#if there’s one thing I related to in that song it’s the painfully desperate desire in it

[canisonicscrewyou]

Listening to Company and feeling Gay

#it’s also been a while since I’ve actively listened to a musical ??? I’ll need to fix that I miss this shit. y’all ever tried theatre? #yknow musicals???? #if anyone wants to watch a bootleg of company specifically if I can find it hit me upppp (after I move abshdjfkgkglg) #might even dare I say. take a nap. hopefully don’t wake up at like 1 PM though. #quick lil nap #anyways listening to being alive and being like ‘I can’t imagine myself like. being on the other side of this song’ #if there’s one thing I related to in that song it’s the painfully desperate desire in it #love that I tell my partner to make a tumblr all the time but if they did where would I be able to be gay in PEACE #bc if there’s anyone who makes me feel like I’m like. being alive. it is absolutely daemon.

[hecksupremechips]

rymin. discuss.

Depends on the day really. I feel like most the stuff I’ve drawn of them has been angsty and I like that but I want cute shit too and I’m trying to make more.....it’s just wips though 😭

I think when it comes to the cruel part I always go back to their separation period cuz some shit definitely went down for both of them that we don’t completely see and hnnghhh. It’s where I go insane thinking of Ryan specifically. Like he very clearly isn’t doing good at all, especially performance wise. He gets gigs at retirement homes where his "audience" falls asleep despite the music being loud. He tries just playing in the middle of a party and literally no one pays him attention. I also believe that despite his efforts, Ryan isn’t great at making friends or good impressions. Like idk I can definitely see him trying way too hard but everyone finds him weird or annoying. He can maybe get ppl to stay for a minute but can’t keep it up (ex. his girlfriends). Which made his separation from Min-Gi especially difficult, that’s the only person he thought cared about him, and then it seemingly isn’t true (to Ryan) after battle. He has to live with Min for the first time in his life, and he immediately tries to enter relationships with women to replace the pain left behind by Min (cough gay coding cough). And you just know how he’s trying so despite to make everything work, cuz if he doesn’t it’d mean that he was wrong, his dreams are unrealistic and stupid, and Min might be better off without him. Ryan could find an evil comfort in the idea that Min is just as miserable as he is, and he definitely tries to believe it when he returns because well. It’s fucking true lol. And boy is my man Ryan bottled up he would never say upfront that his solo career went awful because honestly if he did earlier in the season Min would go all bracket mouth smug about it akshjaka

As for the Min-Gi side it’s very uh. It’s far too relatable to me and I don’t like it 😤. I can very much understand why he didn’t wanna just up and leave with Ryan on such short notice with no plan, though I’d probably try to talk about that after singing our funny songs instead of leaving him on stage alone. But where’s the drama in that 🙄 these bitches are mentally ill. Min is then forcing himself to comply to whatever his parents want from him, very much ignoring his painfully strong need to play music with Ryan. There’s no future in music, he must be in FINANCE WITH AN EMPHASIS ON RISK ASSESSMENT. During his intense ass repression (and on the train) he fully believes Ryan is having the time of his life without him, living their dream. He won’t admit it though because he’s again, very repressed and stubborn. But you just know he gets that cassette from Ryan and listens to it 24/7 like "arghhhh....my homosexual desires are back 😤". Okay maybe not but it’s funny to imagine. It’d be pretty damn easy to blame everything on Ryan while acting like he’s in the right for being "smart" and "realistic", and I wouldn’t doubt the possibility that his parents compare the two and remark on how Min ended up so good through all that. And just the feelings of knowing you’re making your parents proud by living someone else’s life is just. OOF. Hits hard. If we go back to gay coding it would be pretty damn likely that part of the Uni Plan was the expectation that Min would meet a girl who he’d date and/or marry. And he plays the role of a straight man despite being desperately gay. So the whole "choosing the gay path despite the fact it won’t make your parents happy" thing is very good I’m always crying about it

This has become increasingly incoherent so that’s the angst shit I feed off of. As for fluff I like when they k-k-kiss 😳

#ask #infinity train #rymin #i really kept talking about this idk what you were even asking me mal but i dont really care #any excuse to talk about these two! i will take! #i was gonna put out some fluff stuff of mine that ive had stashed away for months during pride month but #i did not #soon though id like to! and more! #the boys have suffered too much i cant keep this up i want them to hold hands and laugh!

[valorxdrive]

Nothing could quite compare to the desperation that roars with fury and renewed hope. He's left ignored for a moment, and all for reasons that's just a touch too good from anyone who gained the eyes of a pessimist. This sight of Sasaki was stretched so viscerally far from anything that he's ever seen before, how those steps thundered and the approach to basking within the radiant of her beloved light was an endeavor that found itself torn three from any inhibitions gained with bitter acceptance.

As if.. This very wound of the heart could finally taste relief after so long.

Too little.

Too, oh so horribly late.

"...Sasaki." Before anything else could be drawn from his lips, a renewed spectacle of weight, disastrous despair tied with the vulnerability of pain begins to reign. It was a feast for and all of the denizens of the dark, a species that found themselves evolving as fresh wounds spread across all reality prompted a similar phenomenon, the light was getting oh so horribly strong, it was turning what was once molehills of effort to evolve into mountains. Within the growing tension of their clashing energies, the proof could be found between Sora and Sasaki.

Unconsciously did his hands begin to arch in a familiar way, as if searching for that portion of power that eagerly vied to fix into his grip fashioned for a blade's hilt. Wrought across the expression of the hero was a sense of terrible pain, a potential thread of relating to the loss of someone so tender and dear to the heart, how that shining smile could seamlessly devolve all darkness and eradicate it, bringing a special brand of peace to the essence.

YOUR LIGHT..

IT BROUGHT HER HERE!

SHE RETURNED.

Creeping up his spine would be a familiar feeling, visceral, hollow and awaiting the opportunity to dissolve any essence of Sora into the thralls of their totality. It caused the wildly beating source of his strength to stir, to awaken a second beat learned by means of the forbidden. Physical and metaphysical, the wielder of the Kingdom Key found his strength gradually, effortlessly breaking those chains he carefully sculpted upon his own might.

Just the sight of one enduring loss and agony, how it's tailored with a bastardized smile as a solution threaded through their reality and so much pain led to a result that made Sasaki and Shadow's flash a smile that signified ruination, how it was so painfully honest in the means it brought the thorny current of emotions upon him.

Hatred. Lost hope. A focus for that torrent that could bring potential relief, to kindle hope with life through blood. "That's.. No!" Sora's voice passionately shot back towards them. That entire time, not even a second was her eyes, that gaze for him and it could be felt.

Blooming with radiant, defiant iridescence would be that very heart at the crux of this theory. The resolve gained through his trials were steeling it, emotion burned into flourishing strength as the scattered, pale yellow eyes would suddenly glare into the rush of energy that erupts in a fierce storm of flame and golden/silver light. Those cerulean hues reflected a lighter shade, swimming with energy as the Kingdom Key would joyously take it's place within the hand of it's chosen, singing a determined tune that shimmered with a pleasing hum.

This same song and dance was made once before, it was an answer born from clashing against that very chaos and it's blunt honesty.

"That smile.. I never did a single thing to deserve it. How could you try fooling yourself!? Our powers might've sparked... something, I'm not truly sure how the chance came to be! But her, Kairi, how dare you think she'd ever go and switch her gaze to a look alike!"

Adjusting into a pose befitting of a warrior who rewrote a fate of calamity, the declaration was clear. Sora refuses to ever turn away from someone who truly desired to find an answer with his involvement.

"You're not going to lose that hope, Sasaki!"

@dichotomouskey - The crossing of X begins anew.

#dichotomouskey #| Threads #Oh I was set when I got home for this one

[existentialmagazine]

Review: Peri Rae’s new indie-folk single ‘the ocean (i could die)’ soars through acoustics, rising orchestral elements and a story of escapism through nature

Singer/songwriter Peri Rae uses her formative experiences to write guitar and vocal driven indie-rock songs, delving into the more intimate details of her life and how she views the world around her.Her infectious personality and open lyrics immediately connects her to audiences, and has seen her garner attention through TikTok, an opening slot for Alfie Templeman, BBC Introducing features and plentiful live show performances. Now sharing hew new single ‘the ocean (i could die)’, Peri seeks to be the one that returns a sense of repose back to your own life.

Just like its title, ‘the ocean (i could die)’ is filled with an utterly dreamy soundscape sure to provide you with the most tranquil lulling sensations, reminiscent of the intimacy and grounding qualities you’ll find only within nature’s grasps. Tenderly led by quickly plucked acoustic guitar, there’s an immediate delicacy portrayed within the sound’s paired-back instruments, and yet within its speeding nature it’s equally uplifting and bright. Carrying through it a bittersweet sense of moving forward to greater things but letting go of fond memories, this haunting sound conveys a depth without even needing the lyrics to accompany it, easy to relate to your own experiences. Delivering her vocal lines with a brisk and airy approach, Peri’s vocals float into soft higher notes that feel safe and comfortable while emotive all the same, similar to the gorgeous talents of the singer-songwriter Dodie. As the song strives forward with a yearning for life, ‘the ocean (i could die)’ builds with violin strings, steady shaken percussion and deep twangs that sound orchestral, seemingly showcasing a rejuvenation of life and Peri’s mood through the cascading, heightened sound. Entwining these mellow layers of instruments into one soothing serenade, ‘the ocean (i could die)’ whisks you away like you’re breathing in the fresh air of the coast for yourself, a short but sweet break from life’s tumultuous nature. The chorus later sees more intense, raw feeling drums and gritty electric guitar strums, a striking shift in tone from the song’s otherwise folk-based assortment of sound. Continuing this living and growing sense of sound as things progress, Peri not just captures the sense of Mother Nature’s freedom but delivers a sound that seems to parallel it, offering you an always changing escape filled with both lows and highs - but either way, it’s always worth taking the opportunity to listen.

But the captivating landscape of ‘the ocean (i could die)’ isn’t all it has to offer, delivering a narrative seeking adventure, to embrace wildlife and let go of a build-up discontentment with life. As the haunting lyric ‘living to survive’ floats through the sound, Peri emphasises the way her existence has shifted from truly appreciating the world, to simply getting by because she must. Continuing ‘I live to be naked, but I have to be at work in an hour’ , it’s clear that Peri is deeply grounded in being natural and free, but her bustling city life and 9-5 limits her every opportunity to feel the roots of why she’s really here. Almost alluding that this industrialised lifestyle is a nightmare to her, Peri sings ‘even in my dreams I breathe the city air’ , feeling utterly trapped and overwhelmed by a life she no longer feels is directed by her own wishes and desires. Her mental health suffering in this environment only greatly builds, painfully pouring into lines like ‘I could die if I don’t get out of here’ , yearning to break out of the world’s hustling expectations and instead get back in touch with simplicity and new experiences. As she brightens up while she transitions towards a life that she’s so desperately hoped for, Peri sings ‘I’m feeling more elated, how could I ever go back?’, finding her own peace in surfing, hiking, swimming and simply taking in the fresh air without looming deadlines there to hold her back. Though some may find the city to be their ideal home, there’s no doubt that the qualities of the ocean, grassy fields and pure escapism aren’t some of life’s most cherished attributes, bringing you down to appreciate the smallest of things.

Check out ‘the ocean (i could die)’ here to appreciate Peri’s heavenly sound and a story we can all likely relate to, finding our way and learning to put our needs first.

Written by: Tatiana Whybrow

Photo Credits: Unknown

// This coverage was supported and created via Musosoup, #SustainableCurator.

#tatiana

[oliviareviewsnasu]

Olivia Reads Fate/Stay Night ~Fate~ Route (Blind Readthrough) Part 1: Intro Sequence and Rin!

Before we begin with this readthrough I'd like to personally thank anyone and everyone who has come here to listen (or read I suppose) my maddened ramblings. You truly make it worth it. Now on to the readthrough. Intro Sequence By now this intro scene is engrained even into my mind and there’s not really much to say about it. As this is a blind review however here’s a basic summary of the events: Shirou, in a state of desperation, summons perhaps one of the most famous characters in the franchise to fend off an unknown attacker. The King of Knights stands before him and asks the iconic line: “I ask of you, are you my master?”. She then states that their fates (heh) are now entwined before the scene fades to white leading into the Rin prologue. On the more technical end; the music in the Realta Nua version is phenomenal. as is Ayako Kasumi’s performance as Saber even this early on in what would be a long career

What I think the anime (Unlimited Blade Works in particular) doesn’t quite convey is Shirou’s mystique and awe in the face of the King of Knights, nor his poetic heart. He’s clearly much much more intelligent and thoughtful than quite a few people give him credit for.

By all accounts this is true in a both a literal and meta-sense. 17 years later people are still discussing the franchise with nearly the same vigor as larger properties like One Piece or Dragon Ball. As for the literal, well, we all know Shirou’s dark fate. On the topic of darkness, I love how they portray Arturia. Awash in the light of the moon while Shirou is cowering in the dark. The contrast is beautiful and highlights just how important of a role she’d play in the would-be-hero’s future. What I find to be fascinating is how much imagery is loaded into these first few moments. That, coupled with Shirou’s prose, makes for a gorgeous introduction. My only issue with it is the whiplash bait-and-switch from Shirou’s perspective to Rin’s; especially with the knowledge that we’ll need to essentially re-read that part to begin with. It weakens some of the dramatic tension and choreography. Prologue: Day 1 (Part 1) And so the Rin prologue begins, in bed, with traumatic memories and regrets. So an ordinary morning for this reviewer. It’s also the first mention of the Holy Grail War that took place during the events of Fate/Zero. Rin’s final memories of her father do pull at my heart-strings however. Wanting to make someone laugh before you see them off is, in my opinion, a noble pursuit. Given what I know of Tokiomi from the events of Fate/Zero I can also agree that his character was perhaps one of the finer among the mages. At least compared to Kiritsugu “Sign a magical contract, can’t shoot, hire someone else to first for me” Emiya, Kirei “My religious views make my sadism and hedonism weird for me” Kotomine, and Lord El Melloi “Old Money, Old Magecraft” Archibald. Sound wise I’ve been listening to the flashback music for nearly ten minutes as I’ve been writing this up and I’m starting to see stars so we should probably move along- And so the Rin proloAnd so the Rin prologue begins, in bed, with traumatic memories and regrets. So an ordinary morning for this reviewer. It’s also the first mention of the Holy Grail War that took place during the events of Fate/Zero. Rin’s final memories of her father do pull at my heart-strings however. Wanting to make someone laugh before you see them off is, in my opinion, a noble pursuit. Given what I know of Tokiomi from the events of Fate/Zero I can also agree that his character was perhaps one of the finer among the mages. At least compared to Kiritsugu “Sign a magical contract, can’t shoot, hire someone else to first for me” Emiya, Kirei “My religious views make my sadism and hedonism weird for me” Kotomine, and Lord El Melloi “Old Money, Old Magecraft” Archibald. Sound wise I’ve been listening to the flashback music for nearly ten minutes as I’ve been writing this up and I’m starting to see stars so we should probably move along-gue begins, in bed, with traumatic memories and regrets. So an ordinary morning for this reviewer. It’s also the first mention of the Holy Grail War that took place during the events of Fate/Zero. Rin’s final memories of her father do pull at my heart-strings however. Wanting to make someone laugh before you see them off is, in my opinion, a noble pursuit. Given what I know of Tokiomi from the events of Fate/Zero I can also agree that his character was perhaps one of the finer among the mages. At least compared to Kiritsugu “Sign a magical contract, can’t shoot, hire someone else to first for me” Emiya, Kirei “My religious views make my sadism and hedonism weird for me” Kotomine, and Lord El Melloi “Old Money, Old Magecraft” Archibald. Sound wise I’ve been listening to the flashback music for nearly ten minutes as I’ve been writing this up and I’m starting to see stars so we should probably move along-

-Only for the lovely siren song of the world’s most annoying alarm clock to start ringing.

I agree with you there Rin, I feel like I’m being attacked as well. Terrible assault on the ears aside, we learn that Rin has been up late at night studying her Father’s will. A hobby that not even I would recommend. After struggling to get out of bed in time for class (Rin really is my spirit animal), she promptly complains about the coldness of her home. As someone who lives in Boston and has never heard of Central Air, this is painfully relatable. Have you had to sit on a toilet seat with ice in the bowl? I don’t recommend it. After the most uncomfortable scene of someone humble-bragging about their rich (literally in this case) background (likely because she can’t to anyone else), she explains that she is in fact a mage and what that entails. Persecution, isolation, and regular communion with forces beyond what most can comprehend. She also goes on to reference the 5 magics (familiar if you’ve played Melty Blood or read Tsukihime, something I’m sure to cover at some point).

What I find to be interesting here is that she fundamentally separates herself from the rest of humanity, treating herself as an outsider despite living what she’d consider ‘an ordinary life’. She shows longing and desire for the things that everyone else has access to and seems to disdain magic on it’s own. But to paraphrase Rin: “Let’s put off difficult discussions, they can wait till they’re old.” As Rin heads out she grabs a rather suspicious (and important) pendant that she managed to find after decoding Tokiomi’s will. It makes me wonder, did he lock up the Tohsaka family heirlooms in various vaults; hoping that someday his heir or maybe one of hers would be able to open them? Was he trolling his daughter? Or am I reading too much into this? Besides her finding the mystical cure-a-spear-to-the-heart jewel, Rin goes on to explain how Tohsaka family magic works. Essentially by slowly storing magic in jewels to draw upon at a later date. I’m reminded of Stormlight and its use of spheres, but that’s besides the point. There’s also a brief discussion of magic crests and how they’re essentially all the magical experiences of her predecessors engraved into her arm. Fun. Rin then goes on to finally leave her house after nearly thirty minutes of getting ready and shows a remarkable knowledge of German. Something that even I haven’t quite managed to master. There’s some brief world building with this area of Fuyuki being a blend of Eastern and Western architecture (as an architect myself this is fascinating to me) and draws a line of parallel between Rin and Shirou. Rin lives in a fancy Western-style mansion and longs for the future, while Shirou lives in the Eastern-style Emiya Residence and yearns for ideals that don’t quite exist anymore. As Rin hurries off to school, a sense of eeriness and unease washes over us, only for us to learn the most terrible and terrifying fact of all. She got up early and so her early morning panic was wasted. Oh and we also meet Ayako who is as exhaustingly energetic as usual. Somehow Rin’s clocks were all an hour fast. She suspects Tokiomi’s work, but I doubt the Tohsaka family Patriarch was one for pranks. Ayako drags Rin off the almost exorbitantly fancy Archery range and they begin to discuss their mutual search for a partner. Have I said that Rin is my spirit animal? I’m sure I must have by now.

This is the first glimpse we get at Rin’s competitive side. Ayako may have been the one to initiate the relationship, but any strong rivalry requires mutual input from both parties. A solid example of this can be seen in the relationship between Sanji and Zoro in One Piece. If I were less astute, I’d prop Ayako as up a potential antagonist later on during the route. As for the contest itself, it’s petty in the most realistic of ways. Attempting to get a boyfriend or girlfriend just to rub it in the face of your rival? I’ve definitely experienced that in my (admittedly brief) lifetime. Well we’ll have to find out another time as I’ve come to realize just how long this document is getting. Join me next week and we’ll continue along with the Rin prologue and hope we get to her summoning of Archer. This has been a fascinating look at the series I’ve adored for so long, just seeing the characters thoughts on the most simple of matters has been an eye-widening experience. This is Olivia Reviews and I can’t wait to see you next time.

#fate stay night #visual novel #blind reader #olivia reviews #part 1 #shirou emiya #rin tohsaka #nasuverse #the alarm clock won't stop ringing in my head several hours later

[writingthegoodwrite]

Forgiveness Part 1

Wonho x Reader

A/N If this is familiar to anyone it’s cause this was from my old account, I couldn’t remember my login info for the longest time, but go figure now that I have a new tumblr I remembered the email for the old one. 

I hope you enjoy!♡

You were nearly asleep when you heard your phone ring a painfully familiar song. You didn’t expect to hear it, though you used to look forward to hearing it every night around this time. You hadn’t heard it in nearly two months. Since your relationship with Wonho fell to pieces.

Since you found him in the arms of another woman.

Part of you wanted to not answer, to let him think you’ve moved on. The other part wanted to tell him off and let him know just how much pain he left you in. You had rehearsed countless times what you would say to him if he had the nerve to contact you again.

The latter side won out and you swiped a shaking finger across the phone and prepared to let him have it.

“H..hello? Y/n?”

Your words died on your lips when you heard the broken greeting. The only time you’ve heard him sound like this was when he talked about how he worried about his family while he was a trainee.

“I know you don’t owe me anything, but please, can we talk? Y/n?” His voice cracked on your name, he sounded like he was in as much pain as you were in, but also, he sounded resigned that you might not be willing to talk with him.

“Yeah, I’m here. Look, what do you need so late, Wonho?” The words felt strange, heavy even, in your mouth. One, you never before would have questioned him calling so late. This was your time, your nightly ritual while he was touring. And two, you never called him Wonho when it was just you two, even if you had fought, he was your Hoseok.

Was.

Not yours anymore, so if you were going to pretend you had moved on, he was Wonho.

You could tell it hurt him when you used his stage name, the name people used when they weren’t in his inner circle. His breath hitched, and he let out a sigh.

“I’m sorry…’” he whispered. “I hurt you and I can’t change that, and now I’m making you listen to me and bringing it all back up.”

You steeled yourself. You had to be strong. He destroyed your heart. Your trust. You couldn’t give in to the instinct to comfort him.

But still there was something there in his voice, something that made you stay on the line. “So, you’re calling to apologize? It doesn’t change anything. Why now? Why wait so long?!” Your feelings were threatening to boil over, but you had to hear what he had to say. If only so you could properly move on. “What do you expect me to say? You cheated, you threw away all our years together, our plans for the future, and in return I get a ‘sorry’?!”

“Y/n, you need to know what really happened. I never cheated on you. I never would.” He paused to sniff, “You know me better than that.”

So, he’s going to deny it, now? Fine, should be interesting, he never was good at lying anyway. “No, Wonho, I thought that I knew you better than that. But I saw you two together in her dressing room. She was all over you!” You found the tears that you had tried to force back, spilling over at the bitter memory.

“It wasn’t what it looked like, y/n, I swear.” His voice got stronger with conviction as he continued to explain what happened. “Our manager told us to be nice to her because she was debuting that night as a solo artist and didn’t have band members to lean on for support.”

You rolled your eyes and your anger got the best of you. “How very accommodating of you! Do you always support the new debuts by shoving your tongue down their throat?” You normally would have regretted the venom that you heard in your voice but while you wanted to hear him out you also needed to let your pain out.

“Please, y/n, I went to talk with her and give her some advice, but she threw herself at me crying. I’m not heartless, I let her get it out of her system. Then we sat and shared training horror stories.”

You knew the girl, you had met her briefly several times. She was a ruthless trainee, she didn’t get along with anyone. Everyone was her rival. But she was incredibly talented. So, after several years at not working out in trial projects with other trainees, they decided to debut her as a solo artist.

As hard as it was to get close to her, you suspected it was because she knew she had to succeed. Her family put everything they had into her training. She couldn’t disappoint them and leave them with nothing. That must be why they got along so well, and she confided in him when she wouldn’t with the other members. They both had the desperate desire to take care of their families who put their everything into them pursuing their dreams.

You let out an exasperated sigh before asking, “So how did that lead to what I saw?” You started to suspect that perhaps you misread what you saw. She had looked you in the eye through the mirror as she latched onto him and you couldn’t break eye contact with her. You had been in shock. You didn’t even wait for an explanation, you just left. You couldn’t bring yourself to look him in the face before you stormed off.

“She must have misread my kindness, and then she just threw herself at me. It was weird though, because I could have sworn she knew we were together, every time she saw us we were together.”

You smiled at his innocence. He hadn’t noticed the deliberate look she had shot at you through the mirror.

“She knew what she was doing, Wonho. She saw me there.” You wanted to hate her, but you actually felt for her. You saw how that life takes its toll on the mind. “You were the only person she felt she could relate to, so you were probably her next goal.”

Wonho made a thoughtful sound while he contemplated what you said.

“Why didn’t you try to talk to me before now?” You felt warmth wash over you heart knowing that he hadn’t, in fact, cheated, yet you still felt like there was a something missing. “Why now?”

“Your face,” he whispered, “I could see how devastated you were, and it tore me apart that you could believe I would do that to you. After everything we had been through. I couldn’t bring myself to ever put you through that again and I didn’t think you would listen to me. I know how it looked…”

He was right. He did know you, you had felt broken and there was no way you would have listened to him. Hell, you didn’t even plan to listen to him tonight. You answered so that you could make him know what he put you through.

“So, what now?” You cringed while you waited for his reply. You didn’t even know what you hoped he would say.

“Can you forgive me?” You never heard this voice before, so devoid of even the smallest hint of hope. “I get that I screwed up. I never should have let you feel that way. I should have chased after you and explained the situation.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“She said that you would need time to breathe before you would be willing to listen. She convinced me I would only hurt you more. That with my lifestyle and schedule you might be better off without me. That you deserved someone normal.”

You snorted, “And I suppose she probably also suggested that you would do better to find someone who can understand your world? Someone in the business?”

He let a light laugh slip and you could feel him returning from the broken man who dialed you tonight. “Yeah, something along those lines.”

“And? Do you agree with her? Would you rather find someone else who could ‘understand’ your world?” Your throat was feeling dry, so you wandered into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. You waited for his reply, feeling insecurities start to creep in when he didn’t immediately answer.

“That’s the thing, y/n. I uhh…better get off the phone. I’m about to see that someone. I finally have courage to tell her that I’d like a future with her. I just had toー”

You fell your heart drop to your toes. Now you felt all the life go out of your own voice, “Get my forgiveness first?” Ever the honorable one. You leaned on the counter not sure you could hold your self up anymore.

“Well, yeah. I couldn’t make a confession without it.” He actually sounded relieved. You wanted to throw up.

You weren’t even listening anymore. You had your explanations, and now you could move on. You would be damned though if you let him think he hurt you again. At least let him have his happy ending. Your chest tightened painfully as you said your goodbyes. “Well, good luck with that, I hope she returns your feelings.” You ended the call before he could say another word.

And before you could even put your phone down on the counter there was a knock at your apartment door. You looked down at your phone suspiciously, and saw it was after 1am.

There’s no way…is there?

You walked lightly to the door, so you wouldn’t be heard and looked through the peephole to see nothing, it must have been the wrong apartment. You let out a sigh and leaned your head against the door, letting the stress and pain of the evening in and feeling a surge of hot tears spill down your cheeks.

Then there was another knock and again there was nothing. You eased the door opened and looked down and your world suddenly stopped feeling like it was spinning out of control.

Wonho was kneeling on the floor with a bunch of daisies in one hand and a carrier with two very large coffees in the other. He looked up at you with red eyes and smiled, “Can I come in?”

You eyed the coffee and shrugged, attempting to look indifferent, “Depends…one of those for me?”

He laughed and now matching tears were spilling down his cheeks, he bowed his head and rested it against your hip and you watch his back shake while he tried to control his emotions.

You knelt down in front of him and he put down the coffee and flowers and you both wiped tears from each other’s faces.

“You’re here. I thought you found someone who can understand your work?” You didn’t care how swollen and red your face was, because he sported a matching look, you just smiled at him and continued to touch his face. The face you were convinced you would never touch again.

“You understand me 100%. You always have. It’s what gave me the strength to call.” He paused to push my hair back that was sticking to my wet face. “Cause no matter what, you know me and had to know deep down that I would never want anyone else.”

You wrapped your arms around his neck and breathed him in, you had missed this. You were jostled when he wrapped his arms around you and stood up not letting you go for a second.

“I’m so sorry it took me so long to find my way home.” He had his cocky smile on, but you could see the insecurity in his eyes. “Could you learn to love me again?”

You laid your face on his chest and melted into him, cherishing his heartbeat. “I never stopped.”

#wonho x reader #wonho fanfic #wonho x you #shin hoseok x reader #shin hoseok x you #shin hoseok x fanfic

[idolizerp]

LOADING INFORMATION ON JINX’S MAIN DANCE NAM SOOJUNG...

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: N/A CURRENT AGE: 28 DEBUT AGE: 20 TRAINEE SINCE AGE:14 COMPANY: Midas SECONDARY SKILL: Variety

IDOL PROFILE

NICKNAME(S): Soojung Bolt, because no one outruns other idols (or their problems) the way she does Hot Body Soo, self explanatory. Thank god the excessive exercising paid off. Sooj, it’s ugly but it’s there. INSPIRATION: Pushed by her friends from school who recognized her talent, Soojung auditioned with quite a few of her friends to various idol agencies in hopes of making it big and debuting in a group together. SPECIAL TALENTS:

athleticism: she runs fast, and puts her all in korean wrestling. there’s a rumor rookies pray they don’t get pitted against her at ISAC

cooking: [ +44, -489 ]: wow she cooks so well for someone who looks like they only have rocks in their head, i’m so fcking hungry just looking at the screen

one-liners/cursing: Jeolla-do’s finest one-liners, insults, and curse words, she knows them all and will share them with or without express permission

NOTABLE FACTS:

younger brother is Seoul FC’s center-forward Nam Taewoong, does not seem to acknowledge this fact very much if at all

has admitted to getting plastic surgery on her nose, eyes, and jaw probably to her manager’s extreme chagrin

was once punched in the face by an Olympus sasaeng after leaving practice, has since distanced herself from the group publicly

prior to her viral fancam was nicknamed JiNX’s most prominent backup dancer” by less-than-kind netizens

IDOL GOALS

SHORT-TERM GOALS:

She’s not an idiot, or at least she’s certainly not as stupid as everyone seems to suggest she is. Banking on new found popularity Soojung’s number one goal is to monetize as much as that popularity as she can, if she can possibly make herself known as something other than the girl who pelvic-thrusted her way into the nation’s attention she wouldn’t oppose that either.

LONG-TERM GOALS:

Nothing lasts forever, certainly not the career of a female idol and though she may not admit it, at least not publicly, she knows there’s nothing left for her once contract expire. She’s too old to continue to pretend that she enjoys putting on cutesy acts or playing dumb and funny for public consumption. In the end, she’ll sink into obscurity and hopefully with enough in the bank to live comfortably in her self-imposed insignificance of an existence. While not ideal, as far as Soojung’s concerned it’s certainly better than aging in front of a camera trying to retain some vestige of a career built off of her late-teens and twenties. Leaving in dignity is the ideal.

IDOL IMAGE

She’s supposed to be like this.

The better part of seven years practicing a relatable smile in the mirror every single day, twenty minutes a day. She’s supposed to be the girl-next-door-turned-sex-pot, or whatever it is her CEO said she was supposed to be. She can’t remember what he said in that meeting all those years ago, it’s not like it matters anyways.

She’s supposed to be like this. Smiling dumbly, content with her lot in life, pretty in a sort of forgettable way.

Maybe that’s what the CEO told her. Smile pretty and let people think what they think. She can’t remember anymore.

If they think she’s an idiot, so be it. That’s what she’s supposed to be like; glib and sedate. No one wants a girl who’s mouth runs a mile a minute, snapping in satoori without a second thought, curse-words decorating sentences like they’re just another adjective.

The people want a girl who’s demure, who knows what to say and how to say it. No one wants the real girl they grew up next to, they want the idealized image of what she should’ve been per societal standards. Pretty with a mouth tinged with the taste of blood, a tongue with noted teeth marks along it’s edges.

She’s supposed to be this fucking fool.

Her manager says no one really wants the reality of who she is. A girl that drinks more than she should, a girl that spends her days off bared-face practicing recipes and watching documentary after documentary. No one begs to see the girl who jogs down the street with her over-sized dog because she’s reformed from her wild child days into a grown woman with a painfully average existence.

People want fantasy, people want the grandiose. Nothing in the reality of who Nam Soojung is at her core fits the desire. But she’s willing to play the part, smile blankly at a camera and basks her in new found fame that’s seven years too late to do her any real good, move her hips in a way that makes tongues and fingers wag all the same.

It’s all for the money. It’s all for the love a desperate little girl was looking for ages ago.

None of it really matters, but she’ll give it a go. If only for a life worth more comfort; pride isn’t worth half as much as everyone seems to claim it is. Not when her checks cash so nicely and everyone bends over backwards to tell her how they adore her.

It’s all bullshit but it’s fine.

This is who she’s supposed to be. This is who she’s supposed to be.

IDOL HISTORY

Life is told in five parts.

i. Her father’s life is ruined the day Soojung is conceived. She knows  this because he tells her just as much over the years.

Nothing is as awful as getting saddled with a baby you don’t want to a girl you don’t love. A lack of control born out of lust and a bottle of beer, that’s all she owes her very life to.

He never lets her forget.

ii. Soojung is good but Taewoong is better.

Maybe it’s three years that make the difference. Maybe it’s their parents halfway falling in love with each other. Maybe it’s just the fact that he’s a boy and the youngest and she’s a girl and the oldest.

Things always work out differently for the pair of them. Even if their mother insists they’re loved equally; the disparity is as obvious as the sun.

The son gets lauded with praise, and the daughter is weighted down with lectures. Halmeoni says this is just how the world works, her mother was raised the same way with her younger brother; it’s just how things work.

Soojung hates it all the same; hates her brother a bit too just for making things that much harder.

No one cares if she runs fast because Taewoong’s always faster. No one cares if Soojung gets first place at a talent show because Taewoong has brains in his feet and the football scout said he was a prodigy.

No one cares about Soojung because the world revolves around Nam Taewoong who clings to her like a shadow.

She can’t stand him, not really. Not when she’s the only one who sees him as he is, a sniveling brat who steals away affection and has the nerve to beg her for it too as if he doesn’t get enough.

Sons receive too much and daughters too little in their home.

It’s the way life is but even still she can’t stand it.

iii. The story goes like this:

Soojung, Eunhye, Minsoo, Kyungwan, and Jinah all audition for Midas entertainment. Ride a train up to Seoul and try their hands at fate.

The details get muddled in the middle. Someone says it’s because they’re all Gemini fans, a group of men singing sweet songs and gyrating motivates a group of teenage girls from bumfuck nowhere to make something of themselves. The other version of events is Jinah’s a great singer, Soojung is the best dancer around town, Eunhye is the prettiest girl any of them know, Minsoo’s hilarious and a decent dancer, Kyungwan has a nice voice and charisma no one can touch.

They’re the perfect girl group set to take the nation by storm. Only nobody knows it yet.

It’s all just a fairy-tale though, Soojung still remembers the truth.

She begs and pleads her friends to come with her to Seoul. Fills their heads up with stupid little dreams, her stupid little dreams, and convinces them they have the God-given talent to be someone the whole nation wants to know. She begs them because she doesn’t want to be rejected alone in a city she doesn’t know.

She lies. She lies. She’s a liar.

No one she knows is as talented as her. Jinah is only okay, Eunhye’s pretty only to countryside eyes, Minsoo can’t dance but she tries her hardest, Kyungwan has the kind of personality that only gets you far in Jeolla-do.

But Soojung’s different. Soojung has life in her bones, vitality in her steps; a God-given talent. People flock to see her back home, they only watch the others out of polite respect.

All of the stories end the same way.

Soojung becomes the only trainee, two of the others go to other companies but end up back home with the rest of their cronies after a few years.

Soojung is the only one who matters in the end.

iv. Halmeoni sends her letters every week. They all read the same way.

Be pragmatic, be kind, be resilient, be strong, work hard.

It’s as if she knows he only granddaughter has turned to a holy terror. Divine intuition, she thinks it’s called.

Arrogant, teenage vain-glory takes hold. Soojung is good and so is everyone else, and they’re all vying for the same stupid little spots. Familiarity breeds contempt breeds a bitter girl who’s a little crueler than necessary because she can be.

Insecurity breeds a girl who pushes herself too hard in every which direction because she’s desperate to be someone who matters, desperate to be another face smiling on a screen for millions to be seen.

She wants to be loved, she has to be adored. Her confidence is too fragile to accept any other option as a possibility.

So Soojung does what she has to. She gets the plastic surgery some higher up suggests with the smaller face and bigger eyes and nicer nose, learns how to be more charming, gets a crash course in the world of sex appeal and what it means and what it earns girls like her.

And when the day is done she runs over to her little group of friends who are just like her with frayed nerves and driven solely by hormones and desperate desires.

It pays off in the end, she knows it does.

v. In a way, it’s all for naught.

All the blood, sweat, and tears. All the wasted hours spent in a practice room, all the youth she wasted living for some desperate desire that she could be adored.

It’s all for nothing.

People like her, but only as Soojung, the other girl in JiNX. No one really loves her as Nam Soojung, most people don’t even care.

Nothing really matters because she’ll never be the nation’s first love. She could claw her eyes out to be the nation’s second or even third love, but everything pales when she stands only a few feet away from the first.

Her father always used to tell her brother, “if you’re not second you’re last.” Soojung doesn’t understand what he means until she’s standing five feet behind the nation’s first love and two other people who are a little bit more than she is.

Her manager says it’s a lack of versatility that’s the issue. She can’t act, she can’t really sing, she can’t rap, all she can do is dance. It doesn’t matter if she’s funnier than everyone else. It’s what people pick up on and run with that matters. Girls who are relatively funny are a dime a dozen.

No one cares.

Even still, Soojung pushes herself a little harder to be someone people could love. She smiles brighter, eats less, works out more, makes herself more attractive in the ways society demands, moves a little more sensually. She could be the nation’s second love or even third love. She’s willing to settle.

Still, no one cares.

She runs fast, she laughs loudly, she looks every fan in the eye, acts graciously, pretends it doesn’t hurt that people call her a fucking fool, pretends she doesn’t know the internet calls her the nation’s first back up dancer. It’s back-breaking work to get the love of the public and it doesn’t pay.

No one cares about Nam Soojung, not really.

A rumor of an iljin past complete with bullying, smoking, and underage drinking comes out. Midas releases a statement about a nice girl from the outskirts of Gwangju who used to write her grandmother every week as a trainee complete with pictures of letters and her grandmother who smiles with closed eyes and a chubby arm raised.

Another rumor flies around about a relationship with an Olympus member floats around Pann. Pre-debut photos of her with her old nose and smaller eyes and bigger jaw, and there are notes from crazy fans about how she’s hung around their boys for too long, desperate for love and affection. A few comments she’s just desperate for attention. Then it culminates with a girl punching her in the eye one day after practice for the next comeback and Midas releasing a statement about criminal actions and false allegations with no proof.

A million rumors could brew, none of it means much until it’s far too late for her Soojung’s liking. No one cares until Soojung no longer bothers.

The girl who’s desperate for attention feels a lifetime away by the time Soojung finally gets the notoriety she spent years searching for.

It turns out pretty smiles into cameras and painstaking work don’t win a nation’s heart. It’s all hip movement that leaves little to the imaginations and smiles that say “come fuck me” is all that anyone wants.

But it’s too many years too late and Soojung can’t truly be bothered by the time what she’s looking for finally finds her.

“I’m not so needy for love these days,” she tells her manager when he asks why she doesn’t seem happier about her situation, “maybe when I was younger but none of it really matters now that we’re at the end of the road does it?”

Adoration, as it turns out, is overrated. It doesn’t win her father’s love, doesn’t make her better than Taewoong. It doesn’t make her relationships any better. Doesn’t make her feel any better any better about the pitfalls of a somewhat pathetic life that she only regrets in retrospect.

All the time she wasted wanting to be loved. All the years she wasted screaming into a void, being the worst possible version of herself. All the time wasted living as a human train-wreck that only serves to disappoint. A nation’s love doesn’t make up for any of it, not the way she thought it would.

There’s too little validation for her liking.

In the end, the belated affection of a nation only earns her more work and grief. Still, the love of a nation lines her wallet nicely and maybe that’s all that matters to Nam Soojung these days.

#id.bio #id.midas #id.jinx #id.reign #id.kim jaekyung

[heartlandhq]

❝ he is an unyielding cornerstone made of steel and he would never shatter. ❞

INFORMATION,

full name ⋯ Daniel Song age ⋯ 32 years old pronouns ⋯ He/Him/His origin ⋯ New York, New York affiliation ⋯ Bergan Mercy Hospital position ⋯ Guard

SURVIVABILITY,

advantages ⋯ courageous & vigilant disadvantages ⋯ impulsive & stubborn preferred weapon ⋯ M16A4, ka-bar knife

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger warning ⋯ blood, death, violence

BEFORE DECEMBER 25th, 2017,

Born to wealth and the moderate degree of status, importance, and all the things that glittered that came with it. The whole package as it were. ‘You’ve got the luck of the devil himself, Daniel.’ Though, turns out too much of a good thing really can turn sour. He was six when his younger sister was born—Emily Song, a healthy happy babe all precious giggles and rosy cheeks. By that point, Daniel was so over the apple pie idea of a family that the TV had painted a pretty of for he and every other child in America. He was never sure his pieces quite fit, as though something was missing. But Emily? Emily was the only piece that felt right.  

Maybe it was because she too was a blank slate. Or that she was the one constant in a house of rotating caregivers whilst his parents worked near constant hours away from home and country. Shouldn’t you be proud of your Momma and Papa, Danny boy? Out there sweating for the little people and saving lives? But what about me? A crushing desperate angry hunger within his child body that seemed to never know satisfaction despite the full plate of food atop the table before him. Quiet days and near dead silent nights within the seemingly impossibly huge three-story home only fueled a greater desire for something he truly had no name for.

There had always been an unspoken expectation to follow in his Father’s footsteps. A great man, strive to save lives and all that is good in life. While never cruel, never neglectful—simply absent. An expected outcome for any couple, even if their romance happened in a mere parade of snapshots. He wanted to be great, he wanted to give and give and give—if only so that someone else not feel the distinct wanting that he had. A vague hope, that if gave and gave that eventually something, however small; would be given in return. A smile, a laugh, a hug—thank you thank you.

He was fourteen when he received the new his parents had been ‘lost at sea’. Their plane suffering a catastrophic malfunction that downed them between points A and B.

Their lives signed off to next of kin, strangers moving into their family home. Faces they’d never seen. Never knew despite ‘Your parents were always so busy! Why I haven’t seen you since you were this tall.’ He didn’t know what to do with such life, such noise and colour. As if starting high school wasn’t a stressful enough situation, rumours flying of shipping him overseas to some private academy or another—a bitter laugh of what if he too gets lost at sea?

Daniel wished he had learned earlier, just how much gold can twist men into wicked creatures.

But, he did have Emily.

There wasn’t much of anything he wouldn’t do for his sister. An unhealthy relation some would say but as their home became more and more foreign she was once again the only constant in his life. His high school years, an uneventful stint. There were awards, pride in the eyes of his teachers and the ‘That’s what a good pedigree will get you!’ spoken by his peers. The moment he could, he abandoned ship, whisking Emily and himself as far away from their home as they could.

An impressive inheritance gifted to him on his eighteenth birthday provided him the funds for this upheaval a second wind would be coming on Emily’s own eighteenth year. Until then, the pair lived out of a modest apartment in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Not wanting to squander the very limited wealth left to him, Daniel took up a series of casual jobs. Mostly construction, maintenance, and general odd jobs around the building and city for a passable buck; occasionally lucking out on shift work at a nearby bar. It was at such a bar he met Officer Brent Parker.

You’ve got the devil’s own luck indeed. The one and only night he’d been allowed to work behind the counter instead of mopping floors and cleaning sick and piss from the floors in the washroom—Officer Parker and company poured on through their doors looking to scratch an itch and Honest Steve’s cramped bar just happened to be the cheapest watering hole around. Eager to please what passed for upstanding customers in his eye he waited on their every need. Even giving them so much of a fine discount for the laugh they managed to coax out of him.

He was smitten.

With the idea of something more. Working at Honest Steve’s (and the guy wasn’t even named Steve) straightened out every skill he had, truly a jack of all trades job that demanded charisma, strength, and an agreeable sense of integrity to say the least. Daniel had manhandled his fair share of drunkards out to the curb, bore the weight of insults and derogatory words heaped on him, and was ready for the next customer with an easy grin in place.

It was a chapter of his life he yearned to keep secret from Emily, making time even after back to back shifts to attend her school events. Her classes and even showing up for several memorable parent teacher meetings whilst he tugged awkwardly at his foreign Sunday’s best. She wanted to be a nurse. She wanted to help people. Emily spent her weekends tugging him away to a volunteer event at the nearby hospital, Emily pulled him along to the animal shelter, wherever she wanted to go—he was happy to follow.

“Don’t you want anything for yourself?” she asked him one night over dinner and he didn’t know what to feel when no answer came forth.

When Officer Parker came back to his bar all charm and hot action movie stories, Daniel took a leap of faith and asked about becoming one of the boys in blue. He showed up at the next enrollment early, sitting straight in a plastic waiting room seat to fill out paperwork. Worried about his qualifications, felt an awful lot like he was applying for some prestigious university.

Keaton Harris of Honest Steve’s openly honest and fine drinking establishment wasn’t too keen on letting him go, but; like the name—he bled an awful lot of honesty for an establishment that turned a blind eye to a fair sum of illegal happenstances and gave him a glowing series of references citing impossibly overblown instances enough to make Daniel go red for a near hour every time he thought about it. But, he passed the written tests—he passed the physical. He was hardly number one, but he wasn’t no dead last either. Not only was he older than a fair few of his fellow applicants, but he lacked their considerable resume as well.

No prior combat experience outside of what passed for violence in a brawl (which, incidentally; was some truly terrible things). No post secondary degrees or certifications. Just a whole lot of heart in every breath. And sometimes, that’s enough—it’s a painful slap in the face, a breath of fresh air in finding someone so eager to serve.

A moment of celebration that was painfully short lived when he came home to Emily telling him she planned to go out of state for university.

He wasn’t her Father. He couldn’t forbid this. Though every fibre in him demanded he do so, hands desperate to clutch her close to home lest she too be stolen away from him. But, she would be turning eighteen shortly after graduation. She already had her acceptance letter. She already had a future. A taste of envy so powerful nearly overcame him but, he painted a smile on his face—nothing mattered more than Emily. And nothing would hurt him more than being robbed of her happiness. So, helped her pick out everything for her dorm. Talked with her soon to be roommate over Facebook, took a hundred photos with her about the city—made her promise to email every week and call as often as she could.

There was a very real fear of suffocating her. That when free of his presence in her life, she would forget about him. Emily would smile and laugh, and all his worries would disappear. He drove her across several states to Nebraska where he helped her set up her dorm, helped her roommate unpack as well ‘So nice having some proper muscle around, Em! Tell me, does he do personal requests too?’

It was easier then, to wake up and go to work. To not have to worry about the other body in his house even if the overwhelming emptiness of the place sometimes got to him. He moved to sunnier streets, a higher rise apartment in New York City following a requested transfer where he spent the better part of his first day staring out over the sprawling city from his apartment balcony. A housewarming party that Emily attended with her dormmate Lauren. She brought a truly awful looking plant. And then she proceeded to bring a new godawful plant every time she visited until his window ledge was decorated proper with them. He was accepted in S.W.A.T. where he could push himself harder and harder, where he could feel as though he belonged. His desk at work soon bore the overflow from his window ledge at home, a photo of him and Emily making faces at the camera sat just to the right of his desktop. Officer Parker still called him the odd time to check in on him, and he’d just caved under his co-worker’s pressure to enroll in the apparently new and hip trend of online dating especially if he wasn’t going to cave in and return the interest of the latest intern to slip into the station with big eyes and easy smiles.

It was…good. Life was good.

AFTER DECEMBER 25th, 2017,

Daniel wasn’t much of a social media guy. He liked to go online to keep in contact with people, to share stories and be a shoulder to cry on for those in need. Sometimes, he liked to join puzzle and mystery games with strangers but that was something of a dirty secret. So, it took Emily mentioning it in passing during one of their scheduled calls for the reality of things to slap him in the face. She sounded worried. She sounded scared. Bergan Mercy Hospital was showing an impossible influx of patients both paranoid and otherwise justifiably concerned.

The city slowly started to show its true colours as the station was swamped with more and more incoming calls from panicked civilians. Crime spiked to an all time high and further news and evidence flooded the internet. People started to see it as the end of days, and as such: the end of such silly things as consequences. On near constant duty, Daniel hadn’t seen the inside of his apartment in days by the time the diseased started to find their ways to their city streets. It’s supposed to be Christmas, a time to celebrate. Good will and good cheer, and all that. He hadn’t talked to Emily in days, his worry for her near eating him alive. She’s not here. She’s not in any place like New York so it’s okay Daniel. It’s okay.

Their phones went down. The network so overrun with calls that it simply collapsed into a constant loop of an automated messaging system. Officers went missing or simply never showed up. Several other emergency personnel stopped reporting in. There were civilians on their front steps seeking safety, protection—if ever there was a time to protect and serve…

Daniel didn’t know much about any other story from New York. He only knows his chapter, the fall of his station as it was overrun by the dead. The thick Kevlar and layers of his S.W.A.T. armor likely the only thing that saved his life. But even so, he’d seen too many of his brothers and sisters go down to teeth, hands ripping and tearing. There was no order. It was only chaos, everything happening in an instant as the barricades fell and the impressive population of New York City flooded their doors. A handful of survivors made it out, running blind only thinking about survival—there was no hope to contain it. To be able to circle back around and it hurts him so deeply to know there truly was nothing he could have done.

Spending the early days and weeks of the outbreak simply trying to survive Daniel tried everything he could to get word out to Emily. All he had was a series of increasingly worrying voice messages to listen to until his phone lost battery. He was limited on supplies in a dying city. It took days to simply even get out of the dead zones, passing through once thriving safe zones and choke points overrun with the dead. Key supplies lost forever as he looked through a pair of binoculars into the torn apart camps, the military transports stopped dead in crowded streets. What few survivors he did see, fled on sight; even in the apartments he broke into in passing did he find no friendly faces. Just more and more dead.

It took nearly a month of travel to get from the bowels of the city out into Omaha. A long dead cellphone in the pocket of his pants. Salvaging what he could whenever he could. Seeing far too much carnage and chaos for his mind to safely contain. Simply fixated on reaching his destination the only thing that ever pulled him from his goal was a cry for help. Some desperate human response—that often, he was told by the people he saved that they never expected anyone to come. He looked at their tears, the raw fear and gratitude mingling in their expressions and only ached.

Some remained traveling with him for a time, finding comfort in his person. In the armor he wore. The weapons he carried. They craved the direction and order he provided, some flavour of normalcy—of the world before, that they desperately wanted to hold once again. Several of these individuals broke off at the camps he stopped at along the way, parting ways with tight embraces the likes unheard of in the world before between strangers.

On nothing more than hope, he arrived at Bergan Mercy Hospital to find it overrun. Which…didn’t match with the reports other campsites at given him. There were people in there. Somewhere. Emily Emily Emily.

It was a trader heading back in that showed him the way, a sprint through the hands and teeth of the undead in the waiting area—their numbers dropped a fair sum by his own hand until he was steered away—‘Don’t bother, more always come.’

Emily wasn’t one of the remaining hospital staff inside. He hadn’t….he hadn’t seen her in the waiting room. Her car was in the parking lot outside (he checked, he obsessively checked) which meant that she was inside somewhere.

Daniel loathes sitting still, but he’s a welcome addition to the team with the firepower, information, and general experience he brings to the table. It seems no one really wants to touch upon the subject of his sister, most turning away from the picture he provides forth in desperation with pity in their eyes. He’s eager to explore the wings of the hospital, to clear them out—others call it a suicidal desire. He calls it wanting closure one way or another.

He hadn’t been present for the culling of the intensive care patients and if he had been, he’s firm in his stance that he wouldn’t have stood for it. Which, has only furthered ire against him—they were people, people like us—we go and do that, we aren’t any better than the monsters outside the door waiting for us. But…he knows, he knows he’s no different. He ran from that station despite the heaviness of his heart. Despite hearing his friends call out for him, scream for help, scream in pain, and simply scream and scream and scream.

His heart governs him more than anything else, leaves him blind to the grim reality of the situation at hand. But, it also brought him to this doorstep where he intends to be of use. For now, he’s usually seen on patrol or heading out on the odd scavenge run for extra security—Emily’s photo kept close to his heart.

CENSUS,

faceclaim ⋯ Steven Yeun played by ⋯ Bigby

#steven yeun #rp #rpg #zombie rp #town rp #{ a. } #{ m. } #{ 30. } #{ bergan mercy. } #{ guard. } #{ bigby. } #{ daniel song. } #blood tw #violence tw #death tw

[amoralto]

Hi, I don't know if you remember but a few months ago i sent you an ask about john's preception of paul's supposed indifference in the media in the early 70s, and i was wondering if your still planning to respond? I mean if not thats totally cool, i just would be really interested if you have even incomplete fragments that you haven't posted (cause you posted a few in the past, i think?) Anyway, i really love what youre doing with this blog, have a great day!

Oh, I remember very well, my dear long-suffering anon, and at this appallingly ponderous rate I’ll probably have a response written up to my own fathomless standards within the next two years or so. 😞😓😩😖 I’m so very sorry; I’ve said so before, but it befits me to say it again. My overall productivity where @amoralto​ is concerned has ground to a halt this past couple of weeks for colourless personal reasons of depression and malaise, so I’m feeling awful about that as well. More fragments I can provide, though - they’re mostly just Thoughts From Several Years Ago, me looking up old notes I made when I was working on this response to your ask, but I hope it provides at least a modicum of entertainment:

I don’t prescribe to the idea of attributing someone’s entire personality to a specific, singular event, but the childhood experience of finding himself in the position of effectively having to choose, symbolically, between the love (and affection, guidance, trust, loyalty, presence) of his father and his mother, would have significantly impacted his ideological makeup and ingrained within young John Lennon a predisposition to see love as a zero-sum game where going with one means abandoning the other forever, and having it both ways is an impossible lie, because you’ve never had it both ways, and in fact, you will see to it personally that you won’t have it both ways, because you’d rather fuck it up yourself than let them fuck it up for you, because they will always leave you anyway. So I’d imagine that as a young John Lennon growing up in schism, comparing your household to others’ and painfully aware of what you don’t have that they do and vice versa and all else, you’d both justify the notion and rebel violently against it. Fulfill your own prophecies. Hence the impulsive, headlong infatuations with gurus, and the incensed, guillotined fallout afterwards. Hence the inveterate need for a parental figure, alternately resenting their authority and desiring their attention and coddling.Why these systemic issues with love, family, and abandonment seemed to pronounced themselves so profoundly in relation to Paul in particular is probably for all those indefinable symbiotic reasons that have been waxed lyrical about. Just as it was a magical buoy for their partnership in its naive and romantic beginning, this indefinable and ineffable quality to their relationship was also an obscure leaden weight to their partnership in its latter-day disillusionment. It’s not so much the fact of its ambiguity itself that was an issue, but that it was conditional, and neither was consciously aware of it until, well, the conditions arose. I mean, this isn’t at all meant to be a summative Where Did Our Love Go? précis, but just in terms of their communication with each other as emotionally hedging Northern lads, their relationship, from John’s perspective, seemed to depend on an implicit awareness and understanding of each other, on the reading of each other’s minds, on recognising each other’s unspoken thoughts and desires and enacting upon them, which he eventually realised was unrealistic and unsustainable (even if he never necessarily stopped longing for it). But they couldn’t have grown as a partnership without expecting and accepting each other to grow as individuals apart from each other, and they couldn’t have gone on continuing to looking to each other and expecting to see their own reflection without depleting themselves.But, uh, rather than go into histrionic ramblings about ego and identity and projection and fear, I think what I mean is: knowing what you don’t want isn’t the same as knowing what you do, and in such immovable contention there was only going to be disappointment and despair. Not knowing what you want but expecting the other to know and give it to you, and not get it? Hurt, rage, betrayal, you never loved me if you did you would have known I was in pain you moon-eyed fucking Engelbert Humperdinck I bet you knew and you just got off on seeing me suffer.

On that note, a candid illustration of John’s Paranoid Troll Logic, circa mid-1966 to early-1967, i.e. the “I was going through murder and I knew Paul wasn’t” period:

1. You’re happy and working and I’m sad and idle.

2. How can you be happy and working when I’m sad and idle?

3. If you really cared about me being sad and idle you couldn’t possibly be happy and working.

4. Maybe I’m sad and idle because you don’t really care about me.

5. Maybe you’re happy and working because I’m sad and idle.

Or two: 

1. I’m miserable, and if we’re as close as I think we are, you should be able to tell.

2. If you’re not able to tell, it must mean we’re not as close as I thought we were, which makes me even more miserable.

3. Maybe the reason why I’m miserable is because we’re not as close as I believe we were, and I can’t tell how close you believe we are.

4. I can’t ask you about it, of course, because I shouldn’t have to, and it’s your fault anyway, you should be the one asking me first, it’s not like you’re the one who’s miserable.

 5. … Maybe you’re making me miserable. On purpose.

Or three:

John: Sometimes I don’t even want to be in this fucking band anymore. I can’t stand being Beatle John, it’s going to suffocate me, but in the situation we’re in I don’t even know who else I can be. We’re in this together, Paul. You understand. We need to break away from all this.

Paul: Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s make a record where we all pretend we’re in a made-up band! Then we won’t have to be in this band, not really, because we’ll be other people playing other people’s music! It’ll be liberating!

John: … Remember when we just canceled all our engagements and went to Paris?

Paul: Sure I do. You know what, you should come out to London with me some time, it’s an amazing scene! All the music and plays and films and happenings… John: Hey, why spoil it when you’re already having so much fun without me around? What’s so good about all that, anyway? Pretentious tossers, the whole lot of them. Not that I care. Paul: They’re not so bad. Have you written any new songs? John: I haven’t written anything in weeks. Bothered.Paul: Well, bother yourself, then! And get something done by Friday. We have an album to make, you know. I’ve already written about four new songs - nothing much, just some melodies I whipped up in between this and that, but we can work with them.

John: You’ve just come here to gloat, haven’t you.Paul: Are you having trouble writing? I can help you out! What are partners for? Not today, though, today I’ve got a gallery to set up and two articles for the International Times to write and then dinner with Groovy Bob and a lot of artsy mingling to do with my new queer friends you’re so intimidated by for some reason. Want to come along? John: No, because I’m in pain and you don’t care and I hate you for not loving me enough. Run along, I’ve got my own lysergic work to get to. This ego of mine’s not going to destroy itself, you know. Paul: Alright, alright, I’ll leave you to it. See you on Friday!John: … Please don’t leave me.

And some waffle on Paul’s manner of Dealing With Things By Not Acknowledging Them (which, when aligned with John’s Desperate Need For Verbal And Explicit Acknowledgment, would hurtle them both towards a terrible ending):

As an affect of his stubbornly persistent optimism, to put it glibly, one could see how Paul’s need and inclination to focus on the enactive and positive side of things would also preclude an avoidance of anything he thinks he can’t achieve, help, or deal with, because direct confrontation of the problem would entail the risk of him losing control in that situation, which would render him vulnerable, or worse, being seen to be vulnerable. The avoidance thus manifests as both a defense and a coping mechanism for uncomfortable situations or unsavoury trains of thought - remember, this is someone who isn’t inclined toward navel-gazing, who doesn’t at all like to examine his own thoughts or emotions,  because it would hang him up. He has to deal with them in some way, though, so what can he do? Diffuse (project onto someone else), deflect (be hostile and passive-aggressive), or dive behind a piano, essentially. So if Paul’s way of handling things (during the Beatles years at least) was to avoid the Negative, redirect attentions and efforts to something Positive and hopefully in the process overwhelm the Negative entirely by all that is Positive, then you can see how the avoidance played out in, say, the case of Brian’s death (Let’s all travel far far away from this smog both figuratively and literally and make a new film about us going on a mad bus trip and make a new album to go along with it and be together all the time as a band again because we can totally manage ourselves and this will prove it and everything will be fine!), or the latter-day disintegration of the band (Let’s plough through the sessions because things have to get good before they get better and it’ll be a good album because we’re us and at the end of it we’ll all be proud of ourselves because it’ll prove we can still do it and maybe just maybe we’ll stay together and make more good albums and everything will be fine!). He couldn’t ignore the plaguing tensions at hand, and knew he couldn’t address it directly without inviting confrontation or contributing to the existing tensions, but he knew what he could do, practically - make music, and involve others with making music. As long he was actively doing something, then he was actively moving himself and everyone elseforward, and if they kept moving forward for long enough the problem would recede into the distance until it ceased to be a problem entirely. And so he did, until they were far along enough to move onto the next phase, or until they couldn’t possibly be moved anymore. 

#context #ask #john and paul

[thecantabilelife]

Favorite Quotes of Age of Youth 2 (K-Drama, 2017)

Forever young… Forever lovely… Forever Belle Epoque :)

Ep 1 (Get Mad Over Little Things #We)

But, you’re not living with us. You’ll visit us occasionally. Then, you’ll stop coming. Then, we’ll stop seeing each other. We’ll end up going our ways like that. – Yoo Eun Jae

Ep 2 (I’m A Coward)

I’m a coward. I’m like a child swinging punch in the air with eyes closed. Like a dog barking out of fear. I’m a coward. I’m always scared. Everything’s unfamiliar feels strange. Everything’s strange becomes scary. And what’s scary becomes bad. And so… what’s unfamiliar becomes something scary that I must avoid. I’m scared again… that I’ll look unfamiliar to others. Strange to others. So, I’m desperately… trying to be like everyone else. I’m scared again… that someone will get hurt by the punch I throw with eyes closed. And I’m scared that… I might not be the good person that… I think I am. – Yoo Eun Jae

So what? Did you expect me to be cold even when I’m dating? – Yoon Jin Myung

Ep 3 (I Decided to Hate You #Crime and Punishment)

Don’t worry. Everything will pass. I know that it feels like everyone is talking about you. But, that’s not true. People don’t really care. Only you care. – Song Ji Won

Let’s be simple minded. Thinking that she might be a good person or that she had her reason. It’s just too complicated. It’s either I like her or I hate her. A friend or a foe. Either this or that. I don’t want to know too much. If I do, I’ll feel pity for her. Then, I can no longer hate her. I don’t understand her. I won’t. I’ll never… I’ll never do that. I’ll have my revenge. – Jo Eun

Ep 4 (I Survived #Selfish Gene)

Why should the woman avoid the man after a break up? I don’t like that. So don’t. – Song Ji Won

There are things that you can’t learn. If efforts always paid off, I’d be Kim Yuna.  – Song Ji Won

The one that hurts never knows. Only the one that is hurt remembers. – Yoo Eun Jae

I always keep a distance so I don’t get too close. I always keep a distance so they don’t get too close. Keeping a distance is isolating oneself. With that distance, one decides to be lonely. Survival… Right… This is my survival strategy. I’ve run like a racehorse wearing blinkers. That’s how I survived this far… and that’s how I’ll survive in the future. I had to keep a distance. – Yoon Jin Myung

Ep 5 (My Heart is Like Reed #First Love)

I don’t want to hurt anybody. Especially the person who love me. – Jo Eun

I pretend that I don’t know. If I get caught that I know that, then I can’t pretend that I don’t know. I just want to see what I want to see, if I see too much, I will get lost. I don’t care at all. Even if I do care, it’s no use. I just want to believe what I want to believe. Then I will be happy with that. I just want to remember what I want to remember. Because I want to protect myself. – Song Ji Won

Ep 6 (I am A Miracle #Searching for The Lost Time)

I’m not successful yet because I’m not doing my best. – Heimdal

Be careful, because… Be careful when it’s nighttime. Don’t walk around by yourself. Don’t go to some isolated places. – Kwon Ho Chang

Two little girls that look alike, at the same time they have different paths. What makes the different between these two little girls’ destiny? Even though we don’t know what caused this… But my guts tell me that this is a very unimportant thing. Very… Very… unimportant. Too unimportant that the reason are missed from everyone’s attention. There’s a possibility that my life is going to a different way to what it was. I’m scared. But there’s also a relief. Those unimportant things didn’t happen to me. I’m feeling lucky, but at the other side, I’m feeling guilty to that kid. – Song Ji Won

Ep 7 (I was The Center of The World #The Scarlet Letter)

Taking the initiative and being obsessive are different. Being aggressive after you broke up is just scary. – Seo Jang Hoon

If you’re nice to someone like me, then you’re a good person. – Kwon Ho Chang

It’s because that person is bad. That person that hates you is bad. You’re a nice person. You’re nice and pretty. – Kwon Ho Chang

When I was younger, I was the center of the world. I thought the world would stop when I fell asleep. I thought the world would stop when I fell asleep. Everything moved for me. I couldn’t imagine the world without me. Everything moved for me. I couldn’t imagine the world without me. Back then… everything existed to love me. When did I realize… that the world still moves even without me? When did I realize… that I’m not the center of the world anymore? When did I realize… that I’m just one of many from my heart. And since when did I… start to put others at the center of my world? When did I realize how much I desire to have things I can’t have? When did I start to rather choose to hate myself… out of anger? Once again today, I painfully realize that… I can also be hated… just like I can hate someone. – Jung Ye Eun

Ep 8 (I Deny Myself - Confession)

You’re the victim. Why are you being blamed?  – Yoo Eun Jae

Why must I be responsible? How can I be responsible of other people’s life? There’s no one. You’re also, Ma’am. Ye Eun’s life is her own responsibility. That’s the only way. That’s why… you choose yourself. – Yoon Jin Myung

I hate myself sometimes. That’s why I don’t expect others to like me. A half hate. A half regret. A half hope. It’s better if I can be honest. Maybe someone would like a person like me. – Jo Eun

It’s better to be alone than be laughed at. If there’s no feeling, it won’t hurt. If there’s no wish, there won’t be heartbroken. Don’t hope anything. Don’t wish anything. Close each door tightly. If I pretend to not know anything, then I could starting over. If I don’t give attention, then I won’t be cared. Pretend don’t know anything. – Jo Eun

Ep 9 (I Became A Scar #Paradise Lost)

It all started, then. It was by chance. By chance, we happened to sit at the same place. We didn’t share beliefs or the same hobbies. We didn’t grow up in similar situations. We just happened to sit at the same row. That was all. And that was enough. That day… we became friends.  – Jung Ye Eun

Ep 10 (It Might Be Me #Hunches are Not Wrong)

Maybe hatred is like a snowball. It starts as a little ball but it grows bigger and bigger and it rolls over different emotion. We hate because we like too much. Because they don’t like is back. Because they have too much, because we feel too guilty, because we have no choice. When the bitterness grows too much, it gets out of our hands.  – Yoon Jin Myung

Ep 11 (I Betrayed Myself #Fall)

The inflection point. A point of a curve at which a change in the direction of curvature occurs. Yes, it’s a curve. And one point of that curve has no direction. No meaning either. Only after we link each and every point, we can find out the meaning of that moment. At that moment, we don’t know. We only find out later… that we just passed the inflection point.  It could be like the Nazca Lines. Lines that look meaningless can become a hummingbird… or an alien when we look at them from afar. – Yoo Eun Jae

Ep 12 (I Affirm Myself #Stand By Me)

Do larva live to become cicadas? The life of a larva could be happier than that of a cicada. And a cicada is just a larva that is old. – Yoon Jin Myung

As if nothing happened. To be honest, I wanted to scream. To be honest, I wanted to run. I thought I’d get caught if I screamed. I thought I’d be chased if I ran. The misfortune that was hiding like a tagger… could catch our ankles… so we walked as slowly as possible. – Yoon Jin Myung

Ep 13 ( I Saw Myself #All Beautiful Words)

Sunbae… Can I ask you a favor? When you date another girl, don’t tell her that she disappointed you. If you date another girl, wait a little bit before you start dating. Don’t treat me too well, or I’ll get confused. But don’t treat me too poorly either. I’m so glad that you were my first love. – Yoo Eun Jae

The longer we drag it on, the harder it will be to say it. – Jo Eun

What kind of future did that child once dream of? Was it an ordinary life? Or a special life? To be provided for? Or to be loved? Though I’m a bit late, I grieve for her. I grieve for her dream that’s now become nothing. The things I remember, the things I can’t remember, the things that can’t be helped… My friend, Moon Hyo Jin. Today, I pray for them. I hope that they don’t have to suffer, that they won’t have to go through more than they can bear. Even it may seem boring, I hope they can live an ordinary life. And I also pray, even if they have no way out, they will get through it. Even when they’re scared to death, I hope they can walk forward. I’ll do my all the become the person I wanted to be. – Song Ji Won

Ep 14 (They Have Their Own Mirror #Goodbye See You Tomorrow)

I will not apologize. I can’t. I didn’t do anything wrong… to apologize. – Song Ji Won

Don’t think about what others do. It’s not like there is one answer, like you have to kiss in one month or a year… and if you don’t, you’re behind. It’s not like that. – Yoo Eun Jae

We swore to never change. We swore to never change until death. I never thought that we’d change. I thought the two of us were enough. Who is the bad one? The one that has changed… or the one that couldn’t? You and I are like puzzle pieces that don’t come together. If we force it, we’ll only get hurt. If I shrink myself so that I won’t hurt the person that I like, I’ll be stabbing myself. It hurts if we get closer, but if we grow apart, it feels like I’d die. – Ahn Ye Ji

Final Impression:

This Little Gem!

I’m glad that Season 2 has the same vibe as Season 1. Even though this sequel is felt more comedic, and is not as mysterious as Season 1, but Belle Epoque Girls are still lovely and relatable. I was disappointed first when my favorite character, Kang Yi Na, only appeared as cameo, but new character, Jo Eun, is also charming in her own way and can give new color in Belle Epoque. And of course, this season is the time for Ji Won to take the spotlight. Her character has the most development and her arc is surprisingly very heartbreaking. I loved Ji Won and her quirky personality in Season 1, but in this season, she took my whole heart with the revelation of her hidden trauma, and I just wanted her to be happy with Sung Min. I was a bit mad when watching Epilogue of 8 years later, but I realized that this drama just stay true in showing the “Slice of Life” element. It’s bittersweet yet realistic.

I felt that 14 Episodes are a bit draggy and the plot is not as tight as Season 1 (12 Eps), but I like how the ending is really “Age of Youth” thingy. We can see how Belle Epoque Girls continue their daily life and start to enter new chapter of their journey, and it seems there is no impactful changes in the ending, but it gives the familiar feeling. It’s like whenever we go to Belle Epoque, these 5 lovely girls will always greet us with their relatable stories.

                   I know the possibility of Season 3 is very small especially because all characters already has their own ending, but I still have this tiny faith that there will be Season 3, based on how this show cruelly gave a vague hint of Ji Won & Sung Min relationship (SsongSungmin Couple). I’m OK if they decide to end this drama in Season 2, but I’ll be happier if they continue for Season 3, as I will never bored watching this little gem *of course with the same ensemble of Belle Epoque*. And if there is Season 3, please… please… please… give more development for SsongSungmin. We cannot wait till forever only to see this OTP as a couple, right? Kekekeke….

My Girl, Song Ji Won! She shows many sides of her in this season :)

Sung Min’s Gaze >.< My Fav OTP <3 <3 <3

Until next year, see you again Belle Epoque :)

-AquaMarine-

#AgeofYouth #AgeofYouth2 #KoreanDrama #Quotes #Review #Recommendation

[lifeslattes]

It was the most unromantic place one could imagine, yet in many ways, that irony made the situation that much more meaningful. Camus had written of the magic, the absurdity of realizing one’s existence, one’s greatest art, on street corners, why not true longing, realized on the city bus? Would that not have more meaning than the stereotypical beaches and rose gardens?  

There was nothing in that moment that would have seemed outwardly exceptional to an onlooker, two teens riding the bus at night, holding hands like all young lovers have the aptitude, and desire, to do so. Most older people do not hold hands, do not hold each other, the way adolescents do. Maybe they’re sure of themselves in a way younger people are not, secure in their long term relations the way high school seniors could never imagine, or maybe, young people subconsciously realize they have so much to hold on to, their youth, a lifetime filled with promise and possibilities.

 It wasn’t the jerking of the bus, or the song playing in my ear, it wasn’t even the pressure of his hand or the shadows of streets going lazily past. It was the yellow. The yellow handrails, the yellow bars stretching the length of the vehicle, and the way the lowly economy lighting, the kind that makes everyone sleepy and dirty, seemed to brighten this yellow, casting a glow to his face. Flushed along his cheeks, the tip of his nose, his eyes bagged, slicked hair, all seemingly benign up until this crucial moment. I met his eyes, green, like every cliché story ever, I remembered why I vowed to give up writing about boys with green eyes, about the way they made me feel. Feelings were fleeting, like buses themselves jerking painfully down streets. Undesirable.

But he, in that moment, became the thing I desired most. The movies always depict people dying for those they care for, fleeing, eloping, suicide, desperation, and in that moment I felt it too, maybe I always do because I’m a writer, maybe I always do because that transcendental door between realities and things that surpass reality, is a bit more unlocked for me. The motive doesn’t matter though, there was no motive, nothing to be gained, no Hollywood moment to be had, the bus, this bus ride with obnoxiously yellowed lights and the boy with the glowing face, would eventually reach its stop, and I would plunge into the night alone.

Time washes away, always, more so even when you try to stop it. In the moments of Absurd, of Feeling, you blink, and then there is nothing but sand left, making it even more Absurd, more mystifying. This little paragraph serving as only mere footprints where the water once was. I never said I could write. He did. He makes me want to write, even when it is sad, even when it is about the last time I would see him again. That is the nature of the Absurd. The sadness, the beautifully saddening final bus ride-the lurching of breaks, littered seats, a drunk bum in the corner. I want to relive it all again in this only way I know how, not because it was beautiful, but because it was painful, the pain, the passion, the longing, the kiss on the cheek, and the consciousness of imminent loss, final moments, an hour glass coming to its last grains, that made it all the more something. Absurd. Nothing made sense. In that moment, it wasn’t supposed to. Maybe, it never was.  

#thoughts

[dentalrecordsmusic]

Album Review: Origami Angel - “Somewhere City”

Words by Ari Jindracek

I’m going to be clear: I didn’t find out about Origami Angel until after they were teasing their newest album with an online ARG I’m not bright enough to figure out. Once I did go check out the Somewhere City teaser material, though--sometime shortly after “Doctor Whomst” -- I was pre-hooked on the album. I’m a sucker for music with narratives, and if all those blog posts about aliens were indicative of anything, it was an intriguing narrative. I don’t think I got aliens while listening to Somewhere City necessarily, though. What I heard when I pushed play for the first time was grounded in several realities: in running away and missing people, watching cartoons and going to amusement parks, being bullied and left behind, and wanting to love and be loved. It feels somewhat larger than the two-piece that created it (Pat Doherty on drums and Ryland Heagy on pretty much everything else) in its universality. The city is everywhere, it seems.

The opening moments of Somewhere City, in “Welcome To…” are tranquil, woodsy--soft guitar, gently piercing vocals, and drums that feel somehow cinematic--until the quiet comes to a screeching halt, the metaphorical city limit. “You don’t have to do anything or be anyone, just follow the road / just come with me / you have to see / there’s something in the air out here” makes it eminently clear: this is going to be a concept album. If “this city never lets me down” isn’t about the artists’ hometown, it’s got to be the beginning of something more narrative. You don’t need to know about all the cryptic lead-up; you don’t need to solve Origami Angel’s puzzles. You just need to listen to the way the instrumentals vary between springy, rhythms to bounce on your toes to, and sweeping buildups like the swell of a wave, and think about how much fun it would be to scream the lyrics back to the band. “Welcome To…” stands for itself on its quality, but it can’t stand alone--obviously, obviously, there’s a lot more to follow. “24 Hr Drive-Thru,” the first single off the album, is the immediate follower to the intro sequence, and it has the pop-cultural references I have come to expect from Origami Angel after listening to them for a little bit, even if they’re on the vaguer side, just drive-thrus as a concept, Dr. Pepper filling free water cups, and the reference to a “mobile phone”, which slingshots me back into 2004 when people unironically used that language. “Kenilworth Avenue to 193” is more concrete--I don’t know what it references, really, but it’s very grounded. It’s a song to dance to more than a song to mosh to. The bouncy “Okay! Okay!” section in the middle is my favorite bit, just because the way the tightly-played guitars, the unrelenting drums, and the “bop bop bop” vocals balance each other out perfectly to create a sound of pure fun, which takes an easily-missed but incredibly-complicated guitar riff as an exit ramp. I didn’t have a lot of teenage experiences going out for fast food with friends on summer nights between years of high school, but this song sounds like something that should be playing if I did. The opening of “666 Flags” breakneck-speeds into a song that is both about roller coasters and sounds like a roller coaster. The lyrics almost blur together at some points and climb at others; there is a brief pause when what actually sounds like the wheels of a roller coaster car plays to cap off the metaphor. “It’s a long way from here to where I wanna be” feels like a disembarking from the ride, and here my theme park metaphor breaks down until the very end, when the guitars and drums shred themselves to pieces, replicating the feeling of terror I get when I even look at a steep, two-hundred-foot drop (I am not a roller coaster person). The softer middle section is stunning not as much for the way it catapults you around hairpin turns and into the stratosphere, but for the lyrics and sentiments of hope for the future, which is a theme I can always get behind. “All these microscopic moments make me feel like I’m not helpless / I’m okay” is stunning because it is painfully, ecstatically real. Listeners take that reality into the fantastical final stretch of their wild ride.

The second single, Tumblr-ishly named “Doctor Whomst”, goes on a brief nostalgia tour of pop culture, as the title reference implies, but also on a joyous rooftop-screaming self-esteem bender. I like the juxtaposition of “just how I used to feel / watching Danny Phantom, eating Happy Meals” with “I think I’m starting to like myself.” It puts the youthful innocence and hard-won adult self-love back to back--the same feeling, several long years apart, facing down the interval between. I can relate to the sentiment, while I jam to the blur of drums, the heavy bass, and the bridge’s intriguing whispery backing “vocals” that sound exactly like the noises I make at my cat to get her to look at me. The sample from some movie that I don’t know off the top of my head crawls into the slow introductory verse of “Say Less,” which is just as relatable: “maybe I would be just fine if I could just change everything that’s wrong with me / but it’s not that easy” could be something I said to my therapist. The realization of how hard change can be rockets the listener out of softness into thick bass and thundering, monolithic guitar hits. “Say Less” feels more like a part of the world you’re escaping from when you run away to Somewhere City, not a part of the world that has, so far, been portrayed as, essentially, a birthday party bouncy castle full of fond childhood memories that you can catapult around at will. This song, though, is about being insulted and getting into fights. If that’s what happens in Somewhere City, like it happens in every elementary school, where’s the escapism? Ironically, “Escape Rope” doesn’t get you there, although it’s definitely a getaway for some other, unnamed “you.” The narrator begs someone--a friend heading out of the house, or someone more desperately needed--to stay. The quick, bright guitar feels like a computer error, a glitch in how things are “supposed to be.” As the speaker pleads--“tell me all the things I already know” feels particularly desperate in its tone--you can tell that it’s having no effect. The friend is still leaving, for their parent’s house or college or another city or just anywhere else. It’s not the desired narrative, but it is still the narrative.

The cheekily named “The Title Track” provides the actual escape, the travel brochure to Somewhere City. As a bassist, I am amazed as to how the bass, drums, and guitar can go off so machine-gun fast that there are moments I can hardly parse as anything but a wall of sound. “The secret is it’s in your brain” is stunning in that it actually stunned me the first time it came up. As I type this, I’m still reeling from that a little bit. The image of “how the sun hits the water at six in the morning on every single day” is beautiful too, and it makes me want to see it, but I think, of all the lyrics I could pull meaning out of in the album so far, the concept of the ultimate escape, somewhere where I couldn’t be found but where I wouldn’t be alone or hiding, being within me is true in a way that somehow confuses me. “You won’t be the same” is right! The song as a whole packs quite a bit of musical odyssey into two and a half minutes.

“Skeleton Key” starts off soft, migrating from a blanket of soft, fuzzy guitar, to a heavier, harder wash of sound, to the boppy dance sound I’m coming to expect from Origami Angel. This song is less city-related and more a loving reply to the person from “Escape Rope,” a postcard-back wish-you-were-here song about missing someone beloved. It’s not wish you were here, though, it’s “I wanna be there with you.” The throat-rending desperation of the last “I hope you know” is indicative of how much love lies in the song. Short of being there, though, the speaker can only send their love. “Find Your Throne” is a distortion-charged song filled with a similar love, an awe of someone else, positioned as a genius, “the goddamn king of the universe.” It’s not self-love but love of others. It fits neatly into the escapist narrative, with the idea of a trip to somewhere, the “throne,” where the person will be among others, loved, recognized for their awe-inspiring contributions to the world. This person is absent, missed, however; they are not in the city, and they want the speaker to return. The lyrics sound like an exchange of letters, catching up. I am also struck by the impact that the simple “I love you”s have--I feel as though music usually takes a roundabout way of displaying love rather than just saying it outright. Sometimes, in the world of “show don’t tell,” telling is more effective. 

“The Air Up Here”, a final letter, wraps up the narrative with “I’m never gonna come back home”--the escape, started from the first moment city limits were crossed, is complete. Somewhere City is the narrator’s home now; the world they left is gone. The song reprises “Welcome To…,” “Skeleton Key,” and a mash of others I can hardly pry apart due to the tangled mass of drum, guitar, and vocals. It is the full experience of the city rolled into one tight ball, ending with a huge, choral “this city never lets me down.” Why go back to somewhere that does? I’ll admit, having seen narratives like this in the media before--and heard them from relatives who didn’t like me moving far away--I kind of expected the ending to the album to be an encouragement to return home. But Somewhere City has become home, at this point. As the album loops back around, perfectly, to the first song, and I start listening again, I think I can get behind the message, not just because I can relate to the whole “moving to a new city I love” thing, but because Somewhere City isn’t a place as much as a state of mind. 

I chopped this review up into a review of each song, but, obviously, the album should be listened to as a complete whole with no breaks. There’s a lot that I missed going song by song to make sure I could wring every drop of meaning out; the transitions between songs are flawless and the way the album paces out the slow and fast sections of songs. It was pieced together masterfully. Somewhere City is much bigger than the sum of its parts, and all of those parts individually are huge. I obviously play favorites--I’m a sucker for reprises and big meaning--but I’d be proud if I’d written even one of these songs. The album stands as a beautiful colossus, glittering in the sun, a paean of love for self and others, and a place you can go to find it, inside or outside of your head.

Listen to Somewhere City on Bandcamp here.

Ari Jindracek is looking up apartment prices in Somewhere City right now. If you find any good listings, you can find Ari on Twitter.

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#origami angel #somewhere city #ari jindracek #album review #washington #emo

[alicejean]

DECADES OF TEENAGE LOVE

1965 - I've Just Seen a Face, The Beatles This track off of the Beatles' 1965 album "Help" is the perfect start to this playlist. Lyrically the song is everything I want to achieve with this anthology - it is about what I can't call anything other than big love - about a love which consumes, takes over and moves someone. I originally titled the playlist "I WANT ALL THE WORLD TO SEE," after the lyric in the first verse, "She's just the girl for me, and I want all the world to see we've met!" It encompasses the feeling of teenage love feeling so massive, it's the biggest thing in your life, the biggest thing you've ever experienced, and something you want to share with everyone in the world. 

The title shouts this urgency from the rooftops, "I've just seen a face," the song excitedly starts, capturing the unique moment of having recently met a girl and feeling total and certain infatuation.

This track is widely known for its immensely wonderful rhyming schemes, (they don't come across particularly well in text and must be listened to). "Had it been another day I might have looked the other way and I'd have never been aware, but as it is I'll dream of her tonight." The rhymes in this song effortlessly cascade into one another. Compositionally the rhymes fit together so perfectly and leaving the listener with what I can only describe as a feeling that this is a song that was meant to be written.

Like any immense, all-consuming crush, this song has quite a wonderful power of luring you back in again and again. "and she keeps calling me back again," sighs McCartney in the main choral motif, bringing the listening back in again for another verse, another chorus. The song is a short, passionate burst of infatuation and adoration. Nothing could be more better fitting to kick off this playlist.

1978 - Teenage Kicks, The Undertones Nearly forty years on from it's release, The Undertones' single Teenage Kicks is a staple of British punk culture and an iconic anthem of adolescent love. On my quest to compile the ultimate playlist of teenage love songs, this electric, desperate, raspy track was at the top of my list.

In writing this song, John O'Neill didn't tell a story that was particularly new - the essence of punk music lies in telling the mundane tales of everyday life in a way that resonates with a subculture, which moves, mobilises and touches a generation. "Are teenage dreams, so hard to beat? Every time she walks down the street," O'Neill's opening lyrics laid over the band's ripping punk rock riffs radiate lust, desperation, energy and melancholy - the typical and vital ingredients of any teenage crush.

This song owes a lot of its fame to eighties BBC1 Radio DJ John Peel, who declared it as his favourite single ever released and gave it twenty eight stars out of five. Peel famously played it twice, back to back, on Radio 1, with no explanation but "It doesn't get better than this." Teenage Kicks is infectious and this is totally self-fulfilling. The song is about infectious love, about craving and passion, and Peel's comment on the track strikes me as so central to what The Undertones were going out to achieve.

What I find to be such an impactful aspect of Teenage Kicks is its treatment of the erotic. It's a song about sex but isn't for a second vulgar or demeaning; it is fundamentally about desire - "I wanna hold her wanna hold her tight, want teenage kicks right through the night,". O'Neill's references are almost virginal - the desire of the song isn't so much the girl in question but the feeling, he desires fulfilment, he desires sex and love but beneath that, the lyrics emit a raw and powerful desire to be wanted. "I need excitement and I need it fast," he pines, desperate for the excitement - the kicks - which make being an adolescent so infuriatingly and maddeningly wonderful.

1981 - Jessie's Girl, Rick Springfield American pop in the 80s was immense and iconic - Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince and their contemporaries dominated the scene. With the rise of MTV, international acts such as Duran Duran and Ozzy Osbourne were bursting onto the American charts, including Australian pop star Rick Springfield. His single Jessie's Girl is a simple, eminent track packed with all the essential components I've been looking for for this playlist. It's desperate, in love, sexually frustrated and adoring. Springfield tells the age old story of falling in love with your friend's girl, yet the raw emotion is easily understood by anyone in love with a girl they can't get for any reason.

"She's watching him with those eyes, and she's loving him with that body, I just know it," Springfield bitterly admits in the bridge to the chorus, before belting forth his desire - "You know I wish that I had Jessie's girl".  Like Teenage Kicks, this story isn't unique and the lyrics aren't particularly poetic - for it's the simplicity that gives the punch in this song. - "I wanna tell her that I love her but the point is probably moot," sighs Springfield, this lyric is so painfully relatable - that moment when you know you're absolutely in love with someone, mixed with the knowledge of how pitifully futile your feelings are. 

My favourite lyric in this track comes at the end of the bridge, "Ain't that the way love's supposed to be?". This lyric sums up what I'm trying to achieve with this playlist. It encapsulates the timeless and endless teenage pursuit of what love's supposed to be like, what it's meant to feel like, and never really finding out.

2013 - Closer, Tegan and Sara

Tegan and Sara's Closer is a track written specifically about the madness of teenage love, and is absolutely fitting for this list. It is beautifully nuanced and to me is one of the standout singles on this playlist in terms of describing desire. "It wasn't necessarily even about hooking up or admitting your feelings," songwriter Tegan Quinn said about the track, "It was the anticipation of something maybe happening that was truly exciting and satisfying." The concept of the song is so wonderful to me - the simple excitement from just getting a little bit physically closer to the person you're mad about. "All I want to get is a little bit closer," the song starts.

I love the lyric "Here comes the rush before we touch," - celebrating not sex or even kissing but the simple, physical rush of emotion you feel before you might hold hands or even brush shoulders with the person you fancy. This song to me really exemplifies one of my favourite things about this playlist which is actually celebrating desperation. Going on a small tangent here - but I've always hated how the word needy is generally used negatively. We're all needy, being in love makes you needy and it's good! And I love that this track celebrates the joy of neediness, of knowing what you want and belting out a pop song about it.

My favourite lyric in this song - and probably my favourite Tegan and Sara lyric - comes at the end of the chorus, "I won't treat you like you're typical." I love this line for totally epitomising the moment when you know you're in love with someone but you're not together - it's the feeling of knowing how good you'd be together, and knowing that you'd never treat them as anything less than extraordinary.

2016 - Cut To The Feeling, Carly Rae Jepsen Remember way back when I was talking about I've Just Seen a Face by the Beatles, and how it's about love feeling so big? It's good to know that sixty years on, song-writers are still feeling that, and still writing about that. Cut To The Feeling is my favourite Carly Rae Jepsen song, it's so immense and shameless and happy. Musically, the beat at the start of the song is rousing and immersive, leading to a gorgeous vocal run just before chorus, and then dropping into the chrous's infectious bass line which lifts the song onto another level.

Like the song I started this playlist with, this track is about love feeling so big when you're young. "I wanna cut through the clouds, break the ceiling," Carly belts out in the chorus. To me this describes how powered up a crush can make you feel, and that classic teenage feeling that the way you feel about someone could light up whole cities. The recurring lyric, "I wanna cut to the feeling," is simple and powerful. A sort of - cut the bullshit, cut the messing around, let's fall in love.

I love how many of the lyrics in this song start with "I want," - especially every line in the chorus. I've always maintained that Rufus Wainwright's 2005 album "Want" has one of the best album titles in pop. It's exactly what the genre is about, and I love how the lyrics of Cut To The Feeling celebrate that.  I really like the disjointed, abstract lyrics in the chorus, "I wanna play where you play with the angels, I wanna wake up with you all in tangles." This reminds me of the first drafts of lyrics when you write them, but in a wholly positive way. I like these lyrics feel imperfect and like they were written in a few hours, emitting a brilliant urgency and desperation. 

Sonically this song probably has one of my favourite choruses of recent pop music. It's exactly the chorus you want to belt out on a dancefloor with your best friends or your crush and feel like your love is filling the whole room.

It's quite incredible how teenage love has been so powerfully and immensely documented through the power of pop. There's probably a hundred more songs I could add to this playlist, but for now I'm really happy with these five songs demonstrating how timeless, infinite and universal our feelings are, and how pop has always been the perfect vehicle with which to tell the world about them.

(link to the playlist here)