#not just ANY lyrics. specifically from a song i have obsessed over for over a decade

[risingsunresistance]

im so mad that i'll probably never have an answer as to whether or not the crimson essence description is actually a reference to the first line of poppyfields or if that is just the most insane coincidence of my life

[arlh0e]

Move me, Baby

Rating: Mature, 18+, MDNI (Please, I really really don't want to have to block you, I write fluff too, go look at that.)

Pairing: Andrew Hozier X fem!Reader (not proofread)

Warnings: No use of Y/n because I personally find it unbearable to read, soft dom Andrew, thigh riding, body worship, nipple play (Female receiving) begging if you squint, scent kink also if you squint, Andrew being the sweetest little sweetie pie, heavy on the praise kink, heavy on the teasing, encouragement,I tried really hard to write a plotless smut but it turned into passionate love making, Your honor they’re in love!

Summary:It’s a lazy afternoon, and you’re watching Andrew write music, one of your favorite activities. Usually you let him do his thing, not wanting to disturb him, and today is just like any other, until you happen to hear some of the lyrics he’s written, coming to the realization of what he’s thinking while he’s writing about you (set during the writing process of Wasteland, Baby!, specifically the writing of Movement because I am utterly obsessed with that song, and I have been ITCHING to put this idea into words for WEEKS. I apologize for nothing.)

Word count: 2.5k ish, give or take maybe 100 words

You couldn’t help but stare at him as he sat there, guitar in his lap, plucking away at the strings and quietly whispering a few words that came to mind. He writes down the words that stick in a notebook, which he has used beyond the point of disrepair.

There were pages that were practically falling out, filled with songs and poems, some of which were about you, that much you knew, though he had yet to play any of them for you, claiming it “Ruined the surprise” Of getting to show you the new album once it was finished.

His words were barely able to be heard between his low tone and the distance between the two of you. You could tell tough, that whatever he was writing was going well, he had only been working for a few hours, but he had already come up with over half a page of lyrics. Rarely did you see him work this fast, so whatever it was was either something important to him that he felt needed to be said, or it was something that he felt deeply in the moment.

His voice grows slightly louder as he runs back a few lines to go over what he had written, just barely loud enough that I can make out the words.

“When you move

I can recall somethin’ that’s gone from me

When you move

Honey, I’m put in awe of something so flawed and free”

I smile a bit at the words. He’s the kind of person who could so effortlessly put his thoughts into something so poetic and beautiful. You had been listening to his music for years, long before the two of you met, and yet you found yourself in awe of the things his mind was capable of every time.

“So move me, baby,

Shake like the bough of a willow tree

You do it naturally

Move me, baby”

Oh.

“So move me, baby

Like you’ve nothin’ left to prove

And nothin’ to lose

Move me, baby”

Oh.

You’re taken slightly aback by the words falling so effortlessly from his mouth. The way their meaning, bordering on sacrilegious, sounded as if he were praying to the most sacred deity as it dripped like honey from his mouth.

This was a rarity, even as you had moved in with him, being able to see the entirety of his musical process, you never got to hear any of his music before it was finished, unless something really stumped him and he needed your thoughts on it.

Everything about having heard him felt like an invasion of his privacy, and yet the idea of the thoughts that must have been running through his head for hours while he had been writing set your entire body on fire.

It took everything within you not to run over there and jump his bones on the spot if you were being honest.

Watching his hands pick at the strings, his hold on the neck gentle while his fingers moved from chord to chord, you were in complete awe of him. You wondered for a moment if his hands would be so gentle if you were there, in his lap instead of the instrument.

“Shit, you weren’t supposed to hear that.” Andrew's almost panicked voice broke through your thoughts, pulling you back to reality.

You must have looked absolutely dumbfounded, you had to consciously pick your jaw up from where it was, having gone almost completely slack. It took you a moment to find your voice, whispering as you stood from your place on the bed that the two of you shared, “I’m glad I did though.”

You muster up a smile as you make your way over to the chair he had placed himself in early that morning. It was almost too small to house his large frame, his legs were too long to sit comfortably in most chairs, and at times it made you question why he didn't have a higher chair made so that he could sit comfortably in that same corner while he was writing.

Having made your way over to him, you gently take the guitar from his hands, setting it on its usual stand a few feet away, before taking your place on his lap, facing him.

He giggles a little bit at your antics. “Hey, I was using that.” His tone is playful, placing a kiss on the tip of your nose as his hands move to sit comfortably on your back,lifting his shirt that you were wearing just high enough so that he could touch your skin, his hands spanning far enough to reach just below the waistline of the lacy underwear you were wearing, holding you secure on his one leg that you had placed yourself on top of, straddling just above his knee.

“Where’d you come up with the idea for that song anyways?” You rocked yourself gently on his thigh, just once, lightly enough to pass off as you trying to get comfortable, but you both knew that that was not the goal in what you were doing. You could tell by the slightest of smiles, almost a smirk gracing his lips that he knew exactly what you were trying to do.

Looking at you through hooded eyes, almost daring you to keep going, he moved his just slightly lower, moving underneath the lace that served as the only barrier between your core and his clothed thigh. “Ehm… I was just thinking about you,” he paused momentarily, only to move your hips farther up his thigh, closer to him, his face now a mere centimeters from your neck as he continued speaking. “And the idea came to me.”

His voice was steady while doing so, almost taunting, chuckling lightly as he heard the shift in your breathing. He loved watching you go from that confident state, coming over to take what you wanted, to putty in his hands the second he gave you any kind of attention.

There you were, straddling his thigh after having come over with all the confidence in the world, now shaking, practically a mess, already leaving a wet spot on his pants in your wake and he had barely even touched you. It never ceased to amaze you how quickly he could get you so wound up.

You let out a small whimper, barely even audible as he placed a soft kiss underneath your ear. “Oh, my love how sweetly you sing for me.”

His honeyed words were dripping with lust. As your hips began moving, this time of their own accord, against his thigh. You moved ever so slowly, almost shying away from the way your body reacted to him, as if you were embarrassed by how weak you were to his touch but nevertheless, needy for any friction you could create between the two of you.

After a few moments of this, his eye look up to meet yours, and you can feel the blood pooling in your cheeks the more you look into his eyes, realizing what was going on, realizing how you probably looked.

He had the biggest smile on his face looking at you though. All the love and adoration in the world was held in that stare. “You’re doing so good baby”

He uses his hands to guide you through the motions, pressing you down onto his thigh harder in a way that drives you absolutely crazy, a sentiment that is reflected in the way you almost immediately moan his name.

You’re almost positive that your face is beat red and your hips snap back and forth. You’re nothing short of a moaning mess on his lap, his touch melting you into a puddle of the sounds that escape your lips as you increase the pressure applied by your hips.

Any reservations that you had about not wanting to embarrass yourself had thrown themselves out the window. You were so wrapped up with the pooling heat between your legs that you barely even registered Andrew lifting your shirt over your head and carelessly discarding it somewhere across the room before his hands returned to you, this time starting at your breasts, teasing your nipples between his thumb and forefinger on each hand.

“Andrew, please.” The words come out louder than expected, and needier, between gasps and moans, you weren’t even sure if he could understand you through the string of moans and profanities you were all but screaming.

“You look so pretty, darling, all worked up for me.” His voice was low and his eyes were unwavering, moving all over you, unable to settle on a single part of which he longed to see most.

“Your pretty face, mouth open like that just for me.” He met his lips with your just briefly, moving his lips down your cheek, moving to your jaw, all the way to the base of your throat.

“That beautiful voice of yours, all the sounds it makes for me.” He continues his descent, dipping his head between his hands, kissing the valley between your breasts a few times before moving his hands down to your waist moving his face to place a kiss on your right nipple, then your left.

“This body of yours is nothing short of utterly and absolutely breathtaking.” He continues his descent with his hands, while his mouth returns to your neck, leaving kisses and bites and sucking on the sensitive area, leaving not a single inch of the skin he touches unmarked.

Your pace is relentless at this point, your hips snapping back and forth against him with what can only be described as pure, unbridled desperation. The way his hands roam your body, the way your core rubs against him, it’s the only thing you can focus on for longer than maybe half a second.

Your face finds it way to the crook of his neck, biting not so lightly on a spot smack in the middle of the left side of his neck and the gran he lets out is incredible.

His hands have traveled lower by now, his right hand resting in its former spot, encouraging your hips, all the while his right hand has traveled down your front, and is now resting underneath the thin layer of lace, the only article of clothing still on your body, rubbing painstakingly slow circles around the bundle of nerves between your thighs.

It’s all that you can do not to come unraveled right at the first moment of contact. You push your face further into his neck, not sure if you're trying to dampen the sound of your own moans or if you're making an attempt to suffocate in his scent, either way, you’re doing everything you can to hold the last pieces of yourself together.

“Eyes on me, darling.” His fingers are still moving at that agonizing pace, while your hips continue their movements, silently begging him to pick up the pace. You face stays put, buried deeply in the crook of his neck.

“Come on, my love, let me see that pretty face of yours. I’d like to watch myself become your undoing if it's all the same to you.” This time, you obey, Lifting your head out of its hiding place to meet his eyes. “There’s my pretty girl.” He smiles so brightly at you.

You’re eyes are pleading with him at this point, begging for release as he maintains his slow pace.

“Please, Please, Please, Please,” You repeat the word over and over like a chant, a mantra.

A rather breathy chuckle leaves his lips and he places another small kiss on your lips before asking. “What is it you want sweetheart?”

You throw your head back and groan at his antics, knowing he wont give you the release that you so desperately need until you ask for it. “Please, Andrew, you know what I want.”

He lets out a laugh, not anything mean spirited, just playful, you know all too well that not asking directly is going to get you absolutely nowhere, but to save yourself your last shred of dignity before you just come right out and beg, you do always give it one good try.

“Do enlighten me, love, how am I to know what you want if you haven’t asked for it?” His smile is wicked by this point. He knows he always get what he wants out of you. He knows just how to bend you to his every whim.

“God damn it Andrew, please just let me come” you’re visibly shaking by this point, both with frustration and from the effort you’re putting in not to finish without his permission.

“See? That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” The pace of his hand gradually picks up and your already rather loud moans turn into what borders on screams. You quickly make a mental note to apologize to the neighbors at a later date.

“Three” He begins counting down, again, painfully slow and you feel the ever tightening knot in your abdomen begin to pull so tight it’s almost painful.

“Two” The seconds that it takes him to count down feel like hours, days even, as you do everything you can to prevent that knot from snapping, including screwing your eyes shut, an action that Andrew seems to take personal offense to, based on his tone “Open those pretty little eyes for me or I will start over.” Your eyes shoot open.

“One” you're on your last leg if you're being honest. You need him to say those words, and quickly.

“Come for me, my love.” At his words, you feel all of that pleasure climax and the knot in your abdomen snaps, releasing all of that pressure that’s been building up for however long the two of you have been there.

The world seems to spin, all the while his fingers still slowly circling your clit, making you twitch and squirm, while he whispers in your ear how good you did and how proud he is of you.

By the end of it, you’re completely limp against his chest, panting, twitching and still moaning even though his hands have both moved to the back of your head, smoothing your hair down from its now wild state, sticking to the beads of sweat on your forehead. He kisses your temple a few times and moves you from your position straddling his leg to cradle you in his arms while he waits for you to calm down.

It takes you a few minutes to regain your sanity. “Do you want me to let you go back to writing?” You ask in a whisper, still tucked tightly against his chest.

He laughs at the thought. “Oh no, my love. After that divine scene I just witnessed, no. I’m not quite finished with you yet.”

N E ways,I wrote that all in the span of like 4 hours, everybody clap. I’ll probably post some fluff in a few days, who knows.

[ghostkennedy]

Cameras Pt. 2

~Leon Kennedy x fem! Reader~

Word count combined for both parts one and two: 8277

PART ONE

Content warnings: smut, sexual content, breaking n entering, stalker leon, obsessed leon, dirty talk, degradation, praise, grinding, slapping, spitting, choking, hair pulling, biting, aggressive sex, very brief mention of wanting to slice reader open and climb inside her, lots of begging, blowjob, throat fucking, taking pictures during sex, fingering, p in v sex, creampie

!!!!!!MINORS DNI! GHOSTKENNEDY IS STRICTLY 18+!!!!!!

The water for your shower had been running for a few minutes now, but as you sat on the toilet seat, your mind was elsewhere. Jumbled thoughts and random flashbacks to the past 2 days were consuming you. You’d been home for two hours now and had yet to do anything at all besides think and think. But you had to shower and probably eat something eventually so you opened your phone and connected to your Bluetooth speaker, allowing your brain to get lost in the music. Maybe music could chase the thoughts away, maybe you could have a few minutes of peace.

You stepped underneath the hot water and let out a deep sigh. You let the water wash over your body and focus on the lyrics of the song blaring through the speaker. Slowly washing your body as you swayed to the music. You found yourself mumbling along to the lyrics of the song as you ran shampoo through your hair. All that mattered right now was the music and washing yourself. You’d never taken such a serene fucking shower, but things had gotten weird since what you’d discovered about Leon.

Leon. So much for sweet inner peace. You weren’t any closer to knowing what you were going to do about him. How could you even show your face around the office knowing he’s there? You can’t manage to force yourself to forget about him and trust me when I say you’ve tried. You’ve desperately tried to push the fresh memories to the back of your mind. As time goes on, perhaps you could forget about what happened; or at the very least the memories could become hazy and your brain wouldn’t be plagued with replays of Leon and his cock. How do you forget a cock like that? Now you’re thinking about his cock again. You’re supposed to not be thinking about his cock. Stop thinking about his cock!

You finished washing yourself off and stepped out of the shower, wrapping yourself up snugly in a towel. You wiped the fog off the mirror and stared into your reflection. Why was this happening to you of all people? Maybe it wasn’t you specifically after all. It could just be a thing for Leon. He picks someone to obsess over until he’s bored and then moves onto the next fixation. He definitely knew what he was doing with the obsessive stalker shit. He could eventually move on and then you could move on as well. Now that you know about him, he could lose interest in you. 

God, you really hoped that wasn’t the case. You hope that isn’t the case? Why the fuck would you hope that’s not the case? This isn’t healthy at all. You hate the way the whole situation is making you feel. Well, hate is a very strong word and Leon doesn’t deserve to be associated with such a word. Uncomfortable? Nerve racking? Uneasy, tense, disturbed? You couldn’t think of a word to describe it. Exhilarating? Intoxicating? Maybe you loved it. Maybe a part of you hated it and the other part, a much bigger part, absolutely loved it in every way. Nobody or anything had ever been so devoted to you. Infatuated with you.

You’re one mentally ill human being. You shook the thoughts from your head as you made your way out of the bathroom. Dinner and some good sleep should help clear your mind. Your thoughts could be factory reset by the morning and you’ll be able to go about your day as if everything is normal. Welcome to the state of Denial, you’ve officially entered. Enjoy your stay with us and please come again. You’re losing your mind, you’ve gone mad. 

Upon entering your living room, you came to an abrupt halt. Your heart felt like it almost fell out of your ass and your muscles all tensed up as if preparing for impact. “What the fuck?” you yelled out, “What are you, the fucking cat whisperer?” The man on your couch just chuckled, not even looking up from the book in his hands. One of your cats was cuddled up against his leg and your other cat was on the back of the couch cuddled into his opposing shoulder. “What are you doing here? Is that my book?” you asked Leon.

He shut the book and laid it down on the other cushion on the couch. He looked up at you and replied, “You should really read the next chapter, things are really starting to heat up.” He talked so casually, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. All you could do was stand in place staring at him, eyebrows furrowed together. You didn’t know what to say, what to do, what to make of this situation. “How was your shower?”

You cocked an eyebrow, “Good. What are you doing here?” 

“We have things to discuss,” he motioned for you to come closer to him, but you refused to move. “Come. Here,” he demanded and you shook your head at him.

“You couldn’t knock?”

“Why would I knock when you know I can just come in? Sounds like a waste of time to me.”

“Because you don’t live here! You could be a nice guy and respect boundaries, although it’s obvious you aren’t very good at that,” you shot him a dirty look and all he did was laugh. Comes into your place unannounced, scares the shit out of you, and he has the audacity to laugh at you. You two stared right at each other. An unspoken staring contest taking place between the two of you. You broke eye contact and sighed, slowly making your way over to sit next to him on the couch.

Leon had other plans, quickly darting his arms out to intercept you. He easily maneuvered you to straddle his thighs, causing you to let out an embarrassing shriek. 

“Leon, what the fuck? I’m basically naked! Let me go,” you exclaimed and tried to pull away from him, but he just held onto you tighter. He wrapped his hands around your back and pulled you even closer to him.

“Oh wow, I thought you were fully dressed under your towel. My mistake,” he smirked as you gave him the deadliest stare you could muster with flushed cheeks. “Have you gone all shy on me? But you displayed everything so nicely for me in those photos,” which caused you to avert your eyes away from him, staring at the cushion underneath you.

He grabbed your chin and brought your face back up to his and you couldn’t help but finally take in his appearance. He was wearing a button up shirt with the top few buttons undone, exposing the light hair on his chest. The sleeves were pushed up above his elbows, extenuating his huge biceps. He could wrap that bicep around your throat, slowly drain the life from you and you’d die a happy little content slut.

You brought your eyes back up to meet his, but his eyes were wandering elsewhere. His eyes looked across your exposed collarbones, down your arms, exploring the valley of your exposed thighs on either side of him. His eyes devoured you in a way that sent chills down your spine.

He finally met your gaze and you didn’t give yourself time to think before your right hand was raising up to his cheek, gently rubbing it. “You’re a fucking creep,” you said, your eyes never leaving his. Both your hands tangled up into his dirty blond hair as you continued, “What kind of a person breaks into someone’s house and jerks off with their panties? You’re a freak of nature. They should study people like you. What’s wrong with you?” He ground his hips up into you and you could feel his hard cock rubbing against you.

You pulled his hair as he brought his mouth to your ear, nibbling gently on the lobe. You had to fight back the moan that threatened to spill past your lips. He brought his mouth right up against your ear and spoke, “What kind of slut gets turned on by such behavior, huh?” You slowly start grinding yourself against his jeans, your exposed cunt making contact with his covered cock. You pulled your hands away from him, causing him to pull his mouth away from your ear and lean back so he could look at you.

You don’t know what came over you, but you pulled your dominant hand and slapped him as hard as you could across his face. “Anyone turned on by what you do is fucking deluded,” you told him as his hands pushed your towel up past your hips. His hands gripped so tightly into your hips you knew there’d be marks. You felt like your pelvis might snap in half between the pressure of his hands, but fuck did it make you so uncontrollably wet. 

“What was I supposed to do? The second I laid my eyes on you I couldn’t think of anything fucking else. I was jerking my cock what seemed like every hour for weeks after meeting you. I tried to stay away, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted to slice you open, climb inside your body, and fucking live there. But I obviously can’t do that, so I climbed inside your house, surrounding myself with your things, learned everything there was to know about you, so at the very fucking least I could be inside your mind,” he said as you two grinded into each other like your lives depending on it.

He continued, “I watched you install your stupid cameras and do you think I gave a shit? I put on a show for you so that I could overtake your fucking mind like you did mine. I’ve been watching you for so long, I knew you were a depraved, needy whore. I knew if I showed you the truth it’d make your little pussy wet. You were made for me, fuck, just look at you.” He grabbed the back of your hair and yanked your head back. You couldn't contain it anymore, his words working you up more than you could stand.

Whimpers, gasps, pants, moans, sounds you’d never made before in your life were falling from your lips as you continued getting that sweet friction against your weeping cunt. His hand left your hair and pulled your towel completely off, baring you completely before him. He took one of nipples into his mouth and sucked intensely, like he was a dying man and the only thing keeping him alive was his mouth on your body.

As he sucked on your breast, his eyes rose and stared back into yours. This sudden urge came over you and you let saliva pool in your mouth before spitting it out on his cheek. He stopped the assault on your breast and looked at you with a shocked expression on his face, trying to comprehend what you had just done to him. “You disgust me,” you said before he quickly wrapped his hand around your throat, completely cutting off your air. 

Your hand quickly shot up and gripped onto his. You weren’t trying to pull his hand away, oh no, you held his grip tighter. Your reflexes were kicking in, your mouth fell open as your lungs tried to suck in any air they could. Your eyes were rolling into the back of your head, but that didn’t stop you from feeling Leon spit right into your open mouth.

“Fucking look at you taking whatever I’ll give you. You’re a filthy whore and you can’t even help it. You sit here and call me all sorts of names because you love my obsession with you,” he spoke as your face felt on fire and numb at the same time. He let go of your throat and you began to greedily suck in the air you’d been deprived of.

Grabbing you by the shoulders, he pushed you onto the floor on your knees as he stood before you, undoing his belt and jeans letting them fall down until he was just in his boxers before you. Your vision cleared as you looked directly at his hard dick through his briefs. You could see the growing wet spot on them from his precum as he brought his hand to his bulge and started rubbing himself through his underwear. 

You looked up with pleading eyes, hoping he’d understand what you so badly wanted to give him, but understanding is not what you got.

“What is it, baby? Is there something you want? We have to ask for things when we want them, that’s a concept you’re familiar with right? Or are you just a stupid slut who expects me to give her whatever she wants without having to work for it, hmm?” he said, the pace in which he was rubbing himself picking up. You whined, maybe he would give in and just let you take him without having to speak the words out loud. He just stared at you, waiting.

You cleared your throat and forced out the words, “Please, can I please suck your cock? I need to taste you so bad, please. Please sir, please fuck my mouth like you deserve to.” Once the words came out you couldn’t stop them. You needed him so badly, all you could do was helplessly beg. “I’ll be so good, I’ll do whatever you want from me, just please let me take your cock. Let me show you I can be good. Let me show you how well my throat can take it,” you continued begging and almost started drooling as he slowly pulled his underwear down, letting them fall to his ankles.

You looked up at him, asking for permission, “May I, sir?” He ran his hand down your scalp, bringing it down to your cheek and massaging it underneath his palm. He suddenly pulled his hand away before a sharp slap met your cheek that had your brain going foggy. The pain spread through your face, causing your jaw to fall open in a groan. 

Leon took this opportunity to shove his cock into your mouth, your attention grabbed immediately as your lips wrapped around him. You let out a moan as the taste of his precum flooded your mouth. The pain from the slap mixed with his taste had your eyes rolling back into your head as you sucked him in as hard as you could.

Leon’s head fell back in pleasure as a moan of your name fell from his lips. You pulled his cock deeper into your mouth, hitting the back of your throat to spur him on. Your hand wrapped around the base of his cock, pumping him while you took his cock as deep as it could go in your throat. The sheer size of his member still blew your mind despite seeing it over camera twice. Nothing could compare to him being right in front of your face.

One of his hands tangled in your hair as the other one fiddled with something behind him. “Hey,” he said, grabbing your attention away from the work you were doing on his cock, “You can say no, okay?” You raised an eyebrow questioningly as you didn’t know what he was trying to say. He pulled up your Polaroid camera and it started coming together in your brain. You whimpered realizing he wanted to take pictures of the two of you together.

The idea rushed feverishly through you and straight down to your cunt. You’d never thought of taking pictures in the act. You both knew you’d taken plenty of pictures alone, but the thought of doing this with Leon and having the pictures for both of you to hold onto? You could feel the arousal pooling down your thighs as you nodded your head once to let him know to please continue. He smiled down at you, “Atta girl. Put on a show for me and I’ll make it worth your while, yeah?” The hand still held in your hair pulled tightly, causing you to close your eyes as you kept up your work on his cock.

You lost yourself in pleasing him. Giving him pleasure gave you pleasure as well. The way his cock stretched your mouth around him was heavenly. He was thrusting into your mouth, pushing himself down your throat. Tears were pouring down your face, but you didn’t want him to stop. You loved feeling like this, loved when your mind went foggy as he used you.

“Look at me,” he suddenly demanded. You looked up and your eyes immediately looked into the camera as he snapped a picture of you. “Fuck, such a good girl. So good for me, your mouth is, fuck, fucking perfect,” he whined out. The sound was pure sex, causing you to moan around his dick.

“You want me to fuck you? You wanna take me into your slutty cunt, huh?” he asked you as you pulled your mouth off his cock sucking in a deep breath.

“Please, please. I want you to fuck me so bad. I want you to use my pussy until you cum, sir,” you were once again pleading for him. You couldn’t find shame within you anymore. Your need heavily outweighed your pride. And knowing he liked you like this? You wanted to give yourself over to him whenever he wanted, however he wanted.

He walked around you, pushing you forward so that your chest was laying on the cushions of your couch, knees still on the floor as he spread them wider before him. You looked back at him just in time to see him take a picture of you bent over for him. After the photo was pushed out of the camera, he brought the device closer to your sopping pussy and took a picture of how wet and needy you were for him. He sat the camera down and started kneading both his hands into your ass cheeks.

Leaning forward he kissed your shoulder as one hand slipped down between your thighs and rubbed your clit gently. He ran his fingers up and down your folds before sinking a finger into your wet heat. You couldn’t help but whine at this point. You were so worked up, you could’ve taken his cock immediately, but you were also too worked up to be able to voice this. He slid another finger in as you let out a long, high pitched moan. 

“Are you ready for me, baby? I need to feel your pussy around my cock,” Leon asked you as you nodded your head as fast as humanly possible. He chuckled at your neediness before slowly pulling his fingers out of you and bringing them to your lips. “Here, be a good girl and clean this up for me,” he could barely finish his statement before you were sucking his fingers clean of your juices. He let out a deep moan as his other hand pulled back and smacked your ass hard. 

He wrapped his hand around his cock and rubbed the tip against your wet hole, causing you to instinctively push yourself back, trying to take his cock. This earned you another smack on your ass. You moaned as you arched your back from the pain. Leon took this opportunity and slammed himself all the way inside of you, which had you unintentionally biting his fingers that were still being held in your mouth. He moaned at the way your teeth dug into his fingers before pulling them out and running his hand down your back.

You turned to look at him, begging, “Please move Leon, I need it so bad. I need you to fuck me, please please please please.” You couldn’t help but move your ass around to get some sort of movement within your pussy. You were so desperate, you couldn’t wait any longer, you needed him to fuck you until you couldn’t remember your own name.

“Shhhhh,” he whispered as he wrapped his hand around your throat, pulling your head back to rest on his peck as your back arched even further for him, “I’ve got you sweet girl.” He finally, finally, started moving and moans were already falling from your lips uncontrollably. “That’s it, you take me so well. Gonna make you feel so good,” Leon praised you. He had completely switched from the degrading way he spoke to you earlier and the praise had you melting beneath his touch. Your walls flutter around his cock in approval.

His pace picked up as he ruthlessly began pounding into you. You were uttering incoherent phrases at him as the pleasure was coursing through every nerve in your body. Leon leaned forward and buried his head in your neck, letting loose the most pornographic moans you’d ever heard. You didn’t know what was giving you more pleasure, the way he was fucking you or the way he sounded.

You pulled your hands from where they were gripping the couch and wrapping them behind you, tangling his hair in your fingers as you pulled his mouth to yours. The kiss was messy and loud, moaning as your tongues clashed together desperately trying to feel every square inch of each other. Leon’s hands released their grip on your thighs and ran them up to your stomach until he reached your breasts, where he rubbed your nipples between his fingers, further driving you crazy.

You felt yourself slowly climbing that mountain, heading towards release, when Leon’s movements suddenly stopped and he pushed your chest back into the couch, pressing you into it with both hands. You were whining and pushing yourself up and down his cock while he held you in place. “That’s it, fuck yourself with my cock. You look so good like this, so fucking needy,” Leon barely formed the words together as he got lost in the sight of you. He rested his hands lazily on his hips, holding himself up as you forcibly fucked back onto his cock.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, please fuck me. I’m so close I need you to fill me up, please,” you begged, wearing yourself out from your movements, hardly able to catch your breath but unrelenting in your need to cum. 

Leon gave into your request, pushing his hands into your back, holding you in place as he ruthlessly fucked into you. He let out a loud moan before speaking, “Fuck, I’m gonna cum. Cum with me sweet girl. I want to feel you cum around my cock.” You couldn’t formulate a response, but after a few more hard, sloppy thrusts you were screaming Leon’s name and all sorts of profanities as you came. 

After feeling you squeeze his cock so tightly, Leon was cumming deep inside your pussy. Thrusting into you through his orgasm, pushing his cum further inside of you. Your knees gave out beneath you, but Leon was quick to grab your hips and hold you up. He slowly slid his cock out of you, taking in the view of his cum slowly dripping down your thighs. If it was possible, he would’ve cum again at the sight alone. 

He helped you turn over and lay on the floor right beside your couch as he laid down right next to you. You were tightly sandwiched between the couch and coffee table with him, but you didn’t mind. You wanted to be as close to him as possible. You rolled onto your side and threw your leg and arm over him, chin resting on his shoulder. He turned to look at you, catching your lips in a slow, gentle kiss. It was a sharp contrast to how you’d just been moments ago and it would’ve given anyone whiplash, but to you both it made perfect sense. 

Leon pulled away and spoke softly, “There’s only one thing I’m not sure of. Why’d you get the cameras?” You let out an airy laugh and were about to speak when you were interrupted by a loud crash in the kitchen, followed by one of your cats zooming through the living room and into your bedroom away from the noise.

“What the fuck was that?” you yelled, whipping your head towards the kitchen. “That’s why I got the damn cameras! Between the cats, and apparently you, I was beginning to believe I was living with a poltergeist.”

Leon laughed before speaking, “Hey, I’m careful. That’s all on them or the poltergeist.”

~masterlist~

[forzalando]

💛 hi 🥹 CONGRATS ON 3K THAT'S HUUUUUGE !!!!

I am obsessed with this idea and also my favourite activity (as of recently lmao) is drunk karaoke and of COURSE my dream would be to do it with lando !!!!

drunk karaoke with Lando would, and i'm not exaggerating, mean everything to me. i am in love with just the idea of this.

thank you for supporting me through the many phases of this blog and for entertaining my every thought/idea. adore you, mel💛 i hope you enjoy this blurb that was meant to be 300-400 words but ended up being 800+ lol

celebration post: here

Drunk Karaoke with Lando Norris under the cut😊

You quickly downed the shot thrust into your hand – sambuca, which meant it absolutely came from Lando since he was the only one who knew of your preference.  

He was on your left, sweaty and somehow wide awake despite the fact you’d been out for hours. Oscar was on your right, slowly swaying to the music with his eyes half shut. Somewhere across the club Charles and Pierre were dancing on an elevated surface while George videotaped them like a suburban soccer mom at her son’s first game. Here in Monaco, everyone partied post-race as if they themselves had made it to the top step over the weekend.

Out of nowhere, Lando fell into you as he shouted in your ear – “Do you know what I’ve always wanted to do?”

Oscar caught you before you could topple over, steadying you on your feet before shooting Lando a dirty look.

“Sorry, sorry,” Lando giggled. He centered himself and then put his hands on your shoulders, looking the most serious you’d ever seen him. “Anyway, do you know what I’ve always wanted to do?”

“Win at Silverstone? Become world champion?”

“Well, yes, but think smaller, you lunatic. Something I could do right now.”

“Out drink Max?”

“What? No, I don’t care about outdrinking Max, where did that come from?”

“Well, I just thought since he usually wins every race that you’d want to beat him at something – ”

“Oh my god, you’re impossible,” Oscar interjected. “He wants to do drunk karaoke. When we went out in Miami he was practically on his knees begging me to sing with him.”

A giant grin spread across your face as you playfully swatted Lando’s chest.

“Why didn’t you just say so? I happen to be an excellent karaoke partner,” you boasted.

Lando clapped his hands and jumped around like a toddler at your remark – “So, you’ll do it with me?”

Instead of answering, you snatched his hand and pulled him through the club at an impressive speed. You weren’t in a karaoke bar, quite far from it, but you planted yourself in front of the DJ booth and gestured to Lando. Security immediately pulled you both into the booth, perks of having Lando at your side, and the DJ of the night asked what she could do for you.

“Hi! Lando Norris wants to do drunk karaoke and I’m trusting that you can make that happen. It’s very important to him,” you professed.

“I think I might have a couple instrumentals or could make some magic happen. Any specific requests? You won’t have any lyrics on screen, though. And you’ll have to share a mic.”

Before you could ask what your options were, Lando was shouting, once again, in your ear.

“DO YOU HAVE THE SPICE GIRLS? THAT ONE SPICE GIRLS SONG?”

“Lando, we won’t have the lyrics,” you reminded him.

“I don’t need them,” he declared, crossing his arms with attitude. “Maybe you need them, fake fan.”

“I most certainly do not,” you yelled back to Lando. “DJ, roll the track. Pretty please. You're amazing."

She chuckled and handed you the singular mic, Lando immediately snatching it from your hands.

“It’s my dream, I get to hold the mic.”

You rolled your eyes and fought back a smile, stepping into his side as he threw an arm around you.

The deafening bass from the speakers grew quiet as the DJ addressed the crowd of people – “we’ve got a special surprise tonight! These two lovely friends of mine up here are going to perform a special number for everyone. Please welcome – ”

She paused, waiting for you and Lando to introduce yourselves.

“LANDO NORRIS AND Y/N Y/L/N.”

“Please welcome Lando Norris and Y/N Y/L/N to my booth. Show them some love!”

The clapping and cheering brought the volume in the club back to an obscene level – the loudest cheers coming from a VIP table not far from the booth where all of your friends had gathered.

Before you had a chance to feel the slightest bit self-conscious, the infamous laugh rang through the speakers and Lando was scream-singing into the mic.

 “YO, I’LL YOU WHAT I WANT, WHAT I REALLY, REALLY WANT!”

The two of you in perfect sync, passing lines back and forth, singing (if you could call it that) in unison during the chorus. You could have sworn you heard George shout out that this was “his song” and Max was most definitely telling anyone who would listen that he personally knows Ginger Spice.  

You tore your eyes from the audience to look at Lando – the smile on his face rivaling the brightest sunny day. With his arm around you, squeezing you to his side, your closest friends cheering for you, your heart was sure to burst from happiness. There was no place you’d rather be in that moment than making a drunken fool of yourself with the most important person in your life by your side.

And if Lando was thinking the same thing, about how he was happier in that moment than he’d ever been, podiums and race win included, he’d keep that to himself for just a minute more.

[h-sleepingirl]

Milton Erickson and a Rabbi Walk into a Bar... (Essay)

Finally, I've finished this essay about connections I'm finding between hypnosis, Judaism, magic, and intimacy. It's ~4.5k words, extremely "me," and I'm really thrilled to share it. Enjoy!

--

My weakness is getting deeply invested in very niche topics.

Hypnosis was my first and most lifelong obsession. It was my confusing, shameful sexual fetish that I eventually took by the horns and -- through my desire to learn as much about it as humanly possible -- turned into a job. But not a normal sex work job where I do hypnosis for money -- a weird job where I just teach about it. The kink community, and the further-specific niche where people want to hypnotize each other during intimate experiences, became my home.

But the value of study doesn't really come from the quantity of people I'm able to engage with. It comes from the way it enriches my life. It creates and benefits from the capability to see overlaps between all of my various interests.

On the surface, it may appear that two skills have no relationship. But the deeper you get into each one, a synthesis appears.

At a certain point when you are learning hypnosis, all seemingly-unrelated information seems to fit effortlessly into your hypnotic knowledge. You can listen to a song and suddenly you learn something new about how to hypnotize someone. Maybe it was a lyric that gave you an evocative emotional response; maybe it was a pattern in the music that you thought about replicating with the rhythm of your hypnotic language.

Over a decade into my own hypnosis learning, I got very lucky and found a second passionate home in communities of Jewish text study about a year ago. I started from almost zero there and found myself again to be a greedy novice, obsessed with digging into it.

Of course, as I got further, it became that I read a page of Talmud (a text of rabbinical law and conversation) and suddenly I learned something new about how to hypnotize someone. And as I progress, it is starting to go the other way: I learn about Torah study by reading about hypnosis and intimacy.

There are two directions this essay can be read. “How can intimacy and hypnosis teach us about Jewish text?” And, “How can Jewish text teach us about intimacy and hypnosis?” One half is of each part written by me as an authority, and the other half is by me as an avid novice. The synthesis of these two parts of me -- just like any synthesis between concepts -- may perhaps create something new.

Models

I’m sure most communities have a version of the idiom, “Ask three people a question and get five answers.” For a long time, this was a source of frustration for me in the hypnosis community. Is hypnosis a state of relaxation and suggestibility? Kind of, but also no. Is it more accurate to say it is based on unconscious behaviors and thoughts? Well -- kind of, but also no. 

So what is it? Well, it’s probably somewhere in the overlap of about 20-30 semi-accurate definitions and frameworks for techniques -- what we’d call “models.” Good luck!

Why is hypnosis so impossible to define and teach? How have we not found a model that we can all agree upon yet? I think many people share this confusion, and it's complicated by the fact that most sources for hypnosis education teach their model as the model. It makes sense -- it would be difficult to teach a complete beginner a handful of complex frameworks with which to understand hypnosis when that person is just trying to muddle through learning “how to hypnotize someone” on a practical, basic level.

…Or would it be? By the time I got involved with Jewish study, I had long given up on chasing the white whale of some unified theory of hypnosis. I was firmly happy with the concept that all ways to describe hypnosis are simply models -- and all models are flawed, while some models are useful. I was delighted, when entering Jewish community spaces, to hear the idiom, “Three Jews, five opinions.”

This concept is baked into Jewish text study, in my experience. You can look at any single line in Torah and find innumerable pieces of commentary on it, ancient and modern, with conflicting interpretations. Torah and other texts are studied over and over -- often on a schedule -- with the idea that there is always something new to learn. And this happens partially by the synthesis of multiple people's perspectives adding to and challenging each other, developing new models. My Torah study group teacher always starts us with a famous line from Pirkei Avot, a text of ethical teachings from early rabbis: “If two sit together and share words of Torah, the Shekhinah [feminine presence of God] abides among them.”

The capacity to develop and hold multiple interpretations at once enriches your relationship with the text. So too do I believe that being able to hold multiple interpretations of what hypnosis is and how it works enhances your skill with it. It is not a failure of the system -- it is the best thing about it.

Intimacy

It is intentional to make the distinction of “relationship with the text” -- not “relationship to the text.”

My job on the surface is to teach hypnosis, but the meta goal is to simply teach something that helps people develop profound intimacy with others. I think that hypnosis is a kind of beautiful magic that is well-suited to this, but it’s not the only path to take.

One of my favorite educators, Georg Barkas, describes themselves as an intimacy educator who teaches rope bondage. Their classes and writings are highly philosophical and align closely with my own ideas about intimacy -- as well as my partner’s, MrDream, from whom I’ve learned so much. I frequently cite Barkas when I talk about hypnosis because I feel the underlying ideas they have about rope bondage are extremely applicable to all kink and intimacy -- and I will continue that trend here.

Barkas recently published an excellent essay looking in detail at the concept of intimacy itself. They posit that our first thought of intimacy is usually about a kind of comfort-seeking and familiarity. That’s contained within the etymology of the word, and socially it’s what many of us think of when we define our relationships as “intimate”: settling in to engage with a partner who we love, know, and understand.

But, Barkas asks, what if we place this word into a different context? They talk of how in scientific endeavors, the goal of “becoming familiar with” is unpredictability and discovering things that are surprising and unexpected. This perhaps offers a different view of intimacy: intimacy where you do not engage with your partner as though you know everything about them; intimacy where being surprised by them and learning something new is the goal.

My partner MrDream teaches about this often in hypnosis education: approaching a partner with genuine curiosity and interest -- “curiosity” implying that you don’t know what to expect, with a positive connotation. There is a kind of delicate balance between being able to anticipate some aspects of what is going to happen hypnotically -- to have a general grasp on psychology and hypnosis theory -- versus holding tight to a philosophy that neither you nor the hypnotic subject really knows how they are going to respond. The unexpected is not to be feared, but celebrated and held as core to our practice. Hypnotic “subjects” (those being hypnotized) who can relax their expectations will often have more intense experiences.

Thus we come to the first time in this essay where I mention Milton Erickson, my favorite forefather of modern hypnosis. Erickson was a hypnotherapist active through the 1900s and is famous (among many things) for presenting a model of hypnosis that wasn’t necessarily an authoritative action done to a person, but a collaborative and guiding action done with a person.

In his book “Hypnotic Realities,” he talks about how his view of clinical hypnosis is defined by how the therapist is able to observe each individual client and directly use those observations to continually develop a unique hypnotic approach with them. The client’s history, interests, and modes of thinking are utilized for the trance, as well as any observable responses they have in the moment. For example, a client with chronic pain may have the frustration they express over that pain incorporated into the trance. This is in deep contrast to hypnosis where the therapist comes in with any kind of “script” or formula to recite ahead of time.

It’s important to Erickson’s model that the therapist doesn’t know exactly what to anticipate, and it’s also important hypnotically that the same is true for the client. A common “Ericksonian” suggestion is, “You don’t have to know what is going to happen, and I don’t know either.” In order to develop the most effective approach with each patient, Erickson would enter into a session with some presumed knowledge, but ultimately learning -- not assuming -- how to best hypnotize each individual person.

We circle back to the phrase, “a relationship with Jewish text.” In my opinion, engaging with Torah is exactly this kind of intimacy. Torah is something we come into in order to poke and prod at it, to interact with it and to see how it interacts back at us. The teacher of my study group always cites a model where Torah itself is a participant in our partnered learning and group discussions. We ask it questions, we push its boundaries, we strive to glean something new and yet unseen. A line that may seem simple on the surface can reveal much more when we explore its context or put it into a different context entirely. 

This is easier for me to say as someone who is coming into learning Torah for the first time, but I am able to look ahead to when I will be fully familiar with the text and still be able to take this expanded definition of intimacy with it. Not coming to it without a sense of comfort, but still engaging with curiosity. MrDream teaches a model for hypnosis that is based on the idea of exploration -- exploring your partner no matter how long you have been with them. You are always coming to them as a different person, shaped by your ever-growing experiences and identity, and your partner changes as a human as well. I believe Torah is also dynamic in this way, as the context within which it exists -- and the way we interpret it -- is constantly shifting.

Ritual

I have been engaging with spiritual ritual on and off for as long as I’ve been learning hypnosis. The concept of magic has always been alluring to me -- not from a motivation to meet specific goals, but for something more difficult to pin down. I like that ritual, in an esoteric framework, is about looking at various metaphors between ingredients and actions; a candle representing an element of fire which may in turn represent intensity, or purity, or something else. Drawing meaningful connections between concepts like this is a skill I’ve developed in parallel with hypnosis, as well.

I was recently talking with a friend of mine who is also interested in esotericism -- we were sharing our frustrations with various books on magic and ritual. We wondered why so many sources would go on to teach prescriptivist formulas and associations, and not much else. Do this, and that will happen. This symbol represents that. My friend and I agreed that the ritual value of ingredients comes from how you personally assign meaning to them -- but why was everything always trying to teach us their meaning, as opposed to teaching us how to cultivate our own associations?

A week or so later, I happened to go to an excellent class that explored whether or not there was a place for smudging and smoke use in modern Jewish ritual. The teacher first took a careful, measured approach towards looking at indigenous smudging practices and the concept of appropriation. What followed was 30 minutes of history and text exploring examples of smoke in early Judaism, and then 30 minutes of a handful of interpretations of what “smoke” could mean and represent with relation to Jewish ideas -- directly practical to modern ritual. It was utterly excellent and immediately profound for me, as someone who has been yearning to blend my experience with esoteric ritual with my relationship with Judaism.

Observant readers will note that through this essay I speak passively about Judaism -- I am a patrilineal Jew, which for better or worse means that it is not a simple matter to say, “I am ‘fully’ (or ‘not’) Jewish.” (I am in the beginnings of working with a Conservative rabbi -- who affirms that I’m Jewish -- to make my status halachic [lawful], which is deeply exciting.) Opinions on that aside, a relevant piece of information is that the Jewish holiday we celebrated most consistently when I was growing up was Chanukah. While a lot of Jewish practice has been something I’ve been striving towards as an adult, Chanukah has always been “mine.” It was fast approaching after this class, and I felt motivated to use my newfound knowledge to make more ritual out of lighting the candles.

I was deeply surprised when all I did was light a stick of incense before saying the blessings over lighting the menorah, and my experience transformed into something intense. I smelled the incense and couldn’t help but think about what I’d learned about the Rambam’s commentary that incense in the time of the Temple was about making the Temple smell sweet to pray in after the burning of sacrifices. I thought about what I’d learned about the presence of God being smoke and clouds to the ancient Israelites. I thought about things I’d learned from other places -- hiddur mitzvah (the value of beautifying a practice), and a midrash (parable) about God loving the light and rituals we do in a very personal way simply because they are from us.

Esoteric ritual has often felt to me like exerting effort in making the associations of ingredients work for me. But this was effortless. I was doing something that was entirely my own, solidly founded by the broad and deep study I’d done, by my personal relationship with the concepts, by my identity.

In other words, the power behind this ritual came from knowledge, and the knowledge came from my intimacy with it. And that intimacy was not just with the study I had done -- it was also the process of being surprised in real time by what I was learning through the ritual itself.

Hypnosis gains “power,” in so much as we let ourselves use the term, through these same acts of intimacy towards knowledge. It operates directly based on various ingredients: how much we know about hypnosis theory itself, general psychology, the person we are working with, and ourselves. Hypnosis is a ritual -- it is setting aside special time to do something with a collection of ingredients that you have personal associated meanings with. If you can’t connect to those deeply enough, it won’t reach its full potency.

Knowledge, Perception, and Unconsciousness

One of my favorite concepts to teach in hypnosis is, “A change in perception equates to a change in reality.” This is derived from Erickson by MrDream, and it’s something he and I have had a lot of conversations about to refine. The implication of this is not something as trite as hypnosis having the power to change a person’s perceived reality. It is the concept that if you look at something from a different perspective, you gain various different capabilities.

For example, when you are feeling stuck in a situation and you think about what a close friend of yours would do if they were in your shoes, you gain the capability to see more options, to change your actual view of the reality of the problem and therefore change your actions towards it. In hypnosis, this could be the difference between simply telling someone to relax their legs versus another perspective of telling them to imagine what it would be like if their legs just started relaxing. It could be the idea that when a person does feel relaxation from a simple suggestion, their perception changes on what is happening -- they build more belief in hypnosis, and that belief in turn makes the next suggestions easier to buy into.

Erickson’s model of hypnosis is predicated on the idea that hypnosis itself matters, that hypnosis is a time within which someone’s reality changes. In his ideal hypnotic context, the subject feels like they no longer can expect things to behave as they usually do in their “waking” reality. They are thus opened to many different kinds of new experiences and capabilities. To Erickson, perception matters -- by itself, it’s a primary driving force behind literal change and response.

This ties back to our idea of intimacy -- just as I aim to approach my partners with this profound curiosity, just as I aim to approach Torah, I want to have this intimacy of the unexpected with trance itself. I want to allow myself to be surprised by hypnosis, by the things I don’t yet know about it even after more than a decade and thousands of hours of trance. But more than this, in an Ericksonian sense, simply changing my perspective to this motivation is one of the things that lets me get there.

I went through a guided study class about Shabbat (Judaism’s weekly sabbath of rest) with a partner, and so much of the class was in the abstract that it at times felt difficult for me to latch onto. We were learning all of this background context about a view of Shabbat where instead of spiritually striving and reaching on that day, you come in acting as though your spiritual work -- like your other work -- is “finished.”

In one session, we spent a chunk of time parsing through how we could interpret that as actionable. It felt like it just wasn’t clicking for me -- the midrashic texts weren’t offering enough for me to feel like I could make judgments on questions like, “Does this imply I shouldn’t meditate on Shabbat in this context?”

It wasn’t until I slept on it that I found a very simple piece of the puzzle: putting aside the questions of concrete actions, in an Ericksonian sense, the internal act of shifting my perspective would absolutely change the way I behaved and interacted with the day. It would become more indirect and unconscious -- instead of carefully analyzing my actions as I might with other Shabbat prohibitions on work, I could simply let myself act in ways that fit that perspective of “spiritually resting.”

The abstraction of the class made more sense -- perhaps it wasn’t trying to give us direct answers, but rather create a psychological environment for us that was well-suited to this more unconscious processing. Or rather, in addition to the sort of typical conscious halachic interpretation. If I allow myself an opinion here, I’d say that I care about halacha as actionable, but as always, I tend to care more about feelings and what’s internal.

This also lent credence to ways this class and the class on smoke and ritual changed my experiences. I was not given a set of actions to take, but rather a variety of perspectives that unconsciously made me think and behave differently. The concept of “knowledge is power” is both true and alluring in many different contexts, and yet had often fallen through for me in most ritualistic frameworks. The way that it succeeds, I believe, is when you develop a relationship with knowledge that actually changes your internal perspective and perceptions.

Limitation

With this we return to the concept of models and interpretations. It is serendipitous to be going through these experiences at a time where I am avidly working on my next book -- the thesis of which is that in order for us to progress as hypnotists, we must get comfortable moving fluidly between many differing definitions and frameworks (models) of what hypnosis is and how it works.

It is as the Ericksonian principle would say: If you take a perspective on hypnosis that boils down to “hypnosis is about relaxing the conscious mind,” you will do hypnosis according to that perspective. You will use relaxation-based techniques and make an effort to get someone to think “less consciously.” If you instead take a perspective that is “hypnosis operates based on activation of the conscious mind,” you may do hypnosis that causes someone to think and process in a more stimulating way.

Both and neither are true, and they can coexist. I believe that most models can be useful -- some more useful than others. But the best thing you can do is to not assume that one model is the most correct one -- instead, it is to develop the capacity to work within many at once even while being aware of their boundaries.

Jewish text, in my experience, provides models -- perspectives that themselves give guidance on how to understand things and act. I think especially about midrash and stories that are explicitly intended to fill in the gaps or give an alternate view on something. The question of, “Is there one correct way to do/see things” is more complicated here, but there are areas -- especially in those subtle shifts of mindset for ritual or interpreting text -- where the answer is still “no.”

My time so far in Jewish study supports this in a different way. There is a human element of collaboration and challenge. Learning as we do with a chevruta (study partner) adds another person to the relationship -- it is no longer just between you and the text. There is another human who you are building something with, and it is “intimate” according to our exploratory definition in an even clearer way.

The purpose of a “scene” inside of kink (a “session” of kink play) is to operate in a semi-limited framework -- limitations exist on who is involved, where it begins and ends, how partners communicate, and what themes/topics/activities are involved. These limitations -- though they may be quite broad -- are partially what allow for intense experiences. A scene needs to exist in a different “space” than our daily lives, and it needs to operate by different rules and involve different ingredients. Here, we also see overlaps with the definition of a “ritual.”

This doesn’t just facilitate intensity (and safety) -- it facilitates learning something new about your partner. By taking your relationship and putting it into a limited context, it allows you to observe it in a more careful way, where novel changes can be more obvious.

Studying with a chevruta is much like this. I have had study sessions where my chevruta and I are meeting for the first time and the only thing we are aware of sharing is our desire to dive into a piece of text. I’ve also had chevrutas where we know each other outside of study, and some of our time is schmoozing and catching up. But in all cases, we are limited in scope, and that limitation creates ease of access towards the common goal of expanding our knowledge and relationship with the text. We are focused; we are motivated. We are creating something that we can only create through who we are as individuals and what we are doing as avid learners.

This has surprised me at times with its tenderness and intensity. Building well-founded interpretations with someone is in and of itself very intimate -- not sensually, but humanly. It has given me something I have always wanted -- an intimacy that is pervasive not just in application of knowledge, but in the development of it. A feeling of sacredness and joy from being able to see so many different perspectives.

I long for this connection, this alchemy. Yes, all models are limited. But within those tight, restricting limits is the potential energy of creation.

“And I Must Learn”

There is an infamous story in the Talmud, in Berakhot 62a, where Rav Kahana hides under the bed of his friend Rav Abba. Rav Kahana hears Abba and his wife giggling and starting to have sex, and remarks out loud that Rav Abba is acting like someone who is famished. Rav Abba, mid-sex, understandably says, “Kahana, why the fuck are you under my bed listening to me fuck my wife?” Rav Kahana replies, “It is Torah, and I must learn.”

There was a version of this essay that began with this tale. I am enamored with the vast overlaps I can derive from its briefness: that intimacy can be studied sacredly both as a general concept and specifically with your partner; that we are obligated to learn ourselves, our partners, and general human desire; that there can be a thread of wholeness in every action of your life if you give every action sacred attention.

Even this, though, is a limited-context interpretation. The rabbis of the Talmud were certainly not sex-positive, especially not as we currently use the term. The surrounding triptych of conversations is similarly humorous but seems to comparatively describe sex as dirty or gross, and this bit of text cannot really exist separately from all of the places where there is halacha derived about sex that is about controlling women’s bodies or preventing queer and trans people from being able to live authentically.

But -- we are allowed to interpret like this. We are allowed to play with context and see what we discover.

For me, this is about finding the connections between my actions and my interests; parts of me that synthesize the whole. It is about developing intimacy with Torah, with my learning partners, with my romantic partners; with the people within the writings, with the authors, and with the readers.

Reading Torah is the same as hypnotizing someone is the same being intimate with someone is the same as doing a ritual. All things on a broad enough scale overlap this closely. There is value in this “zooming out” to a wide enough context to see the connections that exist -- just as there is value in celebrating the limitations that arise, models nestled alongside each other, when you “zoom in.”

We need both to be able to treat our learning -- all forms of it -- as something special.

[gwenster]

This Had Better Come to a Stop (March of the Falsettos)

Per usual, Marvin is projecting his misogyny onto the people in his life. This statement demonstrates Marvin's insistence for Whizzer to take on a domestic role in their relationship as he attempts to compensate for the lack of a housewife role in his life following his divorce. He wants Whizzer to take over Trina’s previous role with no complaints; in “Tight Knit Family (Reprise)” Marvin literally states, “I want a wife who knows what love is” as if he wants a wife when we clearly know that is not the case.

Not only that, it demonstrates Marvin’s continual disrespect for Whizzer’s emotions as the statement clearly shows his disregard for whatever Whizzer is feeling: “hating him” or “needing him.” Marvin doesn’t believe that Whizzer loves him and so he self-sabotages through dismissing his own, and Whizzer’s, emotions.

Marvin’s self-centeredness is not something the musical shies away from admitting and thus us a prime example of just that. It highlights Marvin’s selfish nature, prioritizing his own needs and desires over Whizzer’s.

The subject of the lyrics pertaining to food is so fitting. The continued textual theme of food in the Marvin Trilogy is one of my favorite things to point out and it deserves its own analysis post but for now I’ll stick to writing about how these lyrics highlight Marvin’s particular relationship with meals and cooking. With a concept like this that unmistakably dates all the way back to the sequel, with In Trousers specifically honing in on his obsession with meals with songs like, “How Marvin Eats His Breakfast” and continues to plague the rest of the trilogy.

This Had Better Come to a Stop (Falsettos)

The lyrics in Falsettos differ. I am curious as to why the lyrics were replaced. In the context of Marvin’s character and the pair's relationship, the remark is so meaningful that its removal feels like a missed opportunity; I almost feel robbed due to its absence. Not that I dislike the new lyrics by any means; rather, I adore them.

The entire exchange between Marvin and Whizzer during the beginning of this number is truly one of my favorite scenes in the entire musical. The acting in this singular minute of dialogue is breathtaking, it’s so grounded and characterizes the pair insanely well.

Even though it’s directed at Whizzer, Marvin’s remark on how “Life can be wonderful” is him reassuring himself of that fact, not Whizzer. In this scene, he shows no regard for Whizzer’s emotions; continuing the very one sided nature of the exchange the two are enduring.

Following the reflection of his life, he narrows down his analysis, remarking on his relationship with Whizzer. With his words now partially directed at the other he states, “Isn’t this wonderful?” seemingly giving Whizzer the floor to voice his opinion. Which, in the proshot, Whizzer eagerly does, or rather, attempts to. He begins to reply in an effort to soothe the other and point out the truth in his statement, but an insecure Marvin, who admittedly enjoys picking fights over trivial issues, interrupts him, continuing to stir the pot.

Whizzer’s actions heavily contrast his nature in previous scenes. Unlike “The Thrill of First Love” which introduces us to their relationship, describing how both Marvin and Whizzer both enjoy fighting stating how “of all the lesser passions” they “like fighting most.” Marvin is still acting under this notion. Despite this, Whizzer acts maturely in this situation, making an effort to have a sincere discussion. This is the first time we see Whizzer’s genuine investment in the committed aspect of their relationship, showing there is more to him than originally presented. It’s just another example of how he’s not so great at continuing his facade of not wanting something serious while actively pursuing exactly that. Namely how it explicitly states that he’s had dinners with Marvin’s immediate family and has familiarized himself with his child to the extent that he has.

As previously mentioned, the acting in this scene is amazing. Depending on the performance there are plenty of conclusions that can be drawn from their own interpretations and I’ve had varying ones over the years but it’s undeniable that their body language speaks volumes.

I wish I had access to any stage directions from this moment, but alas I will just be describing what I see:

Whizzer is provoked and stands up to emphasize his point. Marvin then grabs the collar of Whizzer’s suit and shakes him while proclaiming “Life can be wonderful.” He lets go and continues with “Isn’t this wonderful?” Following this Whizzer reaches out to reassure him but Marvin is quick to push him away to which Whizzer flinches or at least experiences a full-body pause to represent shock or dismay and he spends the rest of the confrontation stone faced after freezing up.

Marvin’s display is insanely contradicting, he speaks so gently at moments yet aggressive is at the same time. Due to this Whizzer is left confused, scared even, during their interaction with his whole demeanor changing when Marvin puts his hands on him.

TLDR. I adore both renditions of “This Had Better Come to a Stop.” It’s arguably my favorite song in the entire Falsettos soundtrack and I love both variants of these lyrics. I feel like Marvin as I practically profess how, “I want it all” as I wish these lines could coexist in the same version because of how impactful and relevant they are.

[crumblinggothicarchitecture]

While I agree with most of your posts

I think bringing up grammar in song writing is just kinda weird

Like as long as a song isn't as egregiously grammatically incorrect as 'I'll do what I should have did' (thank you deacon blue) it just isn't a relevant criticism?

Even the song writer you respect most probably doesn't write their songs like an essay they can lose marks for. And that's a good thing! Songs would be a lot worse if writers were worrying about these things

It's just such a bizarre thing to bring up- and unfortunately it kinda makes your other points look less valid because it comes across as weird and petty and like you'll drag Swift for anything (Plus obsessions with 'correct' grammar is just rooted in abliesm, classism and racism- so yeah not a good look)

Plus bringing up your literature degree... like you never studied poetry? Which famously plays with grammar and sentence structure? Like that's inherent to the genre and while very little of TTPD is poetic, lyrics are still most similar to poems then they are to essays or journal articles

Sorry you just really hit a nerve here cos it's just such a ridiculous thing to bring up.

Okay, yes people don't write songs like essay's. However, they often still use determinable grammar rules in art.  

You are keying into the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammar rules. 

The prescriptive rules are ones that you are most likely to find first listed in dictionaries or textbooks. Descriptive grammar rules contend with the dialectal differences and slang. In either case, rules and stipulations or exceptions are noted in various linguistic analysis of the demographic's dialect. Both subgroups of grammar are consistently evolving as the use of the English language changes over time.  

Before I move on, I just want to say that I am well-aware of the deep history surrounding the debates on proper grammar. These debates, of course stem, from sociohistorical issues surrounding class, race, and ableist attitudes. You are correct. However, the academic conversation on grammar and linguistics has advanced dramatically into the subdivision of grammar-practices with respect to dialectal and cultural differences. I judge Taylor Swift's grammar as similar to my own, since she claims to be from my “neck of the woods.” Thus, I feel it is entirely appropriate for me to throw metaphorical tomatoes at her.  

 In the juncture of this difference on prescriptive and descriptive, I want to make that point that people who utilize the difference well often take prescriptive rules and bend them to fit their specific thematic point, thus the lyric forms to its set of descriptive grammar rules. These artists do it with such finesse and precision, unlike Taylor Swift, that it’s nearly awe-inspiring.  

For instance, Kendrick Lamar uses many AAVE typical syntactical structures to make his music personalized art. He won a Pulitzer for it. Take, as an example, the intro to his song “Humble” in which he writes, “Nobody pray for me / It been that day for me” (2017). This is not grammatically correct according to the prescriptive grammar rules laid out in the 1940’s. However, linguistic scholars do not operate on so strict a pendulum anymore. Notice, too, that Lamar is not actually breaking any grammatical rules, only playing with the purpose and form of his syntax, when we take into account the dialectical intention with which he uses “it been” as a poignant use of the past participle form of the verb “to be.” Thus, the simple sentence of “it is” changes into the “it been” as a subjective call first to his cultural dialect and to the thematic gesture of the song. As the phrase “it been” leaves out the helping verb “have” which would put the phrase into present progressive tense should it be present; however, it’s noticeable absence as a stiff detraction from prescriptive grammar rules, focuses Lamar’s thematic point on moving the audience to mediate on the past as it intrudes on the present time. His use of language discrepancy between prescriptive and descriptive rules focuses recognition on his dialectal culture and on his main thematic point as it hinges on making sure to notice where you’ve been in life in order to stay humble and live with authenticity. He is a masterclass on descriptive grammar being used in such a beautifully artistic way that I am damn near in tears for his music.  

Okay, moving onto to your point about poetry not being grammatically correct. You are quite wrong here, because poetry "plays" with syntax but it does not throw the rules out. Much like the example I laid out above, poetry does the same thing wherein it plays with prescriptive grammar in a thoughtful way that often ties into the moral or theme of the work. Poetry centers on a different form of syntactical methodology... yes, you are right. However, the emphasis is still on the necessity of understanding grammar structures like poetic feet, meter, rhyme scheme (etc). It's not a free-for-all. The best poets of the last 6 centuries have been some with the most linguistically precise sentence structure that I've ever read. I can give you examples, but if I do that this answer will become a million words long.  

I am, however, sorry to have struck a nerve or come-off like a know-it-all. I was only expressing my frustration that Taylor Swift is apparently one of the biggest artists in the world and she doesn't even bother to ask a friend if the meaning of her phrases gets lost in excessively languishing grammatical structures. For instance, in her song “Chloe or Sam or Marcus or Whatever” she is stacking so many phrases hinging on coordinating conjunctions that the meaning of the phrase itself loses any poignant message. She writes:

Named Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus And I just watched it happen As the decade would play us for fools And you saw my bones out with somebody new Who seemed like he would've bullied you in school And you just watched it happen (Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus).

In this stanza alone there are 6 coordinating conjunctions stacked together, interspersed with additional prepositional phrases and 2 extra relative clauses. It is the most egregious run-on sentence I have ever seen published before. I've seen better, cleaner prose in the work I've graded from High School freshmen. Not only could she have said it in less words, but the way she is writing it makes it drag on and on. The meaning gets lost, and any emotional impact is shut down because people get lost in the wordiness.

It’s a failure on her part, and it’s clear how just writing a run on sentence with no meaning is so much different than the way that someone like Lamar is masterfully arranging language to fit his purpose.  It's offensive that she gets to make a million-billion dollars off so little effort. 

Sorry, I wrote you an essay, but I am so incredibly passionate about writing. Also, I’ve been listening to Lamar a lot today because of his recent diss track, and it just reminded about how much of a lyrical genius he is. Sorry, I detoured into a rant about how cool he is too. And I need people to understand that I am not critiquing Swift because I need to dunk on someone in order to bolster my own sense of self-worth. I just want better mainstream art, and I want people to have better, stronger art with which to engage.  

I did not mean to hurt your feelings.  You are quite right that obsession with "proper" grammar is bullshit; however, I am not looking for some old fashioned "proper" nonsense. I want people to write like Lamar, with intelligence and passion while he bends the notions of grammar, not like Taylor Swift with obvious run-on obfuscated and stupid phrases.

edit: Also, good writers do actually worry about grammar. It has to do with illocutionary forces behind the phrases. The best among us knows the language inside and out, and that is why they are the best writers.

Edit 2: Also, I've been thinking about this, but what do you think literary and poetry critics do? You say it's bizarre to critique Taylor Swift’s poor grasp of the English language? Of course, I'm critiquing that... she's the one who calls herself a writer. I don't go around checking everyone's grammar, but if you call yourself a "good" writer and a poet, obviously expect people to analyze the words on the page.

[max-nico]

Songs to listen to for maximum Tails angst, as well as a run down of how I daydream to them

Enjoy, or don't, and feel free to add your own. I'm always looking for new music recommendations.

Multiple paragraph incoming, you have been warned

The Tornado, Owl City

Starting off with an absolute BANGER !!!!! I'm obsessed with Owl City so don't @ me about this lol. In this song Adam Young is telling a story about a young boy delivering papers on his bike, when a tornado hits. Miraculously, he survives.

To me, this song is about Tails gearing up to leave in the tornado. As he begins to fly over the ocean a storm hits, and eventually turns into a tornado. As the music crescendos the storm gets worse, and eventually the plane crashes into the ocean (specifically at 2:05, you can't tell me it doesn't sound like a Wii sports snorkeling mini game). By the time the lyrics come in he's grabbed the chaos emerald from the back of his plane and he's trying to get out of the water. At the line "the shadows slowly melted as I was hunkered down" Tails spots angel island and he flies up there and it's a happy ending yayyyy

I Was an Island, John-Allison Weiss

Honestly I don't have like a particular scene or daydream to this. This song just makes me feel things when I listen to it, and I think Tails would really relate. I think specifically NINE would relate actually, but any Tails variation will do tbh

"I can't do this alone anymore, I'm no good on my own anymore. What did I do to do deserve this? What did you do to me? Baby come back, you know I don't wanna be free." Is just something I feel like Nine would relate to idk

Bugbear, Chloe Moriondro

I don't have a particular daydream to this one either but this song is so Tails to me. This is so him. Y'all aren't listening she said "my brain is surrounded by school kids who all got their valedictorian course, while I couldn't care enough about my 3.8, no matter how hard I try I'm still not trying hard enough to be... Great." YOU'RE TELLING ME HE DOESN'T RELATE TO THAT ?!!?!!

Talk To Me, Cavetown

This is so Sonic talking to Tails to me. "You don't have to be a prodigy to be unique, you don't have to know what to say or what to think, you don't have to be anybody you can never be, that's alright, let it out, talk to me." Is something Sonic has said to Tails at least once and you can't convince me otherwise.

This song is just so comforting. Listening to this makes me warm with brotherly feels.

Vanilla Twilight, Owl City

I used to cry to this song, so tread lightly sympathetic criers lol.

This daydream takes place sometime after Sonic Frontiers when Tails decides to go his own way, leaving Sonic by himself. It switches between their POVs depending on the lyric. For example, one of Sonic's lyrics is "cause I'll doze off safe and soundly, but I'll miss your arms around me, I'll send a postcard to you dear, cause I wish you were here." And one of Tails' lyrics is "I'll find repose in new ways, though I haven't slept in 2 days, cause cold nostalgia chills me to the bone."

They'll reunite someday I swear

Overgrown Garden, Beetlebug

Ow ouch ffff-ouch ouchie owwwieeeeeee ಥ⁠_⁠ಥ sorry guys this one involves major character death lol

So the actual song is about an abusive relationship using flower metaphors and symbolism, but I didn't know that when I started listening so this daydream has nothing to do with that. With that being said...

Every chorus is Tails at a different age wondering if Sonic will abandon him, no matter how much Sonic reassures him the thought just sticks in the back of his mind even if he doesn't voice it. Things don't start to get juicy until the 3rd verse, "The rhododendrons crimson flame, set fire to the sleepy air, and lit the early morning haze, that glistened in your tangled hair." I understand that the flame is a metaphor and there's no actual flame but I don't care, in my daydream there's actual flames because Sonic and Tails are in the middle of a flower field that's been engulfed in them.

At the lyric "You place a crown of marigolds on my head, and then you said, as you tried to pull your bloody hands away" Sonic is laying against the only tree in sight, a big bloody wound in his abdomen with Tails trying to stop the bleeding. And then when the chorus comes in again, it's Sonic comforting Tails while he bleeds out on a battlefield. When Tails asked "I wonder if you'll leave me, behind someday, among the wildflowers and lilies, sleeping by the way" he meant like runaway and abandon him on an adventure, not die in a burning flower field you idiot ಥ⁠_⁠ಥ

Blue Hair, TV Girl

For maximum feels, listen to Vanilla Twilight directly after listening to this

I feel like a lot of y'all are already gonna know this one, and I respect that. I'm not super sure what this song is actually about but I like their funny words so it's okay lol

This is another song from Sonics POV to me. It's Sonic talking to his friends at different times about Tails growing up and not needing him anymore. In this case, Tails has to "cut her blue hair off" and Sonic is the blue hair if you couldn't tell lol like "and I tried, to hold her, but it didn't really last long, she's getting older. I guess she's gotta cut her blue hair off".

There's also the line right before that one "what seems so blue in the sunlight, by the night was a pale green" blue and green are literally their eye colors this song was meant for them.

This isn't all of them, we'd be here all day if I listed every single one lol. Don't be surprised if I follow up with more song rec posts bc I love talking about music, and please give me some recs as well

[bengiyo]

Shuffle your on-repeat playlist and then list the first ten songs!*

*any playlist on any platform will do!

I was tagged by @troubled-mind and @lurkingshan. I suppose it's time to see how much synthwave has taken over my listening. I use Spotify, but I'll leave links to YouTube for easier access.

Can't Stop Falling in Love - W O L F C L U B - This is definitely a byproduct of basically doing mixes of The Midnight, who are probably my favorite current band. I love the simplicity of this song's lyrics and the strength of the drums underpinning the emotions.

Into the Light - J.Views (feat. Wildclub) - I just really love the vocals of this so much. It's a song about being a bit lost in yourself and finding your way out through another person, and then going forward together. I don't think this song has left my On Repeat in over three years.

Los Angeles - The Midnight - I really love when songs about cities feel really specific to them. This feels like an homage to nights in LA in a way that I find makes me yearn for a place I've never been outside of movies. The Midnight have been the first band to really shake up my listening habits in a long time.

Summer Love - Trevor Something - This is another byproduct of The Midnight listening. I like this song because a lot of songs about summer love sound like they're for teenagers, but this feels adult in a nostalgic way. Do the 20 somethings even drop acid anymore?

Dawn / Sea - Dem Yuut - I don't think this song will ever leave this playlist. There's something so honest about admitting you wanna know "what it feels like when you can't quit it."

1984 (Reprise) - Siamese Youth - The primary appeal of synthwave and outrun is 80s nostalgia. I was born in the 90s, but many of my favorite movies were made in the 80s and there's a sense constantly that things took a turn after that.

Seasons (Waiting on You) - Future Islands - If I don't see them live in the next few years I will lose my cool. Prior to COVID, Future Islands spent most of their time on the road, and many of their songs are about how they feel distant from all of the people they love. Sam Herring has a knack for poetry in his lyrics, and I often think about the line "People change, but you know some people never do. You know when people change, they gain a peace but they lose one too."

Gloria - The Midnight - They were bound to show up multiple times on this list. This song kind of feels like a high in the midst of a manic episode.

Sleepwalker - The Wallflowers - This one is kind of surprise. I don't remember listening to The Wallflowers that much recently. I love Jakob's voice, and I think I was amused by his reference to Sam Cooke's song Cupid in this track.

Ran - Future Islands - My biases remain so consistent. Most of the time this is my favorite Future Islands song. It's hard to love people when you're far away from them, and I like the way this song captures that from the perspective of a band always on the road.

That was a lot of fun! I am kinda glad that some of my classic obsessions haven't been completely shoved out by The Midnight, and also surprised by the Wallflowers making an appearance on this playlist. Spotify is so weird sometimes.

I'll tag @twig-tea , @waitmyturtles, @so-much-yet-to-learn , @shortpplfedup , @liyazaki , @meteorjam , @negrowhat , and @parralex0889 , @wen-kexing-apologist , @happypotato48

[nuwuna]

Redacted Bois and Which K-pop Groups They’d Stan

Idk if there are a lot of K-pop+redacted fans there are out there but I made this for funsies 😋🫶🏼

David is more of a casual listener, but whenever he’s working out or doing yard work, he listens to EXO. He got really into it when he was younger and bought one of their albums. He then played it for a whole month. Angel was trying not to laugh when he accidentally played Monster on the speakers near the pool (they secretly liked it tho).

Asher definitely listens to Block B. He likes to blast their music anytime, anywhere. On the way to the grocery store? Absolutely banging to Very Good. Cooking? Accidentally burning the food to Nalili Mambo. Trying to get Babe’s attention? Passionately singing Her. He just gets really hyped when he listens to them.

Milo is secretly an aghase and could talk about GOT7 for hours if you ask him about it. He's really passionate about them and their music. Sometimes he uses Teenager or If You Do as entrance music, like sitting on the bed waiting for Sweetheart to come in. He was pretty upset when they announced that they won't be actively making music together, but he still enjoys all of their solo projects/music.

Vincent is a huge ENHYPEN stan. Their whole concept is vampires but despite that, Vincent really likes their music. He and Lovely started watching their survival show and then became obsessed with them once they debuted. He knows the point dance from each title track and learned the Bite Me partner choreo with Lovely.

Sam listens to Girls’ Generation as a guilty pleasure. He accidentally clicked on the music video for Gee back in 2008 and has followed them ever since. He was pretty embarrassed when Darlin’ caught him listening to it, but he was able to convince them to listen to it with him.

Gavin doesn’t really stan a certain group but likes a lot of solo artists, specifically Taemin, Kai, and Hwa Sa. He just feels so connected to their music and actively follows their releases. He was listening to some of their music one day, Freelancer asked what he was listening to, he showed them and they liked it too. They've definitely listened to Mmmh by Kai while making out. he is mr rover and he is coming over

Lasko doesn't listen to really big groups in the industry and instead likes the K-bands more, specifically Day6. He gets into his feels when he listens to them (especially since i hc that hes a hopeless romantic). He learned Korean just so he could sing Congratulations and Zombie even though theres an english ver.

Damien got really into SHINee in high school. He was kind of a toxic stan though 💀. He would get into fights on Twitter and (almost) physical fights at school. He would stay up until 3 am to start streaming music the moment the MVs would drop and then yell at people online to start streaming. But don't worry, he's calmed down now. He gets pretty nostalgic when Sherlock plays on shuffle.

Huxley really liked GFRIEND and supported them in any way that he could, such as streaming, buying albums, and voting them for MusicBank. He tried to show Damien their songs and played Rough but Damien wasn't really into it. He was devastated when they disbanded and Damien had to comfort him for a whole week. He's just such a wholesome girl group stan, it's adorable.

Caelum likes to dance and sing to a lot of PENTAGON and SEVENTEEN songs, even though he doesn't know what the lyrics mean. His favorite songs are Naughty Boy and Pretty U, respectively. Both groups have a lot of members, but he doesn't know all of them. He likes to watch the MVs with Freelancer and point out the few members he does know.

Elliott likes TXT's more chill songs like Fairy of Shampoo and Ghosting. He's a very relaxed fan when it comes to them. He knows all the members and their songs but isn't super active in the community or when it comes to buying merch. Whenever a new album comes out he'll listen to it for about a week and then put his favorites into a playlist. Sunshine started liking them because of him and probably asked him to make a dreamscape that was a TXT concert.

Blake isn't really into it but randomly listened to Love Scenario by iKON and cried to it after looking up the lyrics. He had it on repeat for a whole week.

Guy fell into the “I just want to know their names” trope with TWICE and BTS. He thought it would be funny if he randomly/ironically knew the members’ names and ended up being a HUGE stan of both. Bought every album, lightstick, and a lot of official merch. He’s been to a lot of their concerts and literally screams the fan chants. He biases Jin and Dahyun and has their photo cards in his phone case, as well as an RJ sticker.

Geordi saw NewJeans in a Coca-cola advertisement, decided to check out their music, and ended up really liking their music. It introduced him to K-pop and he casually listens to a lot of groups, but NewJeans is his ult. Their songs are really catchy so they end up playing in his mind 24/7, sometimes somehow mixing with the Tetris theme. He likes all of their songs but his current favorites are Super Shy and ASAP.

[tomorrowxtogether]

TOMORROW X TOGETHER Unpack the “Story of Growth” in New Album The Name Chapter: FREEFALL

"I thought about how far we’ve come," says Beomgyu

In the music video for TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s new single, “Chasing That Feeling,” Soobin, Yeonjun, Beomgyu, Taehyun, and Hueningkai quite literally crash-land back on earth. It’s an apt visual for the focus track off their latest project, The Name Chapter: FREEFALL, which brings the boys back to reality after their spring EPfeatured a dreamy stint in a Neverland setting.

While TXT’s discography has explored young love and other narratives, so much of the group’s music hovers around themes of growing up in an increasingly complicated world. “We want to talk about the experiences that are unique to our generation,” Hueningkai tells Consequence. The Name Chapter: FREEFALL is the group’s first LP in over two years, and their longest collection of new music since 2021’s The Chaos Chapter: FREEZE. There are a few new angles to this project — a harder commitment to rock along with playing around with Jersey club hallmarks — but it’s a TOMORROW X TOGETHER project through and through.

“Happily Ever After,” like 2021’s “Ice Cream,”sounds bright but contains more serious themes in the lyrics . There’s also a song dedicated specifically from the members to their beloved fan base, MOA, titled “Blue Spring.” With more lyrical contributions than ever before from the members themselves, it’s exciting seeing TXT continue to develop as artists and creatives, and Soobin, Yeonjun, Beomgyu, Taehyun, and Hueningkai are back to reflect on the process. Read the full interview with the members below, and catch the music video for “Chasing That Feeling.”

I feel like this album goes bigger with ideas you’ve played with before. Where “Good Boy Gone Bad” and “0X1 LOVESONG” played with rock sounds, “Growing Pain” dives all the way in. Meanwhile, “Chasing That Feeling” is straight-up 80s synth. What are some words you guys would use to describe this project as a whole?

Soobin: I’d call it a story of growth. It looks at the growing pains of our generation and picks up where we left off in our previous album. The main backdrop for the previous album was this beautiful but irresponsible Neverland. This album is about leaving this Neverland and facing the real world. Growing pains are inevitable in this process, and we wanted to delve into that in this album.

Yeonjun: I’d say a soundtrack for today’s youth. We wanted to talk about the courage and determination of today’s youth to face reality head-on.

I feel like you guys have accomplished so many goals we’ve talked about over the past few years. In 2022, you told me you hoped to perform at bigger venues, and to do well at your first appearance at Lollapalooza. You’ve since crushed a stadium tour, dome concerts in Japan, and headlined Lolla! How does it feel to see those things happen in real time? 

Taehyun: As you said, this year has been a really big year for us with our Lollapalooza headliner set, first U.S. stadium tour, and most recently the “Back For More” (with Anitta) performance at the MTV VMAs. It’s an incredible honor to perform at such iconic venues and events and be able to share our music to connect with a wider audience. I’m very proud of the hard work we put in, but we won’t be able to do this without our fans’ support, so we are truly thankful for them.

To that point, now that you’ve accomplished a few really huge goals, what do some immediate next steps look like for you? What are some smaller goals you have for finishing out 2023?

Hueningkai: The new album is another opportunity for us to connect with MOA, so I just want to enjoy myself and cherish each moment. As it’s our first studio album in a little over two years, we really gave our all into it. I hope that the album resonates with as many people as possible around the world.

I’m obsessed with “Deep Down,” it’s easily my favorite on the album. The synth-pop direction is so fun. Do any of you have special memories from being in the studio, for this song or others on the album?

Beomgyu: It was a lot of fun recording “Deep Down.” “Deep Down” talks about how a “horn,” something that you try to keep hidden, can actually be a crown, or a source of hope that represents who you are. There’s a clear connection to our debut single, “CROWN,” so while recording, I was reminded by those times as a lot of different emotions came to mind. I thought about how far we’ve come, both as individuals as well as artists.

Which song on the record do you feel is the most quintessentially TOMORROW X TOGETHER?

Hueningkai: I’d say “Happily Ever After.” It’s a song about coming to terms with the fact that there are no fairytale endings in reality. And with that realization, instead of giving into despair, you can decide to write your own story. That’s something that we as a group have tried to do with our music over the years. We want to talk about the experiences that are unique to our generation. I’d say that it’s a song that really speaks to our DNA as a group.

I know how much you guys love the song “Blue Spring,” and it’s so different from some of your other songs dedicated to MOA, like “Sweat” or “MOA Diary.” Why do you think the song fit with the concept of The Name Chapter: FREEFALL?

Beomgyu: This album looks at the pain and challenges of reality, but within this reality, there are still magical moments that we share with one another. On “Blue Spring,” we compare our fans to spring that brightens up a blue world. Our fans have always been part of our magical moments that fuel our spirit, so it felt right that this song was included in the album.

I love seeing you all becoming more and more involved with lyric writing with each project. Do any of you have something you’ve learned about your songwriting process during the making of this album that you’d like to share?

Taehyun: I think we have become better at putting our honest thoughts and emotions into our lyrics. This comes as a result of many hours of writing that we put in over the years, but I think it also has to do with the fact that we have become more confident in the kind of message and music we want to share with the world. I hope many people can feel that when they listen to our music.

All five of you wrote for the lyrics in “Blue Spring.” Do you have any dreams of someday sharing an entirely self-written project?

Yeonjun: That’d be amazing. Manifesting that for the future! I do love working with other songwriters. I’m always learning a lot from them. We also feed off each other’s creativity, so it’s an experience I very much enjoy.

Is there anything else we haven’t touched on that you’d like to share?

Soobin: This album talks about reality as it is, which is also reflected in our visuals for the album. We shot the music video for our lead single at Universal Studios, but it looks as if we land somewhere in a real city like New York or London. We wanted to show a world seen without a filter, so I think that’s another element that our fans can enjoy along with the music.

[prettyoddfever]

hi! there’s a poem that brendon supposedly posted in august 2008 on “dylan’s myspace” that a lot of fans call “the summer poem” and i was wondering if you could confirm if he wrote it or not. i know you touched on the fact that there were a lot of fake accounts made around that time, but this specific poem has always felt more genuine than other posts and the writing style fits his tone. i’ve always really liked it, but i was never 100% sure of its validity. thank you!

ok so I had to google this to see what the "summer poem" was and I found this tumblr post, which had this link at the bottom:

and that links to the dilloncornbreadandchicken myspace as the source of that poem, which explains everything.

So towards the end of the Honda Civic Tour (and shortly after Pete Wentz got married), one of Pete's dog Hemingway's supposed extra myspace accounts posted a bulletin that said “it would make me happy if you would add my buddy dillon. here's his myspace" and linked to the dilloncornbreadandchicken account. The fact that Dylan's name was spelled wrong and she was misgendered was a little weird. Also, Hemingway's real account didn't post anything about this. (Side note: Yes, Panic's myspace got hacked around the end of the Honda Civic Tour, so even the legit myspace accounts could occasionally do something unusual. Also can I please just complain that the hackers could have posted some highly entertaining stuff "from Adam" on Panic's myspace if they'd had any imagination. Like we all know what's going on, so why not just do something absurd for a laugh).

But the dilloncornbreadandchicken account seemed questionable on its own anyways. Keep in mind that a lot of fans were obsessed with the idea that Brendon & Shane were dating... like a lot of the Ryden enthusiasm got channeled there in 2008 because at least it still implied that Brendon was into guys.

Some random things that seemed odd to me:

Several of the pictures on that myspace were absolutely not Dylan. Similar looking dog, but definitely not her.

One of the songs that played on Dillon’s profile was “Ur So Gay” by Katy Perry.

The account said things like "yea i have 2 daddys... out of the ordinary? daddy brendon and shane both take excellent care of me.”

Many girls had convos with the “Shane and Brendon” who ran that myspace. That account was also very active with replying & commenting on other's profiles. June was still a busy month for the real Brendon, who was finishing the Honda Civic Tour (and doing a lot of publicity/media stuff) and then getting ready for Europe.

In July (while the band was still in Europe), fans asked Shane about Brendon's comment to Kerrang about how the last time he cried was when he heard that Dylan ran away for a few days. Shane explained that Dylan was living with his parents while Panic was on tour, and that she'd run away on a nearby golf course to chase rabbits for a few days. Shane also apparently seemed confused when a fan at the Astoria show told him she was friends with Dylan on myspace.

There were a ton of fake myspace & facebook accounts for everyone in PATD over the years. Some of them even managed to spell Brendon's name right. But Brendon just would not be talking to fans on myspace like that (or even be on myspace at that point period). The band had stopped doing even basic journal updates by 2008, but even in 2006 Brendon & Ryan had put a lot of distance between themselves and fans, and we heard from them less & less. The guys didn't even run their band's social media in the Fever era. This whole episode reminded me of how in late 2006 many middle school girls swore they'd been talking to Ryan on AIM and he'd shared secret lyrics with them, and I was like omg common sense please.

The person who wrote that "summer poem" sounds like a school schedule still factored into their awareness, and they're possibly trying to make a subtle connection to Brendon's old part_time_lovah livejournal account. I stopped paying attention to the dilloncornbreadandchicken myspace after seeing so many big fans similarly conclude that it was fake, so I don't remember much about the poem. I'll only say that it should be regarded with some suspicion... even just posting a poem anywhere online like that would have been very out of character for Brendon. (For context, that poem was posted while Brendon was busy being a tired, sick, sweaty mess on tour in Asia and the band was heading to Australia next).

[merakiui]

WAAA MERA I LOVE MONOPS'S REFLECTION SO MUCHHHH

im obsessed with the way you portrayed jade in the story. like its not everyday that i get to see him written in a way that totally doesnt hide his insanity at all. reading monops's reflection was just so <33 aaa tysm for writing smth so amazing!!!

you mentioned before that monops!jade is very "rotten girl grotesque romance", and i totally agree, but i was actually reminded of another old yandere vocaloid song when i read the fic! idk if you know it, but its called "pure love restraint". its a really good song hehe, you should totally check it out if you dont already know it!

oh also speaking of songs, i recently started listening to loveit? by biz since you mentioned it a while ago, and i love the song so much >< do you happen to have any other song recommendations because clearly you have great taste in music~

also as a final note, i cant wait for tmdg hehe 👉👈

-kanata <3

AAAAA THANK YOU!!!!! >w< I'm so happy you enjoyed Monops's Reflection!!!! Jade is so wildly deranged in that fic. He truly is the embodiment of the harsh, brutal depths he hails from. ;;;; seeing Reader in the storage closet with Floyd pushed him over the edge he'd been teetering on for so long now. T^T he's far surpassed the point of no return. I had so much fun finishing this fic and portraying Jade in such a terrifying manner. And poor Reader had no idea what hid behind that seemingly pleasant smile of his until it was too late...

There are so many layers to Monops!Jade. How he gets so disgusted at the sight and thought of you with anyone else. How it's not really sexual gratification he's after; he's just chasing some thrill he's yet to figure out in its entirety, which is why he doesn't touch you at all during the non-con scene. Because it's not your pleasure he cares about; he could care less whether you feel good or not. How his sanity is so thin and threadbare that it's hardly there at all. How he fails to recognize that, despite the similarities he shares with Floyd, he's still his own person, still different, but not different enough for you to look his way, apparently. And then there's the meaning of Monops, which is a "one-eyed creature." >:D aaaaa he's truly the worst.

OOOOO "true love restraint"!!!!!!! I love that song!!! That song definitely has the vibes that Monops!Jade exudes!! And I'm happy you enjoyed listening to "loveit." :D it's a very good song, but then all of biz's songs are amazing!!!

>:) I always have song recommendations to share!! I'll list a few of my favorite (lesser known) Vocaloid songs with dark undertones/stories below, but if there's any specific genre you'd like recs for please let me know!!!

✧ insanity blue (all of kashii moimi's songs are fantastic!!! i recommend them, but this one is my all-time favorite hehe)

✧ wolfism (there's also a jade utau cover of this song. <3 both are very good.)

✧ go to daitokai (the lyrics for this one are very nsfw, but this song is very catchy.)

✧ biohazard (the original is very good, but i love the sonika cover so much!!)

✧ distortion love (this piko cover is everything. <3)

✧ ◇◇ (i love this song and the songs that are similar to [redacted]'s style. i'm not sure if you know of these style of utau songs (the "no title" songs), but in 2020 they became especially popular and a lot of people online began to call it a secret cult of sorts, where you couldn't search these videos normally because they didn't have a title to search for, so instead the videos would find you.)

✧ lamprey hole (i love this song forever!!!!!)

✧ meiro (it's so so good!!!)

✧ no title (this song is a banger!!!!!!!!! it got me through quarantine as did all the other no title songs and tributes. :D)

I will stop here or else the list will go on endlessly, but if you ever wish to hear new music I will be happy to share some recommendations!!! Also, thank you for looking forward to tmdg!!!!! <3 it grows closer to completion with every passing day!!!!

[hyperfixationiris]

(In advance I apologize for any grammatical or syntax error that I may have, English is not my first language).

The Separated AU by @cupcakeslushie has been my complete adoration and obsession in recent days, so (with the author's permission) I created this playlist for Separated!Donnie!

I have chosen the songs mostly for their lyrics, so the musical genres may be all over the place, hehe.

The title comes from the mini comic "Thirds", also part of the Separated AU and creation of Cupcakeslushie, because damn, that interaction between Donnie and Splinter hit me hard.

That there are thirty-three songs (Three Three) in the playlist is... totally a coincidence! But it is one of which I feel very proud!

You can listen it on YouTube here or on Spotify here (I recommend the YouTube version more, since on Spotify I couldn't find all the songs or not in the versions I wanted).

Below is a brief explanation of why I chose some of the songs, (you can ignore this if you like) But enjoy the music and go see the Separated AU, I recommend it with all my heart!

(This part is very based on my interpretation of Sep!Donnie, so I may be wrong about some things.)

— "Saint Bernard" and "Cradles" are the first songs for being the ones I most associated with Donnie. The first for talking about being a failure and that there is something intrinsically "wrong" with you. The second I associated with his way of seeing the world and the fact that he does not perceive what has been done to him as abuse.

— The instrumental melodies I chose I feel they are a good reflection of his mental state, especially in one of his episodes.

— "Papercut" was a song I heard and it was immediately like: "Oh, yes, this is Donnie talking about Three and the hallucinations he has of his brothers".

— "Immer Sie" is one of the few songs I chose with a specific moment in mind, in this case: Donnie attacking his family because he felt they were leaving him behind and abandoning him. The song speaks of a desperate and almost aggressive love, in addition to having in its lyrics a fairly broken syntax. That is why I think it can reflect Donnie's altered mental and emotional state in that specific moment.

— There is a song that clashes a lot with the others and is "Lovefool (Remix)". However I think it represents the affectionate behaviors, although sometimes too intense, of Donnie, as well as his need to be loved.

— I think "Pale Machine" is a song that would play once Donnie was rescued by his family and once he was living with them. Although he is very happy and basically the situation is a dream come true, that does not mean that all his problems are fixed.

— Two other songs for specific moments are "What I've Done" and "Cop Graveyard". I am referring to the moment Mikey finds out about the collars his brother made for Big Mama, and when Donnie realizes that he basically helped Shredder poison Leo's mind.

— "Rolling Girl" is the first of the comfort songs, being a reflection of the way Donnie sees himself and how his family is doing everything possible to help him out of that vicious circle.

— I see "Demons" as a song dedicated to the relationship between Donnie and Vee (which I love). In turn, "Devil Town" would be Donnie's relationship with Leo, Raph and Mikey.

— "New Soul" is basically Donnie on the road to recovery, with its ups and downs.

— Finally, "Somewhere I Belong" is not exactly a happy or entirely positive song, but whose central theme is something that Donnie has been working on and has wished all his life: a place to belong to.

And with this ends my TED Talk, thanks for coming.

[thesweetnessofspring]

Why don't you like swift? Is it her specifically?

I love how making tags in one random post has gotten me this ask, because like, in general my stance is to ignore her and not talk about it, use my tumblr filters and whatnot to ignore her existence the best I can. But I'm getting asked so here's my answer. I'm going fully honest with this because someone asked me to, so if this pop star is your idol, ignore this and dni. It's just my opinion and arguing with me will only entrench my hatred deeper, as evidenced by my past experience with her fans. Also this is hella long, so fair warning.

There are a lot of reasons why I hate that singer. Some range from my own adolescent dramatics to bad interactions with her fans to just really not being into celebrity culture and therefore her whole persona/existence. I also want to say that everything I know about Swift I've learned against my will, so some of this information may be incomplete, but I don't feel the need to look up details about her. If I could, I would never have to hear about her or her music ever again.

I don't like her music. I actually really despise it and have since she got popular when I was in high school. Now I've come to realize if I hate a piece of media, it usually either did an injustice to something I love (like the Ella Enchanted movie) or it's something I didn't like but it became inescapable. Swift mostly falls into the latter. I know people have been trying to take back "cringe" but I can't help it. When I have to hear Swift's music, I CRINGE and I have since high school. Love Story was the stupidest """story""" to me with huge plotholes. You Belong With Me was incredibly entitled and I still side with cheerleader girl in that one, like that is HER boyfriend who HE chose to date. In general, all of her music (that I heard) in those early years were girl-crying-over-useless-boy and that annoyed me to the high heavens. And I think my dislike turned to hatred when I was told that since I was a girl, I HAD to like her, that she was SOOOOO relatable to teenage girls when my life experience was nothing like hers. And her music being all over the radio, school, my social settings, etc. did not help.

And the thing is, I've heard songs/seen lyrics of hers that I didn't know were hers and I still hated them/thought they were cringe. Like I remember when "We Are Never Getting Back Together" came out. I heard it on the radio and thought "who is this new wanna-be Avril Lavigne?? She sucks!" And then the DJ said it was Swift's new song. 💀 A few months ago I was driving my parents to the airport with their car and a song comes on their radio I hadn't heard before, and I immediately think "ugh this song sucks" and then by the chorus I realized it was a Swift song. Even with her new album, when I saw the first meme for that "you wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me" I thought it was an old meme I'd missed and had originated from like, some cringey 12-year-old on Vine or something. Only to find out a grown-ass woman in her 30s who's likely never stepped foot in a psychiatric unit wrote it, which explained how utterly stupid that line is. All of that to say, even when blind, I hate her music. The one (1) exception to that is Blank Space. That one for some reason, I do find catchy. My obsessed cousin got me to listen to Folklore and I didn't HATE that, but I thought it was hella boring. She's either cringe or boring and mediocre and I think at this point, you have to be a fan of her persona to like her music because that's really all I hear her fans talk about. Not the songs themselves, but how they're about her/her life. Or their blorbos.

I think Swift is a spoiled, entitled, privileged white girl who likes to bask in any slight done to her and blow it up like it's the worst injustice done to any human being. She lacks a true core other than being obsessed with herself, her image, and her fame, and chases trending aesthetics instead of finding something real and authentic to her. Authenticity is really important to me. I really can enjoy things other people think of a "cringey" if it's authentic to the creator, but the only thing authentic to Swift is her martyr complex. She borrows aethetics and throws them off easily, never truly mastering any of the genres she stumbles into as a costume instead of an authentic artistic expression. Everything she does is half-baked.

And that's not to say that the press and people online haven't been nasty. That stuff with the deepfake AI rape-porn was horrendous and she doesn't deserve that. Nor did her body being scrutinized as a teenager (or ever). But she got offended by a TV show joking about her having had a lot of boyfriends (which is true!) and as a result, a black actress who was delivering the lines someone else wrote got harassed online. Like what an absolute LOSER. She's a billionaire and the most popular pop star currently alive, and some rando Netflix show has her panties in a twist to the point where she sics her stans to bully an actress??

I'll give Swift this: she is very good at parasocial relationships (to an exploitive degree, imo) and PR. She's turned feminism into her own "you're misogynist if you attack ME!!!!! Like who cares about poor women or women in countries that mine has colonized or abused women or exploited women, anyone who attacks MEEEEE is the worst misogynist around!!!!!" Ugh. And I'm not going to lie, when 1989 came out and I was getting more into feminism I fell for this narrative of hers until her "Bad Blood" music video came out and it struck me how she was a bully. From what I heard, the beef was that Katy Perry "stole" her dancers and TS responded by making a whole music video with some of the biggest female celebrities to show off how everyone was in her corner. Then I thought...oh...she literally doesn't care about feminism (blatantly attacking another woman for something really minor) she only cares about herself!! And I got on the hate-train again. I still think she uses her power to bully other people/keep them in line about her and I swear if I were a man in Hollywood/entertainment, I would never date that woman.

She's certainly not the worst celebrity around. And also, I think to some extent, celebrities who have achieved even half the fame Swift has is likely somewhat conceited and self-centered. Anyone I'm a fan of, I'm a fan of their work first, and if they seem nice then that's a plus, but I also don't bank of them to be perfect, as long as they don't cross over into abusing others. And I don't think (from what I've been forced to know) that Swift is an abuser. Swift reminds me more of that friend-of-a-friend that makes every gathering about her and is fake-nice to you to gather information about you so she can hold it over you socially. If that makes sense.

And also some of her fans have always just been really pushy and annoying. I'm not going to act like I never threw a little temper tantrum in high school when Love Story came on or anything, but I've had my fair share of her fans as roommates and friends and I've really tried to be polite with them a least since college when I'd gotten a little more mature. Two stories really did me in, though: once in college I went on a roadtrip with a friend. We were going to be going through an area with bad radio signals and when that happened we got out the CDs. She suggested the Red album. I politely said I didn't care for Swift, and pointed out another one of her CDs of band I did like. She told me I didn't like Swift because I only heard her stuff on the radio, reached over while she was driving and pulled out the CD and put it in. I didn't want to start some sort of fight trying to get the CD out while she was driving and had to listen to that CD. This friend was trying really hard to get me to like her, but I was just so pissed she hadn't listened to me and I was trapped in there. Halfway through I asked to change it, thinking okay, it's been like 20 minutes, but no, she insisted I'd like the songs in the last half (I didn't, obviously). I also in college had my "golden" birthday and decided to throw a huge party. My roommates and one of our joint friends at the time were big into Swift. They were helping me put it together and I asked that the music they play not be a) violent toward women or b) any of Swift's music. They got the first part but then put all of the "danceable" songs of her newest album at the time on my birthday playlist. Like, not one song. At least five songs. Because they wanted it. All of the other parties and gatherings I clenched my teeth and told myself to get through it, but seriously, my own birthday party they ignored my very simple request because "it's not a party without Taylor!" I literally left my own party until the songs switched. And when I asked them to take any other of her songs off, they didn't. So. Yeah. Even though that was over a decade ago now, it doesn't help my Pavlovian response to her songs or her voice.

I just really don't think she's talented at singing, dancing, acting, or songwriting and seeing all of her everywhere is just SO MUCH.

[lookninjas]

Love Theme from House of Leaves

So.

POE.

Like I said, I don't usually explain the Bad Descriptions from my Bad Description Song Polls. Some of them I work hard on, some of them are just bad puns on the song lyrics or titles or whatever, but ultimately, the bad descriptions aren't really the point. The point is to get a couple people curious about artists they might not have heard before by erasing any preconceptions they might have about the artist, the genre, whatever. It's a goofy little game about my very serious love of music and my genuine desire to get people to experience the joys of just trying something new.

But then there's POE. Right? Specifically, there is Haunted by POE, an album that just straight up every time turns me into a four-hour video by an obsessed YouTuber down a really deep rabbit hole. Which is absolutely fitting, because as it turns out, Haunted comes from the same place as Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves.

You see, POE's real name is Anne Danielewski. Mark is her brother. And, regardless of the protests of the dudes on the MZD forums back in 2004, HoL and Haunted come from the same place -- the death of their father, Tad Danielewski, and their subsequent attempts to reconcile their complicated emotions about their perfectionist father, their estranged mother, and their shared and separate childhoods. The works contrast and complement -- House of Leaves is a labyrinth for the reader to wander; Haunted is a cache of tapes from a lost loved one that both sheds light on the past and casts preconceived notions into doubt. They reference each other (the "Poe T" in HoL, the "growling voice" in "Hey Pretty"), but don't require each other.

Even their creation is tangled. She read his book as he was writing it; he listened to her songs as she recorded them. He read a passage of his book over top of the album's first single when she was told radio was "just not playing women;" she took him on tour with her when she was opening for Depeche Mode. It was from the start a kind of double act.

And then it just wasn't anymore.

If there's a villain in this story, it is -- in a weird twist of foreshadowing -- WarnerMedia. Specifically, it is the disastrous AOL -- Time Warner merger, which saw POE unceremoniously dropped from Time Warner subsidiary Atlantic Records just six weeks after she'd signed a contract with them for three more albums. Copies of second single "Wild" were never sent to radio. Support for the album dried up. The ensuing legal wrangling saw POE's masters sold and resold from one label to another, while POE wound up unable to tour or record under her own pseudonym for years. So while House of Leaves went on to (deserved) classic status, Haunted disappeared.

I am not alone in finding this terrifically unjust. Mark Z. Danielewski himself calls the album "woefully underappreciated." Granted, he's biased, but so am I. I was a POE fan before House of Leaves was published. I discovered HoL through Haunted, although both came in close succession. For me, part of the mystery of the book is how it tangles with the album, how two people can go through the same maze and come out of it in such different locations, the same story told in different languages. But also...

I mean, it's just a hell of an album. Her voice is extraordinary. Her lyrics blend the metaphoric and the extremely literal in terrific ways. The mix of electronica, hip-hop, pop, and experimental is absolutely wired to my tastebuds (there's a reason she wound up invited on tour with the Depeche Mode, after all), and the overall work is plaintive, empowering, heartbreaking, and occasionally terrifying. It's so good. It's so, so good. I would almost be okay if this were her last ever album, it's that good.

I just wish more people were listening to it, you know?

So consider this my call to arms. If you are a House of Leaves fan, or even if you're not, even if the footnotes left you cold, give Haunted a listen. Just a couple songs. Just a taste.

Someone who loves you left a stack of tapes sitting by a boom box for you. Put one in. Press play.