#i maybe listened to the whole sound of music soundtrack on repeat yesterday

[stobinesque]

WIP Wednesday!

Tagged by @eriquin and @steves-strapcollection, thank you!!

THE RULES

In a reblog (or new post w/ rules attached), post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to post!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can’t share from (for example, an event fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. If you tag me in your post, I will send you an ask request!

THE WIPS

Jeff is Steve's Bi Awakening AU (fwiw I already have two of these sitting in my inbox from a couple weeks ago)

wigwag [Steve's Big Gay Sex Adventure]

Wayfinder [S4 Fix-it, Lucas POV]

phryctoria bonus chapter 7 (marginalia and annotations of How To Have Sex in an Epidemic)

THE (no pressure) TAGS

@devondespresso @starryeyedjanai @xenon-demon @inairbinad @hellsfireclub @delta-piscium @steddielations @thefreakandthehair @skjachukson @steventhusiast -- and anyone else who wants to participate!

THE SNIPPET

uhhhh, I'm pretty sure most of the writing I've done in the past 7 days has already been shared in various asks (or my steddie microfic), so have a sneak peek at chapter 5 of phryctoria, which I spent a good chunk of today revising.

Robin yawns again, stretching her arms high above her head. “Absolutely worth it,” she says, sounding a bit smug.

Steve shakes his head, but can’t bite back the smile she brings to his face. He clicks back into a conscious awareness of their surroundings, and realizes they’re passing by Weathertop. (Try as he might to deny it, the kids’ names for locations around Hawkins have fixed themselves in his mind.) He pulls off and parks the beamer on the side of the road, circling around the front to pull Robin out of the passenger seat. “C’mon, Bobbin, we’ve got a hill to climb.”

Halfway up, Robin turns to him and starts flapping a hand against his chest. “Hey, hey! How’s that song go? The hills are alive, dah-da-dah daaah dah, you know?”

Steve smirks. “Aren’t your ears supposed to be little geniuses? Robs, the next lines are literally the title of the movie.”

“Pretty sure it was a musical first.”

“This does not actually help your case, you know that, right?”

“Whatever, dingus. Just tell me how the song goes.”

“You sure you wanna hear me sing?”

“Okay, you’ll notice how I didn’t say ‘sing how it goes for me,’ you could just tell me the words.”

“No, no, now you’re going to be subjected to the musical stylings of the Harrington family singers, because,” Steve leans into her space and starts singing, sickly sweet, “My heart wants to sing every soooong it hears.” His head is almost fully resting against Robin’s shoulder as he looks up at her with a shit eating grin.

“Oh, my god, get off me,” she says, shoving at him while she laughs.

He lets himself be pushed away, taking a couple of dramatic, stumbling steps away from her before righting himself and drifting back into her space. “You know the next lines have always been my favorite though?”

“Do you have the whole song memorized?!”

“...yeah?” Steve frowns at her. “Robs, it’s one of my favorite movies! I thought that’s why you asked!”

Robin shakes her head, looking at him a little dumbstruck. “Nope, I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that little Harrington factoid.”

“Well…yeah. My mom really loved it, so I guess I just watched it a lot growing up? Especially when my dad was out of town—before she started going on the trips with him—because then we could sing along.”

Robin opens her mouth to say something, before seeming to make the conscious decision not to approach the whole ‘you couldn’t sing along to the movie about not being allowed to sing?’ thing with a ten foot pole, and snapping her mouth shut again. “Huh.” She takes a couple more striding steps forward with a pensive look on her face. “So...how does the next part go?”

He smiles at her, and even without being able to see his own face he can tell that it’s radiant. “My heart…wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees.” He looks at her, and he can feel the way his gaze has become just a little too intense.

“Birds, huh?” She knocks his shoulder with her own, a gentle smile on her face. “Yep. Always loved ‘em,” he says, his heart feeling a little gooey in his chest.

[rockettransman]

MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT ROCKETMAN

I HAVE SO MANY! HERE WE GO!

prelude: i went into this movie pretty jaded and not thinking i was gonna like it. in my head, i got john lennon and elton john confused. i was thinking it was about john lennon. “oh god, they made a movie about that prick?” further, i was already dreading it because they play EJ’s hits on the radio at work all the time, and frankly i was fucking sick of tiny dancer and im still standing. when i watched the trailer i was like “aw geez, elton john sings these? damn, i was hoping i could tolerate him at all.” so. not many high hopes for this movie.

that was until i was on a six hour flight from boston to portland, oregon, and i was delirious with pain and boredom. i was sat in the middle of a father and daughter, and so i really didn’t wanna pull out my laptop and get in their space. reading the subtitles from the office off the airplane tv made me sick. the lights were off and it was 2 am, so no reading. i. was. BORED. and then, i saw someone watching something in the row in front of me. where i was sitting i got a whole view of their screen. oh, they were watching that elton john movie. they didn’t have subtitles on, so i could only take from visual and context clues what was happening. it looked flashy, and oh-- that man just stared lovingly, tenderly into another man’s eyes. oh shit. oh yeah. elton is gay. 

now i’m hooked. if i’m anything, i’m a trans man in a desperate search for a complex queer romance movie. i wanted something that would pull on my heartstrings, that would wreck me emotionally with a high reward. suddenly elton is staring at himself in full garb, putting on and taking off his glasses. smiling then frowning. glasses on. smile. glasses off. scowl. oh he’s in distress. oh, is he snorting coke? okay, cool, tight.

from here on out, i watch the movie with (no audio) the predisposition that elton is in severe distress, dealing with drugs and self-sabotage all because his feelings and attraction towards men are confusing and frustrating and he doesn’t know how to cope with them. is he in denial? does he hate himself for it? does he try to make himself attracted to women? obviously, i was incorrect. elton was pretty secure in the fact that he was gay in his personal life. 

i think about rocketman for days until my flight back to sarasota. i decide to watch rocketman on the plane back instead of renting it. but for some reason, my goblin brain told me to rent it, and i did. but i ended up just watching it on the plane anyway.

i was disappointed. really, kinda bummed about it. every article and review said it was R for a reason. there was plenty sexual content and drugs to do elton’s real life comparison justice. in the movie i watched, i saw none of it. there was some drinking of alcohol, he took pills, it was implied he snorted coke. i saw no kissing, no intimacy, not even a tender hand on a cheek or embrace between elton and another man. this movie was praised for being so groundbreaking! for representing so much of what elton’s life was really like, with drugs and sex and all that. and now that i thought about it, i heard not one curse word. “bloody” was tossed around a lot, but that is used as an inflection. and during the pool scene before he throws himself in, when he meets john at the deck, he spits something about “his secretary shagging him in front of the pool boys.” that had me in utter confusion. there... was no one there with john? he was just sitting there? must’ve been something i missed.

SO IT TURNS OUT THE AIRPLANE’S VERSION OF THE MOVIE WAS HEAVILY CENSORED. i watched the real thing when i got home yesterday and was FLOORED by the differences in the same movie i had just watched. in the scene where elton remarks he’d like to change his name, they completely edited out the character behind him peeing into a glass bottle. they also cut out the scene where elton is staring at the performer, being yelled at to close the door, and the kiss where he’s pinned against the wall. holy fuck. i realized when i saw that, i had missed something MAJOR. this meant i was missing some MORE major explicit, probably important-to-the-plot-and-character-development stuff. oh, now i was excited. 

(we could talk all day about the fact that a single kiss between two men was cut because it was deemed “too explicit”, and in a movie about elton john being the ultimate irony)

the sex scene AND take me to the pilot were completely missing in the airplane version. i had no idea this song existed! oh my god, it was a banger! i cried tears of happiness during the song. holy shit. the tense energy between he and john, standing there silhouetted by the window, and then all of a sudden they’re all over each other, fingers tangled in hair, moaning into each other’s mouths, squirming, trying to get as close to each other as possible. this is what i wanted. this is what i was looking for. not because i was looking for something “hot” or “dirty.”’ i wanted an intense sex scene because then i knew it was real. i wanted the desperation, the nerves, the tender way they cradled each other, and how they went to town on each other. it was elton’s first time being intimate with a man, and it was such a nerve-wracking, intense, lustful, desperate moment. taron and richard absolutely nailed it. The swaying and the leaning into each other, the grabbing and nuzzling and all of a sudden they’re all over each other... it honest to god moved me. not to sound too “grew-up-baptist”, but sex, especially the first time you have it is so special and intimate and personal and important (imo). i know all the times i’ve had sex, it was a very, very special moment to me, and i wholly and completely trusted my partner then. i was so happy elton could find security and love and a heckin good time in bed with another man. it must’ve felt so freeing.

This was between two men! In the smack dab of the AIDS crisis in like 1975 or some shit! If being queer is this fucking tough in 2019, imagine what it was like in 1975!! MILLIONS of people were left to die by eat-shit Raegan who say by and said “aw that’s cute.” MILLIONS of people died for loving who they love!! That’s fucked man!! Seeing a triumphant moment like this in the middle of what was happening and what it could mean for Elton and his career just rly got me ya know

my entire perspective of the movie changed from then on. i was excited to see what else i had missed. in fact, some of the songs weren’t bad. maybe i’d like some of elton’s stuff after all?

i missed the scene in the closet. on the airplane, he followed john into the closet and shut the door. the scene cut. but in the real version, suddenly john pinned him against the wall, mirroring the scene of the first kiss i missed, and elton lamely stutters he wants dinner with him, not a sexual act john was certainly looking for, and in the next moment he was hungrily snapping at his finger. i missed exactly how much coke elton snorted. i missed entire scenes and nuances that provided so much to the story. man, i was angry i missed all this. i was cheated.

when i finished the real version, my perspective on the movie, and elton, and his music, had spun an entire 180. i dug it. i listened to rocket man on repeat during the entirety of my forty minute run. i fell asleep listening to the soundtrack. i woke up today listening to it, and have been through the whole day. i have not been able to get this movie off my mind. im watching it for the third time right now.

WELCOME TO THE THIRD POINT OF THIS POST!

if you made it this far, thank you. what i wrote feels so important to me. someone needed to hear it. I WANNA TALK ABOUT THE ENTIRE ROCKETMAN SCENE. I have PTSD with psychotic features. This means that under the right triggers, i hallucinate, visually or auditorily (is that a word), things that aren’t there. sometimes they’re scary, connected to my past trauma, but sometimes, they’re hazy outlines of good people who i think i know. i also deal with all the lovely things that come along with ptsd, including dissociation. pretty much any and everything can trigger me in a specific way. the pool scene was incredibly difficult to watch. seeing a little boy playing piano underwater, him sinking and hovering and singing along, and people slowly descending, dancing in the water until they retrieve him. the vision snaps apart and holy fuck elton is in trouble. (as an aside, that’s one of my favorite affects of film: the protag is under the influence of something, whether it be a hallucination, drugs, in a deep fantasy, or just otherwise a storytelling device, and he is in imminent danger. the audience is aware he is in imminent danger. the protag, however, is cool and chillin and hanging out, not aware or bothered, and maybe this is where a major character arc beat hits. in an instant, they’re pulled out of it, and we--the audience and the characters--are hit with how dire the circumstances really are.)

Suicide is a super sensitive subject to me. when he mumbled “i’m going to fucking kill myself” and plunged into the depths, my throat constricted. it was a difficult few minutes, but i held my breath, gritted my teeth, and paced myself through it. despite the sheer terror and panic that was racing through my brain, the entirety of it was so beautiful. the bright blues, whites, and blacks of the pool lighting and bubbles decorating him, the flow of his--forgive him, i don’t know if there’s a cultural name--outer garment, how curious and confused he looked as he watched his younger self do something he did now, and the people twirling through the water, reaching out, and eventually snatching him up until we’re suddenly in the present--dude, the cinematography of the entire first verse is so, so breathtaking. the scene in the ambulance and getting his stomach pumped was a bit too graphic for me (i could feel a flashback/hallucination creeping on; sometimes i can’t tell them apart.) but it was all done so smoothly. when they lifted him up, spun him around, undressed and dressed him all in one fluid motion, i lost my fuckin mind. i rewound it several times to just watch that sequence. the pain, reluctance, and exhaustion in his face right before he was handed his bat and exuberantly entered the stage was so intense it was palpable. my heart ached for him deeply. it’s allll about putting on a mask of being truly happy and well, when just before that, he had tried to fucking kill himself. how fucking heavy is that shit?

the downward spiral kept me on the edge of my seat. honky cat was funky as hell, and i loved the little tiny moments and gestures towards each other. maybe john and elton truly cared for each other for mere heartbeats before it all went south. he was hurting so bad and ruining everything and in such denial i wanted to throttle him by the shoulders to scream “LOOK WHAT YOU’RE DOING! YOU BIG FUCKING IDIOT!” he was constantly suffering, doing more coke and drugs than i thought a person could keep in his system. the suicide attempt, the fantastic Dodgers show, the night and day between his outward appearance and his actions, all of it was so gripping. the group therapy medium through which the story was told was insanely cool, too. i thought at first it was a bit cheesy, but it worked. i loved that he confronted everyone who had hurt him, and who he had hurt, and reconciled. i loved that as the major plot beats went on, his clothes eventually toned down in loudness, mirroring how the story was going along in real time. he went from having an explosive outburst, to levelly confronting his parents, and firmly insisting they not treat him like that anymore. they didn’t have the right. we could see how he’d grown through several different literary elements. the fact that it was laid out so plainly really helped me, someone who is dumb as fuck and constantly misses nuances like that.

it’s so disheartening to see elton’s first love was someone who was aggressive, non-interested, and who refused to listen to him.

(im at the pinball wizard scene, and holy shit this tune fucks)

at the end of the day, when i had thought the movie fell through so many expectations, i watched the real, authentic version and was so, so happy with how it turned out. it was much more honest than what i had thought it was. when the credits rolled, and it said he and his husband David Furnish had been happily married for 25 years, the tears really started coming. Elton did it. He survived through all the shit he put his body through, all the heartache and loneliness and terrible isolation and suffering, and he won. He got what he always wanted. A man who loved him deeply, purely, passionately, and properly. 

i haven’t shut up about elton john for days. i’m kinda baffled how something gripped me so intensely, when i had written it off as stupid just a day before this. thank you for reading. i’m sure i forgot a lot of things i wanted to express, but hopefully i got something across. let me know if you read this, please. if you made it all the way down here, i owe you like $5. drop me your venmo.

thank you for reading. this movie touched me in a way i didn’t think was possible. thank god for elton john. thank god for his perseverance. thank god for his story, giving me and millions of others hope that happiness will come. recovery is possible. healing is possible. you just need to reach out first. thank you and goodnight.

[eurosong]

2018 vs 2019: Semi-final 1

Hey there, folks! Every year after the national final season is over, one of the first things I write about Eurovision is a comparison of the new year’s songs with those of the previous year. Often it gets folk unfollowing the blog even though it’s almost entirely posts about ESC statistics and only a relatively small amount on rating the songs here. These are just my thoughts and no offence intended to anyone who thinks otherwise. Without further ado, click below to take a look at my thoughts on semi-final one!

◯ Australia – 2019 – Last year, Oz sent “We got love” (or “We got l’œuf” as I renamed it), which was a dizzying collection of clichés, got a mediocre placement and might well have been the impetus for them finally biting the bullet and getting the punters involved in the thitherto long mooted national final. This decision might not benefit their chances of keeping up their qualification record in the long run – but it means, for once, that Australia can move outside a narrow box musically and send things that would never be picked by internal selectors. “Zero gravity” was a less astute choice than “2000 & Whatever” would have been, I feel – it sounds to be like something that people think is so Eurovision who haven’t seen it in some time. Nonetheless, homegirl has pipes, the tune is quite catchy and it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than last year’s song.

◯ Belarus – 2018 – whilst I’ll be talking about 2018 vs 2019, I have to take a quick detour almost right away to 2017. It was the first time that Belarus managed to sustain my interest and get into my personal top 10 since their début, and they did so by going authentic and finally showing some love for their national language on the ESC stage. One year later, and I certainly wasn’t enthused by a carpetbagging victory of a non-local singing a rather ordinary song in English or some approximation thereof.

And yet, “Forever” and its earnest performer grew on me, especially the strange dissonance between the hopeful lyrics and the very melancholy music. After a similar number of repeated listens, “Like it” has not sparked even the briefest flame. Musically, this starts off with an inoffensive if very 2005 Spanish guitar riff, arrives at a decent-ish bridge and then throws itself off it head first into an absolutely dreadful thumping, repetitive chorus which is reprised way too much in the rest of the song. Lyrically, they put about as much effort into the words as they did into the “screensaver with default font” they were using as a background as Zena performed. She repeats “yes, you’re gunna like it” 40 times in the space of 3 minutes – one every 4.5 seconds. Maybe she’s trying to psychologically condition us, but no, Zena, I ent gunna like it at all. In a delicious bit of irony, it’s also at time of writing the least “liked” ESC ’19 song on Youtube. Strong preference to 2018.

◯ Belgium – 2019 – It can be difficult for a country to come back after a peak moment for them with something equally good that also manages to win over the fans and juries. We’ve seen it in Latvia after “Love injected”, in Estonia after “Goodbye to yesterday” and I think we’re seeing it once again with Belgium after “City lights”. Neither this year’s song nor last’s comes anywhere near the anthemic, emotional power of Blanche’s song. Both are nice enough, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Eliot struggled much as Sennek did last year. I give it a slight preference, but both songs are really let down, I feel, by choruses that don’t pay off the drama built in the verses.

◯ Cyprus – Neither – I try to limit myself to as few “neither” choices as possible in these games because the fun is in having to choose, sometimes, between two difficult options. Nonetheless, I abhorred “Fuego” in every conceivable way and this aptly-named “replay” offers little different to those who weren’t fans of it. If I had to pick, I’d go with 2018, because at least it doesn’t have the sadness of attempting to catch lightning twice in the same jar attached to it.

◯ Czechia – 2019 – Two years, two rather uncomfortable entries from the Czechs in a row. Last year, we had a predatory “Blurred lines” light, while this year, whilst less lyrically degrading, still has weird lines about eavesdropping on people having sex through the walls(?)… but it’s enough to secure a slight preference.

◯ Estonia – 2018 – It seems like such a long time has passed since the days when I consistently found Eesti Beesti, since those days when Eesti Laul seemed experimental and had a decent number of songs in their native language. I’m no fan of popera, but at least Elina was a local talent. It’s bewildering when a country with so many great artists can’t find someone with any real association with it to sing for them. Though both are ultimately derivative, I prefer La forza to what is essentially an aviici b-side.

◯ Finland– 2018 – I have a pet peeve for national finals where you are presented with a single choice of artist. Unless said artist is very versatile (say, Frances Ruffelle, who took on dark pop, ballads and gospel-tinged anthems in her solo national final back in 1994), you are restricted to a narrow set of genres. If you don’t like that artist or their style, then you’re shit out of luck. That’s been the case for the last few years with Saara Aalto and now Darude. I didn’t really like ány of either’s songs and miss the days of a diverse choice in UMK. I pick Saara because her throwback was slightly more tolerable.

◯ Georgia– 2018 – Fair play to Georgia, who always dance to the beat of their very own peculiar drummer. You’d think that the shift to the X Factor format to pick their representative, combined with the cold reception for their “ethno-jazz” last year, would have led to them playing it safe to try to avoid three DNQs in a row. Instead they’ve gone for something downbeat, angry and almost oppressive in its ambiance, i.e. something even less accessible to the general viewer than last year. This feels like the rock song equivalent to a war crimes tribunal. I preferred last year’s effort, which was rather more uplifting, and which I felt was unfairly underrated for a genuinely well-composed piece of music steeped in tradition.

◯ Greece – 2019 – A number of people around me were raving for Oneiro mou last year. I wasn’t one of them and suspected it would fail to qualify from the get-go. Instead of “Greece returning to form”, it felt like them attempting to do so but ending up with a nationalistic pastiche instead. This year, they’ve taken their usual mould and smashed it with a hammer, going in a very different direction with a delightfully husky-voiced singer and a musically anthemic piece that manages to compensate, for me, the song’s lyrical shortcomings. I enjoy it a fair bit more.

◯ Hungary – 2018 – This is one of the hardest ones of this semi final to choose, as “Viszlát nyar” and “Az én apam” are chalk and cheese, but both highly qualitative and with meaningful lyrics. Joci’s other ESC song, Origo, beat Viszlát nyar for me, but his 2019 effort doesn’t have quite the same visceral punch to it, so I think I’m going to have to give the edge to AWS this time around.

◯ Iceland – 2019 – Another country giving us night and day, but this time, I like neither of the two choices. Last year certainly put the “cheese” in the old “chalk and cheese” saying, an unbelievably overwrought and soppy Christmas charity-esque tune that somehow ended up at ESC. This year, it’s something rather acerbic, dingy, grating and ultimately gimmicky. In these times, “hate will prevail” is the last message we need. I will take it over Ari any day though, as that was just squirmworthy.

◯ Montenegro  – 2018 – It seemed that, last year, Montenegro was back to doing what it has always done best – a haunting, beautiful Balkan ballad after a few bizarre years of experiments gone wrong. Unfortunately, Inje got slept on despite its quality and couldn’t bring about an end to CG’s DNQ streak. There were many candidates in this year’s Montevizija that could have gone one better and done just that – but instead, bewilderingly, we got this unspeakable jumble which sounds like it was a rejected b-side for a mediocre mid-90s boy band, but with the addition of Random Casio Noises® in the background. Comparing Inje to it is likening fine wine to a bottle of Panda Cola that has been left with the cap off in the sun for 2 weeks.

◯ Poland – 2019 – Last year, Poland sent a middle-aged man in a hat doing a cringey snake dance whilst a young, inexplicably Swedish guy sort of sang and the whole thing sounded like the soundtrack for a Coke advert gone wrong. This year, they’ve got some women swaying like maniacs in a forest where they probably buried their patriarch. Not much of a step up in theory, but a big step up nonetheless…

◯ Portugal– 2019 – Portugal is a country that could have peaked with their first win, or fallen into a niche in a sad attempt (*cough* Cyprus *cough*) to recapture that glory. Instead, they are challenging all the tropes and have a national final with some serious diversity. I loved “O jardim” and it deserved way better, but this year’s song, “Telemóveis”, exceeds even that. It’s a haunting but catchy as hell rumination on mortality, technology and saudade with a musical backdrop whose influences transcend continents. If it’s not in the running to win the whole thing, I will be disappointed.

◯ San Marino – 2018 – I cannot get my head around the enthusiasm for “Say na na na”, which seems to have been contracted not only by postmodern pisstakers but by many folk who genuinely like it. It makes me cringe 10x more than Jenny B’s not quite sick rap skills last year, and that’s saying something. Plus, they had robots.

◯ Serbia – 2019 – They seemed like really nice people, but I found last year’s Serbian entry itself to be a bit of a minestrone into which a dozen elements of other songs were chucked in, and thus was lacking a bit in coherence. “Kruna”, on the other hand, is perfectly-formed, poignant, beautifully orchestrated and one of the best Balkan ballads in the past few years.

◯ Slovenia – 2018 – Fair play to Slovenia for picking themselves up and dusting themselves off after a few rough years. Hvala ne was backed by almost no one to qualify but I had faith in it early on and Lea benefited from being able to make a real connection with the crowds. Sebi is a very different beast entirely. Whilst Hvala ne had a defiance and a frenetic energy, Sebi is contemplative and melancholy. Both have great lyrics, too. I am going with Slovenia at the minute as it’s stood the test of time, but really the better of the two songs is really a question of mood.

And the automatic qualifiers of this semi-final:

◯ France – 2018 – It’s a battle between two songs written by the same writers, and since I loved their 2018 work, their follow-up should have a chance of making this a closely-run thing. Shóúld. Instead, they went from writing an understated song about humanity to writing an overbearingly pompous and self-important song about ego. This is the worst French song to me since 1988.

◯ Israel – 2018 – I wonder if Israel’s broadcasters remember how their predecessor, the IBU, won on home soil in 1979. I have the feeling they might well do, and as a result ensured it wouldn’t happen again with this song. There are elements of the song I really like, but it’s let down for me by a snivelly, exaggerated voice and a rather self-indulgent chorus. I was no great fan of “Toy”, but can listen to it with more pleasure than this.

◯ Spain – 2018 – I remember when “Tu canción" came out and I was completely in love with it. The unfortunate thing about songs sung by starry-eyed young loves is that their relationships often end up star-crossed. Now, Almaia is no more, and the song has a hugely bitter aftertaste. Nonetheless, I prefer it to La venda, which is a rather empty song lyrically but which I still found the best of a bad lot in the Spanish national final.

Coming up in the next instalment, my thoughts on SF2’s songs and how they shape up to those from last year!

[amilliontinywraiths]

I ran into all this traffic on the interstate today as I was driving through las vegas, which I’d never seen, but it was beautiful. I don’t think anybody really sees vegas and thinks, beautiful, but it was so elaborate in this way I couldn’t touch that I could only see it and be blown away. Yesterday I drove through Utah and felt similarly. Everything is massive. I’d never seen the desert and really only thought about it in relation to the films Holes and Wristcutters. I stopped at this gas station, which was literally the first thing in over 100 miles, this 7-11, and I bought cigarettes and had one of those movie moments where you kind of look out at the landscape and think abt ur life, and are like, ‘huh, this is it.’ I felt that again in Vegas. The hundred-foot tall blue men group portraits. The fake louvre (or maybe just another weird pyramid?). the knowledge that zak bagans of ghost adventures was near. My friend Alison from undergraduate lives in vegas, and I was thinking about her as I drove through. It kind of bummed me out that I couldn’t see her, not like I even texted her, but knew w/ covid and her mom being a nurse the chances were slim. We were suitemates our freshmen year of college. I didn’t like being around my actual roommate, so I’d go into her room and lay on the ground. We had so much time and we were in downtown Chicago. Probably our fourth day living there we bought weed in grant park, which is this massive centrally located park in chicago’s downtown with shitty public sculpture and a skatepark and also its where lollapooloza happens. It turns out the weed was laced with pcp and we both had crazy hallucinations. She saw her long distance boyfriend in her bed. I think I saw something much more morbid. So I was thinking about all of this as I drove down the highway. I was listening to this song, a thousand stars burst open on repeat. I don’t like the rest of the album but that one track is moody in a really specific way – I don’t know music terminology but there’s this distant repetitive guitar noise, kind of new wavey, and other sounds that are likely synthesizers or something. Anyways, it makes you feel small just like Utah or vegas. It’s a good background track I think. I actually first heard it in a Gregg araki film I think, which always make me feel like I should be doing something more w/ myself, if more = more chaotic. the doom generation trilogy, when I first saw it in its whole, made my head spin with want. I want to be a cool 90s LA grungey dyke. I want to drive down the pacific coast highway at like 150mph with my stupid friends. Not that that’s what I actually want – even if its pretty damn close – but that film series kind of implants want in you (queer desire, if you will). I first watched those films in this really amazing queer film history class with professor micky <3 mickey was cute as a button, this 5-foot-tall balding old queer. He was absolutely terrible at facilitating discussion. It didn’t help that our classroom was a theatre. There were probably 15 other students. When we came to class we couldn’t see each other’s’ faces, just the backs of heads and necks when turned. He really showed me so many facets of queer history and I’m really grateful for that. Gregg araki, Barbara hammer, Gregg Bordowitz, vaginal davis… The tenderqueers in the class would always take hold of the discussion. The ‘lesbian week’ we watched a bunch of early films, such essentialist of course. Poor micky wanted a conversation about the changing nature of queer communities, what it means to be a dyke, etc. he told this story about going to the michgan womyns music festival, and being on one of the comittees that took it down when they got super anti-trans. The next week we screened bound. I had never seen it. He was really giddy before. I saw him before class and he was practically jumping. Right before the screening he announced a friend was going to say something before the screening. Out walks lilly wachowski. I was now also losing my mind. Its that sayng that all gays know each other and I was seeing it in real time and across generations. Lilly gave this really sweet introduction. she talked about filming it and ‘being’ a man at the time, but always really being a woman and what that meant in relation to creating the movie w/ her twin. She didn’t stay to watch it. She said something like, “I’ve seen it before.” Later I saw micky in lilly’s new cw show, he played a mall cop. I sent a screenshot to my one friend in my class and was so happy to see micky thriving outside of that terrible classroom, doing things! thriving! I was thinking about all of this with the Gregg araki film soundtrack on repeat, and suddenly it was California and the sun was going down.

[blessuswithblogs]

Top Ten Videocons of Twenty Seventeen, More or Less

2017 has, by all accounts, been a fantastic year for Video Games. Unfortunately for me, it has been a not so fantastic year in Having Money. So while in a perfect world my now annual game of the year list would have been a terribly contested and dramatic affair of cutting games I thought were good but just didn't make it, in actuality, I had to scramble and cheat a little to just find 10 games to slot in and talk about. I did at least manage to find them. Mostly.

10. Destiny 2

Destiny is a franchise with a troubled history, which feels weird to say about something that came out in late 2014. Nevertheless, Destiny 2's shooty looty gameplay loop finds its way on to my list. The story is tepid and the characters, with a few exceptions, are scarcely worthy of memory, but the visuals are good and the core mechanics of shooting and using abilities are a solid foundation to build upon in the inevitable flurry of DLC packages and expacs. It's all quite reminiscent of Borderlands, except without the unmistakable caustic ooze of Randy Pitchford's involvement. That in and of itself is praiseworthy.

9. Gravity Rush 2/Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Okay so I maybe didn't actually play this one myself. I usually try to exclude stuff that I watched and enjoyed but in this case I was sitting on the couch with other people playing it so that's basically the same thing as playing it myself right? I think I held the controller for a little bit. Anyway this game is super weird and charming and a little nauseating in parts because you sort of go flying off into the stratosphere randomly? But the aesthetic and Mood the game goes for is very unique and fun, it even has its own cute little made up language I mistook for French at first until I heard some Japanese and Spanish sounding words in there as well. The main characters Kat and Raven are dating I think? They're happy and alive girlfriends. Raven is a little broody I guess but they're definitely not the Sad, Dead Lesbians I have grown to detest. Raven is not Velvet. Just reminding myself. Tropical Freeze is just really good and while it maybe came out like years ago I only got to play it very recently on my friend's Wii U. The music is super good fuck you Jeff Gerstmann I will fucking fight you and your shitty opinions about video games you god damned grumpy old man.

8. The Surge

My Thoughts on the Surge are well documented on this very website. It's flawed and frustrating in a lot of ways, nonsensical in others, and the story never quite commits to its original conceit which is a real shame. All that said, I respect the game for what it was unabashedly trying to do: be Dark Souls but with cyborg powerloaders and robots. Like, you gotta live your bliss, right? Lords of the Fallen was utterly miserable and the improvements that The Surge demonstrates gives me cause for optimism in future games from the developer. Anything that gives me cause for optimism in 2017 has to be worth something. That said, the inevitable The Surge 2 is probably going to be kind of by the numbers and unnecessary but that's just how you make games in the 21st century.

7. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

To begin with, BotW would be much higher on this list if I had not only come into owning it and a Switch yesterday. It is by all counts extremely good, an open world game that's actually pleasant and charming and has meritorious mechanics outside of Todd Howard style "you can go fuck that mountain" nonsense. I mean don't get me wrong you can fuck plenty of mountains in this game. Link is fucking Spider-man in this game, the only surfaces he can't mysteriously latch on to are inside the puzzle shrines so you can't just cheese them. Weapon degradation is maybe a little excessive? I feel sort of like Bayonetta in the first cutscene where she keeps yelling "Guns!" when she runs out of ammo except I'm yelling "shitty wooden sticks!" when the one I'm using breaks into a million tiny pieces. I understand the reasoning behind it, I do. It establishes a certain rhythm to the game of exploring, fighting, stocking up on shitty wooden sticks, and repeating. When you find like, an actual sword or spear it feels like an occasion to celebrate, and the whole thing demands that you use a variety of different weapons and weapon-like objects. I'm not nearly far in enough to give an honest, comprehensive picture of the game. I just really like what I've played so far so I'm just compromising by putting BotW relatively low on the list.

6. Cuphead

It's Cuphead! Everybody knows Cuphead by now. It's gorgeous, the soundtrack is great if somewhat lacking in variety, King Dice is really cool but has extremely unfortunate racial undertones, the game is pretty hard (not that hard?) and Cala Maria is a babe. It's a singular game that is extremely worthwhile and hopefully paves the way for future games in a similar style of aping specific styles and eras of animation. I really want a game that goes hard on the 1950s Looney Tunes aesthetic where you just drop anvils on people forever. Cuphead isn't perfect, as a lot of the game's difficulty and length comes from bad checkpointing. It's a necessary evil, because if the game did not blatantly disrespect your time in a lot of the later fights, the game would be like, two hours long. I'm not a proponent of the "git gud" philosophy but I can't help but feel like I really want to say that to the various bad-at-games journos who got bent out of shape about Cuphead being hard. This is your damn job. You can suck it up for one game, especially when it's really very good and unique like Cuphead. Also my mom came in while I was playing it and thought I was watching a popeye cartoon so that was kind of cute I guess.

5. Civilization 6 (CHEATING AGAIN)

YEAH I KNOW THIS GAME CAME OUT LAST YEAR AND IM A HUGE IDIOT FUCKER but hear me out Civ6 is really fucking good because of the fact that Wonders take up physical space on the map and districting does the same thing. Like just this single mechanical change basically doubles the amount of thought and planning you need to put into playing the game even on low difficulties to optimize your output and production. Like it's a civilization game so there's not really anything too groundbreaking here but I fucking adore this game. Really looking forward to Rise and Fall, which will be early 2018. With the initial release being late 2016 I feel like this is like, an honorary 2017 game. Don't @ me.

4. Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight is another game I wrote about previously on the blog, but unlike The Surge I had basically nothing but good things to say about it. Hollow Knight has gorgeous hand drawn graphics and environments not entirely unlike Cuphead, but obviously goes for a much more reserved mood. Hollow Knight is a rock solid Metroidvania game with strong aesthetic and musical chops to back it up, as well as some Dark Souls-esque flourishes to give the game a bit of bite and a haunting narrative arc. A fantastic indie game and I can't wait to see what Team Cherry does next. I need to get around to doing the Halloween DLC, come to think of it. Did you know Zote actually has as many precepts as he says he does? I listened to them all. Some of them aren't too bad.

3. Nioh

Geralt the Witcher's moonlighting adventure as a samurai came out quite early in 2017, but remains one of the best games of the year due to its complex and rewarding combat system, beautiful Warring Kingdoms era Japanese architecture inspirations, fun mythological monster designs, and genuinely well done historical fiction backdrop. Coming into it, I fully expected "Dark Souls except the bosses are like Tengus and Nues and shit", but that description does the game a pretty big disservice. It's much more than that, both from a narrative standpoint, which is a fantastically tinged retelling of the Warring Kingdoms period, and from a gameplay one. The combat in Nioh is much more technical than in Dark Souls, with more pretensions of a combo based character action game than the deliberate, heavily customizable experience of the Souls games. Nioh is still quite hard and has the whole death-recovery mechanic, but it makes sense diegetically due to Guardian Spirit system and remains distinct. There are times when it tries to have the best of both worlds and just kind of ends up feeling like it doesn't do a good job at either, but for the most part, Nioh is tremendously fun, and at times infuriatingly difficult, especially in some of the post game optional battles that pit you against multiple bosses at once. Also, finding Kodamas is extremely rewarding because they are so damn cute. I love them. Find them at all costs.

2. Nier: Automata

Nier: Automata, Yoko Taro's latest brainchild, is, well, what it is. It's a hauntingly weird story about what it means to be human, and if that definition is really even adequate. It's a game with a lot to say, which is why I regard it so highly. The core gameplay is fun and serviceable, which is much more than I can say for its predecessor, the first Nier, which was memorable and affecting but played kind of like butts. 2B's android adventures are much more fluid and stylish, and you have a surprising amount of customization options available (though some arguably make the game a little too easy at points, like regenerating health) and there's enough variety in the little Machine Life form enemies (and the big ones, too) that fighting never felt like a chore to me. Of course, others have disagreed, but I think that the tedium really only sets in when you play as 9S, who has a much reduced arsenal of fighting moves in favor of his hacking skills. I liked the little shmup minigames that hacking entailed, so even 9S's story never felt too dull in the actual mechanical execution of it. People tend to have a misunderstanding of how the game works, that you need to complete it 4 times to get the whole experience, but that's not actually true. The 4 endings separate the game into acts more than anything. While 9S's story has a lot of overlap with 2B's story, endings C and D are just entirely new content where you play as A2, who has some tricks of her own distinct from 2B and 9S. It's not perfect, but it's not like you have to play the same game 4 times. It's a very story focused game, so much so that I would say experiencing the narrative is the main draw, but it has the decency to also be varied and fun to play. I love the parts where you get in the transforming flying robot and shoot the dudes. Especially the big dude. You know the one.

1. Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood

The latest Final Fantasy XIV expansion, Stormblood, is super good. I wrote a bit about it earlier, and how it has improved upon Heavensward in almost all respects. Stormblood is a superlative MMO expac, with well designed and amazingly presented raids, dungeons, and trials. It's full of "holy shit that's dope" moments, like when you get into a blade struggle against the primal Susano's gigantic Ame-no-Murakumo in an active time event or storm the fortress city of Ala Mhigo. Ultimately, though, what really makes me evaluate Stormblood as my game of the year is how surprisingly thoughtful it is. FFXIV has, since the relaunch of 2.0, been a game that has not shied away from complexity in its narrative conflicts. The juxtaposition of the mythically strong Warrior of Light and the surprisingly mundane issues even she cannot seem to fix has always been the game's most interesting element to me, and as you spearhead revolutions against the Garlean Empire in two different countries, you learn a lot about how imperial colonialism has made things too complicated to be fixed simply driving out the oppressors. You do, eventually, of course, but the story is quick to remind you that this is only the beginning, and a lot of key issues remain unsolved, both in the newly liberated provinces and back at home. Also the Dark Knight questline from 60-70 is basically the best the game has to offer. It feels to me like that Dark Knight is the unofficial Job of Stormblood, despite the promo material and opening movie having you believe it to be about Monks. Monks, as usual, are boring. The themes explored in the Dark Knight questline, about regret, about shades of gray, about self-destruction, all align perfectly with some of the subtler narrative arcs of the main story. It's just really good and I love it. I still really want to write a piece about it on its own. I probably will soon. But for now, I name Stormblood my game of the year, for reminding us that we are still heroes. That we are still good people.

[seangallen24]

Top 10 Albums of 2017

A list of my top 10 favourite albums released this year. I love all ten of these albums, would love to know what you think!

10. Kehlani - Sweet Sexy Savage

Sweet Sexy Savage shows off not only Kehlani’s brilliant vocal talent, but also her ability to fuse R&B with pop melodies. Lyrics remain relatable and conversational whilst Kehlani acts as a strong role-model to her female listeners. The mixture of catchy hits such as ‘Distraction’ and slower, more emotional ballads such as ‘Hold Me By The Heart’ make the album even more enjoyable to listen to. With the help of her longtime producer Jahaan Sweet, Kehlani has made a record which is not only innovative, but sounds like the future of pop music. 

Top Tracks - Undercover, Piece of Mind, Keep On

9. Princess Nokia - 1992 (Deluxe)

I was lucky enough to see Princess Nokia live back in January of 2017, and she blew me away. 1992 is full of recounts of her challenging childhood and rebellious adolescence, all set to innovative and unique beats. Nokia’s vulnerability is evident on the album’s opening track ‘Bart Simpson’. She raps ‘always been a loner, never had a solid home’. On lead single ‘Tomboy’ and track ‘Kitana’ however, her aggression and unapologetic attitude is at the heart of the songs. Princess Nokia is an interesting artist who i’m sure has a lot more to offer in the coming future.

Top Tracks - Tomboy, Brujas, Mine

8. Loyle Carner - Yesterday’s Gone

Peppered with anecdotes and emotional recounts of his past, Loyle Carner wears his heart of his sleeve on his debut album Yesterday’s Gone. Having seen Carner in concert twice this year. first at Parklife festival in June and then at Boomtown in August, it took me until the second half of the year to fall in love with this record. However. after witnessing him live, I began appreciating what an amazing artist and storyteller he is. The record is sprinkled with beautifully tender moments such as an amusing conversation with his mother and recordings by his late, step-father on the closing, title track. The fusion of jazz, funk and hip-hop on this record is what really makes it one of 2017′s best. 

Top Tracks - The Isle of Arran, Ain’t Nothing Changed, NO CD

7. Halsey - Hopeless Fountain Kingdom

I loved Halsey’s debut album ‘Badlands’, so was very excited for the release of her second studio album Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. Lead single ‘Now or Never’ was one of my Top 20 Singles of 2017, and the full album did not disappoint. The production across the whole record is very good; with tracks such as ‘Eyes Closed’ featuring production and lyrics from The Weeknd and album closer ‘Hopeless’ featuring Cashmere Cat. My favourite moments on Hopeless Fountain Kingdom are when Halsey’s concept of a Romeo and Juliet style storyline come into play. Both ‘Sorry’ and ‘Strangers’ are tragic love songs, the latter, an LGBT anthem, featuring Lauren Jauregui of Fifth Harmony. I love the eeriness of tracks such as ‘Angel on Fire’ and how they juxtapose with pop smashes such as ‘Heaven in Hiding’ written with Sia and second single ‘Bad at Love’. Very clever artist who seems to always know exactly what she wants to do. 

Top Tracks - Now or Never, Sorry, Strangers (feat. Lauren Jauregui)

6. London Grammar - Truth is a Beautiful Thing

Ever since their debut album ‘If You Wait’ dropped back in 2013, trio London Grammar have been my favourite band. Their beautifully cinematic, ethereal music is always something I enjoy listening to. I was very happy when they finally released their second album Truth is a Beautiful Thing. Lead single ‘Rooting For You’ has to be one of my all time favourite London Grammar songs, it’s simplicity being really what makes it so brilliant. ‘Hell to The Liars’ is another one of my favourites on the album, and ranks highly on my Top 20 Singles of 2017 list. Although I do love this record, unfortunately, it doesn’t quite match the standard of their first album. Maybe it just takes a few more listens!

You can read my full review of ‘Truth is a Beautiful Thing’ here.

Top Tracks - Hell To The Liars, Rooting For You, Big Picture

5. SZA - Ctrl

Ctrl is one of the most critically acclaimed releases of 2017, and by far one of my favourites also. On first listen there was only a couple of tracks which I liked, however since it’s release in June, I have grown to love this record in it’s entirety. The production on songs such as ‘Supermodel’ and ‘Go Gina’ is interesting and the lyrical content across the whole album is raw and personal. On ‘Doves in the Wind,’ SZA sings about Forrest Gump. She says he deserves the ‘whole box of chocolates’ as he’s the kind of guy who sees women for more than just what they look like. ‘Drew Barrymore’ has to be my favourite song on Ctrl, closely followed by ‘The Weekend’. The perfect album to pop on whatever mood you’re in and keep on repeat! 

Check out Calvin Harris’ remix of ‘The Weeeknd’ here. I’m obsessed.

Top Tracks - Drew Barrymore, The Weekend, Supermodel

4. Mura Masa - Mura Masa

One of my favourite moments of this summer was Parklife festival in June. I was lucky enough to see some amazing artists including Frank Ocean, Stormzy and The 1975; however, Mura Masa stood out to me as one of the best DJ sets i’ve ever seen. His self-titled album came out in July and is a collection of thirteen brilliant tracks. ‘Messy Love’ opens the album with the sounds of a London bus dropping the listener at New Park Road, near Brixton. From there, Masa’s production across the whole project remains consistent with his percussive signature style. The record’s featured artists add something different to each of the songs. Some amazing artists on this record including NAO, Christine and The Queens and A.K. Paul. Love this album, definitely one to check out. 

Top Tracks - Love$ick (feat. A$AP Rocky) , What if I Go? (feat Bonzai) , Firefly (feat. NAO)

3. Kesha - Rainbow

One of the biggest comebacks of 2017 was this lady. Kesha’s return to music has been brilliant, with her latest album Rainbow being full of catchy hits. Lead single ‘Praying’ was a brilliantly emotional and powerful way to start this new era of Kesha’s career. ‘Woman’, is one of my top favourite singles of the year, and songs like ‘Hunt You Down’ and ‘Boots’ are also fab. Kesha jumps through genres on Rainbow, successfully moving forward from the days of ‘Tik Tok’ but keeping hold of her status as one of pops most interesting. Never thought i’d love a Kesha album as much as I love this one. Amazing! 

Top Tracks - Woman, Hunt You Down, Praying

2. Lana Del Rey - Lust For Life

Lana Del Rey has always been a fav of mine, and this year she returned with her fifth studio album ‘Lust For Life’. As always, Lana delivered a beautiful album, however this time used her lyrics to spread a more political and social message. The Lana Del Rey we know and love is still there on Lust For Life; tracks like ‘Cherry’ and ‘White Mustang’ showcase that she isn’t done singing about her overly complex love life. However, with track titles like ‘God Bless America - And All The Beautiful Women In It’ and ‘When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing’, Lana delivers a topical album which is exactly what she says it is; her ‘modern manifesto’. Brilliant from start to finish.

Read my full review of ‘Lust for Life’ here.

Top Tracks - 13 Beaches, White Mustang, Heroin

1. Lorde - Melodrama

My number one favourite album of the year has to go to Lorde. Lorde is another artist who i’ve always been a fan of, however when her second album ‘Melodrama’ came out back in the summer, I really fell in love with it. From the beautifully innocent ‘Liability’ to the anthemic ‘Perfect Places’, Melodrama acts as a soundtrack to both Lorde’s youth and the lives of her listeners. Every second on this somewhat concise album feels poignant. My favourite moments on this record include the edgy, industrial production of tracks like ‘Hard Feelings/Loveless’. The very romanticised, melodramatic lyrics of ‘Homemade Dynamite’: ‘Might get your friend to drive, but he can hardly see. We'll end up painted on the road, red and chrome, all the broken glass sparkling. I guess we're partying’. The strings used in the title track, and finally the honestly and vulnerability of the lyrics in ‘Liability’. I adore this album and had to name it my number one favourite of the year. Always excited to see what Lorde does next, really hoping she bags that Grammy for AOTY.

Top Tracks - Liability, Sober II (Melodrama), Sober

You can check out my Top 20 Singles of 2017 here.

[crushingonrazz]

Music

Keep me buzzed af

Idk I just turned my music up really loud and tried to get into Sans's head. It's not really a story like the others. The other one I wrote during this, the strangest writing session of my life, is a far cry more disturbing and will probably not see the light of day for a little while.

Sans adored music. He loves to turn off all the lights in his house, put on some noise-cancelling headphones, and turn it all the way up. It cancels out the whole world, and leaves him feeling like he's the only thing in the universe. There are some songs that just get down to his roots. They come in his ears and go all the way in through his bones and give him shivers up and down his spine. It leaves him wanting more, for the song to never end, for that crackling in his ears from his headphones starting to fail to go away forever and never come back, but it's probably okay because he's got three more pairs upstairs. He loves singing, no screaming along to the lyrics in the otherwise quiet darkness. No one can hear him. He can't even hear himself through the sounds he's copying in the first place. There just something very relaxing about leaving the world behind completely, and letting himself drift off like this. Other songs make him want to get up and move, to jump up and down and spin and kick his feet. But sitting here in the darkness and the pressing emptiness as he is, he can't seem to make himself get up and actually do it. So instead, he imagines it. He imagines exactly how he would step forward once, twice, then rock his hips to one side as he throws his hands in the air. Maybe his fingers even give a little twitch, as though they're imagining the movement, too. Then there is the song, that one damn song, that as soon as it comes on, he feels like he's never coming up for air again. It has a memory attached to it, or some sort of special meaning he's never noticed before. This song is different than it was when he did this last week and now, oh, now he never wants it to end. Maybe he even makes the leap and takes his phone out of his pocket, taking a moment to break the darkness by turning on the bright screen and putting the song on repeat. Then he turns his phone off again and, blindly, puts it away, and just lets himself melt into whatever the song brought him back to. Music truly is a manifestation of the soul. And Sans's soul is so incredibly full of this music that he sometimes doesn't know what to do with it. He'll be walking down the street and hear the song he listened to alone yesterday and find himself moving towards it almost subconsciously, like an old friend or an ex-lover. Papyrus notices sometimes, when they're out and about. He'll notice and he'll comment about Sans's head nodding along to some beat or another. Sans smiles, of course, and offers some bland explanation about it having a good tune. But Papyrus doesn't know. He could never truly understand. No one really can, because those moments when he's alone with the music are just so intensely his that no one could ever possibly understand except him. And isn't that the real joke? Not even he can understand. Who would? Who sits on the floor alone and listening to music? Who lets it take over to the point where they don't quite understand where it came from in the first place? Is he alright? Maybe not. Almost definitely not. But sometimes...Sitting on the floor, just with himself and his headphones and whatever shitty soundtrack he has picked out for the day, things start to make sense. Things start to come together, in a way that they never seem to otherwise. It's not exactly...Peaceful. Not really. Sans's mind is so crowded that it's never peaceful. But it gives an order to things. It takes the messy piles and sorts them halfway, into something he can almost navigate. Almost.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Seven things finishing my seventh book taught me

Hey People of Earth!

This is kind of nuts to say, and I legitimately did not think I’d be writing this for another month, but uh.

I finished my seventh book.

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So I kind of made a stupid, somewhat fleeting goal this past Friday, as I usually do. And that was to finish this book at all costs.

I didn’t really think I was going to do it. I had a massive school project to finish, and you know, I didn’t really factor finishing my seventh book to be a thing that I’d actually. I just made a pretty far-fetched goal, and thought it’d be interesting to see how far I got with it by Sunday night.

And I did it... I really did it, and it’s kind of insane to think that I actually did it.

I don’t know who follows my writing updates on here, but if you have been, you’d know that this has been the hardest book I have ever written in my entire life. No joke. So far, FOSTERED #4 has been so difficult for me to write, for a lot of reasons. First off: new content. I was writing about something so greatly out of my comfort zone, and this was a little harder to do than anticipated. The story really changed from its usual action-adventure type of arc, and morphed into something super dark and elaborate.

I brought out parts of my cast that I didn’t even know existed. The book really didn’t branch off from my main cast (around four characters), so it was vital to flesh them out in ways I hadn’t in the previous three books. Overall, the book only followed six people in total that really made a huge impact on the storyline. (Small casts for some reason are a thing I do. I don’ t know why I do that thing, but it continues to be a consistently recurring thing I do.)

Yeah, I’ll be honest--this book was emotionally draining on me. On top of my insane semester, it was so hard for me to push through this book as quickly as I usually do. To this day, this novel’s taken me the longest to write, ever. I started it in July, and finished it yesterday, on the 22nd of January. That’s six and a half months. Almost 200 entire days. That’s double my average drafting time. And it’s not like it was a behemoth of a book like book three was (with DOUBLE the word count, written for an overall period of five months). It’s final WC clocks in at a little over 114k words.

For me (and of course, this is just my pace, you may work differently), this was a major indication that this book was giving me a hard time. And not because of lack of plot-direction, but because I was having a hard time believing in the novel itself. I’d hate every chapter I’d write, but keep writing anyway, and that’s the thing with this book. I almost had to force myself to get it out there because I hardly believed in it as a whole.

This isn’t just because of the plot (which is hardly the reason), but has more to do with my writing. I had some major self-doubt when writing this book because it seemed as though I’d completely bombed in the writing department, and reversed the years of practice I’ve had. I felt like book four was a load of actual shit when writing the entire book from start to finish. And looking back on it, that’s kind of sad. Because the writing is some of the best I’ve produced--and while it’s not perfect by any means, these last couple weeks have really showed me that it’s really not nearly as terrible as I thought it was.

So yes. Ramble over. I just wanted to be completely honest with you guys, because writing this book was not a good experience for me, enjoyment-wise. Finishing it is another story. When I wrote that final sentence yesterday, I felt like I’d done something. I usually don’t feel much besides some nostalgia after finishing my books, but when I finished this one... It was like, I knew I poured my soul into every word written, and I was so incredibly proud of myself for doing so.

To end on a lighter note, here I am to list seven things writing this book taught me.

1. Writing a book is really, really, really, really hard.

So, I personally never had an issue with writing my other six books, honestly. It was like continuous waves of euphoria when writing--some minor struggles, here and there, and one major bump in the road, but beyond that, writing was easy.

AND THEN BOOK FOUR CAME.

I’ve outlined my struggles with writing this book above, but yeah, I kind of realized while writing this book that every book requires different things, and some are hella harder to write than others.

2. Sometimes, writing seems like my greatest strength, and my worst enemy.

What I mean by this is... Writing is something I love with all of my heart, and more than anything--it’s my passion. But while I love it, that admiration and care I have for writing is what makes me feel the most insecure. Because I love it so much, it’s become something I fear. And this is totally something I’m working on. I fear that my writing’s only getting worse. That my storytelling’s getting worse. That my creativity is dwindling. In reality, none of these things are true. I’ve loved words my entire life, and that’s never going to change. But it’s when doubt mingles with love that things get rough for me. This sucks, but I know it’s something that’ll continue to follow me--and any other creative--for the rest of my life.

3. I need to get off my back sometimes.

With this book, it was hard to look back at something and say I genuinely liked it. Because most of the time, I was so wound up in sadness when it came to the story and where it was going. I kind of forgot why I loved the book and its characters in the first place. I think this is bound to happen eventually to every writer--there’s always going to be that one book that was really hard to write. This book was mine. But I think this is important. It helped me grow. Helped me see the potential in something I really just wanted to finish and never have to deal with again.

4. Writing updates are great.

Yeah, definitely. This was probably the only thing I looked forward to doing when it came to writing this book, lol. I loved sharing my journey with you, and with this book. Writing updates have always been one of my favourite things to do, but with this book... I think they genuinely helped keep me on track when I felt like quitting.

So thank you. To you guys for reading them, and for supporting this blog. :)

5. Music and books might just save your dying project.

So. I figured out the a soundtrack album to this book when I was in NYC listening to Daughter’s Not To Disappear for the first time. That trip kicked off most of my major ideas for this novel, and so did the album. If you’re in a similar position to me right now--hating the project you’re working on--look out for music, and any other sort of creative inspiration.

On the days I was practically forcing myself to write, listening to this album saved me from just quitting. (I seriously hate quitting things guys, this isn’t something I’d even consider usually.) And towards the end of the book, it’s what pumped me up.

To name a few favourites from Daughter (which is all I listen to write this series, even when I wasn’t a huge fan writing book one) that carried me through to the end:

- Numbers, (Not To Disappear)

THIS SONG IS SO FIRE. If you’re into Daughter, and or any sort of indie music, you have to listen to this song. I listened to this on repeat while writing chapter 28 on Friday night.

- Made of Stone (Not To Disappear)

MORE FIRE. This was the first song I really saw as my MC’s theme song, (though Numbers beat it by a hair), and I loooove it. The final line, you’ll find love kid, it exists is lovely.

- Smother (If You Leave)

I’ve been listening to this song since writing book two in 2015, and it’s stuck with me. Gahhhhhhhhh. I’ve been loving their live performance of it live at Tate Britain (because the vocals, Igor’s playing, and the actual video are art). Watch it HERE.

- Doing The Right Things (Not To Disappear)

Also wrote chapter 28 to this gem. It’s so haunting and beautiful...

- Drift

I believe Drift is the b-side to Human (If You Leave), but I could be wrong. Regardless, this song is SO great. If you’re writing any sort of action, or emotional scene, listen to this song. There aren’t any vocals, so it’s awesome to listen to if you get distracted easily! Could not stop listening to this song when writing chapter 28. I repeated it maybe 10 times.

6. I have a writing style?

Yeah... So, I personally haven’t really seen this with my own eyes, but my sister, who reads alllllll of my work noted this, which made me really happy. I mean, a writing style hasn’t been something I’ve been working on, but I guess I see where she’s coming from, which was super, super cool! I think my actual style for this story has remained fairly consistent within the series, and branches out to a more casual style in my contemporaries, but yeah, this was something I actually found myself liking!

7. I love this book, and all of the things it taught me.

Not only did writing this book open me up to issues in today’s society (mental illness, sexual abuse, women’s rights), it helped me understand them in ways I hadn’t expected it would. Also, this book helped me a lot, in ways I didn’t expect. I was able to express grief through the novel (grief for the world, my own struggles, etc), and learn to cope.

I’ve been having probably the worst couple months of my life, and this book is something that kept me grounded. Regardless of the hard times I had writing it, it helped me, even in an incredibly minute way.

And I know... it’s odd to say I love this book when all I’ve expressed is how hard it was to write, but in reality--I really do love it. It’s taken six months to finally realize it, but I am so proud of that book, and myself, and how far I’ve taken my looooooong series thus far. This series has been a solid 500 000 words of my life, and I have zero regrets in contributing to that final number with over 100k words that came from the heart. It might sound stupid to say that I wrote this book and I hated writing most of it, but I regret nothing. But this is honestly the truth. Looking back on it, I will never regret writing this book and deciding to continue my series that was supposed to just be three books. I’m thankful I did, because I learned a lot of things I wouldn’t have if I didn’t write it.

So thanks, FOSTERED #4. For being the hardest thing I’ve written. Because if you weren’t I would not have grown and worked muscles of my brain I didn’t even know existed. And also, for still not having a name, even though it’s been six months, but that’s for another time. ;)

I hope you guys enjoyed this post. I know it’s a little... more emotional than my usual posts, but man, writing this book was emotional as helllll. I’m happy it’s over, but I’m sad it’s gone. I’ll miss this book, but I take away all I learned, and I won’t forget that.

As always, thanks for reading. :)

--Rachel