#when that music hit i was ascending bro

[slushy-sash]

bro cooked so hard he split the sea in half

[aberooski]

Not me sobbing at 1 am over fucking Kung Fu Panda music ✋😭

[jackalsinthekitchen]

pop report #6 (billboard 200, week of 2/3/2024)

on dicks, or things that sound like them

I’ve mentioned it before, but my late buddy and I had a different relationship with the pop charts. I was raised – digesting the star-ratings in my dad’s giant album guides like gospel – to distrust the pop cultural world around me. I always felt out of step (like that girl in the Onion article) with the trends of my time; I was always making heroes out of bygone artists out of step with theirs. My bestie similarly distrusted new culture – it being the early 2000s, what was popular was often mean-spirited and overly prefab. But an odd affection for numbers (innate) and a higher tolerance for boomer-sanctioned fluff (instilled) made him pleased as peaches to ride around to the local oldies station. We doubled down on our anachronisms in a bunker of a band, but when we broke up and stepped separately into daylight, we each had new pop epiphanies. Because somewhere between ‘07 and ‘13, radio music got juicy.

Strong melodies are rarely in short supply, but other things had been adjusted. Hip-hop and pop production became indiscernible, the hook emphasis and contrapuntal construction of the latter absorbing the atmospheric and rhythmic virtues of the former. Spearheaded by artists like Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, women (many non-white) took pop over, tamping down indie tumors like Mumford and Sons and keeping the bros at bay. The most conventional such superstar, Taylor Swift, opened her music and mind to the new sonic fashions, while maintaining her foundation of catchy, emotionally inhabitable songs. A vision of a braver, more equitable world felt represented on the radio, and it was a trip to listen to. With digital production outgrowing its ungainly hallmarks, everything started to sound a little like a dream, and by six or seven years ago, what most people wanted to listen to was wonderful.

But pendulums have a way of swinging back, and while I can’t put my finger on what’s changing, I’m at least equipped to note a few data points and go hmmm. For instance: the top five albums currently perching atop Billboard’s 200 chart are by male artists. I’m a lot less savvy when it comes to analyzing the album charts, in some part because my friend talked about them less than the song charts. It’s often a mixed bag of rap platters, country platters, pop platters, soundtrack platters and evergreen old faves (Thriller; Rumours; Queen’s greatest hits; Elton John’s greatest hits; these days every Taylor Swift album). But with the influx of country bros up said charts – who as far as I’m concerned are always named Luke or Zach, even when they’re named Blake or Chris – you wonder why the Eagles’ Greatest Hits isn’t the hotcake it once was.

It bears mentioning that none of country-pop (much less country)’s women – Taylor Swift hasn’t counted for a while – are selling like the dudes are. I mused a few blogs ago that MAGA might partially account for the whitest genre’s ascendence, but if I’m being cynical I could go bigger. The resistance #metoo engendered (as progress does) obviously includes more than just the red hats. Not that I figure All Men are bulk-buying Morgan Wallen CDs solely out of spite, but it’s hard to imagine any mild-mannered or self-reflective men even streaming him. “Last Night” is one of many smashes he’s racked up to date. His country-rock is inflected with a steely pop sheen, and beefed up with rap-adjacent beats, not to mention a looser and less laconic vernacular than Southern-drawl singers are usually armed with. But that cocky song and its album were each the #1 sellers of 2023, which seems a shame when the best stuff (“Anti-Hero”, “Kill Bill”, “Flowers”, any Barbie single) came, yet again, from the better side of the battle of the sexes.

Unrefined as he may be, Wallen isn’t a menace – if grassroots red meat like “Rich Men North of Richmond” was always on top, things would be less nice. But he does seem likea dick, and it’s a shame when dicks win. Wallen’s album isn’t at #1 anymore, and I’m not super familiar with superseder 21 Savage’s work – though he was half of Drake’s sus Her Loss, which definitely had an indulgent-resentment-of-women vibe. And although from the opening monologue, his album American Dream codes sincere (sincere almost never being preferable), it’s nice in theory to have an album called American Dream at #1 when that album is by a Black hip-hop artist making no overt pop concessions. Anyway, like I said, I haven’t given it sufficient attention, and maybe it’s great. But it’s not revolutionary I’ll betcha, and a scan of the reviews solidifies this enough for me to write all this on my blog without worrying about doing 21 Savage too dirty.

Wallen’s album is at #2 – on the charts for the 47th week. I wonder, without caring to do the work to find out, if its preeminence is comparable to that of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, enduring bestseller Elton John’s half-century-old blockbuster. That was a 2-LP set with 17 songs, and because Elton was the biggest artist in the pop music galaxy at that time, it listed for $5 more than a normal LP ($6.98). Wallen’s albums always contain something like 200 songs, so in theory, that spiffs up his sales. Also, his occasional loose tongue (“take care of this n*****”) and the “I’m a jerk but you love me” aura hallmarking his biggest hits almost definitely guarantees a dose of racists and douchebags in his audience share. But you don’t get to #1 without a portion of your constituency being honest-to-goodness Very Fine People. Then again, a lot of people sit out elections – just like Ariana says, “in case you haven’t noticed/everybody’s tired”.

Drake’s latest is #3, and while the title and imagery of For All the Dogs is less self-celebratorily male than Her Loss, it’s still a bad look from a distance. Drake really is the Elton John of his generation – every one of his albums and mixtapes and “playlists” has gone #1 on the Billboard 200, except the very early So Far Gone (#5 pop, #1 elsewhere) and something called Dark Lane Demo Tapes (#2 pop, #1 elsewhere). His reign has just about tripled John’s heyday (though the double-disc compilation Diamonds wouldn’t be a perpetual top 40 staple if John didn’t have decades’ worth of hits to his name). Though when his streak began, it was the Degrassi alum’s sheer niceness that set him apart – to where, when he came on strong to nominal work friends Nicki Minaj and Rihanna, you had to stifle a smirk – he’s been on something of a Dark Aubrey kick for a while. His flow remains a highly agreeable sound, but the charm’s been low (which is never Jay-Z’s problem), and his invention has never been strong enough to counterbalance it.

Next is Green Day. Green Day! A band, with guitars! At this point Green Day are an American institution, at a level above many of their diverse bands-with-guitars ‘90s peers – it doesn’t seem likely Billy Corgan, for instance, will be asked to turn one of his concept albums into a Broadway musical anytime soon. The band’s staying power, although they capitalized on fashionable liberal resistance and indie-derived pretentiousness with American Idiot, can be chalked up to the fact that they’ve always been more of a pop band than a punk band. But coming on like a punk band still helps. “The American Dream* is Killing Me”, Saviors’ opener, couches its good old-fashioned generalized protest in generic, Beatley melodics, and couches that in hard-within-reason guitars. The Tik Tok time-warping that tosses aging acts up the charts is heartening. Whether or not Saviors is good, Green Day feel like old-guard underdogs now, or at least old friends.

Rounding out our Penis Quintet is Noah Kahan’s Stick Season, the indie-boy fluke du jour. Every once in a while, people want to open the window of the pop palace we’re living in to more organic styles, e.g. the Green Day pop-punk model. When indie started really selling in this country, it wasn’t the soundscaping experimentalists or mordant wordsmiths – it was the real teary-eyed and sincere (wuh oh)-sounding people, leading up to people like the Lumineers, who lived at the crossroads between Arcade Fire and Mumford & Sons, and had about as much depth as the Archies but pretended otherwise. You can hear why Kahan is setting himself apart – the unconventional tinge in his voice helps lend a unique air to his lyrics, which are also unconventionally tinged. This isn’t the same as “clear-eyed” or “incisive”, though (much less mordant); the trick is to make you think you’re hearing something more outside the box than you are, which on the pop charts is sometimes just outside the box enough to be compelling. Nevertheless, he doesn’t seem like a dick – his music is as nice as it sounds, and his words’ heart is in the right place despite the weakness of the sauce. They aren’t very funny, but Kahan certainly is, at least when he’s talking about sunflower seed shells.

The rest of the top ten discontinues the pattern. Taylor bookends – #6 is her latest, which happens to be the long-awaited, marginally-differentiated re-recording of the album that launched her into pop super-stardom. Nothing she says isn’t calculated, but she’s right to tout her own prescience in the liner notes. There was liberation as well as mercenary benefit in roping pop into her music, in all its Nashville-bucking, cybernetic glory – and using the tradition of sexualized pop stars as a vehicle to amplify her rich-young-woman-about-town themes. But if 1989 wasn’t a money move (it was, at least a little), 1989 (Taylor’s Version) begins in that category. I note that “Is it Over Now”, her 9000th hit, has more of a self-repetitive vibe than usual. Then there’s Lover at #10 – on the wings of “Cruel Summer”, surely. The notoriously sunny album, brimming with shrewder pop gestures than her more consciously “artistic” last three, increasingly hits like a pre-COVID time capsule if not balm.

In between are two girls and a guy. #7 is last year’s from SZA, an always thoughtful, rarely compromising album auteur whose music rides that line between art and commerce better than most. #9 is country’s best example of same – the self-titled from Zach Bryan, foremost among the Luke and Blake crop as a singer and writer even if he’s no Tyler Childers in either department. Sandwiched between at #8 is Pink Friday 2, sequel to an album that back in 2010 felt like the shape of things to come. Well before huffers and puffers tread on the toes Taylor was dipping into pop waters, Nicki was getting slammed for loving pop and showing it. Now Pink Friday is regarded as the kind of classic none of her subsequent albums, which are always overlong and (how do I safely say this) temperamentally disagreeable, can hope to measure up to. Back around PF1, her verbal invention and shapeshifting ubiquity had me thinking, rockistly, “new Dylan”. Well: she wasn’t. But I’m glad she’s still selling some records.

I never turned my observation of the top five’s all-sausage status into a hypothesis; I’m not really good at hypotheses. But I wonder if there’s also a connection to the #1 song in the country right now, which is by Jack Harlow and is called “Lovin’ On Me”. On sight, Harlow is like a post-Post Malone, a beardy, dirtbaggy-looking white guy who’s sort of hip-hop and sort of not, and he’s been a big star for a minute. (My editor: “he doesn’t look like he has a stylist… or a shower, maybe.”) Like Drake, his flow has a downtempo, low-effort-seductive quality, and he’s possibly hotter than Post Malone – you can sort of see why Dua Lipa dated him, even if it took him putting out a million-selling mash note called “Dua Lipa” and it doesn’t look like it worked out. But I have to admit, I just don’t understand why “Lovin’ on Me” is number one. It’s one of those club-style songs so totally unmelodic it almost feels like an insult, and though “I’m vanilla baby/I’ll choke you but I ain’t a killer baby” is more on the gentlemanly side than is common for this playa-hype stuff, the attitude and verbiage are mostly not mold-breaking.

That line does give me pause; if your partner wants to be choked, and consent is properly brokered, then obliging is not only nice, but, lovin’, even. And while the chorus is a rejection, not an embrace, of BDSM predilections, it still hinges on “you can’t tie me down”, an age-old I’m-a-man-and-I-can-do-what-I-want trope. If American elections have proven anything, it’s that Americans don’t always pay careful attention to what they’re giving power to. The single’s lyric is all over the place (“I keep it short with a bitch, Lord Farquaad”), but one thing it is not is self-effacing. So maybe “Lovin’ on Me” is the druggy-hangout or night-at-the-strip-club soundtrack staple of the moment – for the kind of white bro who likes to pretend he’s (his idea of) a Black bro, or for Black bros united with them via sexism and taste for a certain sound. It’s also worth entertaining that, given its current primacy, a number of women like the song too.

I know it’s dumb and dangerous to speculate along dichotomous demographics (he says, right after doing just that). I remember quizzing my Black Lyft driver about his passion for Luke Combs’ “Fast Car”, which he did not know was a Tracy Chapman song and did not listen closely to enough to hear Combs refer to himself as a “checkout girl”. Instead, he felt drawn to it because of the nature of the narrator’s care, the I’ll-do-whatever-it-takes-for-us of it all. The reasons people love the music they love are often more visceral than complex. It’s not only conceivable but inevitable that “Lovin’ on Me”, by a white rapper who’s on record as a BLM supporter and has been praised for his self-interrogation, appeals to otherwise irreconcilable categories of listeners. But not the category I’m in, which is something like “well-intentioned, open-hearted, bi-vibes older millennial who loves music more than anything.”

Men are people too; I’m one, albeit a self-hating one. And lest I slip into misandry, let me concede that some forms of male aggro do relate to necessary strength, rather than the typical insecurity/emotional avoidance/urge to violence. Hip-hop’s strivers are economic cousins to Nashville’s nouveau riche, because some class disadvantages necessitate hardness to thrive and provide. Inherited toxicities can enflame this already combustible component something awful, but DJ Khaled (for example) insisting he deserves oral sex but his wife doesn’t because he puts food on the table (“ya gotta understand, I’m the king, I’m the don”, he actually said, not in a song but an interview) is an especially low bar. But men sometimes do live up to their projected strength – and there are times when what they’ve got is just what somebody needs. Looking askance at any consensus, like what song or album the biggest number of people are listening to, is a slippery slope if you don’t try to understand it first. Still, I’m playing American Dream right now, and still not sure how it’s won over this many people.

Maybe there's another key to what’s going on here. Many of today’s top hits are het-up and horny, just like “Lovin On Me” – Tate McRae’s “Greedy” (#3) which is plenty feminist, or Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” (#4), a different twist on America’s main racial binary (country-looking white dude belts out barn-burning gospel/soul), or Tyla’s blissfully lubricious “Water” (#11). So maybe that’s why people keep banging “Lovin’ On Me”, which is also the first hit single since Rihanna’s “S&M” a bajillion years ago to turn on the phrase “whips and chains”. The cold is keeping people indoors, and Harlow’s hit is giving them ideas, so they’re jamming to it. Not here to knock your love, America: you fuck to what you wanna fuck to. But maybe being a straight man (ugh) is why I just can’t get it up, be it on a dancefloor or behind closed doors, to anyone who comes on like a dick.

*not the 21 Savage album

[cyarsk52-20]

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MUSIC

The 50 Best Weeknd Songs

From dark alt-R&B jams to sleek summer hits to synth-pop revelations, and beyond

BY 

TOMÁS MIER, WAISS ARAMESH, JULYSSA LOPEZ, CHARLES AARON, ANGIE MARTOCCIO, ELIAS LEIGHT, JON FREEMAN, MOSI REEVES, JON BLISTEIN, SARAH GRANT, JOE GROSS, SIMON VOZICK-LEVINSON, JON DOLAN, KORY GROW

FEBRUARY 14, 2022

IF YOU HAD “Siouxsie and the Banshees fan from Canada remakes R&B in his own image” on your Pop Music in the 2010s bingo card, congratulations! Abel Tesfaye came out of Toronto in 2011 with a stunning series of spacey, sepulchral EPs that proved the start of a landmark run. Pretty soon he was lacing summer hits, sharing tracks with Ariana and Lana, creating epic albums like After Hoursand this year’s excellent Dawn FM, and even playing the Super Bowl. To coincide with the release of his new Amazon special, The Weeknd x The Dawn FM Experience (available this Saturday), we’ve decided to honor the Weeknd’s decade of moody pop dominance, with our list of his 50 greatest songs. You’ve earned it!

50

‘Less Than Zero’ (2022)

KEVIN C. COX/GETTY IMAGES

‘Can we meet in the middle,” the Weeknd offers over the elegant romanticism of “Less Than Zero.” His despair has rarely sounded so vulnerable, and his need to connect has rarely seemed so genuine, as he reaches out further and further with each new ascending keyboard bloop. The result might be his greatest slow-dance entreaty. —J.D.

49

‘The Party & the After Party’ (2011)

FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES

“The Party and the After Party” not only has a chipmunk sample of dream-pop duo Beach House’s “Master of None” at its center, but also a waltz-like rhythm reminiscent of the Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties.” The Weeknd’s lyrics betray an impressive attention to detail. “Louis V bag, tats on your arms, high heel shoes make you six feet tall,” he croons. “But I’ve got what you need.” Midway through, the track switches to a highly sexual volley of vocal thrusts and flickering guitar, as he tries to illustrate “the feeling that I’ll give to you.” —M.R.

48

‘Save Your Tears,’ feat. Ariana Grande (2021)

YOUTUBE

Just when you think the Weeknd has finally released a vacuous little earworm of a pop song, he twists the knife. “I saw you dancing in a crowded room/You look so happy when I’m not with you,” he sings. It would be like if you took “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” and replaced Mickey Thomas with Sade. This love-forsaken-at-the-club song wouldn’t be anything without Grande. Together, their voices are indestructible, which makes this particular song all the more harrowing. —S.G.

47

‘Life of the Party’ (2011)

GUS STEWART/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

Coming on like Smokey Robinson at a black mass, Tesfaye crooks a finger, howls into the death-rock void, and cues the riding-crop percussion. Is this just another dubiously consensual orgy between a rich, coked-out female fan and some fame-adjacent, coked-out music bros? Or does the woman actually represent Tesfaye’s conflicted feelings about his own career choices? Regardless, be careful out there, kids. —C.A.

46

‘Tears in the Rain’ (2013)

JEFF LOMBARDO/GETTY IMAGES

The Weeknd’s R&B plot twist is that his falsetto croon, cunning production, and vulnerable charisma offer a tender caress until you find out that love is really a serial killer hiding in the closet. Inspired by the replicant Roy Batta’s dying monologue in Blade Runner, this gorgeous ballad is a spectacular bell tower of distorted guitar and rippling synths that gives you goose bumps. Too bad you’re lying next to the toilet. —C.A.

45

‘The Fall’ (2011)

VINCE TALOTTA/TORONTO STAR/GETTY IMAGES

The foggy darkness of “The Fall” is a vintage remnant of the Weeknd’s bleakest, most sedated soundscapes. A chugging beat and ominous, choir-like vocals nearly drown him out, but his slightly moribund voice continues with the steely resolve of someone who intimately knows rock bottom. And though the production comes from his early-aughts mixtape era, it’s also ahead of its time, feeling like something that could easily soundtrack a depressing episode of Euphoria. —J.L.

44

‘Privilege’ (2018)

IRVIN OLIVARES/RCC/AGENCIA EL UNIVERSAL/GDA/AP

On this theatrical text to an ex, the Weeknd tries acceptance! Co-producer Frank Dukes suspends the mournful inamorato amid a swell of supportively filtered keys, and Tesfaye counsels himself to move on. But a fingersnap beat enters and he instinctively reaches for his old woes. Synths encase everything, his multitracked wail fades to vocoded static, and it’s clear: litigating sin is his one forever love. —C.A.

43

‘I Was Never There,’ feat. Gesaffelstein (2018)

KEVIN WINTER/GETTY IMAGES

It’s appropriate that the Weeknd at his most publicly distraught — after breakups with tabloid damsels Selena Gomez and Bella Hadid — would be soundtracked by elegant techno brutalist Mike “Gesaffelstein” Lévy. Hello, stylish dystopia. A piercing synth siren swoons and keens above clacking desolation; when the beat later brightens to a warped gurgle, Tesfaye turns spiteful, suicidal. Call it his safe space. —C.A.

42

‘La Fama,’ Rosalía feat. the Weeknd (2022)

YOUTUBE

Call him “El Fin de Semana.” The singer takes a complete turn from his typical R&B style as he joins Rosalía on the electro-bachata track about the downsides of fame. The Weeknd sings in perfect Spanish as his vocals channel the likes of bachata legend Romeo Santos. —T.M.

41

‘Heartless’ (2020)

YOUTUBE

This first single from the 2020 album After Hours finds our hero self-consciously returning to his baller ways, grabbing some of his pals (co-writers Metro Boomin, Illangelo, and Dre Moon), loading up on subdermal bass and trappin’ hi-hats and heading out for a night of licking toads, getting ladies high, and spilling whiskey on himself. Once again, he’s in full players-playing mode and he doesn’t make it sound very fun at all. —J.G.

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40

‘In Your Eyes’ (2020)

KEVIN MAZUR/MTV VMAS 2020/GETTY IMAGES

“I know it hurts to smile, but you try to,” Tesfaye croons to his dirty Diana through the smoky air. Can’t you feel the weight of his stare? “In Your Eyes” has such a suave Eighties groove, it takes real concentration to appreciate its manifold layers. Tesfaye mined late New Wave bands like Roxy Music, A-Ha, and Cocteau Twins for the song’s backbone, let Max Martin do his pop wizardry, and let the sax rip. —S.G.

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39

‘Adaptation’ (2013)

JOHNNY NUNEZ/WIREIMAGE

“Adaptation” is Kiss Land‘s most direct tour-life lament, essentially Massive Attack featuring the Weeknd, slightly pitch-shifted. Over a breakbeat loop, an eerie echo chamber, and a gnarled, ghostly sample of the Police’s “Bring on the Night,” Tesfaye explores his vocal range and imagines tipsy young models as vessels of pure, uncut love. It all sounds exquisite, but his regret is a false confession. —C.A.

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38

‘The Birds Pt. 2’ (2011)

GUS STEWART/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

On the Weeknd’s most intense recorded reckoning, our unreliable narrator delivers a harrowing moral: Don’t fall for self-obsessed, predatory fiends (like me) or somebody will suffer. Forever. Producers Illangelo and Doc McKinney underscore the point — sobs and a gunshot bleed into reverbed whirlpools of decaying surf guitar, an unforgiving snare thud, and Marina Topley-Bird croaking “sandpaper kisses, paper-cut bliss” like Madame Lamort. Then the crows caw a bitter adieu. —C.A.

37

‘Pretty’ (2013)

YOUTUBE

One of the Weeknd’s cooler, earlier tricks is the goth level of melodrama with which he infused his work. “Pretty,” from his debut full-length, Kiss Land, takes an industrial level of synth dread and drum clatter and sets it to the time-honored tale of the road dog coming home to his partner, who may or may not have cheated. Conclusion: He’ll make you feel beautiful if only because it helps him keep the demons at bay. —J.G.

36

‘In the Night’ (2015)

THOMAS CONCORDIA/FILMMAGIC

The first song co-written with pop magus Max Martin, “In the Night” conjures an Eighties neon raincloud with a whoosh of drum pads, pulsing synths, clattering effects, and Visionquest pathos. Principally, it coaxes Tesfaye’s most openhearted vocal to date. His taut yet fluid phrasing (a nod to Thriller-era Michael Jackson) delivers the story of an abused sex worker with an unusually sincere ache. —C.A.

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35

‘Prisoner,’ feat. Lana Del Rey (2015)

CHELSEA LAUREN/WIREIMAGE

This criminally underrated duet is a true relic of the fleeting 50 Shades of Grey-era of 2010s gloom pop, sung and co-written by the genre’s foremost falsettos: the Weeknd and Lana Del Rey. “I’ve inspired her, she’s inspired me,” Tesfaye said at the time. “I feel like we’ve always been talking to each other through our music.” Together for the first time, they sing “I’m addicted to a life that’s empty and cold,” like two dark souls twisting in the wind. —S.G.

34

‘Crew Love,’ Drake feat. the Weeknd (2012)

IAN WEST/PA WIRE/AP

The remarkable opening of “Crew Love” is a true test for the Weeknd, pitting the singer’s siren call against a callous, punishing opponent — a mash of crashing cymbals that seems intent on crushing the life out of anything in its path. But the Weeknd’s sweet croon partially camouflages his own militance. His opening line is every bit as cruel and cutting as those cymbals: “Take your nose off my keyboard/What you bothering me for?” And once the Weeknd puts his enemies on their heels, he presses his attack. “This ain’t no fuckin’ singalong,” he snarls prettily. “So, girl, what you singing for?” —E.L.

33

‘Coming Down’ (2011)

TIMOTHY HIATT/WIREIMAGE

Emerging from the dusted carnage of “The Party & the Afterparty,” this might be Tesfaye’s most emotionally resonant performance. A cold wind blows past a twinkly, taunting mini-motif as various intoxicating agents exit his system. Racked with regret, he convincingly plays the fallen prince; his ah-ahs, la-la-las, and refrain of “I always want you when I’m coming down” are acutely relatable. —C.A.

32

‘Often’ (2015)

YOUTUBE

Over a tear-jerking sample of “Ben Sana Vurgunum,” by Turkish singer Nükhet Duru, the Weeknd boasts about the sexual freedom he gets by being a “young god” in his hometown of Toronto. “She asked me if I do this every day, I said often,” he sings on the chorus. The alt-R&B song gave fans their first taste of the leap forward he was making with Beauty Behind the Madness. —T.M.

31

‘Acquainted’ (2015)

PETER DEJONG/AP

Oh, the humanity? ? On this neoclassic Weeknd tale of compulsive wanderlust, boosted by Illangelo’s crisply cavernous, dubstep-tinged production, Tesfaye coos (and even cries out) with new vulnerability about whether a commitment to “real” love/life might be a risk worth taking. Answer: No, “but, girl, I’m so glad we’re acquainted.” —C.A.

30

‘Wanderlust’ (2013)

OWEN SWEENEY/INVISION/AP

“Wanderlust” hinted at the brightly uptempo, Eighties-inspired pop that eventually launched the Weeknd to superstardom.  Produced with help from DannyBoyStyles and DaHeala, it makes fanciful use of Dutch group Fox the Fox’s 1984 synth-pop hit “Precious Little Diamond,” as the Weeknd depicts a La Dolce Vita life that’s full of thrills and short on love and commitment. It’s a metaphor for the first rush of success, and a predictor of bigger fame to come. —M.R.

29

‘Love Me Harder,’ Ariana Grande feat. the Weeknd (2014)

When Republic Records introduced its hot new R&B act to the world, it used an old-fashioned tactic (Trojan Horse) the new-fashioned way: an Ariana Grande song. Produced by Max Martin, “Love Me Harder” is a coy, synth-driven jam about the joys of rough sex. What takes it to that next level is the indelible way Grande’s sumptuous vocals ricochet off of the Weeknd’s icy falsetto. Two great artists in their own right. But like Pat and Neil, these two just belong together. —S.G.

28

‘Loft Music’ (2011)

CHRISTIE GOODWIN/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

“Loft Music” is one of Abel Tesfaye’s quintessential baby-making moments and a standout from his debut mixtape, House of Balloons. During the chorusless first half of the track, the Weeknd convinces a woman that “baby, it’s OK” for them to hook up, while the second half features a haunting, three-minute outro. —T.M.

27

‘Kiss Land’ (2013)

ARTHUR MOLA/INVISION/AP

Perhaps the Weeknd was worried his major-label debut wouldn’t be perceived as authentically malevolent. The title track settles that — a disorienting din of post-industrial drone and moan, plus oral-sex quips and a witchy brew of booze, blow, and pills. Cloudrap producer Silky Johnson sustains a K-hole of suspense so when Tesfaye cries, “Goddamn, I’m high,” it’s actually startling. —C.A.

26

‘King of the Fall’ (2014)

YOUTUBE

Released as a Soundcloud track and a YouTube video in commemoration of his 2014 “King of the Fall” Tour, this is a fan favorite that didn’t get added to streaming services until nearly six years later. It finds the Weeknd at his most insouciantly boastful: “’Bout to leave the crib with a couple of my pirates/Driving by the streets we used to walk through like a triumph,” he sings. Produced with help from Jason “DaHeala” Quenneville, “King of the Fall” has a thrilling, uncompromising edge. When he says, “If you ain’t with me, motherfucker, you against me,” you can feel the tension in his words. “Ain’t nobody can stop me.” —M.R.

25

‘What You Need’ (2011)

JOHNNY LOUIS/GETTY IMAGES

The Weeknd has said that “What You Need” is nothing more than a “sexy R&B song,” but that explanation underplays the kind of emotional power he conjures here. It opens with a loop from Aaliyah’s “Rock the Boat,” and centers on a raw and direct entreaty shorn of contemporary R&B gloss. When critics and fans refer to the Weeknd as a generational artist, particularly in his early years, it’s due to seductive performances like this. —M.R.

24

‘Try Me’ (2018)

MAHMOUD KHALED/AP

The Weeknd sounds alluring on “Try Me,” a highlight from 2018’s My Dear Melancholy. The EP swirls with romantic anguish and the singer’s high-profile breakups; “Try Me,” where he pleads for an ex-girlfriend to come back to him in haunting, gauzy tones, is no different. Some listeners speculated that this was his attempt to recapture his House of Balloons-era bona fides after the world conquering Starboy. But when he sings lyrics like “Once you put your pride aside, you know where to find me,” he sounds sincere. —M.R.

23

‘Moth to a Flame,’ Swedish House Mafia and the Weeknd (2022)

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“Moth to a Flame” is a petty anthem, masking the bitterness with synth, and marks the Weeknd’s first (of hopefully many) collaboration with Swedish House Mafia. Abel’s vocals shine through a biting chorus that effectively ruins the current relationship of his ex. It should come as no surprise that a list of the Weeknd’s best songs doubles as a masterclass in toxicity. —W.A.

22

‘Snowchild’ (2020)

YOUTUBE

On a trap-chic stroll through the Weeknd’s hipster rags-to-branded-riches story (Morayama, Coachella, and Mercedes are name-checked), Starboy relies on the lovely lilt of his voice to redeem pop-rap groaners like “futuristic sex, give her Philip K. Dick.” And it does, buoyed by a suave whoosh here and chilly wobble there. —C.A.

21

‘The Morning’ (2011)

ROBB D. COHEN/INVISION/AP

Though the first drowsy lines of “The Morning” masquerade as expected Weeknd club sleaze, the song is a surprisingly radiant hustler’s anthem, catching him at an upbeat moment before the blowback from his late-night debauchery sets in. The electric squeals of a guitar follow him as he builds toward a bursting chorus — and once the peak hits, he sings with the carefree indulgence of someone throwing confetti made of dollar bills into the air. —J.L.

20

‘Shameless’ (2015)

JOHN SALANGSANG/INVISION/AP

Compared to the slick dance pop found elsewhere on Beauty Behind the Madness,“Shameless” is an outlier. A stripped-down acoustic ballad that has shades of peak-period Seal, “Shameless” is a triumph of cringe for the Weeknd. “I’ll always be there for you girl, I have no shame,” he swears to a sometime lover who doesn’t want anything from him except the oblivion of a good lay. It’s icky, and the slippery, pornographic guitar solo at the end only adds to the feeling of self-loathing sleaze. —J.F.

19

‘After Hours’ (2020)

YOUTUBE

If there’s a song that captures the Weeknd’s determined progression from brooding club lurker to incandescent pop king, it’s “After Hours,” which starts with echoey synth acrobatics from his early releases. A dance beat trickles in slowly — just hints of it at first — and eventually takes over, thrusting the Weeknd closer to the melodic maximalism that swept him up and blasted him to superstardom. —J.L.

18

‘How Do I Make You Love Me?’ (2022)

RICH FURY/GETTY IMAGES

It takes a lot of skill to make desperation sound catchy, but the Weeknd barely bats an eye as he combines iridescent synth-pop with his urgent, pleading falsetto on “How Do I Make You Love Me.” Just when it seems like he’s reached a breaking point, the song becomes a freeform experiment in electro blips and bleeps that seamlessly transitions into “Take My Breath,” highlighting the tightknit sonic universe of Dawn FM. —J.L.

17

‘Hardest to Love’ (2020)

CHRIS O'MEARA/AP

There’s something singular about “Hardest to Love,” its drum and bass break beat setting it apart from nearly everything else in the Weeknd’s catalog, to say nothing of the North American pop charts (it would obviously feel less out of place in the U.K.). Yet the song doesn’t feel like some tossed off genre experiment or blatant play for a new audience. It remains a quintessential Weeknd tune, that distinct drum and bass groove paired perfectly with woozy, weeping-willow synths and Tesfaye’s heart-melting, self-flagellating vocals. —J.B.

…

16

‘Reminder’ (2016)

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A response to those criticizing his pivot to a mainstream sound after Beauty Behind the Madness, The Weeknd returns to his vibey, R&B origins, promising he’ll reinvent himself as many times as he wants to. And boy, has he succeeded at it. T.M.

15

‘Call Out My Name’ (2018)

YOUTUBE

After “Earned It” became a massive commercial success, it’s no surprise that the Weeknd returned to the same well a few years later — “Call Out My Name” is another slow-drip ballad set in 6/8 time. But where “Earned It” had those peppy strings and uplifting message (“Girl you’re perfect, you’re always worth it”), “Call Out My Name” is desolate and hollowed out, a parched tale of dependency and despair shot through with the Weeknd’s piercing, anguished wails. “I said I didn’t feel nothing baby,” he sings. “But I lied.” —E.L.

14

‘Sidewalks,’ feat. Kendrick Lamar (2016)

YOUTUBE

“Sidewalks” finds the Weeknd wryly recounting his ascent from growing up without a father and experiencing homelessness to the pop mainstream. “My flow too sick, Kevin Costner couldn’t touch me,” he trills in an Auto-Tuned voice over a guitar-inflected Doc McKinney beat. Meanwhile, Kendrick Lamar responds with a bouncy verse that flips Starboy’s theme about prodigious appetites. “It wasn’t just a random Kendrick Lamar verse,” the Weeknd told Beats 1’s Zane Lowe in 2016. “It was something special.” —M.R.

13

‘Tell Your Friends’ (2015)

YOUTUBE

This track was originally co-produced by Mike Dean and intended for Kanye West, who co-produces and raps on the bridge here. Framed by a coolly twilit soul sample, Tesfaye croons a list of  basic starboy gripes. but quickly the lyrics grow belligerent, as stabbing piano chords propel an antihero eruption. “Don’t believe the rumors, bitch, I’m still a user,” he smirks, as if he’s pimp-strutting on the ledge. —C.A.

12

‘House of Balloons / Glass Table Girls’ (2011)

FILMMAGIC

The second half of this track is one of the most viscerally affecting entries in the Weeknd’s whole catalog, as icy and thunderous as an avalanche. He throws himself into the world beyond blotto: Faces are blurring, the drunks are getting mean, and the threat of violence fills the air. The Weeknd’s voice has always drawn comparisons to Michael Jackson’s, but “Glass Table Girls” draws its lineage back to Prince at his most paranoidly perfect. —E.L.

11

‘I Feel It Coming,’ feat. Daft Punk (2016)

YOUTUBE

The stunning closer from Starboy, the Weeknd’s Michael Jacksonesque voice flows freely over Daft Punk’s retro-futuristic, Eighties-inspired disco-pop production. Lyrically, the Weeknd sheds his lustful approach to sex as he assures the object of his desire that she shouldn’t be so afraid of falling in love. —T.M.

10

‘Starboy,’ feat. Daft Punk (2016)

YOUTUBE

After the world-conquering success of Beauty Behind the Madness, the Weeknd could have worked with anyone. He chose Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, who lent an attractive electro gloss to his next chart-topping smash, French-filtering his vocals on the hook as he literally laughed his way to the bank. With its winking lyrics about old Star Trek movies and ivory lines on ebony tables, “Starboy” was also the Weeknd’s chance to show that pop stardom hadn’t changed him — it just made him even cockier. —S.V.L.

9

‘Take My Breath’ (2022)

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It figures that one of the Weeknd’s most straightforwardly danceable songs would be about a kink so intense that it can literally cause death. Propelled by the titanic melody of Max Martin and collaborators Belly, Andrea Di Ceglie, Luigi Tutolo, and Oscar Holter, “Take My Breath” throbs with the insistent kick drum, funky guitar, and arpeggiated synths of classic Giorgio Moroder. Tesfaye coos soulfully, deploying his upper register while describing a woman who asks to indulge a fantasy that sounds a lot like erotic asphyxiation. “Bring me close to heaven, babe,” she tells him. The extended version on Dawn FM features an instrumental breakdown that shreds Tesfaye’s voice into a guttural wail, further blurring the line between ecstasy and horror. —J.F.

8

‘Earned It (Fifty Shades of Grey)’ (2015)

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Wherein the most sexually explicit songwriter of the PornHub era makes the lead single for the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack. “Earned It” (and a very-NSFW video) introduced perfectly Tesfaye’s silk-sheets vibe to mainstream ears. Written in D-minor, which, as  Spinal Tap taught us, is the “saddest key,” “Earned It” is  a Grammy-winning chart-topper full of strings severe and seductive, that falsetto and, of course, a love too weird to last. —J.G.

7

‘High for This’ (2011)

JOHN SALANGSANG/INVISION/AP

“You want to be high for this,” trills the Weeknd on the opening track of his first, career-launching House of Balloons mixtape. It’s a perfect introduction to the Weeknd’s groundbreaking aesthetic: an opiate atmosphere, a sound that hovers between darkwave and bedroom R&B, and endless sensorial delights. Cirkut’s beat is a synthesized whirl of throbbing, stop-start percussion and eerie, organ-like keys, all fodder for the Weeknd to red-pill his listeners: “Open your hand/Take a glass/Don’t be scared/I’m right here.” —M.R.

6

‘Can’t Feel My Face’ (2015)

YOUTUBE

One of the Weeknd’s biggest hits was a dashed-off afterthought. Tesfaye was hanging out with some of his songwriting collaborators, listening to “some modern, disco-y influenced tracks,” as he once said, when they all felt the urge the jam. The whole song — three and a half minutes of R&B-inflected pop with a bouncy, beautifully numbing chorus that may or may not be about cocaine — came together in 40 minutes at the end of Tesfaye’s Beauty Behind the Madness sessions and almost didn’t make the cut. But Tesfaye believed in the song, which became a Number One hit and has since been certified eight-times platinum. —K.G.

5

‘Blinding Lights’ (2019)

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No pop sound is too dated for the Weeknd to have some fun with: As long as it’s got a little sparkle, he’ll find a way to use it. “Blinding Lights” broke chart records by leaning all the way into a synth-pop jingle that sounds like a Eurovision contender or a mid-2000s ringtone, singing the hell out of each hook in a vaguely Goth accent and daring you to call him cheugy. It’s so spectacularly catchy, you’ll never get the chance. —S.V.L.

4

‘Wicked Games’ (2011)

YOUTUBE

The Weeknd’s first single is a sensual, slow-grooving meditation on coming of age — feeling comfortable in your own skin and grappling with differences between love and lust, but “only for tonight.” In the space of five and a half minutes, Tesfaye tells a movie-length story: He’s just broken up with his girl, he took out all his cash and spent it on coke and his date, and he just wants to feel like a human being. “Bring your love, baby, I could bring my shame,” he sings. “Bring the drugs, baby, I could bring my pain, I got my heart right here.” It’s heavy stuff for a pop song, and it established him as an artist who could tackle Big Problems in a way that makes you want to sing along with him. —K.G.

3

‘Escape From LA’ (2020)

KEVIN MAZUR/MTV VMAS 2020/GETTY IMAGES

Nine years after the Weeknd declared “Cali is the mission” on “The Morning,” he backtracks on this cautionary tale, revisiting a theme that’s prevalent throughout his discography: an obsession over the Hollywood lifestyle that’s just as strong as his contempt for it. Four minutes in, the vibe switches (getting somehow darker) and the Weeknd tells the tale of a Chrome Hearts-clad woman who waits for him to cut his verse before moving on to … other activities. Considering how good this song turned out, we appreciate her patience. —W.A.

2

‘Gasoline’ (2022)

YOUTUBE

Tesfaye has always been great at packaging pop thrills in deep despair (and vice versa). The nihilistic despair of this Dawn FM gem is neatly tucked away in the song’s gasoline-soaked sheen. Even its darkest lines — from “I know you won’t let me OD” to “In this game called life/We are not free” — are barely detectable in the midst of all that New Wave euphoria, like the Weeknd had too much fun getting high to the Cars. Please cover “Drive” next. —A.M.

1

‘The Hills’ (2015)

YOUTUBE

A sound-design masterpiece and the quintessential Weeknd hit, with all the pop instincts of his crossover blockbuster era and all the sleaze and self-loathing of his avant-R&B early years. “The Hills” mesmerizes and rebukes like a MIDI-enabled version of Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son.Tesfaye limps through fame’s panopticon before launching into a falsetto war of the spirit (“When I’m fucked up, that’s the real me,” he wails). Somehow, this meticulous smear of muted screams, tolling bells, growly sub-bass, and filtered-to-hell synths reached No. 1 and was eventually certified diamond (10 million copies sold). —C.A.

IN THIS ARTICLE:

The Weeknd,

Weeknd

MUSIC

MUSIC LISTS

Sent from my iPhone

[flightfoot]

If I had to guess, I’d say Coq Courage and Caprikid will be in Kuro Neko, Minotaurox will appear in Penalteam, and Traquemoiselle will get her miraculous in Risk, leaving Strike Back as the obligatory everyone’s here team fight finale episode *Smash Bros music*.

I have my concerns for all of them in ascending order. First, with so little time left, I do think that Marc and Nath will share an episode. On one hand, that would guarantee us some cute ship fuel, and it’d make sense because Ladybug knows that they’re partners who can do anything when they work together. It would also give her the opportunity to experiment with identity rules right after Ephemeral. But their Garnet-from-SU-esque relationship is also part of the problem for me. It’s cute that they act like they’re two halves of the same person and thinking with one mind, but the way they’re glued together all the time is making me nostalgic for their characterization before they got together. It feels like they’re more two-dimensional now. What I really want is acknowledgment that they’re two different people with different personalities and even different lives outside of each other. My ideal scenario for a hero episode with both of them is one where they get to split up for a bit and play to their own strengths, dealing with their individual problems before regrouping and working together, which I wouldn’t rule out as a possibility for canon based on my own wild assumptions as to what their episode could possibly be about.

Next is Ivan, who is, imo, THE most underrated ml character ever. Whichever episode is his, I just can’t see it being about him the way Mega Leech, Guiltrip, and Crocoduel were about the girls. I’ve seen people predict that him getting the Ox miraculous will be similar to how Kim got the Monkey, but at least Kim had his own arc before Party Crasher. He was pretty relevant in season one and two as a cocky bully who learned to grow out of that phase and develop some emotional intelligence (but only some lol). He had one of the first actual arcs in the show. Ivan hasn’t had a major role since Stoneheart unless you count never doing anything wrong ever in the background until he needs to give someone the occasional hug and verbal support as valid screentime. He has his music hobby and his friends and his girlfriend, but can you name any character traits he’s developed into or out of? My biggest concern for him is that this will continue, and that he’ll just be a supportive, too-often-self-sacrifing rock eager to save his friends again in an episode that’s not primarily about him. In the future, I would love to see a glimpse into his home life or something that’s troubling him since he’s always there for everyone else but it doesn’t seem like anyone’s ever there for him.

Aaaand Sabrina. You talked about your concerns about her having some unnaturally compact change of heart that would make her suddenly superhero material, and I agree. I hope she doesn’t have a 180 personality change out of nowhere. The reason why I guessed Sabrina for Risk instead of Penalteam (where Chloe is Penalty) is partially because I think Ladybug or anyone getting hit by the akuma would increase their chances of giving a miraculous to someone they consider as loyal to their enemy. We can assume the risk will pay off and Sabrina will do what she can to help, maybe realizing along the way that she enjoys her independence? Traquemoiselle’s name implies that her power will have to do with tracking, like detection, so I think it’d be useful for a finale where they might finally get enough dirt on Shadowmoth for a dog holder to track him down, hence the final battle, versus a soccer-themed episode where a physical skill might be more useful. I really hope her promised development will come naturally, and I hope it’ll be a good moment for Chloe as well since this dynamic change would really alter the way Chloe’s character functions, seeing as she used to rely on Sabrina for literally everything, from homework to carrying her stuff to making herself feel confident and powerful. We’ve already seen many examples of Marinette and friends trying to break them up, so I don’t think the group would be against adopting her if she has a true change of heart.

Sorry for the long ask, but I feel the same way you do. It kinda feels like watching Chopped lol, four contestants but only three spots, who’s getting chopped this round? Even if they have to cut corners with hero episodes, I really hope we’ll see episodes with their personal lives and developmental checkpoints like we have with most of the other characters. That being said, I’ll get back to re-enacting Britanny Broski’s kombucha girl video @ Minotaurox and Coq Courage. Can’t wait for episode dates. And here’s to hoping well see at least the hero eps before the finale.

Yes to all of this!

It's kinda funny with Ivan. He was one of the first side characters we got to meet and explore, and... that was the only time we really got to do that. Since then he's mostly been a tag-a-long, or just cuddling with his girlfriend in the background. I'd love to get to know him better, see what makes him tick.

MarcNath... yeah it kinda makes sense for them to share an episode and give us some cute shipping fuel, but you're right, I'd like to get to know them outside of being a couple as well. Marc especially, since he's really only had Reverser for development.

But Sabrina's definitely the one who needs development the most. I want her to get to do her own thing and not just suffer Chloe's abuse. Plus, that's likely to shakeup Chloe's world more than any previous event. Right now, Sabrina's the only person she's got. Without her, I dunno what she'd do.

I'm hopeful that if we don't get enough time to properly develop the four heroes this season, they'll get episodes next season to fill in the gaps.

[gayenerd]

Another old article saved in a Word document, which I can only find behind a paywall now (but I linked it in case someone does have access to a subscription)

Green Day Rising Metal Mike Saunders, Bam, 28 January 1994 Popcore Ascending? Or Is That Just The First Phase Of 'The Greatest Band In America'?

'We were down in Irvine and Mike was having a pillow fight outside with his girlfriend. He was running away from her, and at the top of his stride he turned around, right into a horizontal beam five feet off the ground – Vhoom...Out cold. So that suggested the concept of ...misery.'– Billie Joe

WHERE IT all it the brick wall for me personally was 11th grade carpool. Four high school boys jammed into a VW bug, or worse, with the AM radio on for about 20 minutes en route to Hall High, Little Rock.

It was the season of the great Bubblegum Wars, that pint in time where the underground FM vs. plastic AM trench wars had reached the point of no return. Kids vs. pigs, rednecks vs. longhairs. Combat was the order of the day, even in music.

In the fall of 1968, the musical lightning rod was 'Chewy Chewy' by the Ohio Express: 'Turn it off' and 'Turn it down' were the majority opinions. I was for sure the only one going 'Turn it up!' The same routine was repeated just a few weeks later with the Archies and the 1910 Fruitgum Co. (the later with the classic top-five hit 'Indian Giver'), and it seems like ever since that point in time 'pop' has been a derogatory term. Something less than…what? 'Rock'?

What does this have to do with Green Day? Well, it’s like this: There’s this real lame tag – 'popcore' (say it once and erase it forever, pul LEEZE) that was kicking around for a while last year and was affixed to the East Bay trio’s style of music. Aw, hell, they’re just a great rock band.

If Santa came and went recently and there’s still no Green Day in your house, here’s a shopping list: 39 Smooth (Lookout!), Kerplunk (Lookout!), and Dookie (Warner Bros./Reprise). Forty-eight killer tracks by this country’s greatest band and, considering that only in the preceding 12 months did its members start to hit drinking age, possibly just the beginning of what could turn out to be an amazing career.

Proof is no farther away than the band’s new album, Dookie, its first for a major label, but proceeded by two LPs and three 7-inch EPs on Berkeley’s Lookout! Records.

Anyone who’s seen the threesome knows they can play like gangbusters; the difference between a tiny indie-label budget (try about $3000 for all 34 Lookout! Tracks combined) and a major-league endeavor is that for the first time you get proof 10 times over on tape. So you get raging guitar sounds and cracking snare rimshots that explode like the early who. Even the band’s chronic shortcoming – weedy studio vocals – has been corrected to an encouraging degree.

"Yeah," volunteers 21-year-old lead singer/guitarist Billie Joe, "for my vocals we used a Beyer microphone, which was used on some of the early Elvis Costello stuff. I’m really happy with the way it came out."

The entire album is a veritable role model for any guitar-heavy rock band. Says producer Rob Cavallo: "In the case of a raw, live-sounding record like this one, what I try to do is capture on the listener’s speakers the whole left-to-right stereo spread – what we heard in preproduction, listening to the band blast away in their practice room. The key to this, in Green Day’s case, is that they have such a focused idea as to what they sound like, and they’re great players in that style."

Specific elements of Dookie’s production style include a live rhythm guitar on every song, singletracked lead vocals only, and all vocal harmonies done by the second-stage voice, 20-year-old bassist Mike Dirnt.

Warner Bros.’ hands-off role, a characteristic of the company in the wake of its Mudhoney "creative control"-type underground signings, was crucial in shaping such a record. "Warner Bros. stayed out of the way and let us do exactly what we wanted to," says 21-year-old drummer Tre Cool. "All I can say is if you can get on Warners, you are one lucky son of a gun!"

The inclination to make a guitar-heavy record was present from the get-go. "I definitely wanted to get a bigger sound," recalls Billie Joe, "something with more meat to it." Which is achieved, in parts thanks to a borrowed vintage 1972 Marshall head hooked up to the same blue Stratocaster Billie Joe’s been battering since he was 11.

The wall of guitar sound was achieved with a live track and just one more rhythm guitar dropped in. "We had experimented a bit on previous records, stacking guitar tracks to try to get a thicker sound," recalls Billie Joe. "But this time with just the two rhythm guitars; we got a better distorted sound."

Like any other trademark-sound band, it’s the deviations on the record that are most interesting. We’ve got three here: 'Pulling Teeth,' 'When I Come Around,' and the album’s first single, 'Longview,' 'Pulling Teeth' leaps out of the album like a K-Tel cut buried in a techno set; it’s the tune Dave Edmunds never had to break his career Stateside. Tight harmony vocals frame a straight guitar-heavy country-rock melody with a conciseness worthy of the masters. Not one wasted word or second.

"We were down in Irvine," recalls Billie Joe of the song’s lyrical genesis, "and Mike was having a pillow fight outside with his girlfriend. He was running away from her, and at the top of this stride he turned ground – vhoom…Out cold. So that suggested the concept of…misery."

'Longview' hits a whole opposite style. It’s something you might imagine as a late’70s FM track, with a loping dumbo beat ("a rumble," suggests Dirnt) not too far off Tom Petty’s 'Breakdown', Lyrics about nothing, really-killing time, punching the cable remote, getting high. A two-chord riff to nowhere, then a basic garden-variety three-chord chorus. The trick is that the whole darn song is a hook. Simultaneously the dumbest and catchiest Van Halen guitar licks panning across the speakers.

"In a way, that song was cheap self-therapy for watching too much TV," recalls Billie Joe. "It was another case of writing about whatever mood I’m in."

Especially near to my heart (I’m from the South, y’all ) is 'When I Come Around,' an unintentional dead-on-evocation of Lynyrd Skynyrd at its top-40 hookiest. With a lazy turnaround beat like 'Sweet Home Alabama', it’s just about five degrees westward of the slightly ‘70s ballads 'Christie Road' and 'No One Knows' from the earlier Kerplunk album.

"On that one, we weren’t thinking country rock, but rather something that had a groove to it, almost like you could imagine having a martini and listening to it at the same time," explains Dirnt.

See, 80 percent of Dookie is in the trademark Green Day raging pop-punk. It’s this deviant 20 percent that makes one suspect they can pull off almost anything they want out of the trash-dump of earlier under appreciated rock styles. A mainstream audience could forge a very, very interesting alliance with this group.

Of the trademark pop-punk onslaught, averaging an airtight two minutes, 30 seconds apiece, 'Basket Case' and 'Sassafras Roots' are two of the strongest numbers. 'Basket Case' was about a friend who’s pretty loopy,' explains Billie Joe, 'but a bit about myself as well – like seeing your own trails in other people where it’s been taken to a total extreme. There are a lot more songs on this record that are about other people’s experiences, even though I might still be singing in the first person.'

The recording of Dookie went fairly fast by industry standards, the music and vocals finished last summer in three and a half weeks (at Berkeley’s Fantasy Studios), followed by an initial mix. The band then headed out on 40-date fall tour with the veteran LA punk band Bad Religion, which enabled them to come back to the project with a clean set of ears. The entire album was remixed with engineering whiz Jerry, Finn who paid special attention to the record’s amazing bottom end. At that point, the band’s 'creative input' reached its most extreme.

"We all three sat there for 10 days straight, 15 hours a day, and listened to every minute of the remixing sessions," recalls Tre Cool. Which is just short of four working-Joe (like me) work weeks without a day off.

Dookie is one of the rawest melodically oriented rock records to show up on a major label in the last zillion years. Usually when bands go from an indie to a major label, the result is a slicker product.

"When I listen to bad rock music occasionally, I just wind up going, ‘What the hell were these guys thinking of?" agrees Billie Joe.

I speculate that there have now been entire generations’ worth of bad drum sounds committed to record. "Huge room sounds on the drum with shitloads of reverb," responds Dirnit. "Flanged drum rolls," adds Billie Joe.

My favorite, rolls across the chromatic-tuned rototoms, comes in a close second.

While most bands with almost 50 tracks into their recording career hit the point of labored songwriting (that old saw about a band’s first album being its best), that hasn’t been the case with Green Day. "Actually, I think I was more comfortable with my songwriting on this record than I ever was before," insists Billie Joe. "I had a real good handle on what kind of melodies and hooks I wanted to come up with. Didn’t rush myself, just let them come out naturally. It was the previous time out, on the songs on Kerplunk, that I was consciously trying to outdo my previous songs."

The variation from Green Day’s uptempo style, now comprising a good one-quarter of the band’s most recent two albums, will continue. "We definitely are going to continue to expand the scope of our material; we don’t want to get into a rut where we rewrite Kerplunk or Dockie over again," explains Billie Joe. "There’s a lot of musical tastes that run through this band."

I did my homework on the band’s "song-about-girls" label (a tag, Dirnt complains, 'we got caught up in') going back to January 1992’s Kerplunk and assigning topics to each song. The tally was girls, four; mortality/meaning of life, three; neurosis/insanity, one; one novelty song; and alienation, motivation, and coming of age, one apiece. Dookie is more of the same, with topics ranging all over the map, the median perhaps being the pissed-off frame of mind of 'Chump' and 'F.O.D.' The girl-songs ratio is down around 30 percent.

The "girl-songs" tag must have sprung from what was the band’s classic 1990 debut, 39 Smooth, written and sung by Billie Joe and Dirnt at the ripe old ages of 17 and 16. A good 70 percent of the album’s songs related to the opposite sex, with the lead off track, 'At the Library', ranking as perhaps the best song ever written by a high-schooler.

One facet of a Green Day performance that’s impossible to capture on paper is the continuous bantering and riposting between the band and the crowd, much of it hysterical.

"It’s all part of making our audience feel like they’re at home, communicating on an eye-label basis," offers Billie Joe.

"See, before a show we’re usually making fun of each other – making a mess by playing baseball with apples or whatever, meeting new people who are funny and have jokes we haven’t heard – so we’re totally stoked by the time we get onstage," elaborates Tre.

It’s safe to say that after two trips to Europe, half a dozen ('at least') full American tours, and over four years of nonstop gigging, performance anxiety does not figure into this band’s equation. "We never have a list, we just make it up as we go," explains Tre.

I offer my theory that no matter how many fans a band has, there are five times as many people who think they stink, and 10 times as many who don’t care.

"I would see it as three different sections: the people who really like you, the people who really hate you, and the vast majority who are totally oblivious," muses Billie Joe.

The vast size of the record industry contributes to making yesterday’s barely gold act today’s 'Who?' (think Britny Fox, Vixen, and a half-dozen gold Loverboy albums). Indeed, if everyone who ever made fun of Motley Crue videos were assembled in one place, we would surely fill the Oakland Coliseum.

Speaking of videos, the world doesn’t faze our subjects – not yet anyway. "We’ve never done a video. They’ve got us scheduled to do one, so for now we think videos are cool," laughs Tre.

"We’re probably shooting the video in our house," adds Billie Joe, the "house" being what appears to be a subterranean Berkeley abode, complete with a tiny band-practice room; it’s not squalid, it’s absolutely slacker). "So…we figure our video concept will be kind of ‘Looks That Kill’ meets ‘Hot for Teachers’ meets 'Rock You Like a Hurricane'," quips Dirnt.

Given the absolutely superb quality of the band’s Warner Bros. debut, the only mystery is that a major label bidding war on Green Day took so long to materialize.

"Warner Bros. was the label initially considering the band," recounts band co-manager Jeff Saltzman. "But it was when Geffen and Sony/CBS jumped in with serious interest that Warners got serious about picking up the band."

Green Day never would have gotten so much done so fast, however, without the astute ears of Lookout! Records’ president and perpetual talent scout, Larry Livermore, who sent the band into the studio two months after first seeing the trio to record an EP called 1000 Hours, which was followed by the 39 Smooth album, which was recorded at the end of 1989 for less than $500.

"I knew Al Sobrante (Green Day’s drummer through mid-1990) from Isocracy, so I knew about his new band, Sweet Children [renamed Green Day six months later]," recalls Livermore. "My band, the Lookouts, were playing a house party up in Mendocino County, February 1989, so I invited Al’s band up to play also. I was so impressed with the band and their attitude, playing just in front of 15 people, that I hooked up with them immediately to record for Lookout! I never had any doubt about their potential, musically. I thought they were great the first time I saw them."

© Metal Mike Saunders, 1994

[onthevirgeofdestruction]

So I've been reading your fics for a while and it recently occurred to me, how would the painful death crew handle the events of break? Would it pan out the same way or do you think it would go down slightly different?

How would the PD Crew handle Break? As in one of them is Break!Virgil or as in being around when shit goes down? 

I’ve got Ram (PD!Remus but make it a fictive) here with me so... 

Ram: 1,Dante is a chill bro, and I stan them. We have the same music tastes and Dante is kind of amazing, anyway. I would die for polterdante/j 2, I would have ab-fucking-ducted Break!Virgil and/or PD!Virgil from that situation if I was around it if I didn’t fucking snap and try to kill Zillah for doing it. Like how does anyone not have the biggest fucking mental breakdown of their lives when they find that shit out? Rem says ‘same’. 

The thing about Vesper(PD!Virgil) is that if he was in Dante’s(Break!Virgil) situation, he might also put up with it until he found a safe way out. I mean I’ve met Zillah and the dude is kind of sneaky. He’s really nice with the kids and acts really normal other than murdering Dante on main on a fucking regular basis, giving me weird second-hand trauma? Dae says he regrets not going more into how Zillah acts in public vs. private? “At the beginning of the story they were at point of their relationship Zillah was isolating Virgil, so there wasn’t much opportunity to do so, but it would have enhanced the dismal atmosphere and shown more ways abusers isolate their victims.” 

Anyway, Ves in particular would have run off, eventually. He’s not great at finding red flags but he believes takes his friend’s word for it and would be more likely to listen to Logan when he notices things weren’t right. He’d run off without asking for help and just meet up his friends later like “my name’s jared i’m 19 and i’m now fucking homeless”. Rem would have thrown a bitch fit and started a fight. He would have gotten out of it bruised but got out nonetheless. He only tolerates that shit from his dad because minors don’t have many rights (Also just Rem’s ex-dad’s job). I think I’d be the most at-risk in that situation because stress obviously fucks up my mental state and I won’t make great judgment calls. Dante only hallucinates in the sensory dep thing. I, on the other hand, hallucinate all the fucking time and trust me that it’s really easy to let the delusions suck you up if you don’t have someone who can ground you. The delusions might of left me stuck in that situation for life. Oof. Vesper could have gotten me out, though, but I’m not allowed to go into why. Damien would have called the police on Zillah or fucking leave before he got in too deep. He’s just smart and capable like that. Dorjan (Break!Janus) was only in it for a few months before he fucked right out of that abusive relationship. I don’t think Damien would let a single thing pass, he’s got a serious amount of self-respect. Also, D’s parents are very nice. Part of Dante’s shit is his upbringing with his parents giving them a bad impression of how people should treat each other. And that’s not spoilers, it touches on it in the video call chapter.

My brother is a fucking flake but it is 5 in the morning so maybe he gets a free pass for not answering on his half of the cast. Something-something crying, I guess. Roan(Ro) might also be kind of at-risk since he really needs people to like him on a kind of dangerous level sometimes. I think Kal(Pat) and Liam(Logan) wouldn’t tolerate being in that situation as long as Dante did. Kal’s parents are actually decent and he knows red flags, and Liam is basically always looking for red flags. Paranoid little dude sometimes. They’re pretty ride-or-die for each other so they’d probably fight to get each other free, too. 

I agree with Break!Logan in that the only proper response to that situation is to get a spiked baseball bat and go ham. Though the security system on that house is extra and the narrative game for break kind of goes through why most of those options are a bad fucking plan. Poor Dante’s got it bad, even now. 

If we were backing up Dante we’d be rolling up with fucking swords and sweet, sweet dragon magic to take Zillah’s ass down. And Maybe also take Dante down to check them into residential. Imagine that conversation, though, right? “Hey dude we’re from another universe and this guy’s been abused and tortured for two years, please assist” and then we just fuck off back to our own dimension. Wild. Dae says he refuses to write crossovers, so my answers are technically “noncanon”, but I have a pretty good fucking idea, okay? Okay. He’s letting me answer because I’m answering “as an alter”, blah blah blah. IDK like I know Ruy and Ras aren’t old enough to read Break but I’d be interested in an adult Dreaming!Roman in that situation? I mean he’s tolerated some shit but those little fucks are creative and will likely do something completely over the top to get roman out because you know Ras would be like “are you serious with me get the hell out of there”. Maybe they’d somehow get the fucking plea vampires up in there??? You know Tempest and D aren’t letting Zillah get out of that alive. 

I’ve read Break and like what the fuck Dae but honestly we been knew that he’s a sick son of a bitch so that’s not news. Rebuild is wild as shit, too, have fun with that, guys. Daeram says it’s “difficult to edit because of the nuance of Dante’s situation”, but there’s a lot of chapters already.

Anyway, rephrase the question if I didn’t answer it right and maybe I can try again. Or whoever, I’m just the PD fuck that fronts the most lately because I’m supporting my bro Steve’s gay shenanigans.

Vesper wants everyone to know he will ascend to a new dimension when the Among Us update comes out and wants to play it with everyone ever. Also if anyone is willing to play the Arsonist mod with us until then, we’d love that. Hit us up on the server.

Ayri again and oh rain two ADHDers confronted and ascended to a place where time doesn’t matter but now the sun is going to fucking rise. I put in the fictive’s sources because Ram always calls them by their new names and pronouns. hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh just adding that yes Daeram doesn’t believe in doing crossovers for our AU’s but the fictives interact from time to time and they certainly don’t mind answering questions about that stuff. Dae’ll stop them if spoilers. Fictives don’t front super often but like most of my asks sit in the box for months anyway because tumblr keeps not alerting me they exist. I’ll get to the other asks I found tomorrow if I remember. I think Ram kind of went overboard but he stands by what he said so whatever have fun with it? 

[raccdog]

Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms (Part 4)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3  | Part 4  | Part 5

Adrien ascended the stairs of the school absentmindedly, immersed in his own thoughts. Yesterday’s fight with Ladybug had left him depressed. He had never meant to be so cruel. He knew he had taken his own problems out on her. He hadn’t been fair.

He had tried messaging after he’d arrived home but she never read the messages, and he couldn’t really blame her. He had been a prick.

With a sigh he placed his phone in his back pocket, only to see a familiar black mop braided in pigtails walk a few meters in front of him. Marinette. He had forgotten about her. He still owed her an apology.

With renewed determination he trod through the crowd of students until he reached her. She was facing forward, not realizing she was being followed. As he got closer two things became clearer. Firstly, she smelled weird, but not in a bad way. It simply was a pungent, herb-like smell that made his sensitive nose twitch slightly. And secondly, she seemed to wobble as she took each step, so much so that he was afraid she was going to fall the moment a weak breeze passed by.

Pepping himself up mentally, he decided it wasn’t the moment to hesitate and reached for her shoulder.

Only to be turned around, his arm seized in a martial art’s hold as he fell to his knees, his hand completely twisted painfully on his back. He couldn’t have been in that position for more than a few seconds before whoever had attacked him released him again, but he was certain he never wanted to relive that experience again. Adrien then noticed a very frantic voice to his left. The girl apologizing over and over again for some reason...

Oh. The person apologizing and on the verge of tears was no other than Marinette.

And she probably was also the one who had brought him to his knees.

“Are you sure you’re ok Adrien?” She was heaving. “Do you need the nurse? A doctor? Surgery? Oh god I didn’t break your arm did I?” She was flailing like crazy. She was probably on the verge of a full on panic-attack he noticed, with the way she was failing to breath through her ramblings.

“It’s ok ‘Nette, it was my fault, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” Adrien chuckled softly, moving his hand to as to show her it was fine, albeit it did feel a bit sore. “Besides, I deserved it.”

Marinette finally seemed to regain some of her composure, blinking owlishly, blue eyes on green ones. They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. The awkwardness almost palpable.

He opted on being the first one to make a move. He stood up, dusting himself off, and offered her a hand. She looked at it for a few moments before her gaze returned to staring at him. Adrien was beginning to fear that she might not forgive him, but just before he was about to retract his hand she grabbed it, using him as an anchor to lift herself. They stayed like that for a while, their hands lingering  in each other’s.

His free hand shot up to ruffle his nape. “Listen Mari I...” Adrien began hesitantly. “I wanted to apologize, for everything.” He gripped her hand a tad more firmly. She didn’t know how far his apology went. Both as Adrien and as Chat Noir, he was so sorry. He hoped that she could see the sincerity in his face as she looked at him, searching his face for something.

He hadn’t realized he’d been holding a breath until she smiled weakly and Adrien found himself exhaling in relief.

“It’s ok Adrien, I forgive you,” she giggled softly. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you that way either, or assaulted you like that just a minute ago.”

He laughed slightly at that. “Well, we’re even then,” he agreed. He noticed how her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, and she still looked dead tired, but at least his apology had apparently lifted some weight off her shoulders, if the way she had visibly relaxed was anything to go by.

Before he could overthink it he pulled her into a hug, her soft form pressing comfortably against him. She smelled like pastries, sugar, bread and that herb stuff that intrigued him, but he absolutely loved it.

She pulled away quickly after, the hug a bit too short for his taste but he stepped back anyway, giving her space. Her smile was better now, a bit more real and wide.

“Thank you Adrien, I needed that,” she confessed, grasping his bicep faintly. He only nodded, grinning from ear to ear. He was glad he had made up with one of his best friends.

As the bell rang they separated, waving each other goodbye. He was happy sure, but he still felt a little guilty. Maybe he’d surprise her after school with a visit.

After a long day, the last bell finally sounded. Every student got up and prepared to leave. Adrien walked next to Nino, not actually listening to the conversation he seemed to be having with Kim and Max. He was mentally going over his plan again. He’d first go to the bakery and ask permission to spend some time with Marinette, then they could play some videogames together and he’d invite her to something in order to properly apologize.

Just as he smiled to himself because of the ingenuity of his secret plotting he caught that scent again. Except this time it was way stronger, so much so that he found himself retching violently as he went down. Nino, Kim and Max were at his side in an instant, asking if he was alright.

“I’m fine guys it’s just,” he said slowly, trying to not breath anymore of that stench again. “What is that smell?” The three boys looked at one another and then they turned to look at something to the right before their eyes were on him again. Kim was smirking, Max was grimacing and Nino was giving him a small sympathetic smile.

“What?” Adrien asked embarrassed, immediately regretting it as he started coughing.

“Coddled Rich Boy Adrien Agreste hasn’t smelt weed before!” Kim laughed.

“W-What?” The blond choked.

“You know blondie! La beu, l’herbe, la ganja, la marie! Weed bro!” He explained.

“B-but that smell, it can’t, wha-” He couldn’t think clearly, the stink too overwhelming.

“It’s those older students from the class across ours,” Max explained, his nose also scrunched up. “I don’t appreciate their...odor trail either.”

“Don’t worry dude, I’ll tell them to move a bit so you can recover ok?” Nino offered, patting his shoulder when Adrien nodded helplessly.

For some time he tried to hold his breath as much as he could, before inhaling small spurts of air to try and minimize the use of his nose. Adrien felt lightheaded and ready to pass out from lack of proper oxygen by the time Nino came back. “You can breathe again dude,” he reassured him. “They’re gone now.”

Adrien finally let go and breathed deeply, his puffs sounding raspy after such an ordeal. The smell still lingered slightly, but it was much more bearable now. It even was a bit familiar, almost like...

“I have to go!” Adrien yelled suddenly, realization hitting him like a bucket of cold water. He jumped to his feet quickly as he rushed past his concerned classmates.

“What is his deal,” Kim asked Nino, who only shrugged. “I don’t know dude, he’s been acting weirdly lately.” He shook his head. “He probably is late to one of his scheduled activities.”

Adrien, meanwhile, was barging in through the front of the Dupain-Cheng bakery. Sabine looked up in surprise at the racket, but smiled when he saw it was Adrien, although it was rare to see him panting like that.

“Hello Adrien, what brings you here?”

“Hello Miss Cheng,” he heaved. “Is Marinette upstairs?”

Sabine frowned. “Yes she is but-”

“Great! Can I see her? It’s urgent!”

“Yeah you can go up but she’s not al-”

“Thank you see you later bye!” He replied, already going upstairs. Sabine could only smile and shake her head. Boys, always so impatient. She just hoped Marinette could handle two male teenagers at the same time. With a hidden smirk she went back inside the bakery’s kitchen. It was better if Tom didn’t know.

Adrien stopped for a second when he was right in front of the trapdoor. On the other side, music and laughter could be heard. He recognized Marinette’s voice, but she wasn’t alone. A deeper tone was talking and laughing alongside her.

Before he could hesitate any further, he opened it, the room plummeting to silence.

“Adrien? What are you doing here?” He heard Marinette ask. The room was rather dimly lit, her fairy lights turned on. She was sitting on her chaise, no, rather she was sitting on someone’s lap. He was a familiar face. If he remembered correctly he was Juleka’s older brother.

“Sorry Marinette, your mother let me in and I had to talk to you about...” He trailed off as he sniffed more profoundly. The smell was back. It wasn’t as strong as it had been at school, but it definitely didn’t leave him with any doubts. His eyes narrowed at the cups they were holding, where a soft whiff of smoke was rising. The scent came from within them.

“Why are you smoking weed Marinette?” He growled. Marinette’s eyes widened like saucers.

“What?” She squeaked incredulously. The other male only laughed, setting his cup aside as he rose, lifting Marinette gently to let her sit back on the seat. “Calm down Sunshine,” he chuckled. “Come inside!”

But Adrien wasn’t calm. Oh no. He was furious. He could feel himself bristle. “Do you think this is funny?” He spat, then turned to look at the girl pleadingly. “Please Marinette, why would you do drugs?”

Adrien stepped inside and tried to approach her, but was intercepted by Luka.

“Whoa there hot-stuff,” he tried calmly. “Let’s not accuse each other like that ok? There’s no way Marinette could be doing drugs,” the blue-haired boy smiled. He only growled at the older boy, whose eyebrow rose, not intimidated at all. To Adrien’s chagrin they were at eye level, since they were roughly the same height. He would have liked to tower over him at that moment.

“Get out of my way!” He hissed. “I need to talk to Marinette!”

“Adrien!” The girl in question exclaimed. “What is wrong with you! Don’t talk to Luka like that!”

“I don’t think you need to talk to anyone at all, buttercup,” Luka said calmly, his constant aloofness gone.

“Call me buttercup one more time, see what happens,” he seethed. If he had been Chat Noir his tail would have been lashing out from side to side violently.

“Is that a challenge?” Luka sneered. “Buttercup?” Marinette only gasped at the blue-haired boy’s actions. But before she could reprimand them once again Adrien lunged, Luka following close.

Marinette could only yelp in surprise as both boys crashed on the floor in a tangled heap of appendages. They rolled and wrestled with each other as Marinette demanded them to stop from her place in the chaise, but of course she was being completely ignored.

“It’s your fault isn’t it!” Adrien yowled, his hand pressing down on the other boy’s face. “You are the one who got her into drugs!” Luka for his part could only knee him in his side, pushing him under. “What are you even talking about?” Luka questioned, barely moving his hand in time to not get it bitten.

“Don’t act like you don’t know!” Adrien snarled, his legs kicking upwards, protecting his belly. “You are the one who brings Marinette the drugs!” Accused the blond, rolling them both again so he was on top again.

“What drugs!” Luka finally screamed, confused. “Those drugs!” Adrien pointed to the cups. “I can smell it. There’s weed inside those cups!”

At that Luka suddenly stopped struggling, laying limp under him, chest rising rapidly, trying to get as much oxygen inside of him now that he could. Adrien also paused, only to catch his breath, his hands still clutching the other’s shirt, knuckles white in tension.

A vibration startled Adrien out of nowhere, only realizing it came from Luka as he tried to contain his laughter and failing. Then the dam broke and the blue-haired boy started chortling like Adrien had never heard before, his confused form still on top moving with the other boy’s spasms.

He couldn’t help but blush. “What’s so funny!” He demanded to know. “It’s just,” Luka tried, and failed, to explain, as he fell back into laughing like a madman. “Y-you! You a-actually-” He wheezed.

Accepting he wouldn’t be explaining the hilarity of the situation Adrien turned, ready to ask Marinette for her opinion, only to freeze under her glare. He felt himself go rigid as he realized two very important things.

First, he had barged unannounced and accused her of doing drugs at her own home, on her own room.

Secondly, he had just been all-out fighting with a boy for a while just mere seconds ago. A boy that probably was Marinette’s close friend. A boy that most likely was also Marinette’s boyfriend. Adrien gulped audibly, which the other boy seemed to catch, as he tried to reign in his laughter into only snickering as he sat up, pushing Adrien to the side.

“Now I’m gonna go grab the first aid kit,” Marinette drawled, her tone dangerous. “And if I see or hear any one of you, you’re going to wish you had never met me.”

“Yes ma’am” Both teens answered in sync.

With that she marched downstairs to retrieve the kit, leaving an awkward atmosphere behind her. Adrien whirled when he heard Luka snort softly. He glared at him, which only made the other boy snicker harder. He was about to snap at him when the sound of the trapdoor closing rather violently made him jump. He straightened himself a bit and he saw Luka doing the same, a small grin never leaving his lips, which of course irritated him.

“What am I going to do with you,” Marinette sighed as she crouched in front of Luka, his smile widening ever so slightly. It was then that he noticed Luka’s injured lip, a few drops of blood visible. Adrien winced when Marinette dabbed at it with cotton, his guilt rising. He probably shouldn’t have tussled with the other boy. He was a superhero after all. Who knows how much damage he could have done to him if he had lost all control.

Adrien started when Marinette was suddenly in front of him. Her eyes silently reprimanding him, judging him for his immature actions. He let his gaze fall to the floor, ashamed. He knew he had no excuse. Marinette would probably hate him for the rest of her life now.

That’s why it was such a shock when he felt soft hands and fabric against his cheek. He looked up at her, his eyes sparking with hope and guilt. Adrien wished she understood, he wanted her to forgive him, so he tried to convey so with his eyes.

She seemed to hesitate for a second before sighing in resignation. One of her hands caressing his cheek while the other cleaned his face with what appeared to be a rag.

“I’m sorry,” Adrien mumbled, not wanting to make things worse, his eyes fixed in hers.

Marinette stuttered in her actions for a moment before cursing under her breath, which made Luka snort. Adrien looked between them confused.

“What were you trying to do Adrien,” Marinette asked him softly. “I don’t want you doing drugs Mari,” he confessed, eyes dropping down again. “You are way too important to me so I... I couldn’t,” he struggled to answer, his throat felt clogged up.

“Oh no, no, no, Adrien,” Marinette hugged him. “Oh Adrien, I’m not doing drugs or anything like that.”

“But the smell!” He protested. “You smelled like weed Mari!” He heard Luka begin to snicker again, but this time it was curt short thanks to Marinette who sent him a glare, sobering him up.

“Adrien, the smell is from, well...”

“It’s tea Adrien.” Luka interrupted, answering his question finally. “It’s cannabis tea yes, but it’s perfectly legal here in France.” He explained. “Not only that but it’s also great for you, as long as you don’t abuse it obviously.” He concluded, a small amused smirk on his face.

“Huh,” Adrien said intelligently. “I guess I’m an idiot.”

Luka broke again, falling to the floor, howling wildly as he convulsed. Even Marinette looked startled by it. He seemed like such a calm, easy-going kind-of guy, but here he was, laughing at him openly like a maniac.

The absurdity of it all hit him like a train-wreck at that moment, as he began to giggle, then laugh, until he was roaring as loudly as the other teen.

Marinette looked at them like a deer caught in headlights, before she broke into a fit of giggles of her own, a real smile on her face this time. She tried to lecture them, but it didn’t come off as serious, with it being said between pearls of laughter.

Adrien achieved some semblance of tranquility as he laid in Marinette’s floor, his whole body stretched as he just stared at her ceiling. He felt his pulse, quick and alive, running through him. His chest still sputtered with the stray giggle here and there. And as he closed his eyes, he imagined how life would be if it was always like this, full of absurdity and laughter. Happiness.

No, he wouldn’t mind if things stayed like this forever.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4  | Part 5

TAGS UNDER THE CUT

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[jooheonspinky]

Saudade - Ot7 | 06

Ot7 BTS

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Rating: M (Mature)

word count: 1,040

Trigger Warnings: Hospitalization (rehab, mental institute). Mental health issues (Text Reason to 741741 if you need to reach out for help). Insinuated M x M (if you squint hard enough). Substance abuse (alcohol, pills | call 1-800-662-4357 if you are dealing with this). Weapons (gun, knife). Smoking (cigarettes, weed). Mentions of suicide/attempted suicide (National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255). Violence (murder/attempted murder). Mentions of blood. Mentions of therapy sessions (these are not accurate representations, please leave it to proper professionals). Mentions of physical abuse (Call 1-800-799-7233 if you are dealing with domestic violence) WE DO NOT GLORIFY THESE WARNINGS/TRIGGERS; THIS IS A FICTIONAL STORY, AND DOES NOT RELATE TO ANY OF THE MEMBERS. IF YOU ARE DEALING WITH ANY OF THESE, PLEASE REACH OUT TO YOUR LOCAL AUTHORITIES FOR ASSISTANCE, OR THE NUMBERS LISTED ABOVE.

↤ Previous| 06 | Next ↦

December 4th, 2017 | 21:15 

   The gray building towers ominously in front of Namjoon, sending goosebumps along his arms, the hairs on his neck standing. The dark sky and falling snow only seemed to enhance the looming structure. His toffee colored hair whips back into his eyes as he casts them towards the brightly lit glass doors, the staircase leading up in front of him. His fingers brush the strands away before he steps forward, ascending towards the keypad that rests to the right of the doors. Entering the code easily, the doors click open, his free hand going out to grab the frigid handle. 

   Sighing gratefully now that he’s out of the cold, Namjoon makes haste towards the elevators, nodding to the man who sits at the front desk. 

   “Long time no see,” the older man comments, his hand lowering the morning's newspaper. 

   Namjoon chuckles, his hand smashing the silent elevator button before turning towards the security guard. “How’s the misses?”

   “Pfft, a pain in my ass as usual.” 

   The younger man can’t help but laugh at the response, waving a goodbye when the elevator doors open, and he steps inside. He quickly hits the button for the appropriate floor, thankful when the doors close, a puff of air escaping his lips. The soft elevator music fills the silence before the ding sounds, the doors opening once again, and he steps out into the quiet hallway. It doesn’t take him long to get to the correct door.

   Namjoon wraps his knuckles against the door to his hyung’s studio, noting that his friend, who was hard at work, was lost in concentration. Through the narrow rectangular window he could see Yoongi’s figure was hunched over his keyboard. Repeating the gesture, a little stronger this time, the older male finally looks up, his eyes blank for a moment as he’s pulled from the depths of his creativity. Realization hits before he offers a quick smile, waving his friend in. Namjoon steps into the soundproof room, closing the door quietly behind him.

   It hasn’t changed much since he was last in the small room, a new white and blue jersey with Yoongi's name on it hanging on the back of the computer chair. The keyboard lying in front of him on the desk, the keyboard stand completely bare to his left. To the right was a huge flat screen tv mounted to the wall, lyrics covering the screen from top to bottom.

   Yoongi’s desk is covered from corner to corner, making the younger man anxious when he spots a few cans of energy drinks next to the expensive equipment. A small monitor sits at the back of the desk, a medium sized tv mounted onto the wall above the monitor, acting as a second monitor screen. A somewhat thin poster with the words ‘Genius Lab’ hung above the mounted tv monitor, bringing a small smile to Namjoon’s lips.

   Holding up a six pack, Namjoon grins, “Brought some beer.” Yoongi smirks, shaking his head at his friend’s enthusiasm. “How’s the mixing going?”

   Leaning back in his chair, Yoongi sighs heavily whilst shoving a hand through his bleach blond locks, “It’s...going.”

   “Wanna take a break for a few?” Namjoon queries, dropping into the only spare chair opposite the desk Yoongi was stationed at.

   Dropping his hands to his thighs with a smack, the older man shrugs before exhaling, “Sure, why not.”

   Namjoon twists off the cap of one of the bottles, passing it to Yoongi before opening one for himself. They both take a few swigs of the bitter alcohol, the once undisturbed atmosphere gradually morphing to one of awkwardness.

   Clearing his throat, Namjoon leans forward, elbows resting on his knees. “Any updates on Jimin?”

   He watches his hyung’s expression turn dejected, sorrow instantly glazing Yoongi’s dark eyes, weariness weighing heavy on his shoulders. Yoongi sets his half empty beer bottle on his desk, his fingers gripping the glass for a second longer than intended, his lips in a tight line.

   “He blames me for that day, ya know?” Yoongi’s voice is full of hurt as he speaks, forcing himself to clear his throat before continuing. “For stopping him with Taehyung, and then with himself. Of course after I got him admitted he refuses my visits, rejects my calls...” He pauses, raking a slightly trembling hand through his hair. “Man, how am I supposed to get the image of his lifeless body in that bathtub out of my head? He hasn’t given me the chance to replace it with a better one.”

   “It’s tough, bro. I get it,” Namjoon nods empathetically, leaning back in his chair to take a deep breath.

   “That’s an understatement.” Yoongi fidgets with the front pocket of his jeans, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, flipping the carton open to check inside. “Wanna go outside for a smoke?”

   Rather than reply, Namjoon stands, following Yoongi out of the studio and down the hall to outside. Night had long since enveloped the area, a half moon glowing high in the evening sky, smiling down almost maniacally at the men. The younger man tries to force his shiver down, facing his hyung instead. Namjoon accepts the offered cigarette from Yoongi, allowing the older man to light the end of it. Leaning against the building, they exhale puffs of smoke into the night air.

   “How are the visits with the other one going?”

   “Pretty much still the same,” Yoongi sighs, exhaling the smoke from his nose and watching it get swept away with the wind. “The doctor told me they were going to start a new method of treatment.”

   Looking over at Yoongi, Namjoon’s brows furrow together in concern. “What kind of treatment?”

   Yoongi lets out another puff of smoke before advising, “He wouldn’t go into details because I’m not kin, but he did say that in addition to beginning the new treatment, they were going to start him on a higher dosage of the medication he is currently on.”

   “Damn,” Namjoon straightens, stubbing his cigarette bud in the ashtray dome lid of the trash bin near the door. “I can’t believe this is us now.”

   “Me neither...”

   “Let’s get back inside,” Namjoon grabs at the door, huffing in frustration. “I need another drink.”

[podmusical]

Father Nulls Best

Credits and Lyrics for Episode 11 of Our Dumb Universe

starring:

Announcer - James B Kennedy Kvold - Happy Anderson Fuzzo - Jared Loftin Pangla - Melissa Lusk Sondra - Lauren Lim Jackson Bloor - Carl Howell Dankent - Nathaniel Kent Y Ship - Amy Sheehan Commander - Megan Flower Laymen - Themself written by Jonathan A. Goldberg

music by Matt roi Berger recorded, mixed and edited by Martin Fowler

__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/

DANKENT’S SONG

                                 DANKENT

I ain’t the product of the gook inside my bones I ain’t your babe just cuz spored into the unknown My null is voided, you’re not nobody, you don’t count So take a hike pops, you ain’t even worth an ounce! Wait a minute, what’s this coming out my mouth? Never sung nothing before but now I guess I’m singing out! Well let me sing yah ‘zactly what’s I’ve on my mind Cuz it’s been boiling up there for some time You missed on Your long con So piss off I ain’t your son, bum! Take a long walk Off a short dock You can suck my balls! I voluntarily disinherit me, you, as a parent, I reject Already got myself a family, and one that doesn’t make me sick I guess Sondra’s like my mom, and maybe Pangla’s my kid sis Bloor’s like a weird uncle and there’s Fuzzo too I guess. Look I ain’t much, but to them I guess I count So let’s hit the chorus and really spell it out: You missed on This long con So piss off and Kiss my chops, Pops! Go blast off, you jag off You can suck my balls! Man I love sining! Who knew it was so easy! Honestly it’s freaky: Just breath and feel deeply And tell your dad to eat a butt!   Yeah! It’s kinda laughable how bad you screwed this up Your so bad my actual dad looks better just because Sp take your war crimes and shove them in your bum This singing detective ain’t your son! No I ain’t much, but all I am’s not thanks to you Not that you’d understand what friends can do No, You missed on This long con So lift off, Get your hot air long gone I got my friends You ain’t like them You ain’t worth the breath To tell you off Pops No-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh! You don’t matter to me! I was fine long ‘Fore you came long You can suck my balls! You can suck my balls! You can suck my balls! __/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/ Y-SHIP IS A FLY SHIP                                  Y SHIP

Guess who’s back? Y is here! New ship, who dis? Check my brand new gear Hate to brag But my hull is fine And I’m gonna haul When these thrusters fire Back from the dead and ready to let loose Gonna blast some plasma, from my cute caboose! Y-Ship is gonna sail the stars When do we depart? Wanna test these parts! Y-Ship is gonna blow your mind Fastest ship designed Best you’ll ever find, see: The Y-ship is a fly ship, no denying No run of the mill supply ship, bitch is styling Unparalleled design and a leather interior The criterion, the limit, other ships are inferior - Hear me: Stand back, cuz this ship slaps, catching no flack Cuz in a whip crack I’m there, back yeah yeah Blink and you miss - this hip ship’s like a kiss On the lips of a hyper stellar star fairing miss, goddess Technology pushed to its furthest The universe harnessed and strapped to my rockets Speed of light in first gear, I’m honestly yawning Replicating food and fuel and rates almost alarming My sensors are the sharpest, displays are the largest Ever conceived or hypothesized, or possible, honest! And at the heart of this star ship’s the modest and charming Smartest damn bitch in this galaxy’s quadrant, come on! Y-Ship is gonna travel space Take us to the brain Save the human race Y-Ship’ll do it all in style Come on take a ride Dummy get inside me! There was a time I was a finger, so alone No body of my own to call my own, so dark and cold Next thing I know, I’m returned and so much more From death life sparks fresher than before! The Y-Ship is a fly ship can’t deny ship Got a new lease on life ship, ship is priceless Nothing gonna stop her, gonna bother or block her Back to the top, to the center of the galaxy, hop on! This star ship is a hard ship, gonna star in The story of her glory, locked and ready to depart in 3 2 1 blast off and ascend To the ends of the galaxy and do it again! The Y-Ship is a fly ship can’t deny ship Got a new lease on life ship, ship is priceless Nothing gonna stop her, gonna bother or block her Back to the top, to the center of the galaxy, hop on! This star ship is a hard ship, gonna star in The story of her glory, locked and ready to depart in 3 2 1 blast off and ascend To the ends of the galaxy and do it again! The Y-Ship is a fly ship can’t deny ship Got a new lease on life ship, ship is priceless 3 2 1 blast off and ascend To the ends of the galaxy and do it again! __/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/__/ SPECIAL DELIVERY                                      FUZZO

Why am I not scared to die? I’ve thought of this a thousand times And stayed my hands to stay and stand abuse I’ve reason new more than before To fight for life, to shut this door My friends, my sister, all the joy, in truth Once my father preached a toothy plan He promised greater life for man And in this scope I searched for hope - no use Disappointment was my guide I met her then, she’s stayed my life Laughing for she knows more than I do But why now is my soul at peace? Her voice is finally gone from me? I want to live now, peacefully, subdued The sea inside me free from waves That made me sick for all my days And crushed and shamed and raged my whole life through I changed the world, I made it bow A monstrous of feat my self doubt No heaven waits for me if heaven’s true My father’s gone, my mom, my throne The cancers that consumed my soul I’m free of them, my fate is mine to choose! Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah! I wanna live, I wanna feel my sister’s hug around me! I wanna know a life that’s free of hatred, free of doubting me! I wanna see! I want to make up for the time I’ve wasted sad and fearful How do I make up for the pain I’ve laid on those that care for me? I think now I see... Oward into the breech! Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah! Oh, I’m not alone, am I... you’re here with me too?                             BRUSHEE We’re all together in the end                              PANGLA We stand with you our bro, our friend                              FUZZO I feel you now, I know what I must do I know now why my soul’s at peace Before, my death was just for me To save me from some awful aching truth But now I die so I may live My friends, they will remember it Because they live, because I got them through The universe is more than me But I am part of it, the we I’ll die for that, for it’s the life I choose! Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!

[jaeyooniverse]

the FIRST COLLECTION commentary no one asked for, by yours truly

1. Good Guy

00:00 - I love that the recent comebacks have had That Sound at the beginning. Not the same sound but a distinct sound that the moment the song starts you just KNOW. They are sounds i love to imitate tbh

00:08 - okay idk why but the crescendo of the synth/strings (i dont know music words, bare with me for this) it’s so pretty and very well represents how i gradually get more excited as the song starts ( ilove this song). also i’ve watched so may stages that now my mind just immediately starts the fanchant

00:16/00:21/00:23/other times but i wont list them all - the echos!! ugh i love it *chefs kiss*

00:21 - okay i love all of taeyangs opening line but esp the “oh noo”

00:29 - the Slight autotune to dawon’s voice as he says “baby” is my aesthetic

00:38 -  jaeyoon does this part so well like it’s just so PERFECT for him; i love how he says “yeah” sdfhdjkd

00:47 - THE BASS DURING THE CHORUS. this alone gets me so excited it’s so GOOD ; this chorus is the perfect type of addictive like it’s catchy but you wont get annoyed when it’s stuck in your head oof

01:01 - what do i even say,, inseong,,,,

01:14 - i’m probably gonna say this a million times but jaeyoons vocals are so perfect for his parts, props to whoever decides the line distribution, truly, and props to my man’s execution ♡_♡

01:17 - i’m upset youngbin’s part is so short bc it’s so GOOD esp the “feel it” and the “that’s what i like neoui jeonbureul YEH” and omg now whenever his part comes on i think about that penguin video and him reenacting it 🥺🥺 

01:26 - zuhos part is also gold and i love the dance during his & bin’s parts !

01:36 - am i the only one(haha) who gets butterflies in my stomach when dawon sings?? something about the slight run when he sings “molla~ yeah”... oof

01:41 - ROWOON. Yes. i love how soft his voice is compared to when jaeyoon sings this shdfkjh

01:51 - i already mentioned the bass during the chorus but i MUST point it out again. i love the triple beat or WHATEVER you wanna call it ugh it’s my favorite part

02:02 - who can “oh yeah” like rowoon? no one can, no one’s doing it like him

02:19 - i can’t believe i had to wait more than 2 minutes to hear hwiyoung rap for like 2 seconds but ANWAY i love his part i love his rapping voice also the little guitar part in the bg!! good stuff!!! 

02:33 - okay inseong i get it, you have vocals. also i was lowkey disappointed that note didn’t last longer?? also also the first time i heard this i got flashbacks to Be A Man by MBLAQ when G.O’s sings his “never” (that’s how long i wanted inseong’s note to be) and funnily so, it’s around the same time mark as this one lmaoo

02:36 - how the muic goes quiet afterwards,, inseong’s voice echoing and fading away,, poetic cinema

02:37 - THE BASS ,, it hits differently when it’s that end-of-the-song hype 😩

02:39 - THE “OH!” 

02:46 - this part also hits different,, when you watch the stage and zuho is in center looking like THAT....it hits, it truly hits...

02:50 - okay waait i literally just noticed this but is that jaeyoon saying “you so bad” in the bg??

02:53 - not to be dramatic but the first time i heard this song i literally teared up (i still do, if i’m sensitive enough) when it got to this part like dawon’s voice is just something else !! when he sings “naya”,,, ugh the color, the emotion, the man,,,, also cant listen to this part and NOT think about (or do) his little dab move thing sdhfkjh

02:57 - the “chajabwa!” oh vocal king 😩

2. Am I the Only One

00:06 - 😳

00:11 - jaeYOON! I love how airy ? his voice can sound The echoes man, the echoes,,

00:38 - okay this is literally one of my favorite lines dawon’s voice sounds so good here i literally canNOT get over it any time i listen to this song. That “OoH” at ~00:43? the “geuriumi miumi dwaegimaneul I PRAY” ,, an instant classic

00:48 - the VOCALS at this part,, unmatched

01:07 - the “oh-ohh” in the bg i love it shjkshf

01:34 - loook when i tell you youngbins part is my fave part of this song!!! it’s a shame it’s so short but OH i’m always so excited when it starts,, idk what it is,, his voice? the vibes?? the rhymes?? whatever it is,,, it all comes together to make one of my fave youngbin verses

02:00 - yes I already pointed out dawon’s “i pray” part but it hits different everytime he does it, i’m telling you!

02:01 - the amount of layers in this song,, i think it’s inseong&rowoon right?? and then jaeyoon’s little “hey ay”s 🥺

02:39 - chani’s part is like, third favorite for this song. I love his voice, the vibes of this ,, the “yeh yeh” at ~2:43

02:54 - zuho does this thing where it sounds like he’s trying to rush and squish his verse into a certain frame of measures but in the end it still spills into the next measure and tbh i like it here dsfhjkh

02:57 - the POWER in this man’s VOICE ugh this verse is truly for me like going from dawon singing like THAT to jaeyoon, oof i’m in love

03:23 - youngbin’s “tell me where the love goes”,, the little echo of it (how many times will i mention echoes? stay tuned)

03:34 - that ending,, *chef’s kiss*

3. Shh

firstly i love that i now know Two (2) songs with this title (okay the Seventeen one has another ‘h’ but, still), and i love that they’re two diff feels. seventeens is that Good Noise, and has the “shh , just trust me” vibe, while sf9’s is just “shhhut up”

00:00 - the guitar! yes

00:12 - i dont even know what to call this sound but i love it

00:26 - LOVE tae’s vocals oof

00:28 - “right here is where i wanna be”,, you know where i wanna be?? an sf9 concert

00:33 - jaeyoon’s “baby don’t question me”,,, 😳

00:40 - the R is Rowoon stands for RealTalent

00:54 - the instrumental to this song is so good like i could just listen to that alone; also that “ooh~” we stan!

01:02 - inseong’s vocals in this song (okay in ANY song, but we’re talking about this song rn) are just,, amazing

01:26 - i just noticed how that “yeahhh” drags on idk how i feel about this im shdfjkh

01:36 - hi i’m tawa and i’m a dawonaholic

01:50 - shout to that beautiful saxophone tho,, gorgeous

02:03 - see i’m trying to limit how many times i mention dawons lines bc otherwise i would just comment on all of his lines ANYWAY this line hits different the second time around,, when he hits this note,,, i’m ascending as we speak

02:25 - okay the instrumental during zuho’s part,,, good stuff.. his part in general,, GOOD stuff!! 

02:30 - the pause at the end of the line and then the little ‘ding’! musical gold

02:33 - his little “whoop”s and “hey”s and “ay”s omg Number One Hype Man Baek Juho!! the build up of the music & him increasing the speed of his rap,, who is doing it like zuho please tell me

02:39 - here’s a secret: i love dawon’s vocals

02:45/2:51 -  K I M   I N S E O N G

02:56 - okay just one more time,, i love dawons vocals

Wait was hwiyoungbin in this song? Sdfhkjh

4. Lullu Lalla 

okay idk what i was on the first time i heard this song but for whatever reason i didn’t think much of it,, but now i have seen the [beautiful] light i absolutely love this song

00:00 - like it just started and the music is so cute and cheery omg i love this, youngbin’s little “here we go yo~”

00:07 - okay i know the lyric is “drop in” but in my mind i always say “jopping” 💀💀

00:11 - “hey what’s good?” sir it’s your voice,, your voice is whats good

00:20 - hwis voice is so cute i love it sdhfjkh

00:30 - the little “WheeEe” !! i giggle every time it’s so flippin cute like i have the stupidest smile on my face rn i love this part so mcuh

00:40 - the ‘ya jamkkan’ and then the small pause yo i LOVE this and also the “jinjja?” sdhfjkshj GOD i love this song 

00:41 - if you try to tell me this song is not perfect for jaeyoon’s voice i will Not listen to you. youve lost your right to form opinions i’m sorry

00:54 - i have no idea what to call it but that little high pitch noise/sound/thing that kinda mimics the lyrics/rhythm is so cute to me, esp in a later part of the song but we’ll get to that when we get to that

01:05 - “DONT YOU STOP”, filed under “Lines Tawa Cannot Hear and NOT Sing Along To”

01:09 - i really cant think of any other word to describe dawons voice here except cute :(( maybe i just think hes cute :(( also inseong’s “you’re so crazy~” like okay we get it you have vocals 

01:12 - sdhfjkhkj the only thing better than the “whee” is chani going “yeaayyy” 😭😭😭 tell me this isnt the cutest part of the song!! I dare you!!

01:22 - there goes zuho doing that thing with his rap again

01:24 - “nan sweet guy” is also filed under “Lines Tawa Cannot Hear and NOT Sing Along To”, i think jaeyoons voice is so soft and pretty here :c 

02:07 - idk what to say i just like these lines

02:12 - completely unbiased but this is like my fave part of the song omg yes dawon bb hit those notes 😭 and the at the end of his note that high pitch thing comes in and does its little thing and it’s so cute okay? this whole song is just so CUte. i havent read the lyrics translations but the small words/phrases ive picked up oh it’s cute i should really read the translations for these songs sometime shdfkjsh

02:23 - the way dawon says “beolsseo time over” is like one of my favorite things ever, along with how he says “joha” (well, more like “jowa” sdhfkjh but it’s so cute ugh im devastated why do i love his voice so much okay anyway--

02:49 - yoo taeyang ily

02:53 - “that was crazy” you know what’s crazy? How cute that song is

5. One Love

00:00 omg cute funky queennn!! also not to be me but like,, jaeyoons ooh-ooh ooh’s at the beginning is enough reason for this to win aoty no i will not accept any other opinions

00:20 - idk why i just like how inseong says “naman bollae”

00:24 - jaeyoon ;;-;;

00:33 - just,, this,,, *heart eyes* taeyang’s lil airy voice is like,, so good,, so beautiful

00:41 - baby,,,i want you, so loving for you,,, you’re all i think about all day,,,,, bros this is lichrally me @ dawon i can’t believe the writers for this song would get inspo from me WHERE ARE MY ROYALTIES. okay but seriously his voice when he sings haru jongil ni saengakbbuniya :((( <33 i like to imagine he’s softly smiling as his voice softens and trails off at the end,,, oh no oh boy im soft look what ive done ive thought about this for too long lets move on before i start-- *cries*

01:09 - part 247023789 of my crying over dawon’s vocals. stay tuned for more

01:22 - ugh kim inseong if you dont stop 

01:29 - OW

01:30 - love how taeyang sings this esp the ending syllable omg 

01:44 - the little trill or whatever in jaeyoon’s voice,, filed under “Reasons to Smile”

01:57 - i lichrally screamed like his voice is just so pretty and then the layering when he says “bbuniya” im gonna cry see you guys later 

02:43 - chani~~~

02:47 - whys hwi rapping like he had a time limit and he almost went over it like,,, they really just smooshed rap line all into this one part which like i guess i get? the way this song goes doesnt really lend itself to rap i guess ?

02:51 - the pause, the silence,,, only to be broken by the golden vocals of kim inseong,, im love

02:58 - seong’s lil “yeah!"

03:17 - “focus on my mind YEAH”

03:27 - sweet ending to a sweet song ;c

6. Like the Hands Held TIght

this song is truly Fall in Love’s little cousin like they are really related and im not good with words so i cant explain it but i just KNOW. sometimes i’ll be singing fall in love in my head but then somehow it turns into like the hands held tight?? If i could make song mash-ups i would

00:06 - i go “take my, my hands yeahh” at least once a day. thank you taeyang

00:14 - i need a taeyang solo and i need it now ; also i really like hwis verse? Idk what it is about it but it fits him very well and he does so good during the stages, he rocks it

00:32 - i like all of bin’s verse but esp this part especially especially bc of the choreo during it

00:37 - and then THIS part and dawon’s the only one on stage,,, what an experience,,

00:44 - the way he pronounces maeumeul is just.. *chefs kiss*

00:49 - another instance of tae’s wonderful airy? singing being absolutely perfect for the song concept

00:55 - aah~

01:00 - the EMOTION 

01:08 - idk what it is but inseong singing ‘gotongdoO~!’,, my heart,, sasiliya feel it

01:12 - imma say it now bc you already know im thinking it,, jaeyoons voice is PERFECT for this song, hands down no questions,,, that falsetto

01:16 - “nae huimangui bichi neoya” ♡_♡

01:19 - “sumeul swineun iyudo” 

01:21 - “AY. AY!”

Idk if it’s obvious but i just LOVE his part it’s so good i love the way he sings

01:34 - ‘yeah yeah yeah’

01:35 - omg i love rowoons part and his little dance during the stage it’s so good so wonderful just all around amazing great job seokwoo

01:37/01:39 - the little pause before the “yeah”s and just how different these two yeahs are but also i love them both equally

01:47 - *eun dan oh voice* HARU-YAH sdhfkjh okay anyway i love the way jaeyoon sings these lines esp how he says haru and naeili (also? Time over? like is this lullu lalla?)

01:57/02:06 - dawon :’) 

02:42 - dAngerOUS neooreuuuul wihaaaae

02:47 - dawon’s vocals omgggg

02:53 - okay whos that high note im LIVING for this

02:57 - ugh okay i love taeyang in the background; taeyang in this song in general,,, 

03:05 - jaeyoons lines are just so gooddd i love singing along to this song

7. Fire

00:00 - love the little sounds at the beginning,, quality start

00:04 - “it’s me” uhm okay but who are you? 

00:05 - the instrumental is so good tho sdhkjh oof

00:36 - not biased or anything but oh my goodness dawon’s voice!! It’s so pretty :c

00:41 - ready! ready! (go)

00:43 - LET’S GOO

The chorus for this song is just,,, so GOOD im sorry i only have like 5 words in my vocabulary but omg it’s just,,good

00:49 - this line!! I love it

00:59 - rowoon has that kinda voice that he could be saying any nonsense and you’d just be like *heart eyes* yes say it again king;; the way he says “let it go, let it go”

01:05 - love me love me love me YEAH 👌🏾

01:15 - YES

01:25 - omg youngbin ily omg his part is so lit but not like HYPE lit it’s just,, it’s chill lit we vibin

01:38 - im a little bit in love with dawon’s vocals in this song. just a little.

01:42 - the way he says READY. YOU GUYS IM CRYING I LOVE HIM?

01:50 - the way inseong sings “neoman” just,, soO good. inseong... good. 

02:01 - rowoon if you dont be careful im gonna ‘fall in love’ with you

02:15 - chani & zuhos raps + the music change im LOVE this it’s so good

2:24 - omg zuho finishes his rap on time OH YEAH

02:27 - *cries* okay this is it,, this is my favorite dawon line in this song

02:34 - is it really an sf9 song without inseong’s incredible vocals??

02:40 - wait maybe this is my favorite dawon line?? Idk dont touch me;;; the way he says “neoman”,,,,, give me amoemn t dklfmsd fn.l

02:41 - okay and this part, that note,,,, lee sanghyuk,,,,,

8. Stop it Now

00:01 - okay we vibin

00:16 - i really think hwi’s voice fits this song so well, along with like the hands held tight, also love the instrumental during his part;;; is this his longest verse on the album ,, sdhfkj

00:31 - im not gonna lie i think this is jaeyoon but part of me is like what if its taeyang,, either way,, beautiful voice

00:45 - THIS is taeyang and THIS LINE?? perfect, he executes it so well. this album was truly made for him; also love the instrumental here,, i feel like i’d hear it in the bg of a fantasy mmo/rpg

00:59 - idk what it is about inseongs voice but i love it

01:03 - chaniiii

01:06 - :)

01:16 - hello there sir

01:31 - oh his voice is so pretty ;-;

02:23 - zuho’s raps being the buildup is my aesthetic bro

02:31 - YES inseong homygod

02:36 - dawon ;cc also inseongs bg vocals,, thanks for your contribution king

02:40 - wait was i not paying attention or is this the first time rowoon sings (i probably wasnt paying attention)

02:44 - dawons little ‘yeah yeah’ and little adlibs?? filed under “Reasons to Stan”

02:51 - all the layering these background vocals and adlibs and just,,, what a lovely mix

02:53 - inseong imma let you finish but dawon’s “janin hage” is the greatest :// no im not biased

9. Dance with Us

00:01 - i love zuhos voice throughout this song omg :( 

00:05 - omg the piano in the bg is so cute um i love it:((((

00:21 - the way inseong sings “nun bushyeo” 🥺

00:23 - tae’s high notes 🥺🥺🥺

00:28 - okay this line,, him saying ‘i like you’,,, ;;-;;

00:30 - lovvvvve hwis verse here, and the little “ay”s 

00:38 - LMAO i just noticed the “AH!” in the bg??? Why?? 

00:40 - okay this line reminds me of bin’s verse in another song but i cant?? pinpoint it???? uhhhh i think it’s see u tomorrow?

00:47 - okay that transition from jaeyoon to taeyang,,, *chefs kiss*

00:52 - rowoon saying ‘haru’, they did it for us @extraordinary you stans

also im  reading the lyrics as i do this and omg wait this song is so cute so precious,,”today was hard,wasnt it baby? Close your eyes you can hug me??” i’m sobbing?? I’m developing a new love for this song oh my heart--

00:56 - rowoons vocals when he says “naege angyeodo dwae” omg pls

00:57 - LOVE the layering during the chorus it’s so good but also i cant tell who the lower voice is? Zuho? Hwiyoung??

01:12 omg *a wild dawon appears*

01:16 - SKR SKRR

01:19 - no i’ll never shut up about dawon’s vocals

01:40 - these vocals mannnn,, you know what?? I need a jaeyoon & taeyang duet. like i know weve already got one from concerts but i need MORE 

02:27 - i just love this part :(( 

02:31 - i was literally like “wheres inseong” and then he comes out with his powerful vocals as per usual,,,

02:35/’8 - like do you hear this??? go OFF sir also love how the music quiets down and then slowly builds back up !!

03:07/’8 - AAAAH YES BEST PART OF THE SONG I LOVE CHORUS/CHANTING OH IT’S SO GOOD I LOVE IT I LOVE THISS

03:23 - *whispers* dope

10. Beautiful Light

00:11 - “once in a lifetime~”

00:34 - i have already said and will continue to say this but rowoons voice is so perfect for this song

00:49 - dawon i would LOVE to be with you forever

00:53 - ugh this chorus is just so cute, so sweet ;c

00:59 - the way they sing “malhae JUlgeoya”,,, ugh love this little note jump thing idk what to call it,, it’s like a pretty version of a voice crack 😂😅

01:23 - zuhoooo

01:40 come through main vocalist kim youngkyunnnn!!

02:00 - yes im pointing out this line again i LOVE it

02:23 - this part 🥺🥺 

02:29 - OKAY THIs PART!!! I swear rowoon’s voice is sooo pretty hear idk what it is but when he sings this line,,, my heart feels thing,,,emotions,,, it’s so much

02:33 - that “hoo-oh~” ugh rowoon please record an audiobook i could listen to you for hours 😔

02:44 - alright,, i have figured out the formula for sf9 songs,,, music slow down then build up with inseong’s high/long note around ~2:30-40 dkfhjsk before the last chorus but this time with more adlibs (probably also by inseong)

okay i’m done (for now) fsdfhjkhsf i’d be surprised if anyone actualy read any of this tbh. if you did read this, congratulations you have a better attention span that i do LMAO i would say stan sf9 but if youre reading this you probably already do

okay bye goodnight

[mobvla]

hewwo dawn!! how are you my dear?? i hope you’re well!! i was listening to disenchanted by mcr (and thinking of you!) and oh boy that song Hits and i realized i’ve barely listening to mcr’s discography and since i trust your music taste and i know you like them,,, i was wondering if you had any song recs? 👉🏽👈🏽🥺 doesn’t have to be mcr but maybe similar vibes? yeah anyway i love you!! mwahh 💞💞

HSKDJSKS THIS MADE ME SO HAPPY OH GOD SUMAYA 🥺🥺 im so honoured you thought of me while listening mcr and that you //trust// my music taste like..... that's some big responsibility but i'll bear it!!! dhdjsjdjs ANYWAYS soooo song recs!!! yes yes i have a few for you!!

from mcr

honestly the whole three cheers for sweet revenge SLAPS. it's my favourite mcr album and Every Single Song HITS you no matter What you are going thru bUT

you know what they do to guys like us in prison? the gayness of it all?? the pained screams???? THE FUNKY BEGINNING OF THE SONG???? Yes.

the ghost of you simply because, in my humble opinion, it's mcr's best song in terms of the melody and song composition. of course the lyrics are amazing too but just. when you listen to only the instrumental is like im ascending EVERYTIME. not to mention that music video like WOW

thank you for your venom and i feel like i don't even need to explain this one

i never told you what i do for a living...... god..... this is just so. visceral. so raw. like you can feel every scream and every plead gerard sings and. god it makes my hair stand up just thinking about it. also i blame this for my crippling addition to bfu unsolved true crime lmaooo

now moving on to bullets: VAMPIRES WILL NEVER HURT YOU!!!!! bc i will grasp onto every vamp content i CAN. the play with words and all the vamp elements contrasting with the religious ones....... a work of art

early sunsets over monroeville. this. just makes me so sad i dont even have words to explain at this song does to me. also lowkey about murder and vamps but tbh what mcr song doesnt talk about those things amirite hfjfjfkdjf

NOW THE BLACK PARADE. BEHOLD. THE. ALBUM.

yes yes yesssss disenchanted just. hurts. i relate to so many parts of it and the way they write music..... Yeah.

my two all time faves from tbp are the sharpest lives because bro...... EVERYTHING about that song hits me a certain way and i DIE everytime i listen to it but in a good way u kno

and famous last words. that song is. literally me. i cry every single time i listen to it no exception. i become a sobbing mess just hearing the beginning of the song help

but same as three cheers, the entirety of this album is perfection i can't choose just a few songs u need to listen to EVERYTHING bc it tells a story and uuuugh thats so amazing

bonus: my way home is through you which is a bside to tbp and they didnt release it in the album because they Know the POWER this song holds and that the world isn't ready for it

bonus pt2: boy division for the headbanging factor (AND THE NANANANA) and the world is ugly bc It Is

now songs that have mcr vibe mhmmm

the day i left the womb and cellar door by escape the fate give off the same vibe as mcr imo (but even more emo gdjhfkshd) tbh this whole album (dying is your latest fashion) is a Big Fave and i recommend u listen to all of the songs!!!

heart in a cage by the strokes (bc i had to put them here somewhere djshdjsjs) but fr this has the same raw pained vibes from mcr

strangers by the rose and room no. 303 by the vane are both songs from the strangers from hell ost (btw if u haven't watched this kdrama GO WATCH IT PLS I BEG U SUMSUM IT'S AMAZING MIND-BLOWING INCREDIBLE) anddddd the creepy uneasy vibe from them is. Perfect. (room no. 303 is the best of korean emo ive ever listened to tbh)

we're all to blame by sum41 tho this has the same angry vibe, sum41 is punk rock so the composition is v v different

i think this is all i have to offer for now, if i remember any other songs/artists i'll dm u!!!! i hope i could help and that you enjoy the music!!! love uuuuuuuu bby 💓 have a great day today and stay safe!

[gottagobuycheese]

Tag Thingy

Thanks @silent--sonata for indulging my terrible sleeping habits XD

(fyi this will probably be unnecessarily long and rambly, so it’s going under a cut (EDIT: whelp the song list got a little out of hand, I’d apologize if I were even remotely sorry)) 

Rules: Answer 17 questions & tag 17 people you want to get to know better  

Nickname: Cheese (or Lactose Wedge, or Dairy Product of Unspecified Origin and Purpose)

Zodiac Sign: Gemini! 

Height: 160.5 cm/5′3″ (Bubbles I refuse to believe you’re actually that much taller than me) 

Hogwarts house: Somewhere between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff allegedly, both of which I’d be honored to get sorted into, but honestly I’d just be stoked to get sorted at all 

Last thing I googled: I think it was something along the lines of “how to speed up audio playback in GarageBand,” but but my train of thought was derailed before I actually looked at any of the results so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (and on a related note, thanks again for the magical audio editing @imperiousheiress!)

Song stuck in my head: The end credits to Legacy of the Wizard (which is SUCH a jam, thank you for enlightening me @jessicafish) Following and followers: 227 (goodness just looking at that number is stress-inducing) and...104?! When the HECK did you all get here??? I think just last summer I was happily floating about in the 50′s. Anyways, to anyone I have not said hello, hello! Hope you enjoy your stay, and I am sincerely sorry if you expected Quality Original Content, or even just regularly scheduled other people’s content. Sadly, neither of these things tend to happen here. 

Amount I sleep: During the school year it’s usually anywhere between 30 minutes and 6 hours (DON’T EVEN START BUBBLES YOU HAVE NO RIGHT), usually landing in the 3/4 hour ranges if I’m smart about it, but now that I am on Unofficial Break, it’s usually at least around 6 hours (except today was 3 because Avatar is an excellent show and the weirdos in this house have regularly scheduled breakfast at 9-something every morning). Sadly my sleep schedule can only be forced to tolerate normalcy for so long before careening back in the other direction, so we’ll see if this is just a blip or if we’re back to normal mid-Atlantic Ocean hours!

Lucky number(s): I wouldn’t say these are necessarily favorite numbers, but I do like 2 and 9. But come to think of it, second attempts at Official Things do tend to go better for me than first attempts, so maybe there’s some merit there after all! Dream Job: Don’t think I’m really cut out for dreaming anymore, haha (unless you are a theoretical future employer in which case I am Extremely Full of Ambition and Passion). The bed-adjacent metaphor has been made, and not to brag, but I can sleep on pretty much any surface. Currently studying my Not Favorite aspect of STEM (was there ever a favorite or did I just like being good at things sometimes) and learning how to People™ properly (and also learning a gazillion convoluted drug names like what the heck dude, did you just fall asleep on your typewriter coming up with these), so I’ll take whatever place hires me and pays me enough not to depend on my parents for everything, I suppose. In an ideal world, that would entail a job where I could make friends, and even more importantly, a job where my shortcomings would not cause Massive and Irreparable Harm, but I don’t think this line of work really meshes with that last one, so I guess I’ll either have to get my shit together™ extremely soon or fake my death, adopt an alias, and flee to a completely new place with no ties whatsoever before trying to get another, less high stakes job. 

(Though I guess, less cynically, I like helping people well enough? And stories are fun! Maybe there could’ve been something with that. Not that there still can’t be, mind, but there’s still a long way to go between Here and There)

Wearing: Black shorts. Navy t-shirt. Brown some-specific-kind-of-jacket-I-forgot-the-name-of jacket. Is it summer? Is it fall? Am I in middle school? Who can say, but they are COMFY so sadly I have no cares to give

Favourite song(s): way way WAY too many to list here, and I do not have them all organized in a handy playlist separately, but to name a few (and these are not necessarily the MOST favorite okay, it doesn’t mean I don’t love stuff not on this list, it means you can’t force me to pick between my children and I am going to find at least one quick thing from a few things I like before I need to hit post and go back to looking like I’m being studious, and also things I think you should listen to right now, but for everything I’ve linked assuming I mean the whole OST), here’s a spam of links in no particular order: 

LoZ Wind Waker - The Great Sea (aka the epitome of optimism) 

Undertale - NGAHHH!! (I was about to link more but then I realized it’d be the whole soundtrack lol) 

LoZ Breath of the Wild - Hateno Village (Night) 

A:tLA - Peace (bad call BAD CALL NOW I HAVE EMOTIONS) 

Legend of Korra - Final Scene/Ending Theme (MISTAKES WERE MADE MISTAKES WERE MADE) 

Kung Fu Panda - Oogway Ascends (I feel like I’m taking you on a whole little album journey now XD) 

PMD: Explorers of Sky - Dialga’s Fight to the Finish (aka the Gotta Shower Fast song) 

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Pursuit ~ Cornered (aka the HURRY UP AND PACK UR SHIT YOUR FLIGHT LEAVES IN THREE HOURS song) 

Apollo Justice: A New Trial Is In Session (very underrated soundtrack imo) and also Apollo Justice: Telling the Truth (because these two are very closely associated in my head and it’s getting harder and harder to narrow things down so maybe I should stop lol) 

Your Name: Katawaredoki (in which I am forcibly thrown heart first into the bedroom of my second apartment at approximately 12-something A.M.) 

Digimon Adventure 01: Butterfly (MASSIVE 90′s childhood anime feels, and also Last Summer Before Everything Went to Shit feels (on a general scale I mean, not personal)) 

Pokémon: Lugia’s Song multitrack cover by Jordan Moore (would that I could have a talent of that musical talent) 

Pokémon the First Movie: Tears of Life (great now I’m on a Pokémon music spiral GUESS IT’S CHILDHOOD NOSTALGIA HOURS NOW) 

PMD: Blue Rescue Team - Farewell and Run Away/Fugitives (you CANNOT make me choose between these guys okay, my brain WILL explode, and whoops now I want to link the whole ost) 

Palette by A Dear Friend (wink wonk) 

Pokémon: Alpha Sapphire - Fortree City (wow talk about mood whiplash)

Detective Conan: Main Theme (I can’t find the specific version since there are so many, but it’s a Good Theme) 

Super Smash Bros.: Brawl - Opening Theme 

Pokémon Colosseum - Relic Forest 

Song for Lindsay by Andrew Boysen Jr. (oh great now it’s time for marching band feelings I guess)

Mt. Everest by Rossano Galante 

Deltarune - Field of Hopes and Dreams and A Town Called Hometown (orchestrated) (aka the Lots of Work To Do song) and You Can Always Come Home and Don’t Forget (hey guess what I wrote a bunch of fake extra verses for) (also it looks my pathetic attempts at narrowing things down are getting even more pathetic so I’ll wrap up soon XD) 

 Guild Wars 2 - Fear Not This Night (never actually played this myself but my friend got me addicted to the music) 

Lord of the Rings - May It Be (Enya) (aaaand now I miss choir, THANKS BUBBLES) 

Lion King - Can You Feel the Love Tonight (Multilingual) by Travys Kim (aka how I remembered how fun these things are) 

Original Song by Anonymous  

(The urge to add all the other songs I’m not adding is so strong but I’ve got so much work to do so just assume I mean all Nintendo music from any game I’ve played, all Ghibli movie music, every musical I’ve ever heard, and even more) 

Random fact:

Apparently as early as the 17th century, you could guess that a child would have a shortened life span if their foreheads tasted salty. Yes, there is a specific reason, and yes, you may already know what it is, and thankfully no, that life span projection no longer holds true, assuming access to Modern Medicine! 

Favourite Authors: Okay I have not read enough various books of enough various authors to be able to answer this, so I’m just gonna go with a few books instead. They are not necessarily all-time favorites, but I enjoyed reading them very much at the time and more often than not go back to them for comfort reads: The Martian, any of first three Harry Potter books, and The Rise of Kiyoshi. (That last one’s not really a comfort read but I am drowning in Loving Kiyoshi juice so here we are)

Favourite Animal Noises: Certain kinds of birds (UNLESS it’s some ungodly hour of the morning and you’re trying to sleep)? Ooh, and crickets! 

Aesthetic: A slob, but like...a comfy slob. An incredibly disorganized hermit who is happy to mill about in the uncontrolled entropy. (Are we talking about what aesthetic I give off, or what I like to look at, visually? Because I like space, and water, and mountains, and forests, and forests ON mountains, OOH and forests on mountains at night where you can see space, perhaps reflected in a body of water. Or just water, idk. Different things are pretty to look at at different times)

WELL THAT ONLY TOOK FOREVER SORRY FOR THE OBSCENE LENGTH 

@pachelbelsheadcanon @averybritishbumblebee @shingeki-no-korra @sailorlock @yeswevegotavideo @soultheta @queenerdloser @ifeelbetterer @rogueofdragons @peppervl @amadness2method @mutalune and anybody else who wants to do this! This isn’t seventeen, and I don’t know if any of you have already done it/been tagged, but I hear people moving around upstairs so that means this break is over XD. And ABSOLUTELY no pressure to actually do this, this is pretty much just me wishing you well! (and YOU of course, my dear reader! I hope everything’s going all right, or if it’s not, that it does soon)

[fart-gate]

SG1

Season 5 episode 21

"MERIDIAN"

Notes by me

- alexa play radioactive by imagine dragons

- "DONT TOUCH ME" mr pissy pants

- lethal. I know he dies but I didnt think it would be this sudden?? And also happening so fast?

- the writers couldnt get rid of him fast enough I guess

- 4C3- Kolona is the planet

- such a quaint little town!

- JONAS?????? WAIT THIS IS THE GUY THAT JOINS THE TEAM LATER?? THIS GEEK???

- omg hes so cute. Love his reaction to tealcs forehead tattoo

- "we've been burned in the past" yeah I should say so

- "the guld" aksjdjdjd

- theyre only talking to one country of this planet? Seriously?

- drown in his own blood !! Ok awesome!! Sounds good!!!

- this is heart breaking

- I dont think using a Sarc is a good idea since last time he turned into Addiction Boy

- "please dont think youre the only one in your feelings on this matter" AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

- we can make hyper space windows with this shit??? Thats dope

- ask jonas what happened im sure he knows something.

- Daniel himself said he only has like 15 hrs left can we hurry with the diplomatic shit people!!!! Fuck!!!!

- jonas knows something!!! Squeeze him!!! Hold him upside down and shake him until he spills it!!! Make him sing like a canary!!!

- "I could make things worse" somehow I doubt that

- we are in the Dream World now

- I also dream of brunette milfs

- hes mummified

- "why do you care?"

Long pause

- ascended lady???

- "do your thing. Glow me" that is enough. No more out of you

- they brought jonas to the sgc lmao

- he stole the naquadia for them omg I love him. Crimeboy

- ok I love Daniel and jonas. Geeks unite

- daniels sideburns need to go tho

- MY BOY SHOT THE WINDOW AND MANHANDLED A RADIOACTIVE CORE we Stan

- he saved them all. And then they blame him???? Fucking?? Bitch???

- "I believe my entire life has been a failure" my guy??? You figured out the stargate bro I dont think thats nothing

- oh Sam :(

- I cant take this

- tealc saying hes his bestest friend and giving him the jaffa salute. Wheres my whiskey

- SIDE NOTE: I have a headcannon that tealc and Daniel have a monthly kelnoreem session together :)

- his self hatred and depression really show in this huh

- jacob!!!pls help. Crisis level 10 here

- he wants to die

- he chooses Jack to say goodbye to. Gonna go hit the bottle

- jack is unsurprised by this in the slightest

- they really killed him off with the WORST possible death didnt they

- he wants to be a glowy jellyfish!!!

- "everythings gonna be fine"

- the way friaser says "colonel ???" When he flatlines

- " where you going?"

"I dont know..."

- I know he comes back later but like??? How long do I have to wait until I see my nerd son again????

~whump under the cut~

Daniel jackson whump: burns hands on radioactive core, radiation sickness, mention of nausea, skin lesions, open sores on skin, weak, hospitalized , dying, whole body wrapped in bandages, walking in dream, has to accept death, jumps through glass window,self sacrifice, team is concerned and crying and giving death bed goodbyes

🎶Listening to Gotta Go My Own Way by Vanessa Hudgens from High School Musical 2🎶 LISTEN HERE YOU SHITS. THIS SONG IS THE BEST TO FIT THE EPSIDOE. FIGHT ME

Daniel is obviously gabriella in this song.

The whole first verse is Daniel saying he doesnt think the team is making much of a difference and that he doesnt feel like his presence is valued by anyone

"I got to move on and be who I am" hes gotta go fight the goaulds by another means! By being with oma!

"Im leaving today, cause I gotta do whats best for me, you'll be okay" the best for him is leaving with Oma because otherwise he would be suffering in his human body bc they cant fully heal him. Talking to Jack You'll Be Okay

"I just dont belong here, I hope you understand" he feels like he doesnt belong and that he cant make a difference while on the team. While human.

Jack is troy in this song. "What am I supossed to do?" "Why do you have to go" "Im trying to understand" "I want you to stay"

"What about us(sg1)? what about everything we've been through?" Daniel and Jack were the original duo and he feels like he is losing a brother. Like hes losing a limb .

Both Jack and Daniel "I gotta leave but I'll miss you"

🎶Listening to Carry You Home by James Blunt🎶

🎶Listening to Heaven by Avicii 🎶

🤓 No glasses!Daniel for 90% of episode. He only had them on for the flashback which lasted about 5 minutes at most.

[norted4fun]

Random Bakugou HC’s That no one asked for.

Warnings: swearing, fem reader, pot/beer, first HC, RANDOM, horny bakubabe, pre-dating

*sees you walking ahead of him in the halls with your head phones in, ignoring everyone like you intended whilst wearing your world muters.

*pulls one of them out to put into his own ear and you try not to look agitated, yet his brazenness is kinda sexy.

*nope, it’s REALLY sexy.

*”oi, who the hell listens to this crap”

*and right when you thought you both were having a moment.

*well it was fun...while it lasted

*being one of your favorite songs you attempt to pull the wire from his ear and he dodges you slightly

*”chill”

*EL OH EL. You? He was telling YOU to chill?

*at least he wasn’t calling you an asshat or idiot.

*he catches you hiding earphones beneath your hair during class. Knowing you space out with music, and it flusters him low key.

*nope, high key

*wants to know what you’re thinking about as you twirl the pieces of your hair through your fingers or flick your pencil in between your fin

*”hey space face, what the hell were you thinking about.” Asks anyways

*he can’t show how shaken he is when you both make eye contact, so insults it is.

*his name calling becomes more lame then usual when it comes to you, he doesn’t want to be mean to you.

*he’s so full of it, he CAN’T be mean

*kirishima calls him out on it seeing as he’s clearly full of it. “Bro, your sprung for y/n huh?” Sitting in the locker room changing after the last practice of the day finished.

*bakubabe doesn’t take well to being teased on it, worse that it’s visible to others how whipped he is for you.

*”shut your face, shitty hair” pulling his black tee over his head and dipping ASAP

*he thinks so much, all the time in fact. Goes to bed an hour early every night just so he can focus on the events of the day.

*typically it leads to him thinking of you.

*ends up scrolling through his phone on your social media profiles starring at your selfies with dumb captions...

*but that ass tho

*He’s stuck on you, about everything. It’s almost as if you were made with him in mind.

*so help him if he sees you struggling with something, friends, work, practice. He’s there with his bandwagon of comments but more importantly his help.

*it takes you a second to see through the jabs and actually notice the helpful advice that actually might work.

*bakugou is brilliant, like straight A student, but never brags about it or participates in classes or join discussions, unless he’s feeling extra spicy.

*”what THE FUCK are you talking about you damn extra’s? Of course that’s not the answer, it’s B.”

*bakugou suffers when it comes to group projects, if he was doing it himself it would have been done already. Tips back in his chair balancing himself.

*you were assigned to his group coming in late. And you wave causing his chair to slam back on all fours.

*you were a diligent student but it didn’t come naturally unfortunately, you put in a lot more time studying than you wished to. Your grades are great but math, that shit had you STUMBLING.

*the way you chewed your lip, he notices that, low key has a bite kink.

*who’s great idea was it to involve the alphabet with numbers anyways?

*probably a sadist

*speaking of sadist’s... you feel eyes on you

*you turn to your side during the pop quiz, and there he was. Staring at you with hands resting on his head, one of the first to have his test finished of course.

*he doesn’t even look flustered when you catch him.

*bakugou refuses to blush, he’d rather be forced to work with deku and icy hot bastard rather then show that he’s a smitten little fucker.

*and if he does blush... don’t tease our best boy. He’s never been this messed up over someone before, you’re doing a fine number on shaking him UP.

*doesnt enjoy smoking pot and/or drinking too much but sometimes he’ll join sero and kiri for a IPA and joint.

*weed calms bakugou...a little, his vulgar vocab is there but minus the screaming.

*”damn did you see the girls today doing the stretch test? Thought mineta was going to pop a grape and rocket to the moon” Kirishima says passing the joint to sero

*”hahahaha, we all saw, but bro no one beats (y/n), dude she’s so hot and flexible, imagine...

*before he can even finish bakugou can’t help but get defensive, you were his crush, HIS ALONE.

*the only thing explosion murder king shared was air...and that’s because he had to.

*kiri saw the face Katsuki made and attempted to change the subject before he had to clean up sero’s bodily fluids (aka blood) off of his dorm floor.

*”you better not finish that sentence you second rate adhesive or I’ll kill you.”

*sero throws his hands up in a calming effect

*”bakugou you can’t deny (y/n) is one of the prettiest girls in this school, she’s just... different”

*”I have eyes dumbass, and if anyone makes a pass at her I’m going to light their asses up, have em’ breathing fire for a week.” Calm but deadly.

*NUMBER ONE VIBE KILLER: KATSUKI BAKUGOU

*the three leave kiri’s dorm to go get some food, into the elevator they go

*”Oops I hit down instead of up, hahaha” kiri says and sero laughs as bakugou just stares angrily

*”...idiots”

*buzzed,sexually frustrated and pissed off wasn’t the best combo for poor explosion boy.

*the B lights up on the elevator and doors open

*’great the gym, where sweaty ass extras...’

*you walk into the elevator and smile at the boys and greet them.

*skin glistening, hair pulled back, sports bra, tight spandex...

*bakugou does not compute, I repeat bakugou CAN NOT COMPUTE.

*you stare at him and start to laugh.

*”oi” bakugou comes back to earth

*You giggle and ask again” I asked if you could hit 7 for me”

*bakugou stumbles mentally,’ who’s 7? I won’t just hit em, I’ll roast em alive...’

*kirishima and sero look concerned but kiri is the ultimate wing man and hits the 7 button as the doors close and they ascend. except for poor boom boom, he’s ascending in a whole other manor.

*he’s currently screaming in his head so loud.

*bakugou silently vows to never smoke weed again.

*everyone making light conversation as bakugou struggles to overcome... himself

*”oh bakugou I got my schedule changed, I’m in studies 101 for first course, aren’t you in that class too? Maybe we can walk together tomorrow?”

*maybe it was the fantastic workout but you’re a bold babe, what can he say besides yes?

*”whatever, Just text me..” just text me? #bakugouinternalfacepalm

*you smile and tell him okay, the door opens and before you step out you reach into your bag and pull out your spray bottle and give 3 spritzs in the elevator not directly hitting the guys.

*”sorry you guys Wreak” You say with a wave and walk out

*mmmmm watching you walk away was nice

*bakugou smelt like you and it made him melt.

*not only was he impossibly teased the entire time the guys were out.

*a cellphone pinged and all boys checked theirs, bakugou’s being the one who’s phone had lit up.

*“Text from (y/n) -Hey! Meet me down in the lobby tomorrow let’s say 7? Sorry, it’s early but I’m going to need some coffee before school =p”

*and just like that, he had a chance to grab coffee with you tomorrow.

*Bakugou wore his trademark ‘Eat Shit’ Grin and felt his confidence spike.

[maretsuki]

Tagged by @jvplter - I don't usually do tag games but I'll do this one for you bc you're a bro and Ily ♡

Favorite snack? - Probably doritos bc. Doritos.

Favorite place to go on vacation? - Home. XDD I don't like travelling much, I prefer to stay at home and relax when I get the chance.

What's a song that makes you dance immediately? - Planetary (GO!). i'm not emo i swear i just love this song

Tea or coffee? What kind? - Coffee! I usually have half coffee half milk with some sugar, but only because it's super strong coffee. I hate bitter things but I'm addicted to caffeine-

Do you play an instrument? - No. Everyone who does is so talented tho and I'm just here like 'wHAT THE FUCKKK THATS BEAUTIFULLL'

What's your favorite type of personality? - Idk! I tend to like everyone as long as they're not like, a genuinely mean person--

Favorite comedian? - Torn between Bo Burnham and John Mulaney!

Gummy candy or chocolate? - oh noooooo do i have to choose??? If i had to pick one I'd have to say chocolate but I love gummies too--

What did you 'want to be when you grew up' as a kid? - I used to want to be an artist, now I'm working on being an author :3

What's your favorite physical feature about yourself? - Idk, ig my hair is nice sometimes??? I don't like the way I look fbnr

When was the last time you watched a show or movie on the tv? - Long enough ago that I don't remember-

Unpopular opinion? - 4 genders. No more, no less. Male, female, androgynous/hermaphroditic, and neutrois/sexless.

Are you scared of bugs? - Less scared, more grossed out. You don't know where they've been, you really gonna let them crawl on your stuff?

Cats or cats? - Cats. I love dogs too but. CATS.

Are you allergic to any foods? - Red cabbage, but other than that, none that I know of.

Does the description of your star sign match your personality? - Sortof? It matches more if you take into account more than just my sun sign. (If anyone wanted to know, I'm Aries sun, Capricorn moon, Taurus ascendant. Mutuals get to know all 12 :3)

Favorite type of accent? - Idk, all accents are really cute tbh-

Name the first song that comes into your head! - Idk uh- In Flames by Digital Daggers? That's a good song-

Who is the sexiest famous person to you? - Idk, I really don't pay any attention to celebrities so I don't know many but tbch Billie Eilish is really hot (I'm under 18 and about her age so you can't yell at me for this, its only creepy if you're older than her)

Cake or pie? - I'm honestly not a huge fan of either. I love brownies tho ♡

When was the last time you read an entire book? - Uhh Ready Player One for english class a few months ago- (it's a really good book! And I have a whole essay on how the movie ruined it.)

Favorite junk food? - hmmmmm chips ig?

Do you like your height? - No, I'm too short and it triggers my dysphoria rjjs

Apples or oranges? - Apples for eating since there's no pith, but orange juice will always be far superior to apple juice.

What's your favorite personality trait in a person? - Open-minded.

Do you like salad? - Salad is the worst thing to ever claim to be a meal aside from grits. We don't even talk about grits.

What person inspires you the most? - Idk, a lot of people inspire me. I don't think I could pick one who inspires me most, haha-

What's a song that has made you cry? - Waving Through a Window from Dear Evan Hansen. I don't like the musical a lot anymore, but that song still hits close to home with my SAD.

Aaaand finally done!! And I'm tagging @transboisarecutetoo , @kanethetranswolf , and @colliewolf !