#it would typically be a mismatch but their music matches it perfectly

[eriong]

𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒕𝒏𝒆𝒚 𝒍𝒂𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆 // 𝒔𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒃𝒐𝒙

[ballistabeats]

Here Is The Post Where I Have Really Specific Opinions About Bang Dream Covers

ok but i'm just saying they gave the YOASOBI covers to the wrong bands

to date, Bang Dream has covered 3 YOASOBI songs: "ano yume wo nazotte", "kaibutsu", and, of course, "yoru ni kakeru". the first two went to Poppin'Party, while "yoru ni kakeru" went to Pastel*Palettes. here is the post where i explain why bushiroad is wrong

"yoru ni kakeru" is a melancholy song with a distinctly dark bent (the story it's based on, "an invitation from thanatos", is more explicitly a tale about the positive embrace of suicide in a way that i found surprisingly uplifting). despite Aya (Ami Maeshima)'s voice being a good match for Ikura's, she adds a little too much sweetness to what should be a bittersweet song at most. while the arrangement is very typically Pastel*Palettes, it isn't a particularly interesting arrangement, and the keys are relegated to more of an ensemble role instead of the driving force behind the music. the pasupare arrangement, with its bouncy bell synth subbing in for the piano, effectively strips it of the melancholy air that makes it so compelling a song. (i think pasupare covers have a history of not always having the best or most interesting arrangements; i feel strongly this way about their "lum no love song" cover as well. seriously what is with that intro) also, i KNOW Ami Maeshima can put a lot more power into her voice, but i feel like her vocals on this track are a little weak compared to, say, "sobakasu".

"ano yume wo nazotte" is one of the two Poppin'Party covers (and notably, importantly, my favorite song off YOASOBI's first album), although it differs in that it features hololive's Tokino Sora as well. honestly... it's Fine. i don't dislike it, exactly. vocals-wise (like many popipa songs) it would've benefited massively from Aimi being allowed to step outside her Kasumi voice a little to use more of her vocal range, and Sora's voice sounds a little too similar to Kasumi for them to really pop as a duet (although they do sound really cute together). the arrangement is solid �� Elements Garden usually does a great job arranging keys-heavy songs for popipa that incorporate the guitars without taking away too much from the keyboard. it's a fine cover. it's nice.

"kaibutsu" is the other Poppin'Party cover and listen. once again, it's fine. once again, it would've been better if Aimi could've flexed her voice a little more. i think the best part of this cover is really the arrangement — unlike the pasupare cover of "yoru ni kakeru", this manages to preserve the original mood of the song in Poppin'Party's own musical dialect. but it ultimately really suffers for the vocals, which lack the force behind them to keep the song really compelling. which is a shame because we all know Aimi is capable of SO much vocally. oftentimes her Kasumi voice is wonderful, perfectly suited to the music, but in this case, it feels like a mismatch.

Now If I Were In Charge, Here's Who Would Get To Cover These Songs:

"yoru ni kakeru" - Roselia ft. Mashiro. while i've talked in the past about how Mashiro (Amane Shindou)'s vocals can come off kind of weak, especially in Morfonica's early releases, she would be perfect for this song, actually? Morfonica already trends toward the melodramatic, and Amane Shindou's voice has a softness to it that cuts down on the sweetness. the only trouble is that Morfonica is, notably, the only band without any kind of keyboard or keyboard-sound-producing setup, and "yoru ni kakeru" is a very keyboard-fronted track. i think the keyboard melodies would translate beautifully to violin, but i also don't think a solo violin could carry the musical weight that the keys do for the whole song. what's another band with a bit more of a dark tone that is also notable for its use of keyboard? it's Roselia's time to shine, babey!! while i think Amane Shindou could carry this track on her own vocally, Yukina (Aina Aiba) would ALSO sound incredible singing this whole song. i think the two of them would sound even better together! there's a concern that Aina Aiba's incredibly Powerful voice might drown out Amane Shindou, but i actually think that together they'd really be able to bring out the best in each other's voices. also, i just think this song would be really neat as a duet! and a Roselia arrangement? darken up those guitars a little, mix in some of their hallmark synths with the piano, yes??? reblog to agree that i'm correct

"ano yume wo nazotte" is the cover that should have gone to Pastel*Palettes. wistful without being sad, sweetly nostalgic... i think Ami Maeshima would have no problem knocking this one out of the park. i have zero difficulty imagining the refrain in her voice. it would sound great! and there's always the hope of a more interesting arrangement. this song, at least, would benefit more from the idol pop treatment than "yoru ni kakeru" imo.

"kaibutsu" RAISE A SUILEN RAISE A SUILEN HOW DID THIS NOT GO TO RAISE A SUILEN. i think bushiroad owes me emotional damages from not getting to hear LAYER (Raychell) belt out this song. this feels like such a massive missed cover opportunity i'm still not over it. just devastated tbh. the synths-into-piano and dissonant vocal harmonies are RIGHT up RAS's alley. they could have gone really synth-heavy on the whole and it would have sounded really cool.

this does leave popipa out of the mix, which is obviously not allowed, especially since their artist tie-up was Ayase, and if i had to pick one of the three for them it'd be "ano yume wo nazotte". however i submit an alternative: Poppin'Party cover of "haruka". the mood is perfect for them, and Aimi has already done a wonderful cover herself. that said, although her lower vocal range is criminally underused in Bang Dream, i think this song would come out perfectly fun in her Kasumi voice.

anyway in summary im going to need bushiroad to consult with me when they decide who should get to cover "suki da" (the only correct answer is pasupare)

[catcorsair]

19 😬

SO I tried to write a ficlet but this is 2500 words? Unedited, so bear with me. I’ll likely pop this up on ffn tomorrow or some other time idk don’t rush me

For @tasteofthebitchpudding – I didn’t even write smut! :O 

19. Things you said when we were the happiest we ever were, or:

Reflection

Tonight she didn’t look to the painted ceiling as she so often would when the Angel spoke to her. Looking up, as if she could have found me there among the dusty, gas-lit candelabras and carelessly carved plaster rosettes. Looking up, as if in truth I weren’t so deep below. My sweet girl, my ingenue Christine, devoutly kneeling, her face upturned, and palms like molded porcelain clasped beneath her chin. She often twisted the beads of her rosary between her restless fingers even as we sang––as a supposed man of God, I did not know how to tell her to put the damnable thing down.

Tonight the beads lay forgotten upon the shining mahogany of her dressing-table. In the tremulous silence following her bold declaration, Christine clutched her white knuckles together and listened for her Angel’s reply. 

Behind that cursed mirror, I was certain she could not have said what my treasonous ears suggested. Now the distant Angel regarded her in holy quietude, or so it must have seemed to her. The monster’s own depraved, mortal heart could not be so easily stilled.

“I love you,” my girl repeated, all humble timidity, to her voluptuous, silken lap.

Those forbidden, enchanted words, pouring out from between her parted lips, exalted lips bitten red like sweet berry-wine. For me. 

“As you must love the holy messenger of the lord, my faithful child,” I said––perhaps with greater asperity than intended after far too extended a pause––careful to cast the Angel’s voice to floating about the hanging gas lamp above her bowed head. Away from the mirror. Not behind the mirror. 

I am not here, good, charming girl, the Devil behind your dressing-room mirror. I am an Angel, look up. Look up.

On her little vanity-stool Christine sniffed an exhale out that fine upturned nose and buried her unquiet fingers in the warm, mounding silk of her lap, and with her watery gaze, studied their writhing paleness upon the fabric as if she held no control over their movements.

Her painted-ivory cheeks flooded with prurient, brilliant color. Hot to the touch, certainly. My indulgent fingertips found the shadowed glass of the mirror’s reverse to trace the pleasing curve of her bent-forward spine. Realizing what foolishness they enacted, I snatched the detestable things away.

And yet, the corpse was quickening.

Again my tender sweetling spoke to her dancing fingers.  “For so long, Angel…it has been difficult for me, you know. Without Papa.“ 

“Yes, my dear,” I said gravely, well-pleased with my audible, if not actual, collectedness.

Her twilit gaze shot toward the mirror and again to her lap. I spread my fingers before me in a violently terse gesture of silent frustration.

Not behind the mirror! Never behind the mirror. The lamp, the ceiling!

“It’s just, everything was so…dark, really, if you can even understand…as if all the lights in the world had simply gone out and for all my searching I still could not find a match…” continued the beautiful child, her delicate chin lowered humbly, her voice tremulous, puerile, perfect, “until you.”

Normally I stand as we sing. More conducive to proper airflow. Better control of the voice. Less destructive on the knees, on my zibeline trouser-fronts that surely would object to any collision with the black filth that coated the floors, walls, of this cavernous passageway. This demon’s path to Hell. 

Now on achingly senseless knees I pressed my bare palms flat upon the dust-warped vision of her, my delicious girl, all fluttering tension as she perched atop that little stool. She chewed her ripe lip. Waiting, again, for her Angel to speak.

And tell her he loves her in return.

I cooled my wasted forehead upon her shadowed afterimage, her untouchable apple of a silhouette; I closed my mismatched eyes.

“My child, that is enough––” I spoke, as tenderly as was possible and unfortunately, not at all with the Angel’s typical composure. My hot breath steamed upon the icy mirror-surface, heating and wetting my mucid flesh in the dank cavern. 

I heard my sweet girl’s breathless protestations and strangled an ungentlemanly groan upon the glass. My repulsive fingers clawed absently at the bones of my thighs.

“Angel––” she tried. 

I interrupted her. “Your lesson––dear––let us continue."  Thowing my voice. Careful, careful. Anywhere but the mirror, abhorrent fool. A disease of a thing.

"No, please, Angel––hear me.” It wasn’t like my girl to challenge me. Bold, too much so, and yet, how charming to find her so brazen! A vixen indeed, my luscious little Christine.

A breath shuddered from my mockery of lips upon this terror of a face as I resisted the all-too-familiar desire to smash its repugnance upon the back of the mirror. 

“Please…” in earnest she continued, her treasured voice like a curse in my ears as I dug my thumbnails, hard, into my temples. “It was you, Angel, who brought back the light…" 

During this, she had stood––with my eyes still shut tight before the mercury-glass I did not catch her rise. At her sudden proximity to the mirror, my agitated nerves propelled me backwards within the stone cavern; I skittered on hands and knees like the fiendish thing that I am to crouch excitedly, breathlessly, against the wall opposite, my ruined trouser-legs perfectly disgusting. 

Hiding like a criminal in the shadows of a room already hidden. A room the girl could never find. 

With her plump, gentle arms fanned out low by her sides, Christine opened her palms––to me, surely, and yet not to me at all––as I watched her from my shameful prison.

"I need you to know how I love you,” she said to me, her eyes devotedly downcast upon her lovely little feet. Her supplicant palms trembled between us. White wrists. White ankles. White to my soiled, soiled, soiled––

“And I am grateful for your regard, my child, for it is a pure and good thing,” I said, finally, cursing my dryly stammering tongue. “What you speak of is divine, and is only your devoted love for your God,” My shoulder ached, half-crushed upon the unforgiving stone; I hated myself for a thousand loathsome things I could not name. Could not think, do. 

“But it is not!” the passionate thing exclaimed, in sudden arousal. Her fervid gaze captured her reflection in the giant mirror. With a fluster of skirts she took a hurriedly impetuous step, two, toward the glass, then flung herself, breathless, at the base of the frame to press her cheek upon its surface. 

Like a spider––ah, not so very far from accuracy––I very nearly climbed the wall behind me. 

Her lush, red mouth dragged the glass as she continued, “it is you, you, that I love––not as I love God, for I love him too, and not as I love his holy chorus, but you––you––you––oh––,” she groaned earthily against the mirror, my gentle pet overcome. Seductive lips wetting the surface. Pink tongue tickling the glass. Rousing. Gorgeous. Forbidden.

“Angel, Angel––is it blasphemous to say the words? will you hate me for it?––for surely, you are not God, you are yourself––you laugh and think and speak, and I know you well, the person you are, the man––and it is for all of this, that I so entirely and devotedly love you!”

“Christine, please––” I breathed, begging the mordant air. I clawed at the stinking stones with my yellow fingers. Repulsive fingers. Unclean. “You are tired, exhausted––I’ve kept you too long––”

“There is nowhere I would rather be,” she told me, like a secret, and stroked the glass aside her steaming flesh with a sensuous finger. High upon the mirror plane, about her cascades of sticking curls. High, about her halo, and lower, lower, low––

“Dear girl––what you imply is blasphemous, I beg you not repeat it––” I stammered, almost reasonably, though I fell upon my foul palms and knees as zealous as a spring. A beast, ready.

“Do not be offended, my love, my Angel! Do not be angry––” she spoke as if her voice could reach me where her pink-tipped fingers could not. She caressed me with her words, delicious words that whispered and writhed and fogged upon the glass––I felt them, trembling, shivering, burning there behind the mirror. I saw the goose flesh rise upon her flesh as it did mine. 

 "I love you as a woman loves a man,“ my good, pure girl purred. "Not as an Angel, and I want you, need you, to love me too––as a man loves a woman––”

“I cannot love you in the way which you speak, child,” I began haltingly, though hot, shamed tears warmed the horror of my cheeks. “You mustn’t equate me to a man when I am not one.”

“But you do love me!” and then my girl added, with unbearable sweetness, “I love you for whomever, whatever you are!”

“Please. Please! Do not say such things, Christine.” In long, tortuous arcs I ground the vulgar stain of my face into the dirt beneath my prostrate form. “You know not what you say!” The black dust devoured my speech and still I whimpered out the words like a wounded animal, debased creature that I was.

“Please, my dear, dear girl,” I begged her, choking and sputtering in the bruising dust. “Nothing may come of it. I am your Angel of Music, and that is all I can ever be!”

“Then let it be so, and I will love you for it!” proclaimed my good, virtuous Christine, from there beyond my prison gate. 

“I cannot be that if you must say such things to me!” I sobbed, screaming the words in foul seclusion.

She stared at her reflection as if she thought she might find me in it, but for all my carelessness my vile secret was safe. The lever, the hinge. No escape. My clever girl would not find it without the Minotaur’s aid.

“Angel, please!” Her little fist pounded upon the mirror-glass, set me to twitching about in the dark. Beating upon the unforgiving surface and whimpering her sweet ragged sounds. “Come in! Come in!” she moaned, and pressed her steaming forehead to the glass. 

“I swear to be yours forever if you will only love me...” my girl promised, surrendering.

Without thought to how, or when, or even why, I had begun to crawl pathetically upon the blackened stones, dragging my senseless corpse toward her atop the corrupted mire beneath. Water pooled in the corners of my lips and I sputtered revoltingly as I spoke to her, plead with her, with the earnest helplessness of the utterly, entirely mad––

“Christine, Christine,” I sobbed, the Angelic guise abandoned as I slid like the serpent in the mud, “if I were a man, Christine, I tell you, I would love you as one!”

“Angel...” cried my girl as fog steamed from her open, sweating palms, a burning crown about either side of her perfect forehead. I drew myself, slithering, to the ground beneath her and crawled up the mirrors hidden face, to place my sickening palm upon her through the glass.

“If I were a man, Christine, I would love you as no man could hope to dream of loving a woman,” I said to her then, my familiar voice insane with passion, my own putridity a stain upon the mirror-glass. “With all the glory of Heaven above,” I swore, “I would love you, Christine Daaé, so much that you would never want the love of any other man but me again, so much that no other man, living or dead, could hope to satisfy your desire for it––”

Her fingers traced aimless patterns upon the glass. I kissed their shadows, drew my lips, my tongue atop them until the the surface shimmered with my own spit like a hot ocean rippling overtop her.

She felt the warm ghost of me upon the cold surface––upon her––I know she did, for she gasped and touched her fingertips delicately to her red lips, then returned her hands to the mirror-glass to gaze upon them in awe. I covered her palms with my own. Again she gasped, a little tortuous sigh of irresistible pleasure. She was on her knees––how red, how aching they must be––her tender, lovely body pressed close against the mirror. She drew her cheek along its surface, listening, hearing me, sensing my unseen shape so impossibly close––

“If I were a man, my Christine,” I promised her, my forked tongue silken through the glass, “I would love you until you could imagine nothing else save me and my love for you, so your entire world was only me, me, loving you––” 

Upon my knees I pressed my sweating shape to hers, crushing my abhorrence upon her, as moaning sweetly she writhed against the warmth of me. “Sweet, sweet Christine, my lovely, luscious girl-love, I would remind you every minute, every second, until you hated the sound of my voice, until you dreaded the words, I love you, I love you, I love you––”

“Never,” she breathed, pressed to me like a lover, “never, never––”

“Yes––” I said, into the shadow of her ear, “if I were a man, that is how much I would love you––”

The words growled from my throat, words like a disease, words as ruinous as the foul mouth that spoke them. Words that could tear everything down, take everything away, and still were worth the risk just to speak and hear the responses spoken––

Again my sensuous sweetling groaned, as I covered her hands in my own, as I moved against the base heat of her upon the mirror, the vulgar animal at the stinking core of us––

“I would have you, Christine,” the maw of my lips promised hers, “if I could be right there beside you now, I would have you, do you hear me? As only a man can have a woman, I would have you now. As only a man who loves you can––”

Now her eyelids fluttered against the glass, as her open mouth pressed sidelong into the reflective surface. With one palm still captured by the heat of mine my disgusting, delicious girl stroked at herself madly, mindlessly atop her clothes, hot fingers following the hidden curves of her, digging and squeezing at the softness beneath the shifting fabric as she moaned into her own caresses. Hip. Waist. Breast––she rocked upon her touches, sticking, trembling flesh pressed hard upon the mirror. I was that hand, I, those fingers, tracing and discovering her beyond the blind solitude of my rank prison, the damning curse of this repugnant mask. It was me, me, learning her, pleasing her, loving her––

“Have me––” In paroxysmic abandon she growled the words, rising deep from within her throat like the most sensual secret, as she squirmed in sublime mockery of a human union upon the glass. Upon me, on me, she cried out, “Angel!”

“Call me Erik, and tell me again how you love me!” I begged her, emboldened by desperate, esurient mania. My quixotic heart betrayed me––like a fool I was finally overcome by love, the self-preservation of sense had thoroughly abandoned me––and with it, wrath, madness, fear, hatred––my usual companions, my four horsemen––I basked in the light of love, acceptance, hope, something, something, something I could not name, but, oh, oh, how something overwhelmed me––

Bliss! Bliss!

And still my fair, fallen love spoke the words, her sublime and honest words upon the ruin of me! My name, my name! She said my name! 

“Erik, then, oh, holy Erik!” The sweet girl said it, again and again! “It is the Angel Erik that I love, Erik, my love, and I will love you always, Erik, Erik, if you will let me!”

“Press your lips to the mirror-glass,” I demanded, my voice heavy with ardent declaration, “and know it is I who kisses you, I, your devoted Erik, who loves you more than any man has ever loved a woman, and I, Erik, who will love you still, even after you are long dead!”

All things are fleeting, but this was a sensation I had never known and I would cling to it until its inevitable destruction. Because sweet Christine pressed her lips to the steaming surface of the mercury-glass, and mine I touched to hers. And when finally she drew away my girl brushed her pink fingertips over the succulence of her parted lips and met her own wide eyes, reflected––and so she met my eyes with them––and never, never have I seen such deliciousness, such loveliness, such pure, sweet goodness reflected back at me. 

My perfect reflection. My girl, Christine.