sad to read it twice, jeez.

“Sometimes I wonder when you sleep Are you ever dreaming of me? Sometimes when I look into your eyes I pretend you're mine, all the damn time 'Cause I like you”

Yeah, this part is just straight up Ruy to Hai.

“Is it cool that I said all that? Is it chill that you're in my head? 'Cause I know that it's delicate (Delicate) (Yeah, I want you)”

Last one, read the genius: Taylor uses repetition and questions throughout the chorus to show how anxious she is at the beginning of this relationship. Getting romantically involved with someone can be tough because sometimes one may not know where the other stands, hence why Taylor describes this phase as “delicate.” So yeah.

Look What You Made Me Do

I can’t think of anyone else for this song other then Haneul, but as a joke not like a literal disses to someone other than herself, you know? Because no one of my characters literally changed so much because of something someone did to them, other than, well Chihye and Haneul... What a weird flex. But Haneul was more like “wide awake” than actual bad like Chihye, so it’s hard to tell. Yeah, I don’t know, don’t really have anything else for this song.

"I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now "Why? Oh, 'cause she's dead!" (Oh)

This is just definitely Haneul, because: I needed to grow up in many ways. I needed to make boundaries, to figure out what was mine and what was the public’s. That old version of me that shares unfailingly and unblinkingly with a world that is probably not fit to be shared with? I think that’s gone. But it was definitely just, like, a fun moment in the studio with me and Jack [Antonoff] where I wanted to play on the idea of a phone call.

So It Goes...

I don’t really like this song, so whatever. Can’t think of anyone for it.

Gorgeous

I just can’t this is literally the song that made Jinhyung and Kyungri, I die every time because there isn’t a lyric from this that is just not them.

“You should take it as a compliment That I got drunk and made fun of the way you talk You should think about the consequence Of your magnetic field being a little too strong”

I’m going to take reference from your own “type of girlfriend: Kyungri”, she literally takes pride into making fun of Jinhyung and it’s a good thing it means she is into him in a way she can’t explain. That’s literally how they happened.

“You make me so happy it turns back to sad There's nothing I hate more than what I can't have And you are so gorgeous it makes me so mad”

I listened to this song like thousand times just because of them at the time, which is funny ‘cause know sometimes we forgot who birthed the relationships for the new romantics... It’s only a few months old but whenever I think of them there is this sweet nostalgia, it’s really funny.

Getaway Car

This song is for both cheaters: Chihye and Julie. They are very much referenced in this album, but it’s not my fault Taylor Swift did a whole album about such screwed up love. This song became one of my favorites once I realized it’s about a love triangle, where is trying to get away from her past relationship to be with the guy she actually likes without cheating on him but inevitably doing it. Does it ring a bell yet?

“It was the best of times, the worst of crimes I struck a match and blew your mind But I didn't mean it And you didn’t see it [...] I wanted to leave him I needed a reason”

Talking about Chihye and Lian, all the time she was with Pyongho it was just because he was doing her a favor and she wanted someone to want her back. But when Lian came back, it was useless so she was just ready to leave everything behind and run away with him like it was meant to be. In the hand, Julie really cherished Kaili but her mind was somewhere else: her career and the fact that it wasn’t gonna last anyway, so she just needed a solid reason to leave him.

“It was the great escape, the prison break The light of freedom on my face But you weren't thinkin’ And I was just drinkin’ Well, he was runnin' after us, I was screamin’, "Go, go, go!" But with three of us, honey, it's a sideshow And a circus ain't a love story And now we're both sorry”

It’s funny because for me it begins talking about Chihye, Lian and Pyongho and ends up in Julie, Valak and Kaili.

“Until I switched to the other side To the other si-i-i-i-ide It's no surprise I turned you in (Oh-oh) 'Cause us traitors never win I'm in a getaway car I left you in a motel bar Put the money in a bag and I stole the keys That was the last time you ever saw me”

Now, this is just about Chihye to Lian when she finds out she pregnant of Pyongho, “us traitors never win”. So yeah, I really love this song because of it’s whole metaphor.

King Of My Heart

I had this idea that this song was Zeev and Eleanor, and don’t get me wrong it still is but right now it’s also Chang and Yehjin, a little bit. Seriously, I just know Eleanor calls Zeev things like “king of my heart” and she is totally into Taylor Swift, she is american and is from New Mexico, she might even listen to Taylor’s country albums.

“I'm perfectly fine, I live on my own I made up my mind, I'm better off bein' alone We met a few weeks ago Now you try on callin' me "Baby" like tryin' on clothes”

C’mon? I mean, it was totally like that how the chat went and their whole relationship... But this first part just also reminded me of Yehjin about Chang too, I don’t know, fight me.

“Salute to me, I'm your American queen And you move to me like I'm a Motown beat And we rule the kingdom inside my room 'Cause all the boys and their expensive cars With their Range Rovers and their Jaguars Never took me quite where you do”

IM YOUR AMERICAN QUEEN. Literally Eleanor, the fact that they had sex in like their second date and also how she never really had a boyfriend like Zeev before, who just drives her crazy by being so himself. And Yehjin mentioning she prefers Chang’s bike than the rich boys range rovers, haha.

“Late in the night, the city's asleep Your love is a secret I'm hoping, dreaming, dying to keep Change my priorities The taste of your lips is my idea of luxury”

About Zeev being famous and Eleanor actually being into it because she literally just wants him to herself, “change my priorities”. And Yehjin, keeping a secret about Chang to her parents for I don’t even know how long...

Dancing With Our Hands Tied

Weird flex, okay? But my mind associated this first with Clay and Allen... Then it totally went to Linlin and Mingyu, I don’t know, something to do with the vibe. Oh, and Julie and Valak too, again, sorry.

"I, I loved you in secret First sight, yeah, we love without reason [...] My, my love had been frozen Deep blue, but you painted me golden”

It was the “love in secret” that connected these three couples in my mind, see? Here is genius about dancing with our hands tied: To have one’s hands tied is to have no control of a situation. While dancing is supposed to be a liberating form of self-expression, as well as a fun activity for friends and couples, here it represents the inability to keep their relationship away from the public eye. Taylor and her partner had their hands tied in that their relationship would eventually go public.

“And darling, you had turned my bed into a sacred oasis People started talking, putting us through our paces I knew there was no one in the world who could take it I had a bad feeling”

It’s weird because even if those three couples dated in secret, each one had a different way of coming out to the public. First, we have Clay and Allen that were “dating” in and off on the internet, until Allen moved and they actually went out but still people only found out when Clay left May-b, before I guess there was just rumors of Clay being gay or stuff like that. But Clay never really talked about relationships before leaving May-b and writing his own stuff, being his own artist. Linlin and Mingyu were this rollercoaster relationship that most people didn’t know of right at the beginning, and when they did there was always this vibe that it wasn’t going to last. And with Julie and Valak we know really well how this went, although both didn’t care much about it after it happened because it just weirdly made them be even more together.

Dress

Haha, who this? I mean it, seriously. It’s Hana and Mark, finally, one song of this album hits its peak by being theirs. But, not so fast I thought about Danbi and Daehyun too just right now. Let’s take a ride.

“All of this silence and patience, pining and anticipation My hands are shaking from holding back from you All of this silence and patience, pining and desperately waiting”

Both Hana and Danbi had big crushes from the start, both were stupid enough not to admit.

“Say my name and everything just stops I don't want you like a best friend Only bought this dress so you could take it off Carve your name into my bedpost”

Both are really furry in bed, both would totally buy a dress just to be taken off (Hana actually did and said it so). Also, both got in deep love really fast, Danbi and Daehyun even got married to prove their love, even if was later a mistake, but they meant every feeling they had. Hana, on the other hand, doesn’t ever regret how fast things happened with Mark, it was exactly how it was supposed to be.

“And I woke up just in time Now I wake up by your side My one and only, my lifeline I woke up just in time Now I wake up by your side My hands shake, I can't explain this”

Exactly what I said before *see above*.

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Another diss from Haneul. I’m kidding, ha. Also, this is Julie, 7sins and the whole drama. Also, Nayoung to the old crew with the nameless that she used to hang out with *see I Forgot That You Existed*.

Call It What You Want

Here is to another song of Eleanor and Zeev, a classic, one of the songs of them that are simply just them which makes me listen like a dozen times... However, just right now I thought about Minhye and Jukan too, it’s the vibe, listen:

“My baby's fit like a daydream Walking with his head down I'm the one he's walking to So call it what you want, yeah Call it what you want to My baby's fly like a jet stream High above the whole scene Loves me like I'm brand new ”

It’s so sweet, it’s like these two dorks really don’t care about Eleanor’s and Minhye’s screwed up past with love, you know? “loves me like i’m brand new”.

“And I know I make the same mistakes every time Bridges burn, I never learn At least I did one thing right I did one thing right I'm laughing with my lover, makin' forts under covers Trust him like a brother Yeah, you know I did one thing right Starry eyes sparkin' up my darkest night”

These two also really don’t care about the whole “keep a secret” kind of relationship, they respect their lovers because they made them better people. So they just do everything in their power to protect them just the same, even if it sounds cheesy and stupid of them, they just don’t care.

“I want to wear his initial on a chain 'round my neck Chain 'round my neck Not because he owns me But 'cause he really knows me Which is more than they can say, I I recall late November Holding my breath, slowly, I said "You don't need to save me But would you run away with me?" Yes”

This is also one of my favorite songs of this album, mainly because of this part. Like I said, both Eleanor and Minhye were screwed up’s, but with Zeev and Jukan they became better people not only to themselves but for them too... Like, for the future, you know?

Wait up, I just saw Nayoung and Keun in this song too. I hate myself.

New Year’s Day

Finally, the last one, this album is so long. This is Araki and Kayn, lol. And... Anna and Kuen. Because: The closing track on reputation uses a New Year’s party as a metaphor to discuss holding on to people and memories from both good and bad times. Taylor recognizes that when the ‘parties’ in her life are over and the ‘new year’ begins, such memories are all she will have left to hold on to and learn from. She relates a lasting love to someone who shares a midnight kiss with you on New Year’s, but who still stays with you the next morning for the aftermath of the party and begins the new year together with you.

“Don’t read the last page But I stay when you're lost, and I'm scared And you’re turning away I want your midnights But I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day”

This is too sad, wait. But yeah, I can see both these ships.

“You squeeze my hand three times in the back of the taxi I can tell that it's gonna be a long road I'll be there if you're the toast of the town, babe Or if you strike out and you're crawling home”

According to genius, squeezing someone’s hand three times means you love them or at least its like a “take care. You see, both ships here have a thing for leaving. I don’t know which road will Araki and Kayn take but this song reminds me of their relationship a lot, you know the whole after party thing? And to Anna and Kuen who had shared a long list of back and forth but that eventually got together for good after they realized they couldn’t be strangers to one another, which takes me to:

“Please don't ever become a stranger Whose laugh I could recognize anywhere Please don't ever become a stranger Whose laugh I could recognize anywhere”

So yeah, that’s the best way to end this album. With something good to think about.

#*a #pls post this tumblr

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silvanoir · 7 years

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comic shop trip 12/27/17

I saw a beautiful Poison Ivy figurine for $60 and resisting buying it was a real challenge, I tell ya. I promised myself no more toys or figurines because I already have too many to display and shouldn’t spend money on that anyway... but still..... it was so pretty (I didn’t buy it)

Instead I bought Gotham City Garage #5 & 6, as well as Phoenix Resurrection #1 and Phoenix Origins one-shot.

I don’t know how to describe GCC... Gotham is ruled by Lex Luthor, who has everyone on mind-control drugs that make everyone love and obey him, except for a group of superheroines and some villainesses who all ride motorcycles. It’s wild. I hope they make a direct-to-dvd animated movie of it one day.

Phoenix Resurrection #1- I’m a casual fan of X-men mainly out of nostalgia of loving the (upon rewatch admitedly flawed) 90s cartoon as a kid, reading the back issues up to the 1980s and some trades as a teen, and I pick new comics up every few years when a character I like does something I feel is interesting. So me reading X-men comics is always “Hey I thought that person was dead? That other person was evil? When did those those people over there get into a relationship? new haircuts and costumes? and who the heck is that?” reactions while at the same time never caring enough to look up the info to get caught up. Yes, that’s my review for this issue ;p

Phoenix Origins one-shot : Jean Grey learning to control her powers before she joined the X-men and some first few days on the team... Alex Ross style realistic painted art (but not By Alex Ross). Well worth the $1 they are charging for it!

#comics #silvanoir reviews

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inconceivablenotions · 7 years

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Fragile, handle with care

i) The first time your heart breaks, you're eighteen, young and stupid and naive and you'll wonder why no one ever warned you that something so delicate could so easily shatter into a hundred pieces but wait, maybe they did and you just didn't listen.

I bet he told you he loved you as he stripped you down and laid you bare and you spilled your secrets in the middle of the night to the devil who begged you to and the best thing he could do was pretend to listen.

I bet he told you that you were the most beautiful thing he ever laid eyes on and he spun you soft promises that would later turn into sharp lies and all the while, his mind wandered to unholy places that would damn your innocence to hell.

I can guess that he took that little heart of yours and scratched his name into it and he'd play with it night after night, toying, teasing, dangling it just out of your reach as you tried to playfully tug it out of his hands and he'd only dangle it higher and higher, each time just inches from the tips of your fingers. You'd laugh in exquisite ignorance at this game you're both playing but only one of you is winning and it's not you but you've forgotten the rules and you don't care if he's breaking them.

And I can bet my life that one night, as you bathed in his glorious, undivided attention, not noticing a thing amiss, he just...let it drop. It slipped as he loosened his vice-like grip, tired (bored?) of the game that he can now proudly call his own and you were too slow to catch it.

You'll wonder why God never gifted you that delicate little thing in a box wrapped in gold paper, tied with a shiny red bow and a label saying "fragile, handle with care", but if He had, would you have listened? Would he? See, the devil was never one for listening.

It will slowly crack, straight down the middle and that sound will resonate with deafening silence as you splinter from the inside out. You will feel, deep in your bones, the echoes of the fragments as they explode into nothing and you are suddenly wracked with a pain so intense, you wonder why the world hasn't stopped to mourn your undoing, why the clocks are not standing still until you piece yourself together when all you know is the imprint of your cheek against the cool tiles of the bathroom wall where the running shower drowns out your stifled sobs as you dig your nails in, hard, trying to tear the devil out from under your skin.

You learn the hard way to never again hand it over to the devil who comes to you wearing another face.

ii) No one ever told you that the world could break you more than the devil ever could.

Sixteen is sweet because candied dreams and the beginnings of life make you dizzy with undiluted happiness. "The world is your oyster" they tell you but what they don't tell you is that you're living on borrowed time and before you can blink the oyster snaps shut, trapping with it the hopes you had painted in gold dust. With time, it'll start to filter out, clinging to the air with nostalgia and painful longing.

You're high on the promise of a world always on your side, of a universe always conspiring for you and not against you, of winds that sway the sails to the promised land but then the drug drains out of your system and your weary body will hate the world and question the universe and curse the winds that keep knocking you off your feet.

Your bones will rattle with the constant ache of regrets and lost chances and the doors that slam shut time and time again. You can't escape the gnawing suspicion that this is it. That you are living in a haunted house that feeds on the fear of lost time and is filled with the trinkets of empty promises, crushed dreams and failures that are stacked up like old books on a broken bookshelf.

Do what you love, love what you do was a myth absent from your childhood. Fairytales became nightmares and the soft caress of lullabies became the dull thunk of nails in the coffin as you put your dreams to rest. RIP.

You swallow the bitter pill of defeat as you act out the scenes of the life they have penned for you but what on earth happened to writing your own chapters - I guess the skill of your own hand doesn't count for much.

The biting temptation to crown your selfish happiness itches beneath your skin but you struggle to liberate it while figures of authority are stuffing their supposed wisdom down the back of your throat and you are paying the price.

You are exhausted from sweeping the shards of your soul under the carpet as the illusions of the life you dream of, collide and shatter and there isn't enough patience or strength to go around and so that steady organ that breathes life into you, slows and starves of resilience.

Broken wings are harder to heal than broken hearts.

iii) Some days, your knees will buckle and hit the ground and you will know that the world has you beat.

You are tired of entertaining the people who waltz in and out of your life at liberty, singing their promises composed from tuneless sincerity and sugar-coated proclamations of love that turn to acid.

The people you handpick to reside in your home can only dig their claws into you and suck you dry; that home chills you to the bone as the cold winds blow into the little pockets now slowly collecting dust, that have been inhabited and cleared out by the dwellers who either slowly chip away at the reflection you no longer recognise when you look in the mirror, or who force your hand when they fill you with poison, so you kick them out, promising yourself that you'll bolt the front door and hide away the key.

But you forget and leave it open anyway. The door swings madly, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and it drives you crazy but you still can't bring yourself to slam it shut.

Don't you see? The world is only as cold and disappointing as the people in it.

iv) It's 3:42am. The breeze is whispering through my open window and my room is painted by the subdued glow of the faint twilight hues filtering through the quiet darkness that has been listening to my desperate prayers. Just as it's done the night before, and the night before that, and the night before that.

I wonder if it's tired of hearing my silent cries. I wonder if it senses the void that has me hollowed out from the inside, like calling to like. I wonder if it tires of breathing in my turmoil, lifting it into nothingness as if it weighs as little as air.

Because in the deepest hour of the darkest night, I feel myself fraying at the edges, literally breaking into pieces and I am cradling the glass splinters in my bloodied hand and I wonder if it's always been like this.

If my heartbeats tally the minutes in which I am bleeding out searching for...something.

I feel it sometimes. In the stillness of the night it's almost tangible. As my whispers ascend from the ground to the seven heavens, I find it.

It almost makes the breaking worth it.

#spilled ink

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x-wearethefuture-x · 7 years

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♫ ☂ ✧ ( Seunghyun ) // ☠ ✎ ✈ ( Sooyeon )

@numberxixSend me a symbol and I’ll tell you:

Seunghyun♫: my muse’s favorite song, band, and/or music genreSeunghyun will listen to just about anything, though this is because he usually doesn’t pay songs much mind and keeps them on as nothing more than background noise. His favorite genre as a kid was the 60s and 70s rock music that is mother used to listen to all the time. He was especially fond of the Beetles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and so on. Still, he feels plenty of nostalgia for those, but he purposely avoids listening to them most of the time now. They can trigger bad memories and depression in him under the wrong circumstances. Currently (and this is rather odd, so just hear me out!) he actually listens mostly to female k-pop groups. He’s really fond of APink, for example. Generally speaking, the happier the song sounds, the more likely he is to listen to it. Now, that probably sounds strange for a guy like Seunghyun, but there’s a reason for it. First of all, they’re just catchy, you know? Something easy to listen to without having to pay it too much mind because the lyrics don’t generally mean much out of the ordinary, anyway. And if he /does/ focus on the lyrics, that helps, too- they pull him out of his own head and give him something a bit nicer to think about. Second, they’re great mood boosters. Again, the catchy, bouncy, beats tend to kind of help him out on an emotional level. Third, and most importantly, is that he likes listening to them because there’s usually at least one girl in each group who has a voice similar to his mother’s singing voice. It was a bit plain, not exceptional by any means, but lovely to listen to. And though it’s been years and he can’t recall his mother’s voice exactly as it was, it’s nice to sometimes catch little memories that he’d thought he’d lost just because the way someone hits a specific note triggers a memory of his mother in him. But, yeah. He just really likes girl groups xD Though it’s rare that he’s caught listening to them by anyone other than Kyuhyun or Chanmi because he doesn’t listen to music much.☂: my muse’s favorite season or time of yearWithout a doubt, winter. He enjoys the purity of it all- a blanket of white snow covering the muddied and dead imperfections caused by autumn. The snow covers up the “mistakes” brought on by the onset of the cold weather, and it’s draws him in an odd way. He doesn’t care for Spring, though. The weather is fine (aside from the rain), but symbolically it’s about rebirth and resurrection and such and it’s just a reminder of the power inside of him that he refuses to use. It also seems unfair to him- if things like flowers can return, regrow, after a harsh winter, why can’t people return from equally as horrible things? It’s kind of a selfish disdain for the season. Neither of these are things he ever talks about with anyone because he’s not sure that most people would understand.✧: what my muse’s netflix queue looks likeDocumentaries. Sci fi. A few Disney movies and comedies here and there. He also watches kdramas sometimes- they’re a guilty pleasure of his. If he watches things alone, they’re usually going to be documentaries about space or science fiction, though. Stranger Things, Twin Peaks, X-Files (though that’s not available to stream anymore- damn you netflix!), Mr. Nobody (one of his favorites), and things like that. He likes them because he, himself, is kind of a science fiction and it’s entertaining to him to see what other things people can come up with that may or may not rest in reality.

Sooyeon☠: my muse’s biggest fearPlain and simple, her biggest fear is death. Partly her own, partly that of others. She has a lot of anxieties, in general, but nothing quite compares to that. She has some neurotic behavior in relation to it, too. Though she’s medicated so it’s not always apparent to people who don’t know her best. It’s little things generally- like if someone was previously texting her back quite steadily and then they stop without warning she doesn’t think “Oh, they’re probably busy” instead her mind starts spiraling into “What did they say they were doing? Could that potentially be dangerous in some way? Were they alone? If something happened, was someone trusty worthy there to help them? Maybe there WAS someone like that there with them, but they were both injured/killed? Or maybe the other person had a psychotic break and killed them? Or maybe they’d been planning it for weeks? Should I call them? Should I try texting again?” and so on until they answer. As for her own death, she sometimes has this fear of eating out in public because “What if it’s been poisoned? Or drugged? Can I trust the person who made this? Can I trust the person serving it to me?” Even with some random food products that you’d pick up from the store regularly can trigger it without reason- like a loaf of bread or a bag of rice or a gallon of milk that she’s afraid may not have been handled properly or may have been sabotaged by someone in the production line and could, inevitably, cause some sort of horrendous death. Usually her fears occur solely in her head so people don’t notice them, even if she’s not on her medication- but they can be debilitating.If you’re very close to her, she’s probably low-key mentioned it a time or two and seeing signs might be a little easier... but if you’re not exceptionally close to her or don’t have the same issue yourself or know someone with a similar issue, it may completely pass by you.✎: what my muse’s best subject in school is/wasSciences and maths were Sooyeon’s best subjects in school. At least while she was /in/ school. She was really interested in biology, even before she found out that she was a mutant. She liked learning about the way living things worked, how they evolved over time, and how everything’s connected- things like that. Math was another favorite for the fact that it was very logical. She was good enough at math that she was two years ahead of the rest of her grade before she finally ran away. Even while she and Seunghyun (and eventually Angelica) were on the run, she would go out of her way to spend a few hours here and there reading biology books at a local library or brushing up on her math skills. Once at Xavier’s where they were put back on a regular learning regimen, she picked it all back up very quickly and was always at the top of her class (though not always in /first/, mind you- just top 5). She almost went to university to be a biology major where she would then narrow her field of interest down so that she could go into something more specific. That, of course, didn’t end up happening.✈: where my muse would go if they could move anywhereHonestly, Sooyeon is entirely content right where she is. Though if she didn’t have her current profession keeping her someplace in the city, she’d rather be living somewhere with a little more seclusion. Not /too/ much, because that’s basically /asking/ to be in a horror movie! But somewhere with just a few neighbors and a big back yard. If she was to move out of the country, though, she would want to move back to Washington state near where she spent the first years of her life living with her father. If their old home is still there, that would be her ideal place of residence.

#abt;Princess #abt;Nightmare #numberxix #((I put it under a read more because I rambled xD))

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thecastingcircle · 6 years

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By day, Jennifer Turner works in law enforcement in Vancouver. But on this particular late August weekend, she’s in Cleveland, attending JemCon, an annual gathering for devotees of the colorful Eighties cartoon Jem and the Holograms. Turner’s fandom runs deep. She grew up with a single father who supported her love for all things Jem. One Christmas, she woke up to find he had bought her every single Jem-related doll available at the time; other times, he would set an alarm and wake her up early so she could watch the show before school.

“It was such an escape, and so different from the regular narratives that you had about mom and dad,” Turner says of the cartoon, which follows the adventures of a philanthropic-minded orphan named Jerrica — proprietor of an orphanage for teenage girls, the Starlight House — who has a rock-star secret identity/alter-ego, Jem. “I think I identified a little bit with Jem losing her parents.”

In hindsight, Turner, who sports a detailed, full-color tattoo of Jem on her right calf and ink depicting a rival bandleader named Pizzazz on her left calf, also recognizes how the show informed her feminist worldview. “Here was a heroine that owned her own business, was a humanitarian, ran an orphanage, took care of her sister. [She] had a romance, but it was never the whole point of the story. It was about her, and her career. It whisked me away.”

For many, Jem is a forgotten retro footnote. The cartoon had a relatively short lifespan — 65 episodes aired between 1985 to 1988 — and the accompanying doll line enjoyed only a brief burst of popularity. But for fans such as Turner, Jem was a life-changing phenomenon.

Thirty years after the cartoon initially went off the air, and three years after a poorly received live-action feature-film reboot, the Jem universe — or “multi-universes,” in the words of Samantha Newark, who provided the speaking voice for both Jem and Jerrica on the cartoon — remains a vibrant, creative space. Jem lives on via fan art and detailed websites dedicated to the brand. T-shirts mash upJem characters with art in the styles of Duran Duran, Queen, Mötley Crüe, Poison and the Misfits (who share a name with the Holograms’ rival band on the show). There’s also Truly Outrageous: A Jem Fan Film, a Kickstarter-funded live-action short named after a key line in the chorus of the show’s theme song, and a Spain-made short film, MisfitSized. Newark has even compiled a “Jem Drag Stars” playlist on her YouTube channel, featuring detailed makeup tutorials and drag performances themed around the characters.

That same dedication permeates “How Rock & Roll Infiltrated Saturday Morning Cartoons,” an unofficial JemCon kickoff panel discussion and Q&A. Held at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the event features appearances from three luminaries in the Jemuniverse: Newark; series creator Christy Marx; and cartoonist Keith Tucker, a storyboard artist on many of the show’s music videos.

Newark, a beaming presence with cascades of auburn hair, trills one of her character’s signature lines into the mic: “It’s showtime, Synergy!” All three speakers have an easy rapport as they share behind-the-scene tidbits from the cartoon. At one point, Marx draws gasps of wonder by revealing she once pitched a Jem episode set in the Rock Hall that never moved forward.

As the Q&A wraps up, a young woman standing against the wall raises her hand and shares that her name is Jherica —and that she is, in fact, named after Jem’s non-rock-star persona. Incredibly, Jherica Belle isn’t from Cleveland and hadn’t heard about JemCon but just happened to be in town for a work conference and decided to visit the Rock Hall, where she came upon the panel. Her close friends and family call her Jem, Belle shares later via e-mail. “No more than a handful,” she writes. “Not everyone can call me Jem. That name is special.”

Jem and the Holograms was originally created by Sunbow Productions to promote a line of rock & roll-themed dolls produced by toy giant Hasbro, whose other properties included G.I. Joe and My Little Pony. The original Jem doll line is a New Wave fever dream encompassing neon-hued clothing, shoes, accessories and musical instruments. Some toys even came packaged with actual playable cassettes featuring original songs heard in the cartoon.

The show expanded on the dolls’ backstory. After the death of her parents, an ambitious young woman named Jerrica suddenly finds herself running an orphanage and owning half of her late father’s record company, Starlight Music. Simultaneously, Jerrica discovers that her dad created a smart computer named Synergy, who informs the budding music exec that her magical, star-shaped “Jemstar Earrings” can create holograms that allow her to assume the identity of a rock star. Cue the formation of the band Jem and the Holograms, whose lineup features Jerrica’s younger sister, keyboardist Kimber and two adopted sisters: guitarist Aja and drummer Shana.

The show’s 65 episodes boast plenty of over-the-top drama and narrative cliffhangers. Jerrica’s Starlight Music CEO competition is Eric Raymond, a slimy character who constantly tries to sabotage and undermine her. Jem and the Holograms do battle both onstage and off with the Misfits, a gang of felonious (if musically talented) mean girls managed by Raymond. Jerrica also takes care of the Starlight Girls, the foster children who live at Starlight House, and navigates her relations with boyfriend Rio. In true fantasy-land fashion, Rio also falls in love with Jem, but never discovers that the two women are one and the same.

“It’s a character-driven show,” says Christy Marx. “Basically a soap opera for kids is what it was — [or] ended up being anyway.”

This cartoon drama mirrored the press-inflated real-life drama involving the toy lines. As it goes with many real-life female musicians, Jem was often pitted against another female talent: Mattel’s doll juggernaut Barbie. An October 1986 Los Angeles Times article,“Barbie Takes Up Rock ‘n’ Roll to Match Rival Jem,” detailed the emergence of Barbie and the Rockers, a line of rock-themed dolls that debuted in stores shortly before Jem did.

The competition was at least healthy. According to an August 1987 Los Angeles Times story, Jem had sold more than 3 million dolls to date, and the cartoon was drawing 2.5 million young viewers each week, “making it the third most-watched children’s program in syndication.” Unfortunately, Jem’s pop-cultural moment was short-lived: The animated series was canceled in 1988 due to the doll line’s decreasing popularity.

The ongoing fascination with Jem and the Holograms certainly has something to do with nostalgia. Yet Jem isn’t like most children’s entertainment. The show’s sophisticated story lines often involved heavy real-world issues; for example, a runaway hotline was flooded with calls after the phone number ran at the end of one episode. Plus, even minor characters have elaborate backstories, making the show feel more like an adaptation of a novel rather than a cartoon spun off from a toy line.

According to Newark, it was by design that the characters on Jem felt like three-dimensional people. “Our reads had to be very real,” she explains. “They didn’t want cartoony. They were like, ‘No, we want the kids to look up to you, like you’re their older sisters, or their friends.'”

The quality and care that went into Jem’s narratives extended to its in-episode animated videos, whose original music and lyrics also promoted thought-provoking messages. “You might dismiss [the songs] as cheesy, but they’re not,” says Ari Gold, who provided the singing voice for the character Ba Nee, an eight-year-old Vietnamese orphan who was losing her sight. “The messages are good; they’re complex; they’re messages that we still need to hear today. There’s really almost a Jem song about every situation in life.”

Gold, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, notes that their character’s signature song, “A Father Should Be,” is “about the ideal father that so many of us didn’t have.” As another example, they cite “Alone Again,” a rather serious song touching on depression and feeling self-conscious that was sung by a young character dealing with drug addiction. “I mean, this is a cartoon in the Eighties for children. This is before Oprah was talking about this stuff,” Gold says with a laugh. “It was so ahead of its time in so many ways.”

The lyrics were set to equally high-quality music, courtesy of co–composer-arranger Anne Bryant, who noted in a 2009 interview that the Holograms’ songs were orchestrated with real horns, woodwinds and strings, while the Pizzazz-led Misfits tunes had electronic elements and guitars. “[Anne Bryant] was writing pop music, but with a lot of key changes,” says Britta Phillips, who was the singing voice of Jem and is now better known as a member of the band Luna and duo Dean & Britta.

“It was all very sophisticated, and not simple vocally at all,” Phillips says. “I feel like I really learned how to sing doing that. I had a really powerful and high voice, but not a lot of nuance or flexibility or any of that until I started doing the Jem stuff. That all came from that, from working with Anne.”

The show’s smart, non-pandering approach can be traced to Marx, who is revered by fans. Stefan Spierings recalls being “extremely nervous” before he and his cousin Rob met Marx at the 2007 JemCon. “To us, it was almost like meeting Madonna,” the Netherlands native says. “She’s one of our heroes.” A cosplay fanatic named Raven, who published her first book in 2016 under the pen name Evelyn Whitney, could be seen furiously scribbling notes during one of Marx’s JemCon presentations and also considers the creator a writing role model. “I want my career to look like hers,” she says.

The respect is mutual, however. As JemCon unfolds, it’s clear that Marx, who also wrote 23 episodes, takes her role as the shepherd of Jem’s legacy quite seriously, and answers fan questions about character motivations with care and respect. The attention to detail makes sense: Marx grew up an ardent fan of comic books, and worked in TV production before becoming a writer.

When Marx signed on to the Jem project, certain elements were already locked in place, including the rock-star premise and the Jem/Jerrica secret identity. Yet many other elements were in flux, right down to character names (Jem was originally known as “M”). Marx also recalls being given conflicting directions as she began to flesh out and develop Jem’s world. “They said, ‘OK, it’s a girl’s property, and it’s got to be romance and fashion and glitter and glamour,’ and all of this stuff. ‘But we’re afraid the boys might change the dial, so there’s got to be action!'” She laughs. “It was really interesting how they were trying to juggle all of this.”

Despite such seemingly divergent directives, she says working with Sunbow Productions was “a dream” and adds that Hasbro was, for the most part, “hands off. They had moments, perhaps, when they exerted a bit of control over certain stories, but not much. They really let us have a lot of creative freedom.” That helps to explain why Jem explored deeper themes than other cartoons of the time and featured such a stereotype-breaking female lead. Jem herself is a quintessentially Eighties icon, a fashion plate with a shock of pink hair and cutting-edge outfits who’s also whip smart and a total boss. Despite the tragedies Jerrica/Jem has faced, she seemingly has it all: a fun, glamorous and successful life full of romance, rock and responsibility.

The cartoon’s progressive approach toward ethnic diversity — Holograms member Aja is Asian-American and Shana is black — also resonated with fans such as Christina Santisteban, who sports pink glitter eyeshadow, a blue wig and a yellow lace dress. “There were very few other cartoons that were so diverse in its characters, and so inclusive,” she says. “Where do you get a girl band that had sisters that were of different backgrounds? It was very, very well representative of what the ideal should be, in a sense. Jem was a wonderful microcosm.”

For all of Jem’s over-the-top flash, the show also offered subtler messaging to some fans. “[The show] did have an unconscious appeal to the LGBT community, because [of] the secret identity, and being afraid of people finding out and using it against you,” says Garth Jensen, who’s known in the fan community for his seamless custom mashups of Jem cartoon songs with Eighties hits such as New Order’s “Blue Monday” or Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” “And just the idea that it was OK to be different — and it was OK to have that side of yourself that was fabulous, and you could bring that out. Being your true self is your ultimate goal.”

Will Edwardson, who boasts colorful, intricate tattoos of the faces of the Misfits and Holograms on his right arm, had a similar takeaway from the cartoon. As a gay teenager growing up in rural Kentucky, he turned to music for solace. “It was a comfort for me, because I was, of course, an outcast,” he says. “[I] didn’t fit in in my area. Being gay was just not the thing to be. It was pretty lonely and isolated.”

Developing an affinity for Jem and the Holograms‘ music- and glitz-filled premise was a natural next step. “I’ve always loved movies and [been] attracted to showbiz and fame,” he says. “So here’s a show of someone who has a dual identity — you have to be someone here, and you have to be someone else here — along with the music, the colors and the clothes. I just identified so much with that.”

Neither Marx nor Newark were aware of how much of an impact Jem had when it originally aired. But as Newark has started attending more conventions, and met fans, she’s seen the show’s profound, enduring effect on people.

“I have a lot of criers,” she says. “They just burst into tears. Nostalgia’s so powerful, and I realized quite a long time ago that I am custodian of something very precious, and I take it seriously. They’re, of course, like, crying and apologizing, and I’m like, ‘No, I understand.’ They’re suddenly eight years old again, or five years old, or however old they were. And the show’s just meant so much to them.”

Jenny Dumlao — a gregarious, enthusiastic New Yorker who traveled to JemCon with her two daughters, eight-year-old Aurora May and six-year-old Leilani — in particular gets extremely emotional when she talks about the ways Jem has provided her with guidance and comfort throughout her life. Born in the Philippines, she moved around frequently as a child after coming to the U.S., and fell in love with Jem early on. In fact, she and one of her best friends would play “radio” using a boombox, and pretend to be DJs talking over the Jem music cassettes — idle play which sparked a lifelong love of music and even a future foray into real-life radio DJ’ing.

“[The show] stays with you, and you experience it in so many different ways as you’re getting older,” she says, adding that she also sees now how big of an impression the show’s ethnic diversity left on her. “I was a kid that would get very excited if there was a character that was like me. And so Aja was the first favorite character. Because you’re like, ‘Oh, she’s Asian, but not only that, she’s so cool — and she’s so smart.'” A few minutes later, she becomes overcome with emotion as she talks about the power of this representation. “I don’t know, as a parent and just even back then, that’s really important to me in media, seeing yourself.”

When her daughters were old enough, Dumlao naturally introduced them to Jem and the Holograms. This introduction came at a time when she was leaving the girls’ father, as their relationship had turned toxic. “Sometimes bad things would be happening, and our safe space was in my room, in the bedroom away from stuff,” Dumlao recalls. “And we would watch [Jem].

“I didn’t think it was happening at the time, but I know based on how [the girls] would talk about the show that it was helping us in those times,” she adds. “And sometimes it was helping me too — whether at that moment I was getting inspiration, or whether I feel like I was going to a simpler time.”

Dumlao and her girls are in a much better place these days. Unsurprisingly, both Aurora May and Leilani are now mega-knowledgeable Jem fans in their own right. (During Friday night trivia, although they seem to be concentrating on coloring, they very quietly answer some difficult questions correctly.) Dumlao recognizes their Jem fandom might not always persist in the same form, but she sees how they’ve soaked up lessons from the cartoon, including the value of hard work, as well as the idea that girls can be anything and everything they want to be.

“I remember one time the girls said to me, ‘You’re like Jerrica — you work really hard, Mama,'” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘Wow. Thank you for noticing that.'”

JemCon kicks off bright and early on Saturday morning with toy designer Stefanie Eskander, who draws a rapt audience to a fascinating, photo-packed presentation covering her time working on Hasbro’s Jem doll line back in the Eighties. To the delight of everyone in the conference room, at one point she reveals her original concept art for Jem’s pet llama, Rama Llama, a fan-favorite cult item that ended up being available only as a mail-in incentive.

People furiously snap photos of a slide featuring Eskander’s drawing of the pink-hued animal, which she initially named Dolli Llama and gave accessories such as a smart bowler hat and hatbox. For a capper on the reveal, she pulls out a prototype llama figure that’s pale yellow, not shocking pink; it occupied a prominent place on her art table in the vendor room all weekend, a mini-celebrity in its own right.

Over the three-day weekend, more than 140 people from all around the world — two attendees short of the all-time JemCon attendance record — will converge on (and brighten up) this otherwise nondescript suburban Double Tree Hilton. The JemCon agenda is packed with activities, including trivia, a costume masquerade and late-night disco, panel discussions, karaoke, a charity auction, and a vendor room full of Jem ephemera for sale and display.

Loyalists devour this kind of minutiae, and have impressive knowledge of every inch of Jem’s narrative world, judging by Friday night’s competitive trivia round. (Sample: “This San Diego Comic Con-exclusive doll had issues with mold in the packaging.”) The Jem-inspired cosplaying is also truly, truly outrageous (and impressive). A willowy 17-year-old named Erica Hill — an aspiring graphic designer who “became totally obsessed” with the Jem and the Holograms cartoon via TV reruns — sports three separate outfits painstakingly constructed by her mom, Andrea, from a combination of thrift store finds and homemade flourishes. “She’s a MacGyver when it comes to birthing cosplay ideas,” Erica says proudly.

JemCon founder Liz Pemberton, who came to Jem after she started collecting the dolls in the early 2000s, launched the convention in July 2005 as a one-day event at the University of Minnesota. That initial installment drew 50 people and, from there, JemCon has happened every year since then in various cities. “Which astounds me,” Pemberton says with a laugh. Even more impressive, JemCon is still a very grassroots, DIY effort: It doesn’t have huge sponsors, and is a volunteer effort planned by a different person or group of people each year.

“I just wanted to get people together to look at our [doll] shoes and fashions,” says Pemberton, a thoughtful speaker who wears her silver-gray hair pulled back into a ponytail. “That it has grown into this much more comprehensive [thing], and that it has become such a welcoming place for such a diverse lot of people, continues to amaze me and makes me very happy.”

In Cleveland, every JemCon attendee has a different story to tell about how they came to Jem or why the franchise is meaningful to them. There’s Ankur Malhotra and TJ Schuessler, who started dating after they met at JemCon; Ilana Pernica, who has fiery red hair and cat-eye glasses and stresses with great urgency that she is the biggest fan of the Stingers, a fictional band introduced later in the series; and first-time attendee Becky Scott, who first loved Jem after hearing cassettes of the music.

Many fans have traveled great distances to JemCon or have parlayed their fandom into a career. Italy native Davide Quatraro learned English from watching the cartoon and now works in the dubbing industry; in fact, he even translated the Jem and the Hologramsmovie into Italian. “It was a huge thing,” he says, “when you can have your greatest passion turn into a job.”

As a kid, Rachel Pankiw — host and organizer of the Cleveland JemCon — was first drawn to Jem and the Holograms by the bright, eye-catching packaging of a VHS tape. But once she watched the cartoon, she saw her own life reflected in the story lines. “I really related to this whole story of the Starlight Girls, and the whole thing with kids not getting attention or getting left out,” she said, adding that her parents were divorced when she was small, and her dad wasn’t around much.

Independent of one another, and without prompting, multiple people express that JemCon feels like a family, which would be a cliché if it didn’t feel so absolutely true. This inclusivity isn’t just lip service, confirms Will Edwardson’s husband, Steve. “I’ve made a lot of good friends here,” he says. “With him being the collector and the one into Jem — and me being a supporter — they’ve made me feel very welcome.” In fact, the soft-spoken Southerners decided to get married in a surprise ceremony at the 2010 JemCon in New Hampshire, since same-sex marriage was then still outlawed in their home state of Tennessee. “We talked about it, and we said, ‘What other place to get married than at JemCon?'” Steve says.

Pemberton gets choked up while mentioning the Edwardsons’ JemCon marriage, and that Malhotra and Schuessler also connected romantically there. “Their lives have changed,” she says. “You don’t go into a convention going, ‘I’m going to change people’s lives.'” She laughs. “Just the way you don’t write a cartoon going, ‘I’m going to change people’s lives.'”

Certainly those attending JemCon represent a cross-section of the most dedicated Jem and the Holograms fans. Pemberton realizes that, in the greater scheme of pop-culture fandom, the brand’s impact is small. When she attended the official 2010 Barbie convention to promote JemCon — while dressed as the Misfits band member Pizzazz, bright green wig and all — “nobody recognized me,” she says, save for one man she knew from the Jem message board. But an interesting twist, Pemberton recalls that there were dancers dressed as Barbie and the Rockers at the convention who “made some joke about Jem and Jerrica, some little insult kind of joke.” She laughs as she adds, “And I’m like, ‘Mattel certainly knows who Jem is still!'”

That Jem and the Holograms hasn’t been given more of a modern second chance is curious. Nostalgia for Eighties cartoons shows no signs of abating, judging by the popularity of modern iterations of My Little Pony and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a buzzed-about new Netflix reboot, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Unfortunately, the cartoon’s polarizing reemergence into pop culture has something to do with it: The 2015 Jem and the Holograms movie was lambasted by critics (it has a 20-percent-fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating) and earned an anemic $2.3 million worldwide at the box office.

Perhaps because the show remains a cultural underdog, fans are intensely loyal to the franchise and its principals. Newark has parlayed her time with Jem into a musical career, and records danceable synth pop in the vein of Kylie Minogue or early Lady Gaga, while Britta Phillips too has Jem fans come see her live. “The confidence it gave me later in life, hearing that people were still so into [Jem], has given me confidence as a musician, in my singing,” she says. “It took me a long time to make a solo album, but I made one a couple of years ago, and the Jem fans were so supportive of that even though it sounds nothing like Jem.”

Unsurprisingly, JemCon attendees also have very detailed opinions over why the 2015 Jem movie does (and doesn’t) succeed. “Christy Marx wasn’t given the opportunity to write the movie,” says Katie Brandt, who’s attending JemCon with her younger sister, Colleen O’Leary. “That’s why it didn’t work; that’s why it fell apart.” This isn’t an assertion out of left field: Even producer Jason Blum apparently admitted in June that the movie should have had Marx involved.

Still, Marx did make a cameo in the film, portraying Lindsey Pierce, a Rolling Stone reporter, and received a warm welcome on the set — to the extent that when she asked to change some of her lines, she was given a green light with no hesitation. Marx is also extremely complimentary toward the actresses in the movie, even as she too expresses wishes that she had been involved with the writing.

“I think that the essence of Jem got lost, and we lost a great opportunity to genuinely reboot Jem,” she says. “I’ve had so many ideas over the years — of ways to reboot Jem, to bring it back, to rejuvenate it—and yet could never get any traction to do that. And so I think it’s just a shame that opportunity didn’t get pursued.”

“I think there’s a lot that can be done to update it, but keep it true to its essence,” she adds. “So I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen. I kind of doubt it at this point. “

Still, Jem is staying alive in pop culture. In recent years, Integrity Toys launched a high-end Jem and the Holograms doll collection. There’s a special edition, Jem-themed Manic Panic hair dye that glows under black light, while Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken has featured Jem in multiple episodes, once envisioning the character as a pop star who’s fallen on hard times since her Eighties heyday, another time as a foul-mouthed sexpot. (For an even raunchier take on the show and characters, there’s also a mega-NSFW fan parody on YouTube dubbed “Jiz and the Mammograms.”) The original Jem cartoon is finding a new audience as well, in the form of a comprehensive DVD release and, in recent years, syndicated reruns on the Hub (later Discovery Family) and Netflix.

One of the most groundbreaking extensions of the Jem and the Holograms legacy is the IDW Publishing comic book series produced between 2015 and 2017 written by Kelly Thompson. The comics feature characters with body diversity — a particular strength of artist Sophie Campbell, who drew many of IDW’s Jem issues, Thompson says — and expand the backstories of some Jem regulars; for example, Holograms keyboardist Kimber and Misfits keytarist Stormer are openly gay. Later in the series, the comic also introduced a musician named Blaze who is a transgender woman.

“I was interested primarily in drawing out the spirit of the original, which was incredibly diverse for its time, and making sure we continued that tradition by modernizing it and making it even more diverse,” Thompson says.

At JemCon, the Saturday evening festivities especially embody Jem’s spirit of diversity, and playful music and fashion. The impressive costume contest possesses both an abundance of inside jokes and attention to detail. Cherise “Tootie” Sims, who’s cosplaying as Jem’s boyfriend, Rio — specifically as he is in an episode where he kicks a plant in frustration — draws raucous laughter as she mimes kicking a tiny manicured fake plant with exaggerated anger. A veteran JemCon attendee named Jacques, who’s dressed as Jerrica’s late father, Emmett Benton, sports a lab coat and carries a working, light-up prototype of supercomputer Synergy.

With a giant smile on her face, Raven sweeps around the room wearing a floor-length cloak over a black miniskirt and yellow print leggings; she’s portraying a character dressed like an oracle, as seen in the beloved episode “Midsummer Night’s Madness.” Pittsburgh resident Danna Kurela glides gracefully in a costume handmade on her embroidery machine: a shiny gold dress with a fur-trimmed collar based on the Integrity doll line’s Glitter ‘n Gold Jem. The eventual winners are Dumlao — who draws laughter as she does ballet moves around the floor while dressed as Synergy, complete with purple body paint and a silver jumpsuit — and her girls, cosplaying as Jem and Jerrica.

Once the contest is over, the musical portion of the night kicks into high gear. Jem-themed musical karaoke goes longer than it’s supposed to, simply because everyone is having so much fun belting out the songs from the show, although Dumlao (under her DJ name, Jenny Doom) eventually packs the dance floor by spinning an all-killer mix of tunes: Prince, the B-52s, Madonna, Cardi B, Sugarhill Gang. The time ticks away toward midnight, and JemCon has been going full steam for nearly 15 hours.

Plans are already in motion for the next JemCon, which will take place in September 2019, in Buffalo, New York. An agenda and guest list are still being worked out, but it’s safe to say many in attendance in Cleveland are already looking forward to next year.

“I meet so many little kids now,” Newark says. “Some of them come in full cosplay, like a little tiny Pizzazz or a little Jem. I always wondered if [the cartoon] would translate, because it was set in the Eighties, but they don’t care. They love the whole thing: the color, the music, the sparkle, the glamour. [There are] new little Jem boys and Jem girls running around. It’s so cool.”

“The characters, the stories, the emotional elements of it, the fashion, the music,” Marx adds, “I mean, it all came together in a perfect storm, and became this amazing phenomenon that’s called Jem.”

#jem #jem and the holograms #jem & the holograms #the misfits #the stingers

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