Goi of NFL released his album 이솝우화/AESOP’S FABLES. All tracks were produced by Panda Gomm.

1. 이솝 2. 재편 3. 구연우화 4. 미아리 5. 일로가요 6. 펄럭 7. 하늘천따지 8. METHOD 9. 거울아

In this context I'm actually counting anything that's not in 5sos5 as old, and like, I'm curious about how much will they deviate from their regular setlist, cuz songs like slsp, yb, no shame (their reduced set setlist) are expected, and I'm willing to bet that jbh and goy are in the setlist, or at least being highly considered but I can't picture songs like teeth or no shame with an orchestra. And honestly, I wonder if they will look at older songs that work better with an orchestra or just stick to what they think it's popular, cuz as much as I love slsp and believe that they should continue to play it, i feel like playing it with an orchestra a waste of 3 minutes, even more considering this is an one night only thing. And also the new songs too, i think take my hand in that is gonna be a religious experience, but I don't think mm&i will work in this context either.

Also if osco is not in there it's gonna be such a wasted opportunity.

I honestly have never been this interested on a setlist before. I'm really curious to see what they're going to do 🤔🤔

OKOK FIRST AND MOST IMPORTANT THING:

anyone reading this, go and listen to Can You Feel My Heart by BMTH (Live at The Royal Albert Hall) (and actually, the whole album while you're at it. I recommend it wholeheartedly!!)

I say this first because, while being heavier than Teeth, it's the perfect example of why Teeth would absolutely fuck with an orchestra. Teeth is one of my top 5 favourite 5sos songs for many reasons, one being that you can play it in a variety of settings and it sounds great in everyone of them. Make it heavier (LFTV)? It fucks. Make it soft (acoustic)? Gorgeous. Make it 100 times more dramatic (orchestra)? It Will Fuck. For this and other reasons, I believe Teeth is one of the best songs in the 5sos discography, in this essay i will...

I think Youngblood could also work great with an orchestra (if done right ofc). I think in general powerful songs can (hence why metal bands tend to incorporate the sound into their songs, i think). So this applies to More and maybe even No Shame.

SLSP works well live bc of the nostalgia it brings, but i also don't think it'd work with an orchestra (imo). And, they could 100% stick to what's popular, but being a ONO show at The Royal Albert Hall (so, a bit of a Big Deal), and considering not everyone can assist, they know the people going will be hardcore fans, so I don't think they're going to play this show like any regular show (no matter how much care they put in regular shows. This one is Special).

Speaking of songs that just have to be there: JBH, GOY, TMH, because all of these carry such a big, massive emotional response, it would be a complete waste (and shame) if they didn't take advantage of that.

Songs that in my 100% biased opinion should also be there: Vapor (like i said before) & OS/CO, maybe LOM.

Songs that could also work if done right (and i know this will prolly sound insane, and it's 100% my biased opinion): WAYF, IYDK.

Just A Normal Afternoon: Destiel Ficlet

Some baby jack truthing for the incredible @smiledean ‘s birthday!!! Happy Birthday Alison I hope you have a wonderful day!!!!🥳💖 

It was just another normal Wednesday afternoon. Sam and Eileen where off on a hunt, but they were supposed to be back before dinner tonight. So Cas had offered to make the run to the grocery store, and Dean prayed (literally, he's prayed to him three times since he had pulled out of the garage) that he wouldn't come back with half the store again.

So that left Dean and Jack to their own devices. Which is how Dean found himself on the floor in the library, seated across from Jack, on top of a rainbow blanket.

He was currently sending another silent prayer ("I pray to thee Castiel, that so his dumbass remembers that we don't need four different types of spaghetti sauce. Also stop buying kombucha, you know none of us even drink it!"), when a wooden block collided with his knee.

With a smirk Dean glanced down to see the culprit giggling to himself.

(read the rest under the cut)

"Message received kiddo, but hey it's not my fault your Dad is a shopaholic. Also we don't throw things" Dean tacked on at the end for good measure.

All he got in response was incoherent babbling, so he's assumed that "no throwing" lesson didn't stick, but hey that's a future Dean problem.

"Dee!" Jack screamed as he started wiggling and twisting in place.

"Oh do we have a dancing baby now? You're right kid, it is too quiet in here. You handle the clean up crew, and I'll go put another record on?" Dean offered and Jack flapped his hands around in the pile of blocks.

He quickly made his way to the record shelf(the bunker came full of record players, so Dean just improved their music selection), and began to comb through the albums.

"Any requests?" Dean called over his shoulder. Jack babbled in response, adding a little screech at the end.

"Good choice, bud. My thoughts exactly" Dean agreed, as he pulled out Queen's, Jazz. It had Jack's new favorite song.

Dean placed the needle on the second track, hoping he could tire Jack out a bit before his nap. Jack cheered when the song began, so Dean crossed the room, sitting back down in his spot. Jack hurriedly toddled over to him, and Dean grabbed his hips twisting him to the beat, as Jack laughed his head off.

He sang along, while Jack tried to mimic some of the sounds, and for a 13 month old he wasn't half bad.

Halfway through the third song Jack barreled into Dean's chest with an "oof".

"Hey you can't be tired already squish, I thought you were a dancing machine!" Dean teased as he lifted him up to blow a raspberry on his belly. Jack's laugh echoed through the halls.

Then he sat him in his lap, and Jack grabbed Dean's face with his little hands, smooshing his cheeks together.

"I know dancing takes a lot out of ya, what a workout! How about I grab your juice and you take a breather? Then the party can reconvene?" Dean suggested.

"App joooce!"

"Coming right up squish. Stay right here, capiche?" He said as he set him back down on the blanekt.

"Capeee" Jack repeated back with a smile.

So Dean quickly made his way to the kitchen, double checking that Jack was still within earshot.

He ripped open the fridge grabbing the jug of apple juice and plucked Jack's favorite sippy cup from the drying wrack on his way to the counter. As he poured the juice the opening chords of "Don't Stop Me Now" flitted down the hall, followed by an excited shriek. Dean couldn't help but laugh, god the things his kid did to his heart.

Dean screwed on the cap, making sure it was secure. The last thing they needed was apple juice staining the eighty-year old hardwood floors.

He heard the tell tale sound of Jack's feet on the floor as he danced to the music. So he jogged back to the library.

Dean froze. The smile slipped off his face, barely registering the sippy cup hitting the floor.

His heart leapt in his throat at he took in the scene before him.

He couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't talk, what was he goi-

A book smacked him in the face, snapping him back to reality.

Around the room mugs, pens, pages of research, Jack's blocks, and hundreds of books floated around the room, bobbing through the air to the beat.

And in the center. Jumping in place on his rainbow blanket, arms above his head, was Jack.

Dean's heart began to race as the fear took over. He watched as lamps and ancient, heavy, artifacts flew right above his son's head.

He's never done this before, hell Dean didn't even know he could do this.

He suddenly couldn't breathe.

If Dean called his name he might startle him causing hundreds of objects to come crashing down.

But if he didn't call his name soon, then he wouldn't get his attention, then he'd get tired (it was almost naptime) and just drop everything all at once and crush himself a-

Focus Winchester.

So with a shaky breathe, Dean slowly bent down to pick up the fallen sippy cup. Then, carefully dodging an ashtray, he inched closer trying to make his presence known.

It must have worked because Jack turned to Dean with a bright smile.

"Dee!!"

"Hey kiddo. Why don't you put those arms down and come get your juice from Dee?" Dean said with the happiest voice he could muster and a smile plastered on his face.

And of course Jack raised his arms even higher in excitement when he spotted the juice.

"Dee look!"

Shit

"Yeah buddy I see, but if you lower your arms, you can have your juice? But only if you lower your arms, okay bud?" Dean offered switching tactics, trying (and failing) not to let his desperation show.

But Jack had already forgotten all about Dean and the juice because all of his attention was on the bridge of the song, lost in the guitar solo. And he apparently used his mojo to crank the volume too.

Then everything began spinning faster, and Dean had to dive to the floor to avoid a statue to the face.

He kept his head up, eyes trained on Jack, as he army crawled towards him.

"Jack! Baby please! Why don't you put your arms down for Daddy?" He pleaded reaching out as he moved closer.

Dean dared a glance up, eyes blowing wide, as he took in the tornado of crap above him. Fear dropped in the pit of his stomach as he, urged forward, heart pounding in his chest.

God he could almost grab him, just a couple more inches. Dean has to get him, what if he gets crus-

"Da!"

And then, hundreds of objects came crashing down around them.

The air left his lungs as he scrambled to get to Jack.

Who was sitting on his blanket, not a single book or a block within two feet of him, smiling to himself.

Thank fucking god.

Dean scooped him up, squeezing him tight against his chest. Jack was fine, he wasn't smushed like a pancake by some old statue, he was saf-

Then there was another thud.

He snapped up to see Cas, standing slack jawed, wide eyed, with shopping bags spilling out around his feet.

"Da!" Jack cheered again wiggling out of Dean's grasp, racing towards Cas, who wasted no time picking him up.

"Well, it looks like you two had a busy afternoon" Cas said, smirk clear in his voice as he recovered from the initial shock.

The same could not be said for Dean, as he deflated, flopping on his back. He tried to get some air back in his lungs, as he worked through what he was sure was a minor heart attack.

"Dean, I told you Jack was too young to watch Matilda" Cas hummed as he crossed the room.

And Dean could only muster the strength to flip his finger in the air. And looked up when he felt Jack being dropped on his chest.

"I'm going to get the rest of the groceries, so do try to keep our son from flying the knife collection around the room, next" Cas joked with a smile as he pressed a kiss to his forehead.

Dean shot him a glare without any real heat behind it, then turned his attention to his kid perched on his chest, sippy cup of juice now in hand.

"Hi Dee!" Jack smiled, as if the events from two seconds ago, never occurred. That's kids for ya.

"Yeah hi kiddo" Dean said exasperated as he laid his head back down, shutting his eyes.

He stayed their for a moment still trying to overcome the shock, until Jack crawled higher up his chest and squishing his face with a giggle. And a smile tugged at Dean's lips, opening his eyes to see Jack peering down at him.

"Alright, naptime super-baby. Dee needs to sleep off his heart failure" Dean said pushing himself off the floor, and he carried Jack down the hall.

God this kid was literally going to be the death of him, but Dean didn't mind too much. Normal Wednesdays are boring anyway.

Tag list:

(As always please let me know if you would like to be added or removed💛!!!)

@wormstacheangel @smiledean @shelikestv @chaoticdean @midnightwings-deancas @jellydeans @sunshine-jack @archervale @wikiangela @organicpurplepants

@writtendevastation @tkdwolf2012 @doemons-blog @rolling-stoned-girl @skylerkernaghan @shadowywerewolfqueen @the-cookie-navy @thelahatiel @thefantasyfiend @castielle-deanna @aestheticflyer26

@multi-fandom-imagine @x-mypeopleskillsarerusty-x @wellofwoes @becky-srs @multi-fandom-dark-lord @perfectkoaladream @castiel-for-lunch @it--hurts--to--become @bowtiesandneckerchiefs @dakiaty @feraldean @teamfreebees @keshetcas @hrh-princess-bea @martymar1963 @midnight-sparks-studio @slipper007 @rainbowsam @winchester-novak

NCT Dream Reaction to You Wearing a Short Skirt

Renjun

he was helping you clean out your old closet at your parent's house. both of you had just bought an apartment together so your parents left you the house keys, expecting all the moving hassle to be done when they come back next monday; a road trip being paid by their jobs.

jun spent his time sitting in your old bean bag occupying himself with your old journals and photo albums. "you went to a school with a uniform?" he asked and you looked to see him looking at your old school's photo album.

"wha- oh yeah." you breathed out a slight laugh and dug a little deeper into your closet. "speaking of uniforms." you chuckled and held up the plaid skirt to your body, looking into your mirror.

"i wonder if it still fits." your head leaned to the side. "im gonna try it on." you finally decided and walked to the bathroom and wasting no time. it fit perfectly...just...shorter than you remembered.

you were gonna take it off yet remembering your boyfriend that was sitting in your bedroom.

you tucked your graphic tee into the skirt and went back to your room, his gaze still stuck to your old photos. "so what do you think?" you saw him do a double-take, his eyes landing on your ass that was practically hanging out the bottom.

"it...it fits nice." he nodded, his hands setting the book down beside him on the floor.

"i remember i would get in trouble everyday because the teachers didnt know how to mind their stares." his answer was delayed as he swallowed hard. "i mean..." you noticed a more fidgety renjun as he thought for a moment. "i can't blame them." he whispered but it was enough for you to hear.

you smiled, walking closer to him and lowering yourself onto him so your legs were straddling his thighs; the fabric of the old skirt becoming bunched up at the top of your thighs.

your hands rested on his shoulders, his frame relaxing at your touch as his hands rested on your exposed thighs.

"you're so cute and blushy." you pinched his cheek and his smile fell. a more unsettling tone took place as his eyes seemed to get darker. he took your wrist and gripped your hand roughly, forcing your hand down to his now apparent bulge.

"and you're such a brat. you know what you were doing, baby." an airy laugh escaped his chest as your hand could feel him getting harder by the second.

"so...are we going to do something about this or are you going to keep grinding on my lap acting like i don't notice?"

Jeno

he was finally off and agreed to go on a small date to relax and unwind. "im going to go get ready." you said getting up and kissing his cheek. "alright. ill just wait for you here." he smiled and watch you walk off.

you wanted to do a coupley outfit today. you grabbed a tighter white t-shirt and a shorter pink plaid skirt with one of his oversized flannels. you walked down and he immediately almost started choking on the water he was drinking.

"isnt it so cute?" you asked as you did a little spin infront of him. yet, his response was just picking you up and holding you tightly as he walked back to the bedroom.

you didn't know he was going to react the way he did. jeno saw you in the short and flowy skirt and thought he saw red.

the coffee date seemed so distant as you were both in bed now, entangled in eachother. his hands would grip your thighs with such force it felt like he could break you in half if he really wanted to.

"you just look so good." his lips attacked your neck and painting it with dark hues. "i just can't control myself." your hands gripped and pulled at his hair; messiness setting in and making him look absolutely euphoric.

his hands got lost up your shirt and was just grabbing and pulling roughly. he couldn't take it anymore and just ripped your shirt down the middle, your chest now exposed, rising and falling quickly.

"you look so nice, babydoll." he fawned at you, his hand coming to brush your hair back out of your face.

"you should wear this kind of stuff more often." he winked, laying a more softer kiss against your lonely lips.

[you're mark]

Hyuck

all day...games...after breakfast...games...after lunch...games...after you fell asleep in his arms for nap, you woke up to the constant keyboard clicking...after dinner he was right back in his chair with the rest of the boys on a conference call on his phone; shouting following you down the hall and into the living room.

you were done though. you wanted to have your time with hyuck. it was your turn. you went to your dance bag, grabbing your old costume skirt from a previous dance competition. you went to the bathroom and changed quickly. you added the finishing touch which was one of his shirts; his weakness for seeing you in his clothes running through your revengeful mind.

no time was wasted as you went to the shared bedroom. "no go to the left, jae!" "the other left." your boyfriend yelled at his computer screen.

your soft steps went unnoticed until you were right next to him. you set your hand softly on his shoulder. he only looked at you for a second though. "hey, babe." he spaced back out, not even noticing your attire options.

"jaemin if i have to tell you one more time on where to go i am goi-" your fingertips grazed up the side of his neck, slowly tugging on his hair at the back of his head.

his eyes closed as he leaned his head back and let out a deep sigh. his hands became limp at the keyboard and his friends began calling out for him. you had gotten him exactly where you wanted him.

his gaze became more glazed over as both of you became caught up in each other. "im so lonely, hyuckie." you whined and his hand began trailing up the back of your thigh.

"you just had to ask." he smiled a little and his eyes finally caught his t-shirt hanging from your body.

he turned his chair and leaned forward to grab your body and put you on top of him. "LEE DONGHYUCK WHERE ARE YO-" "im busy. bye." and he hung up quickly as they tried to make him stop.

"now where were we?" he asked as his hand came to both sides of your face, guiding you to kiss him softly, hands then coming down to just go back up his shirt.

yet when he took his shirt off your body, he was met with a pleasant surprise. a white skirt laid bunched up at your hips. his hands came to your exposed ass and began forcibly grind you on his lap.

your soft touches drove him absolutely wild as he wanted to make you more vulnerable as the minutes ticked by.

yall shoulda known where I was bout to go with this...

Jaemin

you went and grabbed one of your skirts you had bought awhile ago and slipped it on with some thigh high socks. you went out and started to clean up a little bit. you began to tidy the living room where jae sat on the couch watching a random show he found.

you bent over and began to clean off the coffee table. "oh sorry, am i in the way?" "a little." he said, craning his neck around you to continue watching the show.

you wanted to face palm and walk off. yet, you were going to push on. you grabbed your phone, checking random emails as you sat in the seat next to him. "hey, jae?" you asked and he only tilted his head toward you, his pinkish hair being contained by a black baseball cap.

"im gonna go out with jeno for a little bit. i'll be back in a couple hours." you said and grabbed your keys from infront of him and trying to walk over his legs.

his arm flew forward and wrapped around your body, pulling you down towards him quickly.

"you're not going anywhere dressed like that, princess." he said, gaze looking down at you in his lap.

"well i want to do something then." you sat up in his lap and crossed your arms over your chest. "then do something. but you're not going to go do something with my friend dressed like this." his touch slowly going up under your skirt.

"well come on, princess. do something." his hands then went behind his head. a smirk sat on his lips and he felt as if he won. he really did and at this point you were desperate.

"please, jaemin. just touch me." you pouted and he wanted to coo at your cute ways but he bit his lip and waited. "i don't think you need me ye-" you grabbed his hand and put it on your clothed heat.

you grinded on his hand desperate for some friction. you were ready for him but he didn't want to give you that satisfaction yet.

he wanted to keep you in this skirt forever and you be his little princess that only he could do this to.

he froze in his position, his eyes locked onto his hand that disappeared under your tiny skirt.

his other hand grabbed the back of your neck and pulled you down towards his lips where he was ready to give you what you were wanting and waiting for.

Chenle

this baby wouldn't know what to do when he saw you in your tiny skirt.

he would feel turned on definitely but didn't want to act out of line and touch you if this wasn't your clear and true intention.

you would have to guide him a little bit on what to do but once he started going, he found it hard to stop. you were a new drug-like anomaly he was completely addicted to.

this was still new to him so you doing this for the soul purpose of getting this kind of reaction...well...he didn't mind it all too much.

he asked you for permission to touch you even when you guided his hands onto you.

"can...can i-" "you don't have to ask lele. just do what feels right." you smiled a little, beginning to kiss up his neck softly. "even if you know it's completely wrong."

boyfriend lele vibes are strong in this one uwu i just had to put it in

statement regarding the sudden disappearance of all my childhood memories and subsequent photos, gradually, over the course of four years

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Jasmine Harper, regarding the disappearance of all childhood memories and photographs over the course of four years. Original statement given July 21, 2011. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

I can’t really remember when it was that I noticed. It was a gradual thing, but at the same time it felt so sudden… like I woke up one morning and they were all gone, or at least most of them were. But I know that isn’t what happened at all, is it? The more I think about it, the more I realise that I began to forget years and years before I realised something was truly wrong. I thought it was normal, you know? I thought it was just part of getting older. I mean, how many of us get out of university able to recall the full names of everyone in our first primary school class? I took Psychology for one of my A-Levels, actually, and when we did our module on memory that was one of the tests. I must have been able seventeen then, so it was before I noticed this happening. We had to take a sheet of paper and write down every full name we could remember from our first primary school class. I won by a landslide, and I had five names. Only five names! But that’s the thing – I used to have such a good memory when it came to my childhood. That’s why I can’t understand what’s happening.

I had a good childhood. This isn’t any childhood trauma or anything like that. I mean, there were some nasty moments in it, like any childhood is prone to have – I had a problem with bullies when I first started high school, nothing out of the ordinary but you know how cruel kids can be, and when you’re that age it sticks with you. My parents divorced when I was fourteen, but there was nothing specifically traumatic about that. It sucked, and I was sad to see them sad, but they remained civil through the whole thing and actually got on better afterwards, so it wasn’t like there were screaming matches or anything. They were careful to keep my brother and I updated on everything, which I was thankful for. It was nice, that they didn’t do what a lot of parents seem to do – treat us like small children, and not young adults who would also be affected by the situation. If I ever get a divorce, I hope to god it’s as pleasant as my parents’ was. There’s nothing in my childhood that I can pinpoint that might have caused this, and that seems to be a common cause of forgetting, at least – trauma, mental illness, something like that. I’ve… struggled with depression sometimes, but never anything that I didn’t get under control with the right combination of things. Really, I’m a completely normal, average person. There’s nothing that could have caused this at all. I’ve been to doctors, I’ve had brain scans, I was worried it was some kind of tumour or stroke, but no. Nothing. I’m perfectly healthy, but I don’t feel it.

As I said, it began gradually. I realised I was forgetting things; small things. The address of the house I lived in until I was five. Old phone numbers. The last names of childhood friends. Some of my teachers’ names. None of it was unusual. I’m pretty sure everyone forgets those things, so I wasn’t worried at all. A little annoyed sometimes, because it really felt like getting old, or I couldn’t randomly look somebody up on Facebook to see how they were doing or something, but really it wasn’t unusual at all. It was only when I started forgetting bigger things that I began to grow concerned. I mean, this was stuff that I shouldn’t forget at all, or that was relatively recent. I know for most people, childhood probably means when they were a smaller child; before they hit their teenage years, perhaps. Well, this seems to be taking the legal definition of child as its guide, because I found myself forgetting things that happened when I was sixteen, seventeen years old. I mean, that’s not that long ago! That’s not even ten years ago! I began to forget huge chunks of time; before I knew it I couldn’t recall my earliest memories, and then I couldn’t recall anything from primary school. It’s just blank, like trying to think about what was there before I was born. Still I told myself it wasn’t that much to worry about, but then it began creeping up and up, and back then I still had the photographs. I could look through photo albums or friends’ Facebook pages and see what I was forgetting: a birthday party at Alton Towers when we were eleven, the school ski trip to Italy when we were fourteen, our school’s knock-off idea of an American prom when we were seventeen. There I am, in all of the pictures, grinning and present and definitely there. But I can’t remember a thing about the day at all!

I finally accepted something was terribly wrong at my aunt’s wedding. She was getting married pretty later on in life because she was kind of wild as a young adult, didn’t want to settle down or anything. Everyone was fond of her – she always had the most interesting stories and she’s just a lot of fun to be around – and so the whole family was there to see her get married: all the surviving grandparents, great aunts and uncles, cousins, partners, friends, kids, even the dogs were invited. It was a beautiful summer day and everyone was having so much fun and I know this sounds stupid but I feel so mad that this had to happen on that day of all days, because nothing bad is supposed to happen at a wedding, right? Well, everything was fine until late into the reception, and we were all a little drunk but not overly so. I was sitting with my mum and brother at a table with some cousins and my aunt and her new wife, and we were all reminiscing about other crazy family parties and stuff. I was talking about my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, that happened when I was twelve or thirteen. I was telling some story – of course I can’t even remember what it was now, but it was something about me and my brother and the cousins that were at the table with us, and I was talking about it just fine and then, literally mid-sentence, I forgot it. Not just what we were doing, but the whole event. I didn’t even know I was talking about the anniversary until my brother prompted me, and then it was just blank. My brother and cousins all picked up the story and I laughed along and played it up like I’d had a little too much wine, you know, haha, but I mean it when I say it was gone. And not only that – it felt taken from me. It felt as though somebody had reached into my head and just… plucked the memory right out.

It bothered me so much that I went to visit my mum shortly afterwards. We sat down and had a few cups of tea and eventually I worked up the courage to ask if I could root around in the photo albums, saying that the wedding had reminded me of a few things I wanted to look at again – ironic, I know. Mum was of course down to get out all the albums – she never went digital, she doesn’t like not having physical albums to look through – so we dragged a bunch of them down and sat around the table to look. The first one was normal, just a family holiday to Florida when I was sixteen, but as we started going through the older albums I noticed there were pictures of me missing that I know for a fact existed. They were just gone, and then there were others where I knew I should be there but I wasn’t. And Mum didn’t think anything was strange! There was one picture, I remember it so clearly because we almost got into a big fight about it, and it was of my brother dressed as Spider Man on Halloween. I distinctly remember that night because I was dressed as the Pink Power Ranger and the costume was uncomfortable as hell, so I know I was there. I know I was in that picture, because it was such a ridiculous picture, the two of us in full bodied costumes like that, and I finally mentioned to my mum that I should be in there. Not aggressively or anything, just oh, I could have sworn I was in that one!, and she denied it and I insisted and she kept saying no, she was sure it was just George in that picture, but then I pointed out that George had his arm out in mid-air like it should be around someone. It was clearly around my shoulders. The height was right, his fingers were slightly curled like they were pressing in to my arm. Mum just looked for a moment, and I thought, briefly, that she might finally see it – but then she just said George was doing a Spider Man pose, like shooting a web from his wrist or something, and I just… I don’t even know. I just felt so hopeless, I almost cried. I was sure, so sure! Mum’s always taken photos, even now – every holiday, every event, even just going over for Sunday dinner. She’s told me several times I loved being in front of the camera as a kid, so I know there must have been way more pictures of me than that. Mum just didn’t get what I was on about, though, so I gave up in the end. There was no use fighting. What could I say?

Well, that was when I went to the doctor. I’ve already outlined how useless that was. Nothing wrong with me at all, apparently, but I’m sure most of them weren’t really taking me seriously. I was told it couldn’t be all my memories, and that photographs didn’t just vanish. I was seconds away from getting referred to a psychiatrist when I decided I would be better off shutting up about it. I’m not—I don’t think this is mental illness. I’ve looked it up so many times and I’ve read about people being delusional, you know, not believing they’re the ones in the picture, or that other people in the picture have been replaced, but that’s not what’s happening here. I haven’t read anything about like what’s happening to me. Nobody is out there saying they’re forgetting their entire childhood, birth to eighteen, and the pictures are vanishing along with it. There is something else going on here but I don’t know what. I’ve never done anything to deserve this, I’ve never messed around with anything I shouldn’t. If this is something like—like what you people investigate, I do not know when I would have come across it. I don’t even know what I mean by this. It seems ridiculous to even consider that it could be a ghost, or a curse, or—or God knows what.

A few weeks after this I went to Mum’s again, and one of the photo albums was still out. I looked through it and I was gone from every single picture. I was not there at all. Even the ones I saw only recently, I was gone from them. Just George on his own, and in the spaces where pictures of just me should be, other photos had replaced them. Just scenery shots, or views from the hotel balcony, or Christmas decorations and piles of presents, or spreads of holiday food. Nothing Mum would put in there herself. She likes to preserve the details, but her albums are for people. Her photos in the albums always have people or pets in them. I showed her, pretending it was just out of interest, but she seemed to not know what I meant. “I’ve always accessorised”, was what she said. Something about context, making it a pretty spread, keeping all the themes together. I don’t know. It was nothing that Mum would say, anyway. She was always so militant about it – at least up until recently.

I walked around the house a bit and of course I was gone from the rest of the pictures, too. My school photos were all gone, and all the framed pictures on bedside tables or shelves showed just my brother, or more scenery. There was one picture of the rose bush in the garden and I knew for a fact I was supposed to be standing in front of it, because it was my prom picture and I was wearing a dress the exact same shade of red as the roses, and Mum wanted to get a picture of me standing in front of it to show off the perfect colour match. There was just the rose bush, and even when I picked up the frame and looked closely at the picture, I could see no signs that it had ever been anything but. I wondered why it was still there, because pictures of just me usually vanished and got replaced by something else entirely, but then I saw in the corner, almost hidden by the frame, the faintest pink blur of part of my mother’s finger. Is that all it takes? Is one blurry finger worth more than my entire being? I don’t understand what’s going on!

I think… I think I could deal with it easier, if it wasn’t for the fact that everybody seems to think nothing is wrong. If it was just one of those weird things, I think I could live with it if my parents and brother were also with me on it, knowing it was weird, being concerned. I’ve looked everywhere and they’re all gone, all the photos, in every relative’s house and on Facebook. The earliest ones I can find are on my eighteenth birthday party. Everything before that is gone. I don’t remember anything. It’s like I materialised at age eighteen and there was nothing before that; I don’t even really know who I am anymore. I can’t know, because all the steps I took to get here are gone, and everything I learned about my family and friends as I grew up alongside them has vanished. I feel completely… completely detached, completely adrift, and I don’t know if I’m being paranoid but it just feels like there’s a little less of me every day. It’s like I spent eighteen years building up, and now I’m just… fading away.

I don’t know what to do.

ARCHIVIST

Statement ends.

This is a fairly straightforward one to follow up. There isn’t really much to say. On the surface it does very much seem like a case for a doctor rather than the Institute, but some things do seem to back up part of the story, at least. Attempts to get in contact with Ms Harper were unsuccessful, as it seems she does not exist. There are a couple of records here and there of a Ms Harper matching the age and occupation that she provided with her statement, but when Tim contacted the workplaces involved, nobody could recall her. As for anything else – records such as a birth or death certificate, a driver’s license – there is nothing. Of course, she could have provided a fake name, but Tim managed to get in touch with George Harper, Ms Harper’s younger brother, and confirmed it was the same George Harper by asking a few questions about his childhood. He recalled several holidays and weddings that Ms Harper mentioned, though he mentioned nothing about a sister. When questioned about siblings, he was adamant he had never had one, and had grown up an only child. I’m not entirely sure how he did it, and nor am I inclined to want to know, but Tim managed to persuade Mr Harper to give him the contact information for his parents. Both stated that they had only one child – a son. The only Jasmine in the family seems to be Mrs Harper’s pet pug dog; apparently, Mrs Harper “always liked the name”, but had never had the chance to use it.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much more we can do regarding this one.

End recording.

sour undertones - klaine oneshot

AN: this work is based off of a piece of fanart by animateglee

words: 1723

summary: Kurt finds Blaine’s diary and is surprised at what he finds there. Blaine thought it was good at the time, I mean, he got an A in creative writing from Miss Eavesbridge once! (quarantine fic)

The days have been long for the both of them, and it’s not like he was snooping, really, he wasn’t. He was bored. 

Ever since the lockdown had started in New York, Kurt felt like he was going to go mad. His apartment with Blaine was only small (despite their success and newfound fame, prices to live in the city were still ridiculously high) and there was only so much they could do in such a tiny space. After multiple different jigsaw puzzles and games of monopoly and other miscellaneous things that didn’t involve sitting around and scrolling through Instagram, he was starting to go a little bit crazy.

It was also hard for them - they were different types of people; Kurt was an extrovert… and well, Blaine… not so much. For Blaine, it was much easier; he would happily sit around at home all day keeping himself busy doing nothing much at all. 

But Kurt, he thrived on socialisation, on meeting new people, new faces and interesting personalities. He was growing tired. So he wasn’t surprised when he found himself searching through the shelves and bits of storage in their tiny home, not really knowing what he was looking for. 

He found lots of old things knocking around in their draws - a photo album of their first year together as a couple, and smiled as he looked through the miscellaneous memories that had been captured and saved, something to hold onto for all their lives. The receipt from their one of their many dates, a recipe book Kurt had given to Blaine one year for his birthday in their old loft in Bushwick, and Kurt was a little offended to find it hidden away in a random draw next to their bed, but then he decided to search some more. 

He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t seen it before, but it was a beautiful thing, a notebook with a leather covering and writing on the front, stuck on with different clippings of letters from headlines of newspapers, and Kurt laughed to himself as it reminded him of The Burn Book from Mean Girls. A guilty pleasure of his, if he was being honest. 

However, this expression changed as he opened the notebook. He saw on the very first page, ‘property of Blaine Devon Anderson’ scribbled messily onto the parchment. Around it was lots of different doodles and hearts and other little drawings that made Kurt smile. Then he turned the page, realising what he was actually looking at. 

15th March 2011

Dear Diary, 

Kurt’s eyes widened as he recognised the date. That date was special to them. He recognised it, even more so, when he read the words ‘I kissed Kurt today!’ in big, capital letters, confirming why it was so special to them. That was when he burst out laughing, deciding to read on. Half of him felt bad for reading through his husband’s diary from nine years ago, but dammit - they were husbands! It was healthy to have some secrets in a relationship, he thought. Reading again, a big smile lit up his face.

I don’t think I’ve ever been happier than I am right now. I’ve been so oblivious all this time, and only now I’ve realised how much I appreciate him. I can’t believe that this might turn into a real thing soon! And hopefully, his feelings are the same. I mean, they would be, wouldn’t they? He did kiss me back. Twice. Anyway, I think I love him. He’s beautiful, and his eyes are so blue… 

Kurt was aware that his face was probably lit up like a Christmas tree, but he didn’t care. His now-husband had written about him in his diary on the day of their first kiss. He was allowed to be happy. 

“Kurt?” 

It was only then that Kurt closed the notebook abruptly, jumping up from where he was sat on the floor against the bed, dumping it on the floor and turning to face Blaine, who had now walked into the room. 

“What are you doing?” 

Oh god. Kurt looked suspicious. He was fully aware of that. He was trying to wipe his sweaty palms on his trousers (even if they weren’t allowed outside, didn’t mean his fashion game was going to falter) and his eyebrows were raised up far too high as he tried to keep a sense of nonchalance about his aura but failing. 

“Nothing, sweetheart.” He smiled. The tension in the room was suffocating. He shouldn’t have been nervous, really, he shouldn’t have, but Blaine was standing there looking very worried and curious and Kurt wasn’t ready for whatever would happen next. 

Blaine frowned, moving closer to Kurt. 

“You’re acting weird. What’s going—” 

He paused as he realised the notebook on the floor. He looked at it, sitting there, then back at his husband, whose eyes were now comically wide, and they stared at each other incredulously. 

“Kurt, I swear to fucking god—” 

Kurt broke the tension by letting out a giggle, deciding teasing was the best way to go about this situation. He bent down and picked up the notebook from the floor, and continued to read the page he’d been reading, but out loud to Blaine this time. 

“So, my soft but scratchy lips tasted exquisite… the sweet flavour of starburst fruit gums but also the sour undertones of orange juice, along with the sweet promise of love?” He burst out laughing. Blaine scrambled towards him, trying to snatch his old diary out of Kurt’s hands. 

“Kurt! Give that back!”

“Why… are you talking… about our first kiss… like it’s a fucking Michelin star meal?”  Kurt marvelled, between fits of laughter. Blaine was trying to grab the notebook but Kurt made sure to keep a hand on his chest, preventing him from stealing it back.  

“Kurt… please! I was excited!” Blaine shouted, exasperated. 

That only made Kurt laugh harder, running away from Blaine who was now getting closer to stealing the diary back, so he jumped up on the bed.

“No! I have a right!” He screamed, jumping down from the bed and now running around the apartment, trying to find another excruciatingly cringe-worthy piece of writing to read out to his very embarrassed husband. 

“When we pulled back, I stared into his piercing blue orbs… what the fuck are orbs?” He joked, collapsing onto their couch, reading some more, “and I was so dazed, the only thing going on in my mind was Kurt, Kurt, Kurt, then he said, in the softest, most beguiling voice—” he broke off his reading again, trying to understand Blaine’s writing, “sorry… Blaine? Why are you using such descriptive words? This sounds like a fucking fanfiction!” He laughed, then continuing, “he said we should practice,” he raised his eyebrows as he noticed Blaine was watching him at the end of the couch with an exaggerated pout on his face. 

You’re so mean,” Blaine whined, he fucking whined, and that was when Kurt started to feel bad. 

  “Honey, I’m sorry,” He apologized, “but you’ve gotta admit, it is pretty funny.”  

  “You’re making fun of my sixteen-year-old self’s writing skills,” Blaine said, the pout on his face still prominent, “Miss Eavesbridge gave me an A for creative writing in English at Dalton once!” He said, referencing their Eleventh Grade English teacher.

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry for making fun of your creative writing skills,” Kurt laughed, affectionately, pulling Blaine onto the couch from where he was sitting, untangling his folded arms. “Although I don’t think this would be creative writing since it actually happened.” He cross-examined, stroking his hands through his husband’s hair. He was so grateful that Blaine had loosened up on the gel now, moving away from the brick-like hair he had five years ago. He loved stroking Blaine’s hair.

Blaine groaned in annoyance at Kurt’s display of his pedantic trait but obviously appreciated the attention, nestling his head into Kurt’s neck, wrapping his arms around his husband. 

“You’ve embarrassed me.” 

“That’s what marriage is for!” 

"Rude.”

“You’re cute.” 

Blaine looked up at Kurt then, lifting his torso so he was fully on top of his husband, holding himself up by his hands. “I can’t believe you found my old diary. Although I am sorry that I described our first kiss like a Michelin star meal. It’s just— it was special, you know? And I wanted to remember every bit of it.” 

Kurt’s face was glowing. He was so in love with Blaine, every day his love grew stronger. As he looked into his hazel (Kurt laughed to himself as he thought of the word orbs) eyes, he wondered how he had become so lucky. 

“It was special. Do you want to recreate it?” He replied.

Blaine hummed appreciatively, “mmm. Sounds like a good idea,” and leaned in for a kiss. They stayed like that for a while, breathing each other in, Kurt’s hand cupping Blaine’s cheek, eyes closed. 

When they broke apart, they stared at each other for a while, when Kurt mumbled, obviously quite dazed, “Any sour undertones of orange there?”

Blaine groaned, dropping his head back down onto Kurt’s shoulder, “That honestly sounds so fucking disgusting. I can’t believe I ever wrote that.” 

“Well, actually, you said you wanted to remember every moment of our first kiss, but you actually got a bit of it wrong in your writing.” Kurt acknowledged, picking up Blaine’s old diary again, “you see, here you wrote that I said we should practice, but I actually remember quite clearly that you said that.”

Blaine frowned at this, grabbing the diary out of Kurt’s hands, reading out loud where he had written that. 

“he said, in the softest, most beguiling voice, we should practice. Huh. I did get that wrong. Guess my mind was so dazed all I could think about was Kurt, Kurt, Kurt.” Blaine said, quoting his diary entry. 

Kurt burst out laughing at that, wrapping his arms around Blaine’s neck, pulling him in for a short kiss once again. “You’re such a dork.” 

“But you love me anyway.” Blaine smiled.

“Of course I do. And I know you love me too.” Kurt replied, pressing their lips together again. He loved his beautiful, ‘I-got-an-A-in-creative-writing’, beguiling husband. And he wasn’t going to see the end of this story in a very, very long time.

AO3 link

Zombie Apocalypse!Sehun

Notes: Write something happy? Me? Impossible! A sad scenario about the apocalypse? That’s me! warnings: death, zombies, curse words, angst •the day the world ended was interesting at least •it had been a Monday night, you were walking home from school when you heard snarling •you had run away from the snarling cause you ain’t dumb •when you turned around you were face to face with someone •their eyes were a grey, they were glazed over as well •their hair was a mess, diet and blood was caked on their face •”can I help you?” •they snarled at you, and lunged, making you scream and hit them with your bag and then run •you could hear other people screaming and running and you knew something was wrong •but where do you go? •not wanting to stick with a crowd of people and cars that wasn’t going anywhere •you ran into the first building you saw, it had been an apartment building thankfully •you ran into the first apartment that looked inhabited •there were blankets on the floor, photo albums with pictures missing on the counter •but there was food, you could hope up in here for a while •so you locked the door and shut yourself in •you charged your phone, any other electronics you had knowing that this might be the last time you’re able too •you closed the curtains, turned off the light but kept a flashlight on •you checked the master room, making sure there was nothing there •there was a floorboard missing, making you look where it should be •a box filled with money and a gun with bullets was in its place •taking the gun, You put the safety on and continued searching •In the closet were other weapons, a sword and some knives, good ones •the sword interested you, it looked like it was from a TV show •it wasn’t sharp but you could fix that •pulling the knives and swords with you, you went back to the couch where you phone and bag was •emptying out your bag from the books and random papers, you put the knives in the front of the bag •the gun, you put it along the knives, making sure the safety was on •the sword you left out, unsheathed so you could find a way to sharpen it •and you went to sleep, feeling tired and scared • •when you woke up there someone next door, throwing things and yelling •you crept around the apartment, gathering your supplies so you could leave •you could only pack so much in your backpack, deciding to leave your books in the apartment with a note on top •in case the world hadn’t ended and you still needed them •when you had packed, you grabbed some of the clothes that the people had left over •jeans, a flannel and the same boots you had been wearing •looking at the apartment once more, you sighed and cracked open the door •waiting for whoever was next door to go back in the room, you ran, not caring if your footsteps could be heard •when you made it onto the street, the monsters were roaming the street •you ran again, away from the monsters and the apartment •when your thighs burned and your feet had blisters, then you stopped •the was a long row of houses, you were in the rich area •knocking on a door and not getting an answer, you picked the lock, a skill you had acquired before •the door crawled open, letting you slip inside before gently shutting it •”my name is y/n, Is anyone here?” •instead of getting a response, there was silence •walking to the kitchen, you swear you heard a scuffling of feet, which stopped you in you tracks •”is anyone there?” •you asked, opening you sword and holding it in front of you, in what you hoped to be a threatening look •this time you got a loud wail as an answer, a baby? •”I won’t hurt you.” •it wasn’t a lie, you wouldn’t unless you needed to protect yourself •it was quiet once more, so you shrugged and went to the kitchen •seeing that the power still worked, you heated up some pasta •as you had seat the table to eat, you noticed something in the shadows •”do you want some?” •you asked the shadowed figure, it was about the size of a child so you weren’t terrified •”yea!” •the little girl exited the shadows to hop up on the table, you alternated between feeding yourself and her •it was quiet besides the slurping noises, until you heard a male yell •”Momo! Momo!” •the little girl rolled her eyes before yelling back that she was in the kitchen •the male sighed before coming into the room, the paused in his tracks •you, a stranger, feeding his sister pasta •”get out.” •he coldly said, stomping over to where Momo was and grabbing her •”no! I like them.” •Momo glared at her brother, her brown orbs held defiance in them •”they have to go.” •it sounded absolute, you had already started packing up but Momo wasn’t letting you go that easily •”I’m going with them.” •the black haired girl told her brother, her voice just as absolute as his •”I’m gonna go.” •you said, standing up and walking away from the siblings stare off •as you were walking, you swore to heard what sounded like gasping for air •dropping your bag and sword in the floor, you raced upstairs to where the sound was coming from •a closet is where the sound led you to, so you threw open the door to see a two year old gasping for air •pulling him out, you got whatever he was choking on out of his mouth, making him cry •”ssh, it’s fine.” You’re Alright now, you were just scared.” •you bounced him on your legs, his head was nuzzled between your shoulder and neck •his screams had subsided, but he was ripped out of your arms •the teen glaring at you angrily, his stare was untrusting •”he was choking.” •you stood up, watching the black haired male look at the small child with wide eyes •”I’ll go.” •you began to walk down the stairs, Thinking of where you were going to go •”stop...you know how to take care of them?” •you turned around to look at the teen and nod, watching his dark brown eyes stare back at you •”stay.” •”I’m not a dog, but i will.” •you grinned at him, walking down the stairs to go find Momo • •it had been a week since you had met them •Momo was a seven year old girl, who liked dolls and cars, and every morning she’d make you comb her hair and put them in pigtails •Mark, the toddler, was a calm kid but he puts everything in his mouth, his black hair was usually a mess •Sehun, was the seventeen year old “adult” in the house, who stood around awkwardly as you played with the kids •and you, a sixteen year old, who felt like a nanny to the three of them •because even though you were younger than Sehun, you felt the need to make sure he was alright •even if that meant that you had to grow up, so while having electricity you watched shows that he liked •somewhere during the fifth day with them, electricity shut off, and though they had a generator, you didn’t use it •hoping to save it until winter, plus it was a little loud, making you nervous to use it with those monsters around •Sehun had become a little nicer, not glaring at you everyday •but food was running out, and the kids were missing their parents, asking for them every time you put them down for a nap or for bed •so a night after putting Momo to sleep, you asked Sehun if he knew where they were •his eyes steeled and his jaw tightened, he raked a pale hand through his black hair •”No clue. I got home from school and they weren’t here. The bus dropped Momo off and my grandpa gave me Mark.” •he shrugged trying to seem indifferent but you could see the signs that he was trying to hold tears back •”it okay to be sad, Sehun. It alright to miss them. All we can do is hope that both of our parents are okay.” •you comforted him, or hoped that you were •tears had started to spill from your own eyes, but you were pretty sure he was crying too •together the two of you cried, for the loss of your childhood, for your parents, for the unknown •crying takes a lot out of someone, you could feel yourself drift off •clutching sehun’s hand, you hope he knew that he wasn’t alone • •waking up from someone’s shaking, you sat up quickly •”what’s goi-“ •you were shut up by the same hand you were holding last night, holding his hand over your mouth •Sehun pointed at the kitchen where two men were rummaging through the rest of your supplies •”Wealthy people! Thank god, Jaebum would have had our head if we didn’t bring anything.” •a familiar voice said, probably talking to the other person •ripping sehuns hand off of your mouth, you ran to the kitchen •”Bam!” •running into the other teenager, you felt him gasp as you squeezed him •”y/n? I thought you died! Fucking hell, this is amazing!” •Bambam squeezed you back, making you burst into tears again •this was normal, so normal •”um, as much as I love reunions we gotta go, it’s almost sun up.” •the brunette Bam was with said, fidgeting with his hands •”can we take y/n?” •Bam asked, his arm sling around your shoulder •”you should ask me first you asshole, plus the way you said it jaebum doesn’t need anymore people.” •you raised an eyebrow at him, your grin still on your face •”what’s one more person?” •Bambam said, making you shake your head at him •”four.” •you replied, pointing to where Sehun was watching from the shadows •”what’s the harm in trying?” •Bam shrugged, making you roll your eyes at him •flinging Bam’s arm off of you, you walked to Sehun •”can we?” •you asked, after all it was his siblings, even though you grew attached to them, it wasn’t your choice •”we could comeback at anytime?” •sehun asked, his eyes saying that he hopes that you didn’t have to •nodding at him, you watch him slowly nod at you •”let’s do it.” • •grabbing the kids and your bag of weapons, you were carrying Mark as you guys were walking to where Bambam and the brunette, Jungkook, came from •but the sun was rising, and both of the teens were getting nervous •”what are you afraid of?” •you had asked, watching bambam’s eyes shift quickly •”people aren’t very friendly today, especially the dead ones.” •rolling your eyes at him, you continued walking, only stopping by when you bumped into Jungkook, who was leading the group •”we’re surrounded.” •and with that a gunshot came flying past you, and all of you were running •you weren’t sure if you were going in the right direction or where Momo and Sehun was •all you knew was that you needed to get away, that Mark needed to be safe •memories from the day when this began came flooding back, your legs began to become sore but you pushed through it •you ran and ran, so far that the city you were just in was far away, that you could see mountains and a stream •that trees were all you could see, that the only sight of a building was the tip •sighing, you sat on the floor •setting mark down, you pulled your bag into your lap, taking out the knives •the sword was in its case which was in its sheath, which you attached a belt too, so you wore it on your back •pulling the bag on your back once more, you picked Mark up, and took the leaf out of his mouth •with the knives in your hand, you walked back to the city you had just ran from • •when you arrived back at the city it was mid day, the trip had taken a lot out of you and Mark •the toddler was sleeping in a stroller you had found on the way •he looked like a doll when he was sleeping, quiet snores came from his mouth as he breathed •As you looked around the city, there was no traces of your group •No Sehun or Momo, it was like they disappeared •leaving you to walk aimlessly with mark •thinking of a plan •when Mark woke up you gave him biscuits that you had found in a house •keeping him quiet so the monsters or people wouldn’t hear you •on a flipped over car was where you found a clue •’Y/N, we’re safe. Going to group.’ •under the writhing was a flower that was most likely drawn by Momo •a map was under the car, a circle showing where you were and where you needed to go •feeling determined, you began the walk to the group • •it’s been two days since you were split up, and things have went from bad to worse •Mark has a fever, someone’s been following you, and you’ve probably broken your wrist •finding medicine was almost impossible, drug stores were ransacked •when you did find some it was for adults, which you kept but didn’t want to give it to a two year old •with no other options you gave him some of the adults one, a little bit, and his fever went down so you didn’t kill him •the stroller was used as a weapon against a monster so you had to carry him •and there was no time to worry about who was following you •you were getting close to the base, but You knew better •you kept your guard up •or tried too •but going to sleep was inevitable •Mark opening up a door and going outside was an accident •waking up to him crying and running outside without any of your weapons was a misstep •jumping on to the man who was holding marks arm without having a plan wasn’t smart •choking the man until he was unconscious only to see a monster approach mark as well •grabbing mark, you ran back in, not quick enough as a monster sunk their teeth into your ankle •stepping on the skull of the monster and continuing your dash, no time to think about your ankle •but once you were back in the room, everything hit you •you let mark leave, you played a part in someone’s death, you’re going to die •the thought of Sehun and Momo came flooding into you, and you began to sob •your parents are probably gone, you’ve failed your mission of finding them •a weight climbed onto you and small hands gripped your face, forcing you to look at them •”y/n ok?” •Mark asked, blood on his face, not his •”we’re good, we’re fine. Let’s go find your siblings.” •crying wouldn’t save mark •picking your weapons up, and than mark, you left •walking past the feasting zombies, you slipped past buildings •you listened to mark babble, ignoring the fire in your ankle •ignoring the hurt in your ankles, the stinging your eyes •you walked with mark, you watched the clouds when he fell asleep •you didn’t cry •and when you saw the dumpster pushed together, you knew you made it •knocking roughly on them, you hushed Mark who had woken up •a familiar face peeked through, but you couldn’t remember his name •his nose twitched when he saw you •”get Bam and the new kid.” •the dumpsters were moved, letting you walk through them •people stared at you, and you couldn’t imagine what you looked like •were your eyes glazed? •did you look like one of them? •”Y/N!” •a familiar voice yelled, pigtails running towards you •you were being hugged, you found them •you could feel the tears escaping your eyes •you cried •when you felt someone else’s arms go around you, you knew who it was •you cried harder •your time was almost over, an you knew it •”Mark’s fine. He’s okay.” •you maneuvers out of the hug, looking at Sehun •he had bags under his eyes, he was still pale although it looked like he was getting some sun •”y/n! They have toys here and cookies, wanna see?” •Momo was practically hopping up and down •”No thanks, why don’t you go play with them?” •Momo nodded and she ran off, her pigtails flying behind her •”I need to leave.” •you voice steeled when you faced Sehun •”what? You just got here!” •Bambam exclaimed, his face turned in confusion •”It’s time for me.” •you were speaking in riddles, you couldn’t bring yourself to come out with it •”time for you? What are you talking about?” •Sehun questioned, although you could tell the he was guessing what you meant •handing Mark to him, you showed your ankle •the bite marks had turned a crude purple, dried blood had made it red, the skin was a pale with veins showing •you felt sick, looking at it for the first time •gasps were heard throughout the base, but your eyes stayed on Sehun •”it’s time.” •covering it with your pants, you removed your bag with weapons •grabbing the gun, you took a singular bullet •putting it in your pocket, you handed the bag to Bambam who was staring at you with sadness •”it’s not fair! Why?” •Bam cried, tears filled his eyes as he clutched the bag tightly to his chest •hugging him, you ignored your vision getting blurry •letting go of Bam, you faced Sehun who was biting his lip •”you have to be strong, you’re the adult. You can be sad, but remember that they are too. You’re valid, Oh Sehun.” •pressing your lips to Sehuns cheek, and then to Marks forehead •walking backwards, your back hit the dumpster •”I love you.” •”y/n? Y/n?” •marks cries made tears escape your eyes, a knot in your throat, leaving you unable to speak •turning around, you walked through the dumpsters, back the way you came •the knot in your throat grew as you slid down a tree •looking up at the sky, the clouds moved, making the pit of anxiety in your stomach shake •loading the bullet into your gun, you put the gun up to your head •memories of school days, being with your parents, Momo, mark, and Sehun flashed in front of you •you pulled the trigger

MIA: This is a white country, you dont have to spell it out to me

Maya Arulpragasam is bringing dancehall, hip-hop and grime to this years Meltdown. Is the outspoken British Sri Lankan the best argument for positive cultural appropriation?

The Guardian said that you couldnt shag to my record. As conversational openers go, MIAs beats the banal niceties of, say, Hello, how are you doing?. Its no surprise that she charges straight into a chat about why her last album was considered too confrontational for the bedroom by this paper. Its an icebreaker moulded to MIAs very own design: abrasive, compelling, underpinned by sex. Yeah, she finally concedes with a grin when I suggest we move past it, you cant have it all, can you?

Its a theme she warms up to when we talk about her edition of Meltdown at the Southbank Centre, which were ostensibly here to discuss. Usually, I wouldnt do something like this, she says, slouched under an oversized khaki coat dress. [But the organisers] were like: Hey, you can do whatever you want. Still, putting on the South Banks annual festival, curated in previous years by the likes of David Bowie, David Byrne and Patti Smith, has turned out to be a fairly arduous affair for MIA who says she doesnt do computers at the moment.

They didnt tell me it was nine days long. I thought it was a weekend. And then all my lists were, like, Well, this person wont be in London and that person is doing Glastonbury. Organising festivals is actually really complicated, she stresses. It wasnt just about dreaming something and then it appeared. Programming literally means, like, programming.

For all that Maya Arulpragasam didnt quite know what she was letting herself in for, one suspects the Southbank Centre didnt either; logistics aside, the mornings photoshoot has already been met with some flapping from the press officer made nervous by MIA climbing on the roof without safety clearance. Still, her lineup dancehall, Brooklyn hip-hop, depressive Swedish rap and Nigerian grime is perhaps the most underground the festival has seen in its 24 years. How much is she expecting to shake up its comfortable concert halls, cafe bars and conference-room spaces?

Click here to watch the video for last years Go Off.

When I was a teenager in London, I would just get a Travelcard and go somewhere, explore the city and go to weird places, she says. I would never judge the place, like, This is middle class and white. This is a white country, you dont have to spell it out to me, but there wasnt ever a limit on where I could go or what I could do.

A long, elliptical digression on London then and now follows, which takes in the optimistic multiculturalism of the 90s, Tamil house parties, empire and British identity. Its the bento box of an MIA interview: individually contained ideas that dont obviously bleed into one another and yet, overall, make a collective sense if youre prepared to go with it. Thats the key thing about MIA: you have to be willing to go with her to properly get her. Given that she still looks and sounds like a beautiful, bratty, art-school upstart and is prone to labyrinthine tangents, its easy to portray her as inarticulate or unhinged. But MIAs intelligence is instinctive rather than intellectual, and fuelled by the political.

The Mehrabian maxim that reckons that only 7% of communication is verbal is one that might best be proven by the transcript of a chat with MIA removed of all tone, attitude, context and body language. Take, for instance, her explanation of why only the future remains relevant:

As humans, we dont use our past and our history to work out the importance of what our role is in the present, she says. And if you cant use the past to define your present, then it should not be an element that holds back the future. Greece is a perfect example. More than Britain, they were brought to their knees, and not a single white country thought about saving them. And it was part of their heritage. Its where their mythology comes from or their concept of capitalism and democracy comes from. Nobody cared, everybody cared about the modern. Right?

Kim Kardashian is actually more powerful than Greece. She has more money than the whole of Greece, she continues. Therefore, thats where the power lies. If you then define it that way, then you kind of just have to live with that. And maybe whats happening in modern society: that if youre going to judge it by that, then other countries are gonna come in and define the future.

In print, its a statement that seems lacking in logic and coherence. In the moment, Im fairly sure Im able to follow her and we go on to consider how and where this future is being defined (for the record: You cant ignore the fact that China is going to be doing their thing in the next 50 years) and how Arulpragasam believes the immigration issue has become a red herring covering up a truth that can explain the American and British swing to conservative populism.

With Brexit, the idea was to get away from Europe and reinvent our identity, she says. And really, that identity was going to be American, but then they gave us Trump! So, everyone now is like, Oh shit, what is Britain? Are we going to rewind back to the 1800s? We cant. Its too late for that. So, going forward, we need a charismatic leader who then va va vooms the British identity. And we dont have that either.

People thinking that Im a bitch is totally unwarranted … MIA. Photograph: Stephanie Sian Smith/The Guide

The prime minister has called a snap election on the day we meet. Does MIA have any faith in our political system? Or in the left?

Everyone keeps going, Corbyn cant do this, but its, like, well, who else is there? she says. If people just left him alone to actually do the job and actually gave him some support, maybe hed be different. Treating him with so much contempt fighting that takes all his energy. How the fuck do you expect him to do interesting things? In any case insists the estranged daughter of a Tamil revolutionary, politicians are people who couldnt get jobs somewhere else.

MIAs politics, unwieldy and unslick though they may be, have often made her an easy target for tedious sneering in the press; the most insistent narrative is that, like Banksy, shes big on arch, subversive statement but lacks substance. Or that she is a hypocrite for making herself the poster girl for the worlds most marginalised people. And yet, shes one of the best pop stars Britain has ever produced. For all the ear-clanging experimentation of her five albums, MIA has always kept a sleeve full of pop bangers Bucky Done Gun, Paper Planes, Bad Girls, Finally that have sounded like little that came before or since her. Even if she didnt have the tunes, here is an art-school refugee Sri Lankan single mother with a visual aesthetic co-opted by everyone from Vetements to Versace who was born into political rebellion and revels in controversy. Gleefully gauche and carefree, MIA is the best argument for when cultural appropriation works. Bland singer-songstress beloved of Radio 2 playlists she isnt. So how much has the criticism bothered her?

People thinking that Im a bitch is totally unwarranted because Im not, she ays. I just had to fight for shit, and I still do. I just dont care any more. I dont know. She stops and starts. What I deal with as an artist, the media, the public persona, its a walk in the fucking park, compared to how confusing the universe really fucking is. Theres so much beauty in it and theres so much mystery, theres so much confusing shit in it. That is way more interesting to think about than why, like, Patricia hates me. You know what I mean? I laugh. Its like, Who the fuck is Patricia? and How can Patricia say this shit about me?. It just does not matter to me at all.As it is, she says shes most preoccupied with how to be a functioning grown up, an adult and a mother to an eight-year-old son (whose father Benjamin Bronfman is son to the billionaire heir of the Seagram fortune) born into immense privilege.

When the war came to an end in Sri Lanka in 2009, it actually did affect me, she explains. Everyone was, like, What the fuck does she know? Shes, like, a pop star, but that was my life. It was 50% of who I was, it was my identity. I didnt know what to do with myself. So I had a kid. Its the year the cause died, but the year my personal cause my son was born. And then, OK, I have to figure out what to do in very small parameters: I have a son, how is he going to see his grandma, am I going to make it there on Saturday? Can I make sure that I dont mess up his head by being depressed about certain things?

She struggles to reconcile her upbringing poor and living in Sri Lanka for her childhood to poor and living on a council estate in Mitcham, south London, in her adolescence with her sons. Im not very straightforward as an immigrant. That whole My kids would never see the pain that I saw; Im not like that. Im totally up for reintroducing him to the pain. I dont have any qualms about that. Her problems havent changed, she says, because of money or better circumstances. Whether Im in a mansion or a council flat, I would feel the same anxiety waking up going: I need to write this thing in a scrapbook, wheres my notepad? I would still have all those problems. I might still overcook the fish fingers. Those things are not going to magically transform because your house has changed. At the beginning I thought that money couldve saved my family. Very quickly I realised that money is not the thing.

Her conflict in wanting to being huge and commercial versus credible and ahead of the curve has been a persistent tension threaded through MIAs career. When I got into the music game, it was never an option to shut up and make lots of money. she says. To be a huge pop star, I would have to be, like, Yes, I think bombing Afghanistan was a great idea, I love our democracy and what it has achieved. I love the American flag and Im going to make a jumpsuit out of it. I just think it was important to have all of those Arab Springs, and its great and lets drink Coca-Cola. I had to do that, and do it all in a thong. Could I have done that if it meant that my mum had the nicest house in Chiswick by the river?

Click here to se the video for MIAs Bad Girls.

Does she worry about money now? If youre preaching living within your means, you have to, to some extent. But I also know that if youre someone in society that speaks out about injustice or political issues, one of the things that happens is that you get economically punished, 100%. I take that hit all the time.

The most recent, obvious example was MIA being forced to quit her headline slot at Afropunk last year, following a contentious quote in which she asked in an interview why Beyonc and Kendrick Lamar might not discuss why Muslim lives matter or Syrian lives matter. I dont regret [raising the issue], she says, with triumphant chutzpah. You saw how bad it was. And the Muslim ban didnt happen just with Trump, it was already happening under Obama. But you couldnt say that about him, you couldnt say that he introduced the Muslim ban, or banned seven different countries, or was already monitoring people, or dropped more bombs than Trump has. In truth, Obamas administration did identify the seven countries on Trumps list for additional screening measures, but it didnt bar their nationals. Shes already skipped ahead. The quantity of damage cant be quantified right now, she insists. Well have to wait the four years. After eight years of Obama, we kind of knew [his failings], but we just werent allowed to say them because he was so great. He was better than any person in Hollywood that I wouldve watched. He was really likable and just had loads of swag. That doesnt mean that you have to deny the truth, though.

This (and much more) comes moments after she tells me she has no time for opinions these days. She claims she doesnt read the news any more and that her primary sources for information are customers at the local kebab shop, taxi drivers and then sort of figuring it out. What about the state of the world? MIAs moment as an agitprop pop activist has never seemed more potent. Politics? I have no time for these things because Im so stuck in the zone. Ive become a hermit. [Meltdown] is actually giving me the chance to actually go out and meet people again. Ive gone for weeks without talking to a person, I do that happily. I tell her I dont believe her, as I suspect it would be a recipe for her to go fully barmy.

Im actually quite an extreme person, so I dont see that as madness. I see that as, like, solitude, doing a phase of solitude is not that bad. After declaring her fifth album AIM to be her final one, shes also trying to find new ways to channel her creativity. Im trying to write a film. I havent stepped into it yet because I want it to be good. Once you hit the start button you cant really stop it. She has, she tells me, the added complication of ADD to contend with. When was that diagnosed? I just have it. Dont even need diagnosis, its a waste of time, its a waste of the NHS. In truly blithe MIA style, she adds: Its just when you have too many ideas and not enough ways to get them out.

MIAs Meltdown is at the Southbank Centre, SE1, 9-18 June

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Skinny Brown features 2020 1/3

Skinny Brown has been soooo active this year. By now (end of April) he has featured in 19 songs! (Not counting his own releases!) So I thought why not listen through all of them and find new artists. In the course of that it became a reaction post that nobody asked for :’D

(Links lead to youtube) (all songs are ft. Skinny Brown obviously)

1.       Kid Wine – 알게뭐야: Soft romantic pop with acoustic guitar and heavy bass. Nice.

2.       BENPICKS – Dust: Autotune-pop. Melody okay. Kind of nice but nothing special. Might love it after listening 5 times.

3.       RAUDI. – Still want me (ft. Keem Hyoeun): ♥ this song is sad but I don’t mind I love Hyoeun lol. So it’s nice ^_^

4.       bdo – Joker: Acoustic guitar intro. Guy has a nice deep voice. Reminds me of Kim Seungmin a bit? His singing and rap are both v nice. I like it.

5.       NIL LEEV – No rewind: Heavy autotune. Bit too much. Okay, but sounds like a lot of other songs nowadays (=not unique)

6.       Rhythmical Boy – Poison: Heavyyy autotune on old computer games sounds(?). Too much for me. Okay but nothing special.

7.       Kid Wine – 너무 늦기 전에: Same guitar and bass as in other Kid Wine song. It’s nice for relaxing and being comfy. Guy sounds like he would be a good singer in reality too. The song itself is a bit too romantic for my taste.

8.       Goi – Howling (ft. B JYUN): I have listened to this album before because of the Young B feature. Goi sounds a lot like Hongwon too (or is trying to?) but I don’t mind. This song is a slow ballad hmm it’s not my thing. But listen to Goi – TAKE AWAY (ft. Kuzi, Young B) lol it’s awesome.

9.       M!KYLE – Way U Move: Something about this song is interesting? One of the music things goes wooOOooOoh? Like a guitar with wahwah effect but it’s not? Oh there’s some dubsteppy break. Overall I don’t love it too much. The vibe reminds me of Jung Jinhyeong a bit but only he can pull that off for me personally.

10.   Jayci Yucca – Who’s The Champion (ft. Leellamarz): ♥ yes I’ve written about this album already, I looooove iiiiit and the song is one of my favorites. waysiide♥♥

11.   B JYUN – BREAK THE LINE.: This one definitely makes the list of favorites. It’s very different from the rest so refreshing woah. I remember why I had planned on listening to this album properly. Ok so there are instruments and not too much autotune and electronic music. One of the sounds is someone crunching crisps or sth. I can’t tell the genre. Sth sounds latin. Very internationally mixed anyway. This one is definitely art and puts me straight into different worlds like a movie or a dream.

12.   Bizniz – Put it away: Well this one is from Do You Know Hiphop and I haven’t really checked that out because, u know. It’s a rap song, old school compared to the others on this list, and I suppose we should know Bizniz but I don’t sry:( It’s calm and sounds a little sad.

13.   Dept – Down (ft. Kid Wine): Slow R&B-y… not outstanding, okayish. There’s subs in the yt upload.

14.   AITE – 엑셀: Took my heart straight away. Starts with fast rap<3 Skinny Brown’s part fits into this song perfectly. Never heard of AITE before but I really love his rap style. He can go really fast and switches speeds and it sounds chaotic and sometimes just like talking but it all fits into the beat in the end, kind of like Justhis or Ravi. There’s a song dedicated to Mac Miller on the album, a plus for me :D.

15.   Kim Seungmin – Gas Station (ft. DEREK): ♥ I’ve had this on repeat since it was released. My favorite song of the album, too. A little bit of rock music is so refreshing.

16.   차우주 – CASH OUT (ft. Razyboyocean): the autotuuune I’m sorry this song has the disadvantage of being lower in the list and I’ve already had enough. Overall it’s fine and not bad objectively.

17.   Purp Xanny – Emotion (ft. Sonny Zero): slow R&B, it’s okay

18.   GI$T – For me: let me say it GI$T ONLY MAKES GOOD SONGS. I was so happy to hear Skinny Brown is working with him here. Love his part in the song as well. GI$T is an underrated gem. He can sing and rap and The Quiett likes him too. Check him out if you haven’t.

19.   Leellamarz X TOIL – Nombre (ft. Sik-K): 4 of my favorite boys what more needs to be said ♥_♥

MIA: This is a white country, you dont have to spell it out to me

Maya Arulpragasam is bringing dancehall, hip-hop and grime to this years Meltdown. Is the outspoken British Sri Lankan the best argument for positive cultural appropriation?

The Guardian said that you couldnt shag to my record. As conversational openers go, MIAs beats the banal niceties of, say, Hello, how are you doing?. Its no surprise that she charges straight into a chat about why her last album was considered too confrontational for the bedroom by this paper. Its an icebreaker moulded to MIAs very own design: abrasive, compelling, underpinned by sex. Yeah, she finally concedes with a grin when I suggest we move past it, you cant have it all, can you?

Its a theme she warms up to when we talk about her edition of Meltdown at the Southbank Centre, which were ostensibly here to discuss. Usually, I wouldnt do something like this, she says, slouched under an oversized khaki coat dress. [But the organisers] were like: Hey, you can do whatever you want. Still, putting on the South Banks annual festival, curated in previous years by the likes of David Bowie, David Byrne and Patti Smith, has turned out to be a fairly arduous affair for MIA who says she doesnt do computers at the moment.

They didnt tell me it was nine days long. I thought it was a weekend. And then all my lists were, like, Well, this person wont be in London and that person is doing Glastonbury. Organising festivals is actually really complicated, she stresses. It wasnt just about dreaming something and then it appeared. Programming literally means, like, programming.

For all that Maya Arulpragasam didnt quite know what she was letting herself in for, one suspects the Southbank Centre didnt either; logistics aside, the mornings photoshoot has already been met with some flapping from the press officer made nervous by MIA climbing on the roof without safety clearance. Still, her lineup dancehall, Brooklyn hip-hop, depressive Swedish rap and Nigerian grime is perhaps the most underground the festival has seen in its 24 years. How much is she expecting to shake up its comfortable concert halls, cafe bars and conference-room spaces?

Click here to watch the video for last years Go Off.

When I was a teenager in London, I would just get a Travelcard and go somewhere, explore the city and go to weird places, she says. I would never judge the place, like, This is middle class and white. This is a white country, you dont have to spell it out to me, but there wasnt ever a limit on where I could go or what I could do.

A long, elliptical digression on London then and now follows, which takes in the optimistic multiculturalism of the 90s, Tamil house parties, empire and British identity. Its the bento box of an MIA interview: individually contained ideas that dont obviously bleed into one another and yet, overall, make a collective sense if youre prepared to go with it. Thats the key thing about MIA: you have to be willing to go with her to properly get her. Given that she still looks and sounds like a beautiful, bratty, art-school upstart and is prone to labyrinthine tangents, its easy to portray her as inarticulate or unhinged. But MIAs intelligence is instinctive rather than intellectual, and fuelled by the political.

The Mehrabian maxim that reckons that only 7% of communication is verbal is one that might best be proven by the transcript of a chat with MIA removed of all tone, attitude, context and body language. Take, for instance, her explanation of why only the future remains relevant:

As humans, we dont use our past and our history to work out the importance of what our role is in the present, she says. And if you cant use the past to define your present, then it should not be an element that holds back the future. Greece is a perfect example. More than Britain, they were brought to their knees, and not a single white country thought about saving them. And it was part of their heritage. Its where their mythology comes from or their concept of capitalism and democracy comes from. Nobody cared, everybody cared about the modern. Right?

Kim Kardashian is actually more powerful than Greece. She has more money than the whole of Greece, she continues. Therefore, thats where the power lies. If you then define it that way, then you kind of just have to live with that. And maybe whats happening in modern society: that if youre going to judge it by that, then other countries are gonna come in and define the future.

In print, its a statement that seems lacking in logic and coherence. In the moment, Im fairly sure Im able to follow her and we go on to consider how and where this future is being defined (for the record: You cant ignore the fact that China is going to be doing their thing in the next 50 years) and how Arulpragasam believes the immigration issue has become a red herring covering up a truth that can explain the American and British swing to conservative populism.

With Brexit, the idea was to get away from Europe and reinvent our identity, she says. And really, that identity was going to be American, but then they gave us Trump! So, everyone now is like, Oh shit, what is Britain? Are we going to rewind back to the 1800s? We cant. Its too late for that. So, going forward, we need a charismatic leader who then va va vooms the British identity. And we dont have that either.

People thinking that Im a bitch is totally unwarranted … MIA. Photograph: Stephanie Sian Smith/The Guide

The prime minister has called a snap election on the day we meet. Does MIA have any faith in our political system? Or in the left?

Everyone keeps going, Corbyn cant do this, but its, like, well, who else is there? she says. If people just left him alone to actually do the job and actually gave him some support, maybe hed be different. Treating him with so much contempt fighting that takes all his energy. How the fuck do you expect him to do interesting things? In any case insists the estranged daughter of a Tamil revolutionary, politicians are people who couldnt get jobs somewhere else.

MIAs politics, unwieldy and unslick though they may be, have often made her an easy target for tedious sneering in the press; the most insistent narrative is that, like Banksy, shes big on arch, subversive statement but lacks substance. Or that she is a hypocrite for making herself the poster girl for the worlds most marginalised people. And yet, shes one of the best pop stars Britain has ever produced. For all the ear-clanging experimentation of her five albums, MIA has always kept a sleeve full of pop bangers Bucky Done Gun, Paper Planes, Bad Girls, Finally that have sounded like little that came before or since her. Even if she didnt have the tunes, here is an art-school refugee Sri Lankan single mother with a visual aesthetic co-opted by everyone from Vetements to Versace who was born into political rebellion and revels in controversy. Gleefully gauche and carefree, MIA is the best argument for when cultural appropriation works. Bland singer-songstress beloved of Radio 2 playlists she isnt. So how much has the criticism bothered her?

People thinking that Im a bitch is totally unwarranted because Im not, she ays. I just had to fight for shit, and I still do. I just dont care any more. I dont know. She stops and starts. What I deal with as an artist, the media, the public persona, its a walk in the fucking park, compared to how confusing the universe really fucking is. Theres so much beauty in it and theres so much mystery, theres so much confusing shit in it. That is way more interesting to think about than why, like, Patricia hates me. You know what I mean? I laugh. Its like, Who the fuck is Patricia? and How can Patricia say this shit about me?. It just does not matter to me at all.As it is, she says shes most preoccupied with how to be a functioning grown up, an adult and a mother to an eight-year-old son (whose father Benjamin Bronfman is son to the billionaire heir of the Seagram fortune) born into immense privilege.

When the war came to an end in Sri Lanka in 2009, it actually did affect me, she explains. Everyone was, like, What the fuck does she know? Shes, like, a pop star, but that was my life. It was 50% of who I was, it was my identity. I didnt know what to do with myself. So I had a kid. Its the year the cause died, but the year my personal cause my son was born. And then, OK, I have to figure out what to do in very small parameters: I have a son, how is he going to see his grandma, am I going to make it there on Saturday? Can I make sure that I dont mess up his head by being depressed about certain things?

She struggles to reconcile her upbringing poor and living in Sri Lanka for her childhood to poor and living on a council estate in Mitcham, south London, in her adolescence with her sons. Im not very straightforward as an immigrant. That whole My kids would never see the pain that I saw; Im not like that. Im totally up for reintroducing him to the pain. I dont have any qualms about that. Her problems havent changed, she says, because of money or better circumstances. Whether Im in a mansion or a council flat, I would feel the same anxiety waking up going: I need to write this thing in a scrapbook, wheres my notepad? I would still have all those problems. I might still overcook the fish fingers. Those things are not going to magically transform because your house has changed. At the beginning I thought that money couldve saved my family. Very quickly I realised that money is not the thing.

Her conflict in wanting to being huge and commercial versus credible and ahead of the curve has been a persistent tension threaded through MIAs career. When I got into the music game, it was never an option to shut up and make lots of money. she says. To be a huge pop star, I would have to be, like, Yes, I think bombing Afghanistan was a great idea, I love our democracy and what it has achieved. I love the American flag and Im going to make a jumpsuit out of it. I just think it was important to have all of those Arab Springs, and its great and lets drink Coca-Cola. I had to do that, and do it all in a thong. Could I have done that if it meant that my mum had the nicest house in Chiswick by the river?

Click here to se the video for MIAs Bad Girls.

Does she worry about money now? If youre preaching living within your means, you have to, to some extent. But I also know that if youre someone in society that speaks out about injustice or political issues, one of the things that happens is that you get economically punished, 100%. I take that hit all the time.

The most recent, obvious example was MIA being forced to quit her headline slot at Afropunk last year, following a contentious quote in which she asked in an interview why Beyonc and Kendrick Lamar might not discuss why Muslim lives matter or Syrian lives matter. I dont regret [raising the issue], she says, with triumphant chutzpah. You saw how bad it was. And the Muslim ban didnt happen just with Trump, it was already happening under Obama. But you couldnt say that about him, you couldnt say that he introduced the Muslim ban, or banned seven different countries, or was already monitoring people, or dropped more bombs than Trump has. In truth, Obamas administration did identify the seven countries on Trumps list for additional screening measures, but it didnt bar their nationals. Shes already skipped ahead. The quantity of damage cant be quantified right now, she insists. Well have to wait the four years. After eight years of Obama, we kind of knew [his failings], but we just werent allowed to say them because he was so great. He was better than any person in Hollywood that I wouldve watched. He was really likable and just had loads of swag. That doesnt mean that you have to deny the truth, though.

This (and much more) comes moments after she tells me she has no time for opinions these days. She claims she doesnt read the news any more and that her primary sources for information are customers at the local kebab shop, taxi drivers and then sort of figuring it out. What about the state of the world? MIAs moment as an agitprop pop activist has never seemed more potent. Politics? I have no time for these things because Im so stuck in the zone. Ive become a hermit. [Meltdown] is actually giving me the chance to actually go out and meet people again. Ive gone for weeks without talking to a person, I do that happily. I tell her I dont believe her, as I suspect it would be a recipe for her to go fully barmy.

Im actually quite an extreme person, so I dont see that as madness. I see that as, like, solitude, doing a phase of solitude is not that bad. After declaring her fifth album AIM to be her final one, shes also trying to find new ways to channel her creativity. Im trying to write a film. I havent stepped into it yet because I want it to be good. Once you hit the start button you cant really stop it. She has, she tells me, the added complication of ADD to contend with. When was that diagnosed? I just have it. Dont even need diagnosis, its a waste of time, its a waste of the NHS. In truly blithe MIA style, she adds: Its just when you have too many ideas and not enough ways to get them out.

MIAs Meltdown is at the Southbank Centre, SE1, 9-18 June

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