#most of these were drawn during the pandemic or when my friends and i first started playing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sweepseven · 1 year

Text

Cirque du Soleil Corteo review

What a way to end the year! After two years apart, I managed to fit in seven different Cirque shows in 2022. Seven shows but eight performances, since I was physically compelled to see Kooza twice. That’s a hell of a year under any circumstances, and in a pandemic world it feels all the sweeter.

My final two shows of the year were Drawn To Life, the new Disney resident show, and Corteo, which I haven’t seen since 2018 and was thrilled to see make its post-pan return. Initially I was going to post both reviews at once buuuut as always I have no sense of brevity when it comes to this stuff, it got ridiculously long, so it’ll bet two separate ones after all.

So! Corteo is up first, because it’s easier! Act by act below.

Opening: Oddly there was no animation - the band members came out to wave and chat with the crowd a bit (a deviation from the norm, in my experience - I’d never seen any Cirque band speak outright to an audience), and then the show kicked right off. No wandering characters like in the past, no one reading a book on the edge of the stage, no one lacing their shoes, or otherwise going about their little lives. As soon as the show began in earnest it became clear that the sound was very unbalanced. I suspect the venue was partially at fault (the XL Center in Hartford is rough) and it improved a bit in the second half, but the opening did unfortunately suffer for it. I wonder how immediately clear it was to a first timer that it’s a funeral.

Chandeliers: Maybe not quite a hot take, but a lightly warmed one nevertheless: chandeliers is kinda boring. They make an absolutely beautiful image and they’re an excellent welcome into the nostalgic world of Mauro’s friends and life experiences, but there’s only so much an aerialist can accomplish with all those beads in the way. They did the best they could with their apparatus, but David Repullés’ Volo Volando was a bit disappointing too (more on him later) and that didn’t help.

Trampo beds: Also not my fave act, but the energy is impossible to deny. Not much to say here. It’s kids jumping on the bed and it’s fun and cute! There ya have it.

Cyr wheel: Okay now we’re talking. I am just weak for this act. It’s the first proper look at the labyrinthine pattern on the stage (which I would love to figure out one day, like why is it there, why was it chosen, I love it) and the choreography is a fantastic example of Cirque doing relatively simple things with such immaculate perfection that they might as well be doing the most difficult tricks in the world. You’d still be equally impressed. Every single movement was identical between artists, everyone got a moment to shine, and with all five wheels at once the stage feels suddenly so small and intimate. And Anneaux... god. One of my all time favorite songs. Still not great in David’s hands, but good enough.

Suspended pole: The crowd lost it for this one, and for good reason. Such incredible control. And the male angels watching the act!! I wish we got more of them throughout the show, but it was still neat to see it. Loved the guitarist’s deft switch from guitar to accordion.

Golf: I adore this little act. Short and sweet, not too clowny, Victorino’s there... what’s not to love.

Marionette: Such a magical moment. I don’t know who our Mauro was, but I do know he’s Colombian thanks to his soccer team choice during this act. I am forever impressed by how the artist manages to disentangle the lines so perfectly every time without ever looking at them.

Hoops: Out! Which was weird because she was there for Klezmer Moment, but we never got the full act. Honestly the first half felt so packed that I didn’t feel her absence even knowing how lovely her act is. There was no replacement act tonight.

Helium Dance: We pushed Valentyna!! She floated right over to us and it was clear no one else could reach her!! It was a very magical and special moment, up there with other strokes of interaction luck like dancing with Fleur. She gave us a “thank you, madame,” waved her handkerchief, and went on her way.

Korean plank: I love this act. It’s relentless, it keeps you guessing, it takes risks, and best of all it does so much to flesh out the broader world of the show.

Paradis: Sette Ricordi you beautiful song, you. This act was tight beyond belief. Not a single slip, complete comfort and control from both flyers and catchers, just clean clean clean.

Juggling: Remains adorable. I can’t remember whether the August Clown always helps out with this act? Either way, he was in there with a little supporting diabolo action on this night and it was very cute.

Ladder: I love this!! So much!! This act is what Corteo is all about. These simple, heartfelt interactions between strangers that you somehow feel you still know intimately. The little Eiffel Tower robot dogs or whatever tf they are were too cute, such a fun extra touch of magic. The White Clown took something out of his pocket and fed one a little snack. And finally my question of whether the ladder artist dies is answered: I would argue yes. When he reaches the Angel, she gives him a wrist strap and he floats away with her, up and back through the side curtain. She was waiting for him and finally he came. <333

Aerial straps duo: Similar to suspended pole and paradis, just utter technical perfection. The glitter gets me every time. The audience loved it.

Tournik: I felt it was a little short this time around! Maybe I’m misremembering. But yet again everything was crisp and clean as could be. Honestly I can’t remember the last time I saw such a perfectly executed show, and ending with this just sealed the deal.

Finale: Mauro leans forward in the final moments, pedaling his bike with purpose and anticipation while his friends and family wave from below. It’s a warm, bittersweet, and encouraging approach to death. Isn’t that exactly how you’d want a loved one to move on? By appreciating his life but anticipating the afterlife enough to leave it behind with purpose and optimistic eagerness? I’m emotional just remembering it. I couldn’t help but cheer the very final “alla-vi-ta!” along with the band.

Characters: Again, I don’t know who our Mauro was but I know I liked him very much. He was another element that was done a disservice by the unfortunate sound - when you could hear him, he was saying such beautiful things to add color to the characters, setting, and story! But it was intermittent, and anytime there was music or other conversation he was difficult to make out. Same was true for the Whistler, who I think was just on dreadfully low volume the entire night. It left him with little of the command and authority the character usually possesses, and instead he came across as just some guy trying to yell. I was particularly affectionate towards Victorino this time around - he is undoubtedly Mauro’s deepest and truest friend of all. Valentyna and Grigori were fun as ever, though Grigori didn’t have much to do outside of Teatro Intimo, which I am pretty neutral about except for what it adds to the setting and feel of the show. I also very much liked the White Clown this time around - every movement was measured, sharp, and purposeful, but in a warmer way than I’ve seen him in the past. I’ve seen White Clown behave like a manager, like a guide, and now like a facilitator, and I really enjoyed it. It made for a warmer, friendlier White Clown than I’d seen before: not trying to manage the transition from life to death with clinical precision (which I have also quite liked), but rather someone easing a friend from stage to stage of life. He was playful and familiar towards Mauro, who clearly felt similarly: he complimented White Clown’s “costume” and said it reminded him of the moon. A lovely example of the details that make Corteo Corteo.

Music: I was on the opposite side of the stage from my first viewing, which means I was with the bassist and female singer’s main spot on one side and (I believe) the keyboardist and brass player on the other. Sofia Montaño brings a warmth and accessibility to her role that I very much enjoyed. You feel very welcomed by her performance where other female leads might have felt more ethereal. David Repullés, on the other hand, is perhaps the weakest male baritone I’ve heard in Corteo. I want to give him a certain amount of grace because of the obvious sound issues - how can you fully blame a singer for his volume when it’s totally out of his control? But there were other moments where it was clear his actual vocal quality wasn’t quite what we’ve gotten from other singers. That one long note in El Cielo Sabrá was a notable example of the role being just out of his reach. He was really working for it, but cut it short, and similarly his performance overall seemed to fall a little short. I assume the band was very good, but key moments that are deliberately musically chaotic, such as Nos Dejó, were unfortunately utterly decimated by the sound quality.

Overall: I loved Corteo, I love Corteo, I will continue to love Corteo. It’s unique and human in the most wonderful way.

#cirque du soleil #corteo #reviews

7 notes · View notes

hypaalicious · 2 years

Note

I just got fired from my job today and like... im gonna be okay but god.. this wouldn't happen to Ignis

Getting fired does not feel good, and that really sucks 😩 I hope you aren’t taking it as a reflection of your self worth, because these jobs don’t give af about us, frfr. We’re just cogs in a machine.

Want me to tell you how I got fired from my job I gave 7 years to? Maybe it’ll make you feel better!

TL;DR: I mouthed off to an insufferable executive, she reported me to HR, and they fired me. But she got fired too shortly after 😂

Aiight, so boom:

Idk if folks remember but I worked at a casino and moved up from a basic customer service job to a supervisor of that department, then finally an office job with the executives. The group of us had a really nice relationship; pretty casual, went to lunch together, etc. Like, I would have called my boss my friend if I wasn’t very adamant of keeping lines drawn via work power balances.

But… we all got too comfortable with each other, and when it came down to it, I was the only one expendable.

One of the executives was… she wasn’t a good person, tbh. Lol she was very petty, very shallow, made things really hard for our creative team. She had been reported to HR multiple times for inappropriate comments but like outside of a slap on the wrist, she was untouchable because she was besties with the CEO.

Anyway, COVID hit, and shit got real. Most of us stayed in office to work. During lunch one day, this executive’s doctor called her and left a voicemail to get back to him immediately. We were all like ?? but figured she had it covered.

Then, she called out of work a few days later. And then a week passed and she still ain’t show up. They did a deep clean of the cafeteria that we were all at and roped it off.

So yeah, she came down with the rona. Which is ironic because when the pandemic first hit she scoffed at it and was like, “I’m just gonna live my life, ya know?” And I guess life said:

So yeah. Work wise, things went a lot smoother with her gone. I was more involved with the creative team and got shit done without ruffling their feathers. More people from other departments that this executive had pissed off in the past started coming around more. It was the golden age of productivity. LOL

Well, my boss also had her added on IG. And she was pissed cause while she was out with COVID, she’s posting herself going on walks with her dog, going to the gym (unmasked), doing yoga… basically living it up for the gram. We were pissed, lmao.

Anyway after a month and a half, she shows back up to the office. Nobody is really happy about it but oh well. I go into her office to say welcome back.

My pettycopter flew cause I opened my mouth and said, “hey Typhoid Mary, how’s it going?”

She laughed, I laughed, we chatted for awhile, I caught her up on the work we did for her while she was out, that was it. She left her office shortly after.

Well, later that day, my boss comes in my office shaking. I have never seen her that mad. I ask her what’s up, and she tells me “that bitch reported you to HR over a joke” and that I’m suspended until she can pull whatever strings she can to get me back in office. I just nod, pack up my immediate things and leave.

HR calls me in to talk to me about the insensitive things I said and how I violated HIPPA by exposing her medical history… to only her in her office apparently, but whatever.

A week passes and my boss calls me and said despite going all the way to the CEO and ripping assholes in the company president and everything, she can’t reverse the decision and I’m fired.

Should I have said that? Probably not. Do I regret it? Not really. LMFAO sure, I’ve been unemployed and very poor since then but like… I got to finish my book. I got started on my own otome. I reclaimed my life in a lot of ways. Yeah, it’s been stressful in some ways but I wasn’t gonna go anywhere in that job and I was being taken advantage of like whoa.

Also, the executive got fired after that cause her own shenanigans caught up with her. She used company funds for her own personal projects. LOL

I’m looking for another job rn but it’s a bad time to try to get back into the job force as we’re on the way to a recession LOL But still, no regrets!

I felt bad about it at first tho. I’ve never gotten fired before, lol. And it sucks to give 7 years of your life to a company who won’t even give you benefit of the doubt. But… everything happens for a reason, I guess. LOL

So anyway, I am sorry for your loss of income but I don’t think you’re less of a person because you got fired. Ima pray you find a better job with a bigger paycheck in the future!

#it took me way too long to write this #I was also eating dinner at the same time #and I’m also tipsy cause I drank wine #BUT I FINISHED #keep ya head up Anon I’m in ya corner!#anon ask

10 notes · View notes

themarinadiaries · 1 year

Text

There is something peaceful yet eerie about the woods that I’m just so addicted to. I feel at home there yet completely terrified. I’ve always been drawn to nature and would call myself outdoorsy but I’m adventurous. Growing up in the woods meant a leisurely walk through a town or state forest in the middle of neighborhoods. There weren’t too many get lost in the woods, woods. Growing up I had dense trees between my house and the next with some railroad tracks thrown in there, or just a yard. When I moved to Maine I was amazed by the countless amounts of forests all around me. I made friends who loved being outside and who took me hiking for the first time. I loved it. I love the different trees, rocks, and terrain, but most of all I loved all the different smells.

Last weekend I went on a mini getaway with a boy who I’m very fond of. It was the first time we went away just the two of us. We stayed in a small cabin in the middle of the woods in Millinocket, Maine. This cabin had no electricity or running water and was heated by a wood stove. There was barely any service, no distractions just me and him. I loved every I was with him. It was perfect.

A little back story about me and this boy. We met during my sophomore year of college through my friend Colin, his brother. I saw him occasionally throughout the rest of college on the few weekends he would come up and visit. I could tell he had a crush on me, but eww that’s colin’s little brother, it’s weird. I also had a boyfriend during the last two years of college. Then New Years 2020 happen. All our friends rented a house in Greenville, Maine it snowed most of the time so we were all stuck inside. This between my boyfriend and I were not good and I could tell things were going to end. At this point, I hadn’t seen my Boyfriend for three weeks and we barely talked. The whole time we were at this house me and the boy were innocently flirting. A week later my boyfriend and I broke up.

Then the pandemic happens, my lease is up and I have no one in Maine to live with, so I move back home to Mass. Flash forward to the day before my birthday Colin and his fiance Rachel invite me over to Colin’s parents for a little joint party for me and the boy because his birthday is the day before mine, I’m older though. The night ended with me really drunk and upset crying in the boy's arms. Since then we’ve had this thing, a situationship we’ll call it. He’s the emotionally unavailable guy who has never been in a relationship and I’m the always in a relationship girl. Drastically different experiences with love yet we’re drawn to each other. Over the course of two years now we go through this cycle of talking all the time and seeing each other then things get too real and, in my opinion, he gets scared, does something stupid, and we stop talking. However this time he says he feels ready and he’s putting in a lot more effort. We’ll see what happens but I’m hoping for the best and expecting the worse.

He arrived late Thursday night driving straight from getting out of work in Mass. My new friends, that he hasn’t met we giddy and excited to see him, as much as I was. We were all drinking and when my friends drink they can be crazy so I was nervous about how he would react. He handled it well and he sat and drank with us and talked all night long. I finally felt completely comfortable with him. The next morning we got up I took him to a cute little coffee shop, my specialties, and did some grocery shopping for the weekend ahead. The first stop was the ice caves off of golden road. Now this time of year there is no ice yet but it is still a nice easy hike. He was so excited acting like a little kid, now he is the crazy adventurous up-for-anything type. Halfway through our hike, we come across a guy and his grandson in bright fluorescent orange. I felt my stomach drop, how could I forget it’s hunting season and they allow hunting in these woods. The man warned us and advised us that we should really be wearing orange. We thanked him and continued with our hike, we hadn’t seen anyone else but I was on edge and I could tell he was too. He picked up the pace and I tried to keep up. We made it to the cave I watched as his face lit up I couldn’t help but smile. I went down the first ladder and was shaking, there was no way I was making it into the cave. I watched from above as he climbed all around talking about how amazing and incredible it was. As we were heading back to the car we heard one single gunshot I jumped and he started picking up speed big time talking the whole time. We made it back to the car safe where the man and his grandson were eating their lunch.

We started heading to the cabin following the directions provided to us by the owners since there was no reception. We turned onto a dirt road which turned into a series of dirt roads that looked like old logging roads. If we were going to see a moose this is where it would be. As we pulled into the driveway we were greeted by a big black fluffy dog who we soon found out was named Andy. We were shown to our cabin and settled in. He started the wood stove for me as I was already freezing and he talked about how excited he was to go canoeing, I was not sharing his excitement. To my luck, it rained the rest of the weekend so that meant no canoeing. We spent the weekend playing games, talking, drinking wine, and enjoying each other's company.

It was something out of a movie and it was weird. I guess with him I just expect something bad to happen and him to leave but that didn’t happen. He held me and I held him until he had to leave and go back to Mass. Now I don't know when I’ll see him again or what we even are. Are we still in this situationship? It doesn’t feel like it but we aren’t in an actual relationship. It’s like we're stuck in this purgatory unsure of what will happen next and that scares me.

15 notes · View notes

harmonyspopculturecorner · 1 year

Text

Comfort Media

Think about when you’ve been having a long day… or when you aren’t feeling the best… or even when you just feel like you need something to keep your mind off of everything going on in the world. What do you find yourself being drawn to? Some music that you associate with driving down the road, friends by your side? A fanfic that you found late one night and had you kicking your feet with how cute the plot was? Or maybe even a show that you know more dialogue to than you’d like to admit? Any piece of media that makes you feel at home, safe, relaxed… like you can turn your brain off for a while. That’s what I’d call comfort media.

Now, the idea of comfort media isn’t necessarily a new one. People have always had media that they choose to indulge in no matter how many times they’ve watched, listened, or read it. However, during the pandemic, when our world was literally turned upside down, this idea became more of a forefront. It took me until the pandemic to put a name to it, and since then I’ve realized that I have a few different pieces of comfort media.

My comfort media doesn’t have a theme… an anime, a music group, literary couple fanfiction, children’s cartoon, superhero animated show, and YouTube comedy. All of these are different, but all of them bring me a sense of relaxation at different times when needed.

One of my indicators that I am building up stress is the urge to put on ‘Ouran High School Host Club’. This was one of the first anime I ever watched, and it remains one of my all-time favorites. I could quote countless episodes, and even list their titles in order (This is no lie, my friend can attest to looking at the episode list while I recited the titles off on a video call). ‘Ouran’ is my comfort because I don’t need to think while watching it. I can put it on in the background and easily be doing work… all while keeping focused and gradually calming myself down.

The shows ‘Scooby-Doo’ and ‘Young Justice’ season 1 do the same thing. ‘Scooby-Doo’ could be listed as my favorite piece of media ever. It’s classic, the stories are fun, the characters are relatable, and most importantly… It's my childhood. To this day, I still have two shelves worth of the ‘Scooby-Doo’ movies and show volumes. It doesn’t matter if I know who the ‘Miner 49er’ is already - I’m going to watch the episode and follow along as the gang finds clues, gets chased, sets a trap, and finally catches the criminal.

‘Young Justice’ is, overall, an underrated show in the DC Universe. It was what really roped me back into liking superheroes. Growing up I watched ‘Teen Titans’, but I fell away from superhero media for a few years. Then, a friend suggested I watch ‘Young Justice’, and I was right back in. All 4 seasons of this show are great, but if I’m going to do a simple rewatch, it’s going to be the first season. There’s something about the original team of Aqualad, Robin, Kid Flash, Superboy, M’Gann and Artemis that always puts a smile on my face. The characters all have great chemistry, the storylines for the first season were clever, thought out, and reasonably challenging for the target audience. (Though not too complicated where you have no clue what’s going on) So, anytime I am beginning to feel my anxiety building I can throw ‘Ouran’, ‘Scooby-Doo’, or ‘Young Justice’ on the TV and instantly relax.

When I am just having a bad day, there are a few pieces of media I’ll turn to. First is something every nerd knows about: fanfiction. I read fanfiction for basically every media I enjoy, but there’s a specific kind I turn to when I need a smile:‘Percabeth’ fanfics. ‘Percabeth’ is the pairing of Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase from Rick Riordan’s ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians’ series. I absolutely adore this couple more than words could describe. They’ve been through hell within their stories (I mean they’ve literally walked through Tartarus together). The fanfics I read give them the happiness and love they deserve. Instead of focusing on battles and life-threatening situations, the fics I read for this couple focus on the mundane. We get to see between the battles, helping bandage each other up and even watch them go through relationship growing pains. My favorite is glancing into their future, watching them live out their lives attending New Rome University together. Whatever the situation, seeing the creative stories fans write for these two never fails to make me smile.

The next thing I turn to on almost a daily basis (even when I’m not having a bad day) are ‘Smosh Videos’. I used to watch Smosh back when they first started on YouTube: Just two friends making silly skits and videos. I had no idea they eventually grew into a company with a whole cast, crew, and studio… until my friend put on an episode of ‘Eat It or Yeet It’ because they knew how picky an eater I am. Since then, I am always watching their newest videos. I even have the notifications on! The variety of their videos are fun and can appeal to many people. For example, you can find a plethora of new party games to play with friends from Smosh’s ‘Board AF’ series. Even my dad gets a laugh out of the crazy food crimes Garrett commits for ‘Eat It or Yeet It’!

My final piece of comfort media, the one that I truly hold closest to my heart, are ‘BTS Music and Videos’. Basically everyone has heard the name BTS, and there’s not really a need to explain why. They’re global superstars, not only for their music and talent, but because of their meaningful messages and love they share. I have so much to thank BTS for… they helped me begin to see my own worth and learn to love myself, they introduced me to a culture that led me to an amazing year of living abroad… and most importantly because of them I have two of the most important people in my life. Anytime I listen to BTS’ music or watch one of their videos I can’t help but smile. Nothing but good memories come from them, and that’s the ultimate comfort.

Comfort media can be different for everyone, and it can shift throughout our lives. However, one thing remains the same: These pieces of entertainment are a simple place to turn to when you just need to sit back, relax, and let the world fall away for a bit.

Thank you for reading! This is all simply my own opinion and thoughts on the concept of comfort media. I’d love to know your thoughts and what makes comforting entertainment for you! Feel free to comment and even share your comfort media too!

#entertainment #pop culture #comfort media #ouran high school host club #bts #percabeth #fanfiction #scooby doo #young justice #source: smosh

2 notes · View notes

supersanderman · 1 year

Text

The Intro

Welcome reader. You have officially decided to join me on this journey into my mind and I want to first thank you and second off, I want to give you a warning, this isn’t always a happy carefree blog. I am going to share my personal journey of how I got to be where, and who I am today. Am I a rich success story? No. Am I an influencer or actor with thousands of followers? Not even a little. I am just a music-loving, D&D-playing demi-boy nerd who is trying (and many times failing) to love themself in a world that sometimes doesn’t give people enough love. I want to share my story so that maybe, people will be able to feel ok sharing their own.

I am also probably going to ruin your favorite fandoms… no scratch that… I am going to make you think a little deeper about your favorite fandoms. You probably know the issues with Harry Potter and Star Wars and D&D already but I want to look at them once again, and see how we can appreciate them, despite their sometimes very obvious flaws.

But that comes later. Now back to my story. I’m trying not to be self-centered. Because my story isn’t that important. It’s just another story. But it’s my story, and I hope that is enough to make it valid to share. Let’s start at the beginning. I came from a small prominently white, prominently conservative town in the middle of nowhere New Jersey, Long Valley. It was quaint, quiet, and safe, like any other small white town in America. And like any small white town in America, it was a bubble, one that kept you on the inside, really preventing you from questioning your identity, and why would you? In my time in Long Valley: I was one of around 10 or so Jewish People, and I knew probably less than 20 people of color. In addition to that I knew one transgender person, who consistently was ridiculed and called their deadname, and I knew no one who was non binary, nor anyone at the time who was openly gay or lesbian. Hell, I didn’t even know the term nonbinary existed until I came to Rutgers. Eventually, I would come to learn that many of my closest friends from highschool were all “in the closet” during high school, just a byproduct of living in a place with virtually zero diversity. It makes sense now that they were the ones I was drawn to.

Rutgers meanwhile was a breath of fresh air for me, a place where I learned that people could actually express themselves and be unapologetically themselves. In Long Valley, sure I was myself, but I was myself blissfully unaware, and Rutgers became sort of a culture shock for me.I joined Marching Band, Choir, Creative Writing Club, all with the goal of continuing my passions. And as time progressed and I became more acclimated, I began to question who I was, especially when I came face to face with a former friend and their ex, who happened to be a former roommate of mine. Once a gay couple, they would always be in my room, and would always try and tear away at my identity, questioning why I was straight and if I liked being straight. I would be asked to rate the “hotness” of celebrities, and would be asked why I just “can’t be gay?” Long Valley me, was very uncomfortable. Identity should not be forced, and discovery should be a self guided process, not one that is made through invasive questioning. I remember one night, it got to a point where I left the room and would block their calls for the night as they just kept prodding and probing and asking why I “liked girls and not guys.” Now both of them are distant memories, and knowing what I know about myself now, it doesn’t really hurt as much, but it is still something that I look back on, as a reminder to always go at my pace.

I made it most of the year still remaining cisgender and heterosexual and then shit hit the fan, as a global pandemic destroyed everyone’s way of life. There’s something about being trapped at home for weeks on end that makes you question everything about yourself. Maybe it was just the desire to escape, maybe it was wanting a fresh start as it felt like everyone else was starting over, but I just kept thinking. Thinking about who I was as a person, and I think that drove my desire to keep questioning. While it wouldn’t be until the summer of 2021 that I would actually really change my identity, I think the pandemic year was a sort of stepping stone into questioning and taking steps. I restarted therapy, realized who of my high school friends I actually cared about enough to stay in contact with, and overall wanted to try and grow in some way. It sounds cheesy but it was a goal of mine, because I learned so much about myself after being trapped and isolated for so long.

I also joined a professional fraternity, Phi Sigma Pi in the Spring of 2021 where I met my big who is now one of my closest friends, Mox. They have been instrumental in my journey of self-discovery and identity, and have taught me so much about a world I had no window into. They validated my identity when others didn’t, and it was refreshing. In fact, they have started to use "they" to refer to me, and it is the most validating thing. To finally be in control of my identity for once is, in a word, wonderful. But the way I got there was a twisted path of confusion, anger, and fear. I hope you stick around to read the rest in upcoming posts! Oh, and yes, I still plan on ruining your favorite fandoms ;)

1 note · View note

paddy-morgan · 1 year

Text

Longevity is rare in professional sport

Paddy Morgan sits down with four-time World Snooker Champion John Higgins to reflect on his amazing career in snooker since turning professional in 1992.

John Higgins was talented grown up but did not realise that snooker could be his living until his late teenage years “I think it was when I was 15 when I won under 16 World Amateur Championship.” Higgins rise in the amateur game was down to leaving his local town Wishaw to join a club in a main Scottish city “I moved into a snooker club in Glasgow and then went into Glasgow to play all the top boys.” Higgins realised that he was good enough to make it as a professional in snooker after winning some of the biggest Pro-Am tournaments in Scotland, England and Ireland “in fact one over in Dublin when I was 15 I beat Ken Doherty in the final he was given me 10 points of a start I played him just off O’ Connell Street in the Mint Snooker club and managed to beat him in the final of one of the big Pro-Amsaround that time.” Higgins finally turned professional when he was 17 years old.

Higgins impressed in his first year as professional as he reached the quarter-final of the British Open. He won his first professional tournament in 1994/1995 season after beating Dave Harold 9-6 in the final of the Grand Prix but 1998 was a significant year for the Scotsman as he won his first World Championship at the Crucible “I think it have to be when I won the World title for the first time and I think that was the realisation of all my dreams coming through.” Funny enough the Scotsman was drawn against his friend from his amateur days in 1998 final “I played Ken again and the Dubliner was hoping to defend the World Championship because he won it the previous year in 1997 but when I beat Ken in the final that was my ultimate dream.” Higgins announced himself onto the big stage in sport after winning his first big tournament in 1998.

Higgins has won three more World Championship titles since his maiden win in 1997 and the Scotsman gives an insight into his practice in the run up to the Crucible “I would just put in a bit more time in the practice room and I would play a few more players.” Winning a World Championship at Crucible is like taking part in a marathon “matches at crucible are extreme with it been either the best of 19 or 25 frames to progress to the next round.” This is a routine that Higgins does every year and has been successful due to winning four times at the Crucible “I would just play a few more matches I have always done that every year by try to sharpen yourself up before the biggest tournament in snooker.” Practice is crucial to sharpen the mind before a big tournament regardless whether it’s the World Championship in snooker or The Masters in golf.

With snooker been an individual sport it is difficult to keep patient “it probably happened to me at the World Championship this year as it was only one of the handful times were I was losing to Ronnie O’ Sullivan 13-9.” It was unlike Higgins to get frustrated especially playing in a semi-final of the World Championship at the Crucible “I was really getting down by the way I was playing and I missed a long red at the start of one frame.” The Crucible is not a place were you let your frustrations get the better of you “I really wanted to smash my cue in and I was thinking that that I could not win this game playing like this.” Higgins lost his 2022 World Championship semi-final by a score line of 17-11 to O’ Sullivan and possibly getting down on himself stopped the Scotsman from advancing to the final.

Professional sport is currently up in the air since the rise of potential European Super League in football and rise of LIV series in golf “Barry Hearn came back into the game in 2010 and he has managed to ramp the tournaments up by increasing prize money every year.” Higgins revealed that most tournaments went ahead during covid-19 pandemic but missed out on travelling to International tournaments “most of our tour is in the far east but not managed to get out there due covid-19 pandemic but it has been a tough time in general.” The world of sport has returned to normal in 2022 with full crowds at the biggest sporting events again which included the World Championship in Sheffield.

Higgins has really looked after himself in having a successful professional career that has lasted for over 30 years “I never really got too up or down in my whole career and I have always kept a steady level.” Higgins has not lost his love for snooker in recent years “I have always enjoyed playing and touch wood I don’t have any physical issues like my eyes going by maybe wearing glasses.” The Scotsman is still passionate about the professional game “I still love getting up most days but I don’t practice as much as I used to as I still put in a solid four hours of practice a day.” It is remarkable that Higgins is still passionate as ever after 30 years in the professional game.

The Scotsman still has big goals which includes winning either the UK Championship in 2022 or winning the World Championship for a fifth time in 2023 “I would love to win another World Championship.” Higgins has currently won 31 tournaments since turning professional and will like to overtake Stephen Hendry on 36 before The Wizard Of Wishaw hangs up his cue.

0 notes

callmebrycelee · 2 years

Text

It was in March of 2021 that I decided to try my hand at writing a fanfic. When it comes to Glee fanfiction, most notably Kurtofsky fanfiction, I consider myself old guard. I started off reading stories penned by @sunmontuewrites, pulpobsessed @davesdude80, @ktfranceebee, and @spookybibi. Perhaps my favorite Dave and Kurt story was written by a friend who goes by the name metalnoir668 on AO3. Stranger Currencies is the definitive Kurtofsky story for me and I consider it a fanfiction masterpiece.

Over the years I have met (and even befriended) other Kurtofsky writers. @elledelajoie, @samarakurtofsky, and @nubianamy are some of my favorite writers as well. All this to say, I never would have had the nerve to try my hand at writing fanfiction had it not been for reading the incredible work of the aforementioned writers.

In May of last year I completed my first official fanfic Welcome to Camp Black Bear and it is honestly one of my favorite things I have ever written. Writing fanfiction during the height of the pandemic was particularly liberating and a source of comfort during a particularly dark time. The thing I love most about fanfiction is that it is a reminder that the characters we read in books and on TV and movies do not belong to the individuals who created them. They belong to us. Dave and Kurt may be the intellectual property of Ryan Murphy and Company, but the moment those characters appeared in our living rooms, dorm rooms, and bedrooms, they became ours. Glee means so much to many of us but part of loving something is recognizing it's flaws and yes, Glee is an extremely flawed show. With that said, fan fiction is a way for us to write the wrongs (see what I did there). What never was now has a chance of being and that is what's so beautiful to me.

So, in honor of the first anniversary of Welcome to Camp Black Bear, I asked the incomparable @starkurt to take the original artwork and put a 70s spin on it. Growing up, I was always drawn to 70s and 80s horror movies, especially the ones that took place at summer camp. Thank you @starkurt for always taking the thoughts of my head and bringing them to life with your pen. You are such a valuable part of this community and your praises should be sung!

Thank you to everyone who has been supportive of my work. Being on the other side of the fanfiction fence, I now understand how brave it is to put your work out there for strangers on the internet to consume. It takes a level of vulnerability I never fathomed.

Special shout-out to saxman2750 who has been a huge cheerleader for me. There were moments where I wanted to put the pen down but he was there to keep me lifted and encouraged.

If there is anyone I missed, please forgive me. Thank you so much!

#kurtofsky #kurt hummel #dave karofsky #ao3 author #archive of our own #starkurt #fanfiction #artwork

53 notes · View notes

swissmissficrecs · 3 years

Text

Favorite Sherlock Holmes fics from 2020

Usually I put a bunch of explanations and disclaimers on these lists but you know what, it was a weird year and I’m not going to try to justify or apologize for what I read or didn’t read so here are my favorites that were completed last year, in descending order of length:

and your very flesh shall be a great poem by CaitlinFairchild (151K, E, Johnlock) After a tragic confrontation with terrible consequences, Sherlock and John follow Mary as she flees to America.

Drawn to Stars by Silvergirl (107K, E, Johnlock, Sherlock/OMC) After the Culverton Smith case Sherlock is clean, working, and looking for a romantic partner—since John has told him that’s what he needs. Shame John didn’t mention he was interested in that role himself, before Sherlock went off to Rome with a gorgeous Italian copper to try to fall in love and become a complete human being. (This one is very slightly cheating because it was finished on 30 Dec 2019, but it didn't make it onto my 2019 list because I didn't read it until after I'd made the list. And it deserves to be on a Best Of list, so here it is.)

Thermocline by J_Baillier (83K, M, Johnlock) John "Five Oceans" Watson — technical dive instructor, dive accident analyst and weapon of mass seduction — meets recluse professor of maritime archaeology Holmes. As they head out to a remote archipelago off the coast of Guatemala to study and film its shipwrecks for a documentary, will sparks fly or fizzle out?

Do No Harm by Calais_Reno (79K, T, Johnlock) In 1923, Dr John Watson is on trial for the murder of his lover, Mary Morstan, a writer of popular mysteries. If convicted, he will hang. Sherlock Holmes sets out to prove his innocence, but finds himself more and more infatuated with the handsome doctor, and deeper and deeper inside the bohemian world of London's painters, playwrights, and poets. Will he uncover the evidence needed to acquit him in time?

To Be Human by ohlooktheresabee (78K, NR, Johnlock) There is a serial killer on the loose with a penchant for collecting the brains of his victims. Sherlock, John and Scotland Yard are on the case, but something about the chosen victims has Sherlock on edge. While they piece together the clues that will lead to the killer, John begins to realize that the way his best friend thinks may sometimes be more a hindrance than a help….

immediate and inglorious by simplyclockwork (72K, E, Johnlock) Bodies are showing up in back alleys, with no sign of a struggle, no trace of drugs. If not for the strangulation bruises on their necks and the scythe carved into their left shoulders, they could have died peacefully, in their sleep. With New Scotland Yard dumbfounded by the Grim Reaper Killer case, Sherlock is called in to consult. The more he investigates, the deeper Sherlock finds himself drawn into the work of London's newest serial killer. As his views of good and bad begin to blur, he risks losing himself to a darkness he never imagined. And, even more pressing: where does John Watson, grieving ex-boyfriend of the Grim Reaper's latest victim, fit into all of this?

Curtain Rising by tiger_in_the_flightdeck (61K, E, Johnlock) A disgraced television star is the target of a series of death threats just after a theatre production’s adaptation of The Sound of Music is announced with her as the lead. The suspect list is a mile long and growing, Rosie Watson is in the spotlight, and Sherlock might be getting too fond of his time on stage to focus on the case. With opening night approaching, can he and John figure out who wants their client dead before her final curtain rises?

The Fire Finds a Home by fearfully_beautifully_made (61K, E, Johnlock) After Sherlock and John decide to give having a relationship a go, this is how their relationship starts to develop. There a little bit of plot, if you squint, but it was mostly an excuse to write John and Sherlock having sex in a lot of different ways and learning to love each other.

Borrowed Ghosts by DiscordantWords (57K, M, Johnlock) In the aftermath of the Culverton Smith case, John spent one painfully stilted afternoon hanging out with Sherlock. He counted the minutes, finished his tea, and left for home without ever clearing the air between them. And once he'd left, he found it very hard to go back.

You Might Just as Well Be Blind by ArwaMachine (56K, E, Johnlock) When a serial killer starts targeting couples, Sherlock and John must do what they have to do in order to get to the bottom of things. Unfortunately, John already has a girlfriend. Surely pretending to be in a relationship with Sherlock won't pose any problems with his relationship, will it?

The Broken Tether by J_Baillier (54K, M, Johnlock) Maybe he thinks that you only enjoy his company because of the Work, because of the way his dazzling intellect shines when he's in his element, but the truth is this: it is when he is at his most human, most bare, that you feel closest to him.

how the light gets in by subtext-is-my-division (Quill_A) (54K, E, Johnlock) Red wine always makes him tipsier than usual and he finds himself saying, the words slurring a bit. “You know, I’ve got to ask. Do you always shoot cabbies for people you barely you know?” John meets his gaze over the rim of his glass, and there’s something there that Sherlock can’t pin down. “Not for everyone,” he says, meaningfully, pointedly, his smile all teeth.

Erosion by saintscully (53K, E, Johnlock) Sherlock’s father falls ill, leaving the surviving family members broken and rudderless. James Sholto shows up in London unexpectedly, his intentions unclear. John has to navigate the consequences of crime, illness and death and their impact on his frayed relationship with Sherlock.

Hold You Like a Weapon by MissDavis (52K, E, Johnlock) Eurus shows up at 221B Baker Street in labour. Things go downhill from there.

Chances Are by Berty (51K, M, Johnlock) Sherlock is spending some time in his mind palace - so far, so normal. But why is John there, why do things keep changing and why are there only two exits from the sitting room at 221B, neither of which seem to go anywhere useful? It's a case like no other for Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.

Sine Nomine by SilentAuror (45K, E, Johnlock) As Mycroft reviews the footage from Culverton Smith's morgue, he revisits his original question: whether John Watson would be the making of his brother, or make him worse than ever. He's come to a conclusion, but decides to give John one last chance. So he gives him a choice.

Cockaigne by HollyShadow88 (38K, E, Johnlock) When John’s contacted by an old uni friend about problems in his new art exhibition, he doesn’t think it will be worth Sherlock’s time. After a glance of the crime scene, however, they’re both pulled into the project in ways John didn’t expect. Will a week of erotic performance art finally be enough to bring them together in the way they both secretly hope? (Spoiler: it’s a tropey fic, of course it will)

Written in Ashes by 88thParallel (37K, M, Johnlock) Sherlock becomes the prime suspect in a homicide case, and recently unearthed memories of his childhood are complicating matters. It's up to John to track down answers — can he help Sherlock before it's too late?

A Desperate Indulgence by LollipopCop (34K, M, Johnlock) John thinks it's 2012 after waking up with amnesia, having no memory of Mary. Sherlock, exhausted from years of tension and hiding his love, pretends they got married instead.

Inhale With Ease by Vulpesmellifera (25K, E, Johnlock) In the years after Vivian Norbury's capture, life seems to work out just as John planned. He's got that respectable job at the surgery and goes home to his wife and child. He joins Sherlock on cases a couple times per week. It's a rhythm he can live with - just enough adrenaline highs to balance out the drudgery of a normal bloke's life. Until a pandemic, and Victor Trevor, arrive in London.

The House on Rue des Boulangers by Berty (24K, M, Johnlock) After being invalided out of the army and without any other prospects, John Watson has relocated to a small town in northern France. Now he has to decide what to do for the rest of his life. One morning there's a mad stranger in his garden chasing a swarm of bees, and it seems John's decision is made.

High Mountain Tea Leaves by disfictional (23K, E, Johnlock) A mountaintop robbery on a Japanese-occupation-era train where the only item stolen was a small case of mysterious tea leaves in a backpack? An ideal Christmas gift, two days late. Sherlock convinces John to travel for tea.

Detours by saintscully (22K, M, Johnlock, Sherlock/OMC) During the better part of the first year following Mary's death and the events at Sherrinford, Sherlock and John are slowly rebuilding their lives and their friendship. All seems (relatively) well and John takes comfort in once again being a father, a doctor and a friend. An unexplained shift in Sherlock's behaviour catches John by surprise, and he begins to worry about his place in his friend's life. John has to examine everything he thought he knew about Sherlock, himself and their relationship in order to win his rightful place yet again.

hands full of matter by simplyclockwork (21K, E, Johnlock) When Sherlock is captured in Serbia, Mycroft cannot afford to involve the British government in his rescue. Instead, he sends John. After two years spent thinking Sherlock was dead, John finds himself navigating not only Sherlock’s rescue but their fractured friendship as well.

The Victim Experience by J_Baillier (16K, T, Gen) A case takes Sherlock and John deep into the seedy underbelly of the haunted attractions industry. With audiences craving more and more intense experiences, is a real murder the next logical step?

On the Fence by BeautifulFiction (13K, T, Johnlock) The murder of the King's College fencing champion leads to revelations about Sherlock's past. Will it be the point that tips them from friends to lovers, or will they remain on the fence?

Plus bonus ACD era:

"Baker Street: The Sleep of Reason": A Memoir by John H. Watson, M.D. by Gaedhal (98K, M, Johnlock, Johniarty) This is a Victorian Era story in the "Sherlock Holmes" (2009) Ritchie-verse. The main characters are Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson and is from the doctor's memoirs. It was written before "A Game of Shadows" so there are differences in this story and film canon, mainly in the person and backstory of one particular character.

The Taste of Truth by sanguinity (25K, T, Johnlock) Two and a half years after Reichenbach, John Watson discovers the magical tree that caused Holmes to fake his death.

The Adventure of the Vatican Cameos by Garonne (18K, E, Johnlock) How should one behave when waking for the first time in the bed of one's dearest friend? Holmes and Watson solve a case in Catholic London while navigating the turbid waters of their new relationship.

Hot Water by wordybirdy (13K, E, Johnlock, Watson/Gregson) Dr. John Watson's libidinous affair with a respected Scotland Yard inspector abruptly judders to a halt when the former meets a certain Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, for the very first time. The attraction between the two is strongly mutual, but misunderstandings only multiply and tensions abound, as all three men attempt to deal with the new situation.

#rec list #best

519 notes · View notes

path-of-my-childhood · 3 years

Photo

CABIN FEVER - Aaron Dessner: Producing folklore and evermore

Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Tom Doyle

The pandemic gave Taylor Swift a chance to explore new musical paths, with two lockdown albums co-written and produced by the National's Aaron Dessner.

Few artists during the pandemic have been as prolific as Taylor Swift. In July 2020, she surprise-released folklore, a double-length album recorded entirely remotely and in isolation. It went on to become the biggest global seller of the year, with four million sales and counting. Then, in December, she repeated the trick with the 15-song evermore, which quickly became Swift's eighth consecutive US number one.

In contrast to her country-music roots and the shiny synth-pop that made her a superstar, both folklore and evermore showcased a very different Taylor Swift sound: one veering more towards atmospheric indie and folk. The former album was part-produced by Swift and her regular co-producer Jack Antonoff (St Vincent, Lana Del Rey), while the other half of the tracks were overseen by a new studio collaborator, Aaron Dessner of the National. For evermore, aside from one Antonoff-assisted song, Dessner took full control of production.

Good Timing

Although his band are hugely popular and even won a Grammy for their 2017 album Sleep Well Beast, Aaron Dessner admits that it initially felt strange for an indie-rock guitarist and keyboard player to be pulled into such a mainstream project. Swift had already declared herself a fan of the National, and first met the band back in 2014. Nonetheless, Dessner was still surprised when the singer sent him a text "out of the blue" last spring. "I mean, I didn't think it was a hoax," he laughs. "But it was very exciting and a moment where you think it's like serendipity or something, especially in the middle of the pandemic. When she asked if I would ever consider writing with her, I just happened to have a lot of music that I had worked really hard on. So, the timing was sort of lucky. It opened up this crazy period of collaboration. It was a pretty wild ride."

Since 2016, Aaron Dessner has been based at his self-built rural facility, Long Pond Studio, in the Hudson Valley, upstate New York. The only major change to the studio since SOS last spoke to Dessner in October 2017 has been the addition of a vintage WSW Siemens console built in 1965. "It had been refurbished by someone," he says, "and I think there's only three of them in the United States. I heard it was for sale from our friend [and the National producer/mixer] Peter Katis. That's a huge improvement here."

Although the National made Sleep Well Beast and its 2019 successor I Am Easy To Find at Long Pond, the band members are scattered around the US and Europe, meaning Dessner is no stranger to remote working and file sharing. This proved to be invaluable for his work with Swift. Dessner spent the first six weeks of lockdown writing music that he believed to be for Big Red Machine, his project with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. Instead, many of these work-in-progress tracks would end up on folklore. Their first collaboration (and the album's first single), 'cardigan', for instance, emerged from an idea Dessner had been working on backstage during the National's European arena tour of Winter 2019.

"I sent her a folder and in the middle of the night she sent me that song," Dessner explains. "So, the next morning I was just listening to it, like, `Woah, OK, this is crazy."

On The Move

As work progressed, it quickly became apparent that Swift and Dessner were very much in tune as a songwriting and producing unit. There was very little Dessner had to do, he says, in terms of chopping vocals around to shape the top lines. "I think it's because I'm so used to structuring things like a song, with verses and choruses and bridges," he reckons. "In most cases, she sort of kept the form. If she had a different idea, she would tell me when she was writing and I would chop it up for her and send it to her. But, mostly, things kind of stayed in the form that we had."

Dessner and Swift were working intensively and at high speed throughout 2020, so much so that on one occasion the producer sent the singer a track and went out for a run in the countryside around Long Pond. By the time he got back, Swift had already written 'the last great american dynasty' and it was waiting for him in his inbox. "That was a crazy moment," he laughs. "One of the astonishing things about Taylor is what a brilliant songwriter she is and the clarity of her ideas and, when she has a story to tell, the way she can tell it. I think she's just been doing it for so long, she has a facility that makes you feel like you could never do what she's capable of. But we were a good pair because I think the music was inspiring to her in such a way that the stories were coming."

Swift's contributions to folklore were recorded in a makeshift studio in her Los Angeles home. Laura Sisk engineered the sessions as the singer recorded her vocals, using a Neumann U47, in a neighbouring bedroom. Live contact between Swift, Sisk, Dessner and Long Pond engineer Jonathan Low was done through real-time online collaboration platform Audiomovers.

"We would listen in remotely and kind of go back and forth," says Dessner. "We used Audiomovers and then we would have Zoom as a backup. But mainly we were just using Audiomovers, so we could actually be in her headphones. It's powerful, it's great. I've used it a lot with people during this time. Then, later on, when we recorded evermore, a lot of the vocals were done here at the studio actually when Taylor was visiting when we did the [Disney+ documentary] Long Pond Sessions. But Taylor's vocals for folklore were all done remotely."

Keeping Secrets

Given the huge international interest in Swift, the team had to work with an elaborate file-sharing arrangement to ensure that the tracks didn't leak online. Understandably, Dessner won't be drawn on the specifics. "Yeah, I mean we had to be very careful, so everything was very secretive," he says. "There were passwords on both ends and we communicated in a specific way when sharing mixes and everything. There was a high level of confidentiality and data encryption. It was sort of a learning curve.

"I'm not used to that," he adds, "'cause usually we're just letting files kind of fly all over the Internet [laughs]. But I think with someone like her, there's just so many people that are paying attention to every move that she makes, which can be a little, I think, oppressive for her. We tried to make it as comfortable as possible and we got used to how to get things to her and back to us. It worked pretty well."

Drums & Guitars

For the generally minimalist beat programming on the records, Dessner would sometimes turn to his more expensive new analogue drum generators - Vermona's DRM1 and Dave Smith's Tempest - but more often used the Synthetic Bits iOS app FunkBox. "There's just a lot of great vintage drum machine sounds in there, and they sound pretty cool, especially if you overdrive it," he says. "Often I send that through an amplifier, or through effects into an amplifier. Then I have a [Roland) TR-8 and a TR-8S that I use a lot. I also use the drum machine in the [Teenage Engineering] OP-1. So, a song like 'willow', that's just me tapping the OP-1."

Elsewhere, Dessner's guitar work appears on the tracks, with the intricate melodic layering on 'the last great american dynasty' from folklore having been inspired by Radiohead's In Rainbows. "Almost all of the electric guitar on Taylor's records is played direct through a REDDI DI into the Siemens board," he says. "It's usually just my 1971 Telecaster played direct and it just sounds great. Oftentimes I just put a little spring reverb on it and sometimes I'll overdrive the board like it's an amplifier, 'cause it breaks up really beautifully.

"I have a 1965 [Gibson] Firebird that I play usually through this 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb. So, if I am playing into an amp, that's what it is. But on 'the last great american dynasty', those little pointillistic guitars, that's just played direct with the Telecaster through the board."

Elsewhere, Aaron Dessner took Taylor Swift even further out of her sonic comfort zone. A key track on folklore, the Cocteau Twins-styled 'epiphany', features her voice amid a wash of ambient textures, created by Dessner slowing down and reversing various instrumental parts in Pro Tools. "I created a drone using the Mellotron [MD4000D] and the Prophet and the OP-1 and all kinds of synth pads," he says. "Then I duplicated all the tracks, and some of them I reversed and some of them I dropped an octave. All manner of using varispeed and Polyphonic Elastic Audio and changing where they were sitting. Just to create like this Icelandic glacier of sounds was my idea. Then I wrote the chord progression against that.

"The [Pro Tools] session was not happy," he adds with a chuckle. "It kept crashing. Eventually I had to print the drone but I printed it by myself and there was some crackle in it. It was distorting. And then I couldn't recreate it so Jon Low, who was helping me, was kind of mad at me 'cause he was like, 'You can't do that.' And I was like, 'Well, I was working quickly. I didn't know it'd become a song."

Orchestra Of Nowhere

Meanwhile, the orchestrations that appear on several of the tracks were scored by Aaron's twin brother and National bandmate, Bryce Dessner, who is located in France. "I would just make him chord charts of the songs and send them to him in France," Aaron says. "Then he would orchestrate things in Sibelius and send the parts to me. I would send the parts and the instrumental tracks to different players remotely and they would record them literally in their bedrooms or in their attics. None of it was done as a group, it was all done separately. But that's how we've always worked in the National so it's quite natural."

On folklore standout track 'exile', Justin Vernon of Bon Iver delivered his stirring vocal for the duet remotely from his home in Eaux Claires, Wisconsin. "He's renovating his studio, so he has a little home studio in his garage," says Dessner. "It was Taylor's idea to approach him. I sent him Taylor's voice memo of her singing both parts, and he got really excited and loved the song and then he wrote the extra part in the bridge.

"I do a lot of work remotely with Justin also, so it was easy to send him tracks and he would track to it and send back his vocals. I was sending him stems, so usually it's just a vocal stem of Taylor and an instrumental stem and then if he wants something deeper, I'll give him more stems. But generally, he's just working with the vocal layers and an instrumental."

Vernon also provided the grainy beat that kicks off 'closure', one of two tracks on evermore that started life as a sketch for the second Big Red Machine album. "It was this little loop that Justin had given me in this folder of 'Starters', he calls them. I had heard that and been playing the piano to it. But I was hearing it in 5/4, although it's not in 5/4. 'Closure' really opened everything up further. There were no real limits to where we were gonna try to write songs."

Given the number of remote players, Dessner says there were surprisingly few problems with the file swapping and that it was a fairly painless technical process. "It was pretty smooth, but there were issues," he admits. "Sometimes sample-rate issues, or if I happened to give someone an instrumental that was an MP3, that sometimes lines up differently than if you send them an actual WAV that's bounced on the grid. So, sometimes I'd have to kinda eyeball things.

"If there was trouble it started to be because of track counts. I probably only used 20 percent of what was actually recorded, 'cause we would try a lot of things, y'know. So, eventually the sessions got kinda crazy and you'd have to deactivate a lot of things and print things. But we got used to that."

Soft Piano

Aaron Dessner's characteristic dampened upright piano sound, familiar from the National's albums, is much in evidence throughout both folklore and evermore. "The upright is a Yamaha U1 that I've had for more than a decade. Usually, I play it with the soft pedal down and that's the sound of 'hoax' or 'seven' or 'cardigan', y'know, that felted sound. It kind of almost sounds like an electric piano.

"I always mic it the same way, just with two [AKG] 414s, and they're always the same distance off the wall. I had a studio in Brooklyn for 10 years and then when I moved here, I copied the same [wooden] pattern on the wall. And the reason I did that is 'cause of how much I love how this piano sounds bouncing off that wall. It just does something really special for the harmonics."

When on other folklore songs, such as 'exile' or 'the 1', where the piano was the main sonic feature of the track, Dessner played his Steinway grand. "A lot of times we use a pair of Coles [4038s] on the Steinway, just cause it's darker. But sometimes we'll have the 414s there as well and choose."

Keeping Warm

On both folklore and evermore, Taylor Swift's voice is very much front and center and high in the mix, and generally sounds fairly dry. "I think the main thing was I wanted her vocals to have a more full range than maybe you typically hear," Dessner explains. "'Cause I think a lot of the more pop-oriented records are mixed a certain way and they take some of the warmth out of the vocal, so that it's very bright and it kinda cuts really well on the radio. But she has this wonderful lower warmth frequency in her voice which is particularly important on a song like `seven'. If you carved out that mud, y'know, it wouldn't hit you the same way. Or, like, `cardigan', I think it needs that warmth, the kind of fuller feeling to it. It makes it darker, but to me that's where a lot of emotion is."

Effects-wise, almost all of the treatments were done in the box. "There's no outboard reverbs printed," says Dessner. "The only things that we did print would be like an [Eventide] H3000 or sometimes the [WEM] CopiCat tape delay for just a really subtle slap. But generally, it's just different reverbs in the box that Jon was using. He uses the Valhalla stuff quite a bit and some other UAD reverbs, like the [Capitol] Chambers. I often just use Valhalla VintageVerb and the [Avid] Black Spring and simple things."

In some instances, the final mix ended up being the never-bettered rough mix, while other songs took far more work. "'cardigan' is basically the rough, as is `seven'. So, like the early, early mixes, when we didn't even know we were mixing, we never were able to make it better. Like if you make it sound 'good', it might not be as good 'cause it loses some of its weird magic, y'know. But songs like `the last great american dynasty' or 'mad woman', those songs were a little harder to create the dynamics the way you want them, and the pay-off without going too far, and with also just keeping in the kind of aesthetic that we were in. Those were harder, I would say.

"On evermore, I would say 'willow' was probably the hardest one to finish just because there were so many ways it could've gone. Eventually we settled back almost to the point where it began. So, there's a lot of stuff that was left out of 'willow', just because the simplicity of the idea I think was in a way the strongest."

The subject of this month's Inside Track article, 'willow' was the first song written for evermore, immediately following the release of folklore. "It almost felt like a dare or something," Dessner laughs. "We were writing, recording and mixing all in one kind of work stream and we went from one record to the other almost immediately. We were just sort off to the races. We didn't really ever stop since April."

Rubber & Vinyl

Sometimes, Dessner and Swift drew inspiration from unlikely sources; `no body, no crime', for instance, started when he gave her a 'rubber bridge' guitar made by Reuben Cox of the Old Style Guitar Shop in LA. "He's my very old friend," says Dessner of Cox. "He buys undervalued vintage guitars. Stuff that was made in the '50s and '60s as sort of learner guitars, like old Silvertones and Kays and Harmonys. These kinds of guitars which now are quite special, but they're still not valued the same way that vintage Fenders or Gibsons are valued. Then, he customizes them.

"Recently he started retrofitting these guitars with a rubber bridge and flatwound strings. He'll take, like, an acoustic Silvertone from 1958 and put a bridge on it that's covered in this kind of rubber that deadens the strings, so it really has this kind of dead thrum to it. And he puts two pickups in there, one that's more distorted and one that's cleaner. They're just incredible guitars. I thought Taylor would enjoy having one 'cause she loves the sound. So, I had Reuben make one for her and she used it to write `no body, no crime'."

Another friend of Dessner's, Ryan Olsen, has developed a piece of software called the Allovers Hi-Hat Generator which helped create the unusual harmonic loops that feature on `marjorie'. "It's not available on the market," Dessner says of the software. "It's just something that he uses personally, but I think hopefully eventually it'll come out. I wouldn't say it's artificial intelligence software but there's something very intelligent about it [laughs]. It basically analyses audio information and is able to separate audio into identifiable samples and then put them into a database. You then can design parameters for it to spit out sequences that are incredibly musical.

"When Ryan comes here, he'll just take all kinds of things that I give him and run it through there and then it'll spit out, like, three hours of stuff. Then I go through it and find the layers that I love, then I loop them. You can hear it also on the song 'happiness', the drumming in the background. It's not actually played. That's drums that have been sampled and then re-analyzed and re-sequenced out of this Allovers Hi-Hat Generator."

The song `marjorie' is named after Swift's opera-singer grandmother and so, fittingly, her voice can be heard flitting in and out of the mix at the end of the track. "Taylor's family gave us a bunch of recordings of her grandmother," Dessner explains. "But they were from old, very scratchy, noisy vinyl. So, we had to denoise it all using [iZotope's] RX and then I went in and I found some parts that I thought might work. I pitch-shifted them into the key and then placed them. It took a while to find the right ones, but it's really beautiful to be able to hear her. It's just an incredibly special thing, I think."

Meet At The Pond

Taylor Swift finally managed to get together with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff in September 2020 for the filming of folklore: the long pond studio sessions, featuring the trio live-performing the album. It also provided an opportunity for Swift to add her vocals to some of the evermore tracks.

"It did allow us to have more fun, I think," says Dessner. "Y'know, drink more wine and just kinda be in the same place and have the feeling of blasting the music here and dancing around and just enjoying ourselves. She's really a lovely person to hang out with, so in that sense I'm glad that we had that chance to work together in person.

"We were using a [Telefunken] U47 to record Taylor here," he adds. "Either we were using one of the Siemens preamps on the board, which are amazing. Or I have Neve 1064s [preamps/EQs] and we use a Lisson Grove [AR-i] tube compressor generally."

One entirely new song, `tis the damn season', came out of this face-to-face approach, which Swift wrote in the middle of the night after the team had stayed up late drinking. "We had a bunch of wine actually," Dessner laughs, "and then everybody went to sleep, I thought. But I think she must have had this idea swimming around in her head, 'cause the next morning when she arrived, she sang 'Us the damn season' for me in my kitchen. It's maybe my favourite song we've written together. Then she sang it at dinner for me and my wife Stine and we were all crying. It’s just that kind of a song, so it was quite special.”

National Unity

One key track on evermore, 'coney island', features all of the members of the National and sees Swift duetting with their singer Matt Berninger. "My brother [Bryce] actually originated that song," says Aaron Dessner. "I sent him a reference at one point - I can't remember what it was - and then he was sort of inspired to write that chord progression. Then we worked together to sort of develop it and I wrote a bunch of parts and we structured it.

"Taylor and William Bowery [the songwriting pseudonym of Swift's boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn] wrote 'coney island' and she sang a beautiful version. It felt kind of done, actually. But then I think we all collectively thought, Taylor and myself and Bryce, like this was the closest to a National song."

Dessner then asked the brothers who make up the National's rhythm section, drummer Bryan and bassist Scott Devendorf, to play on 'coney island'. Matt Berninger, as he often does with the band's own tracks, recorded his vocal at home in Los Angeles. "It was never in the same place, it was done remotely," says Dessner, "except Bryan was here at Long Pond when he played. It was great to collaborate as a band with Taylor."

No Compromise

folklore and evermore have been both enormous critical and commercial successes for Taylor Swift. Aaron Dessner reckons that making these anti-pop records has freed the singer up for the future. "I think it was very liberating for her," he says. "I think that's the thing that's been probably the biggest change for her has just been being able to make songs without compromise and then release them without the promotional requirements that she's used to from the past. Obviously, it comes at this time when we're all in lockdown and nobody can tour or go on talk shows or anything. But I think for her probably it will impact what she does in the future.

"But I also think she can shapeshift again," he concludes. "Who knows where she'll go? She's had many celebrated albums from the past, but to release two albums of this quality in such a short time, it really did shine a light on her songwriting talent and her storytelling ability and also just her willingness to experiment and collaborate. Somehow, I ended up in the middle of all that and I'm very grateful."

INSIDE TRACK - Jonathan Low: Secrets of the Mix Engineers

Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Paul Tingen

From sketches to final mixes, engineer Jonathan Low spent 2020 overseeing Taylor Swift’s hit lockdown albums folklore and evermore.

“I think the theme of a lot of my work nowadays, and especially with these two records, is that everything is getting mixed all the time. I always try to get the songs to sound as finalised as they can be. Obviously that’s hard when you’re not sure yet what all the elements will be. Tracks morph all the time, and yet everything is always moving forwards towards completion in some way. Everything should sound fun and inspiring to listen to all the time.”

Speaking is Jonathan Low, and the two records he refers to are, of course, Taylor Swift’s 2020 albums folklore and evermore, both of which reached number one in the UK and the US. Swift’s main producer and co‑writer on the two albums was the National’s Aaron Dessner, also interviewed in this issue. Low is the engineer, mixer and general right‑hand man at Long Pond Studios in upstate New York, where he and Dessner spent most of 2020 working on folklore and evermore, with Swift in Los Angeles for much of the time.

“In the beginning it did not feel real,” recalls Low. “There was this brand‑new collaboration, and it was amazing how quickly Aaron made these instrumental sketches and Taylor wrote lyrics and melodies to them, which she initially sent to us as iPhone voice memos. During our nightly family dinners in lockdown, Aaron would regularly pull up his phone and say, ‘Listen to this!’ and there would be another voice memo from Taylor with this beautiful song that she had written over a sketch of Aaron’s in a matter of hours. The rate at which it was happening was mind‑blowing. There was constant elevation, inspiration and just wanting to continue the momentum.

“We put her voice memos straight into Pro Tools. They had tons of character, because of the weird phone compression and cutting midrange quality you just would not get when you put someone in front of a pristine recording chain. Plus there was all this bleed. It’s interesting how that dictates the attitude of the vocal and of the song. Even though none of the original voice memos ended up on the albums, they often gave us unexpected hints. These voice memos were such on‑a‑whim things, they were really telling. Taylor had certain phrasings and inflections that we often returned to later on. They became our reference points.”

Pond Life

The making of the National’s 2017 album Sleep Well Beast and the setup at Long Pond were covered in SOS October 2017; today the studio remains pretty much the same, with the exception of a new desk. “The main space is really big, and the console sits in the middle,” says Low. “In 2019, I installed a 1965 WSW/Siemens, which has 24 line‑in and microphone channels and another 24 line channels. WSW is the Austrian branch of Siemens usually built for broadcast. It’s loaded with 811510B channels. The build quality is insane, the switches and pots feel like they were made yesterday. To me it hints at the warm haze of a Class‑A Neve channel but sits further forward in the speakers. The midrange band on the passive EQ is a huge part of its charm, it really does feel like you’re changing the tone of the actual source rather than the recording. Most microphones go through the desk on their way into Pro Tools, though we sometimes use outboard Neve 1064 mic pres. Occasionally I use the Siemens to sum a mix.

“We have a pair of ATC SCM45 monitors, which sound very clear in the large room. The ceiling is very high, and the front wall is about 25 feet behind the monitors. There are diffusers on the sidewalls and the back walls are absorbing, so there are very few reflections. Aaron and I will be listening in tons of different ways. I’ll listen in my home studio with similar ATC SCM20 monitors or on my ‘70s Marantz hi‑fi setup. Aaron is always checking things in his car, and if there’s something that is bugging him, I’ll join him in his car to find out what he hears.”

Low works at Long Pond and with Dessner most of the time, though he does find time to do other projects, among hem this last year the War On Drugs, Waxahatchee and Nap Eyes. When lockdown started in Spring 2020, Low tacked up on supplies and "had a bunch f mixes lined up". Meanwhile, on the Eest Coast, Swift had seen her Lover Fest our cancelled. With help from engineer aura Sisk, she set up a makeshift studio which she dubbed Kitty Committee in bedroom in her Los Angeles home, and began working with long-term producer nd co-writer Jack Antonoff. At the end of April, however, Swift also started working with Dessner, which took the project in different direction. The impressionistic, atmospheric, electro-folk instrumentals Dessner sent her were mostly composed nd recorded by him at Long Pond, assisted by Low.

Sketching Sessions

The instrumental sketches Aaron makes come into being in different ways," elaborates Low. "Sometimes they are more fleshed-out ideas, sometimes they are less formed. But normally Aaron will set himself up in the studio, surrounded by instruments and synths, and he'll construct a track. Once he feels it makes some kind of sense I'll come in and take a listen and then we together develop what's there.

"I don't call his sketches demos, because while many instruments are added and replaced later on, most of the original parts end up in the final version of the song. We end up in the final version of the song. We try to get the sketches to a place where they are already very engaging as instrumental are already very engaging as instrumental tracks. Aaron and I are always obsessively listening, because we constantly want to hear things that feel inspiring and musical, not just a bed of music in the background. It takes longer to create, but in this case also gave Taylor more to latch onto, both emotionally and in terms of musical inspiration. Hearing melodies woven in the music triggered new melodies."

Not long after Dessner and Low sent each sketch to Swift, they would receive her voice memos in return, and they'd load them into the Pro Tools session of the sketch in question. Dessner and Low then continued to develop the songs, in close collaboration with Swift. "Taylor's voice memos often came with suggestions for how to edit the sketches: maybe throw in a bridge somewhere, shorten a section, change the chords or arrangement somewhere, and so on. Aaron would have similar ideas, and he then developed the arrangements, often with his brother Bryce, adding or replacing instruments. This happened fast, and became very interactive between us and Taylor, even though we were working remotely. When we added instruments, we were reacting to the way my rough mixes felt at the very beginning. Of course, it was also dictated by how Taylor wrote and sang to the tracks."

Dessner supplied sketches for nine and produced 10 of folklore's 16 songs, playing many different types of guitars, keyboards and synths as well as percussion and programmed drums. Instruments that were added later include live strings, drums, trombone, accordion, clarinet, harpsichord and more, with his brother Bryce doing many of the orchestrations. Most overdubs by other musicians were done remotely as well. Throughout, Low was keeping an overview of everything that was going on and mixing the material, so it was as presentable and inspiring as possible.

Mixing folklore

Although Dessner has called folklore an "anti-pop album", the world's number-one pop mixer Serban Ghenea was drafted in to mix seven tracks, while Low did the remainder.

"It was exciting to have Serban involved," explains Low, "because he did things I'd never do or be able to do. The way the vocal sits always at the forefront, along with the clarity he gets in his mixes, is remarkable. A great example of this is on the song 'epiphany'. There is so much beautiful space and the vocal feels effortlessly placed. It was really interesting to hear where he took things, because we were so close to the entire process in every way. Hearing a totally new perspective was eye-opening and refreshing.

"Throughout the entire process we were trying to maintain the original feel. Sometimes this was hard, because that initial rawness would get lost in large arrangements and additional layering. With revisions of folklore in particular we sometimes were losing the emotional weight from earlier more casual mixes. Because I was always mixing, there was also always the danger of over-mixing.

"We were trying to get the best of each mix version, and sometimes that meant stepping backwards, and grabbing a piano chain from an earlier mix, or going three versions back to before we added orchestration. There were definitely moments of thinking, 'Is this going to compete sonically? Is this loud enough?' We knew we loved the way the songs sounded as we were building them, so we stuck with what we knew. There were times where I tried to keep pushing a mix forward but it didn't improve the song — 'cardigan' is an example of a song where we ended up choosing a very early mix."

The Low Down

"I'm originally from Philadelphia," says Jonathan Low, "and played piano, alto saxophone and guitar when growing up. My dad is an electrical engineer and audiophile hobbyist, and I learned a lot about circuit design and how to repair things. I then started building guitar pedals and guitar amps, and recorded bands at my high school using a minidisc player and some binaural microphones. After that I did a music industry programme at Drexel University, and spent a lot of time working at the recording facilities there.

"This led to me meeting Brian McTear, a producer and owner of Miner Street Studios, which became my home base from 2009 to 2014. I learned a lot from him, from developing an interest in creating sounds in untraditional ways, to how to see a record through to completion. The studio has a two-inch 16-track Ampex MM1200 tape machine and a beautiful MCI 400 console which very quickly shaped the way I think about routing and signal flow. I'm lucky to have learned this way, because a computer environment is like the Wild West: there are no rules in terms of how to get from point A to point B. This flexibility is incredible, but sometimes there are simply too many options.

"l met Aaron [Dessned] because singer-songwriter Sharon van Etten recorded her second album, Epic [2010] at Miner Street, with Brian producing. Her third album, Tramp [2012] was produced by Aaron. They came to Philly to record drums and I ended up mixing a bunch of that record. After that I would occasionally go to work in Aaron's garage studio in Brooklyn, and this became more and more a regular collaboration. I then moved from Philly up to the Hudson Valley to help Aaron build Long Pond. We first used the studio in the spring of 2016, when beginning to record the National's album Sleep Well Beast."

Onward & Upward

folklore was finished and released in July 2020. In a normal world everyone might have gone on to do other things, but without the option of touring, they simply continued writing songs, with Low holding the fort. In September, many of the musicians who played on the album gathered at Long Pond for the shooting of a making-of documentary, folklore: the long pond studio sessions, which is streamed on Disney+.

The temporary presence of Swift at Long Pond changed the working methods somewhat, as she could work with Dessner in the room, and Low was able record her vocals. After Swift left again, sessions continued until December, when evermore was released, with Dessner producing or co-producing all tracks, apart from 'gold rush' which was co-written and co-produced by Swift and Antonoff. Low recorded many of Swift's vocals for evermore, and mixed the entire album. The lead single 'willow' became the biggest hit from the album, reaching number one in the US and number three in the UK.

"Before Taylor came to Long Pond," remembers Low, "she had always recorded her vocals for folklore remotely in Los Angeles or Nashville. When I recorded, I used a modern Telefunken U47, which is our go-to vocal mic — we record all the National stuff with that — going straight into the Siemens desk, and then into a Lisson Grove AR-1 tube compressor, and via a Burl A-D converter into Pro Tools. Taylor creates and lays down her vocal arrangements very quickly, and it sounds like a finished record in very few takes."

Devils In The Detail

In his mixes, Low wanted listeners to share his own initial response to these vocal performances. "The element that draws me in is always Taylor's vocals. The first time I received files with her properly recorded but premixed vocals I was just floored. They sounded great, even with minimal EQ and compression. They were not the way I'm used to hearing her voice in her pop songs, with the vocal soaring and sitting at the very front edge of the soundscape. In these raw performances, I heard so much more intimacy and interaction with the music. It was wonderful to hear her voice with tons of detail and nuances in place: her phrasing, her tonality, her pitch, all very deliberate. We wanted to maintain that. It's more emotional, and it sounds so much more personal to me. Then there was the music..."

The arrangements on evermore are even more 'chamber pop' than on folklore, with instruments like glockenspiel, crotales, flute, French horn, celeste and harmonium in evidence. "As listeners of the National may know, Aaron's and Bryce's arrangements can be quite dense. They love lush orchestration, all sorts of percussion, synths and other electronic sounds. The challenge was trying to get them to speak, without getting in the way of the vocals. I want a casual listener to be drawn in by the vocal, but sense that something special is happening in the music as well. At the same time, someone who really is digging in can fully immerse themselves and take in all the beauty deeper in the details of the sound and arrangement. Finding the balance between presenting all the musical elements that were happening in the arrangement and this really beautiful, upfront, real-sounding vocal was the ticket."

A particular challenge is that a lot of the detail that Aaron gravitates towards happens in the low mids, which is a very warm part of our hearing spectrum that can quickly become too muddy or too woolly. A lot of the tonal and musical information lives in the low mids, and then the vocal sits more in the midrange and high mids. There's not too much in the higher frequency range, except the top of the guitars, and some elements like a shaker and the higher buzzy parts of the synths. Maintaining clarity and separation in those often complex arrangements was a major challenge."

In & Out The Box

According to Low, the final mix stage for evermore was "very short. There was a moment in the final week or so leading up to the release where the songs were developed far enough for me to sit down and try to make something very cohesive and final, finalising vocal volume, overall volume, and the vibe. There's a point in every mix where the moves get really small. When a volume ride of 0.1dB makes a difference, you're really close to being done. Earlier on, those little adjustments don't really matter.

"I often try to mix at the console, with some outboard on the two-bus, but folklore was mixed all in the box, because we were working so fast, plus initially the plan was for the mixes to be done elsewhere. I ran a couple of mixes for evermore through the console, and `closure' was the only one that stuck. It was summed through the Siemens, with an API 2500 compressor and a Thermionic Culture Phoenix and then back into Pro Tools via the Burl A-D. I will use hardware when mixing in the box, though mainly just two units: the Eventide H3000, because I have not found any plug-ins that do the same thing, and the [Thermionic] Culture Vulture, for its very broad tone shaping and distortion properties.

"The writing and the production happened closely in conjunction with the engineering and mixing, and the arrangements were dense, making many of the sessions super hefty and actually quite messy. Sounds would constantly change roles in the arrangement and sometimes plug-ins would just stack up. So final mixing involved cleaning up the sessions and stemming large groups down."

Across The Rubber Bridge

The Pro Tools mix session of 'willow' has close to 100 tracks, though there's none of the elaborate bussing that's the hallmark of some modern sessions. At the top are six drum machine tracks in green from the Teenage Engineering OP-1, an instrument that was used extensively on the album. Below that are five live percussion tracks (blue), three bass tracks (pink), and an `AUX Drums' programming track. There's a 'rubber bridge' guitar folder and aux, OP-1 synth tracks, piano tracks, 'Dream Machine' (Josh Kaufman's guitar) and E-bow tracks, Yamaha, Sequential Prophet X, Moog and Roland Juno synth tracks, and Strings and Horns aux stem tracks.

"Most of the drum tracks were performed on the OP-1 by Aaron. These are not programmed tracks. Bryan Devendorf, drummer of the National, programmed some beats on a Roland TR-8S. I ran those though the Fender Rumble bass amp, which adds some woofiness, like an acoustic kit room mic. There's an acoustic shaker, and there's an OP-1 backbeat that's subtle in the beginning, and then gets stronger towards the end of the song. I grouped all the drum elements and the bass, and sent those out to a hardware insert with the Culture Vulture, for saturation, so it got louder and more and more harmonically rich. There is this subtle growing and crescendo of intensity of the rhythm section by the end.

"The 'rubber bridge' guitars were the main anchor in the instruments. These guitars have a wooden bridge wrapped in rubber, and sound a bit like a nylon-string guitar, or a light palm mute. They're very percussive and sound best when recorded on our Neumann U47 and a DI. On many of those DI tracks I have a [SPL] Transient Designer to lower the sustain and keep them punchy, especially in the low end. There's a folder with five takes of 'rubber bridge' guitar in this session, creating this wall of unique guitar sound.

"I treated the 'rubber bridge' guitars quite extensively. There's a FabFilter Pro-Q3 cutting some midrange frequencies and some air around 10kHz. These guitars can splash out in the high end and have a boominess that's in the same range as the low end of Taylor's vocal, so I had to keep these things under control. Then I used a SoundToys Tremolator, with a quarter-note tremolo that makes the accents in the playing a bit more apparent. I like to get the acoustic guitars a little bit out of the way for the less important beats, so I have the Massey CT5 compressor side-chained to the kick drum. I also used the UAD Precision K-Stereo to make the guitars a bit wider. The iZotope Ozone Exciter adds some high mids and high-end harmonic saturation sparkly stuff, and the SoundToys EchoBoy delay is automated, with it only coming on in the bridge, where I wanted more ambience."

Growing Pains

"Once we had figured out how to sit the 'rubber bridge' guitars in the mix, the next challenge was to work out the end of the song, after the bridge. Taylor actually goes down an octave with her voice in the last chorus, and at the same time the music continues to push and grow. That meant using a lot of automation and Clip Gain adjustment to make sure the vocal always stayed on top. There also are ambient pianos playing counter-melodies, and balancing the vocals, guitars and pianos was the main focus on this song. We spent a lot of time balancing this, particularly as the track grows towards the end.

"The vocal tracks share many of the same plug-ins and settings. On the main lead vocal track I added the UAD Pultec EQP-1A, with a little bit of a cut in the low end at 30Hz, and a boost at 8kHz, which adds some modern air. The second plug-in is the Oeksound Soothe, which is just touching the vocal, and it helps with any harsh resonance stuff in the high mids, and a little in the lower mids. Next is the UAD 1176AE, and then the FabFilter Pro-Q3, doing some notches at 200Hz, 1kHz, 4kHz and close to 10kHz. I tend to do subtractive EQ on the Q3, and use more analogue-sounding plug-ins, like the Pultec or the Maag, to boost. After that is the FabFilter Pro-DS [de-esser], taking off a couple of decibels, followed by the FabFilter Saturn 2 [saturation processor], on a warm tape setting.

"Below the vocal tracks are three aux effects tracks, for the vocals. 'Long Delay' has a stereo EchoBoy going into an Altiverb with a spring reverb, for effect throws in the choruses. 'Chamber' is the UAD Capitol Chamber, which gives the vocal a nice density and size, without it being a long reverb. The 'Plate' aux is the UAD EMT140, for the longer tail. These two reverbs work in conjunction, with the chamber for the upfront space, determining where the vocal sits in the mix, and the plate more for the depth behind that.

"At the bottom of the session is a two-bus aux, which mimics the way I do the two-bus on the desk. The plug-ins are the UAD Massive Passive EQ, UAD API 2500 compressor, and the UAD Ampex ATR102. Depending on the song, I will choose 15ips or 30ips. In this case it was set to 15ips, half-inch GP9. That has a nice, aggressive, midrange push, and the GP9 bottom end goes that little bit lower. There's also a PSP Vintage Warmer, a Sonnox Oxford Inflator, plus a FabFilter Pro-L2 [limiter]. None of these things are doing very much on their own, but in conjunction give me the interaction I expect from an analogue mix chain."

#Aaron Dessner #bryce dessner #Jonathan Low #the long pond studio sessions #making of #folklore album #evermore album #interview #about taylor #taylor swift #songwriting #producer #evermore era #folklore era #Sound on Sound Magazine #scans

258 notes · View notes

aethelflaedladyofmercia · 3 years

Text

Twelve Months - Good Omens fanfic

Happy 31st Anniversary of Good Omens! :D

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I have posted a slightly-sad, slightly-sweet Wake the Snake fic on AO3, because our demon has been napping for a whole Twelve Months, and sometimes Angel gets a little lonely!

Thank you all for another fantastic year in this fandom!

Twelve months.

Aziraphale pushed open the door to Crowley’s flat, a simple shopping bag tucked under his arm.

The lights were still off, the curtains drawn in the awful empty room he called a study. Nothing had changed.

He passed through the enormous, rotating section of wall and into the solarium. This was still bright—many of the plants flourishing despite being unattended so long, despite clearly not having enough water. A few had started flowering. They waved their branches at him as he entered, perking up eagerly.

The angel waved back, but first he peeked into Crowley’s bedroom.

He was still where Aziraphale had left him, on his last visit a month before. Bright red hair spilled across black pillows, grown into a stringy mop. Duvet pulled up to his messily-bearded chin. One hand curled up beside him on the bed.

Still asleep.

With a sigh, Aziraphale crossed over to the plants, who greeted him excitedly, unfurling their newest leaves, a few vines hanging down to brush his face.

“Hello, my lovelies. How are you all doing? Look at you, grown at least a foot since I saw you, I’m sure. And you! What beautiful pink buds. Very impressive.”

He didn’t think Crowley would approve of how he spoke to the plants, but the poor things had been so distraught on his first visit, straining to keep upright, trying to hide their yellowing leaves. So much healthier now, much happier for just a bit of attention. He picked up the watering can and gave them all a quick splash. He didn’t know how much water each needed, but it didn’t seem to matter.

“You keep it up, dears. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Picking up his shopping bag again, Aziraphale headed down the hall to the kitchen. The kettle sat on the island where he’d left it, and he quickly refilled it and set it to boil. While he waited, he pulled his latest creations from the bag: a small pumpkin spice cake from a recipe he’d been perfecting since fall, a lemon coconut cake, and a few apple cinnamon muffins.

Two plates—a muffin for each, a slice of the coconut cake for himself and the pumpkin spice for Crowley.[1] The rest went into the refrigerator, where they would never go bad or stale.

Aziraphale put the plates onto a tray, along with forks and napkins. Next he found two mugs and pulled the little tin of his second-favorite tea out of the bag just as the kettle boiled.

For himself, a teaspoon of the expertly blended leaves, steeped for exactly three minutes, resulting in a pale brown tea with a slightly spicy aroma. For Crowley, he dropped a tea bag into boiling water and let it sit until it was almost black.[2]

He carried the tray back to the solarium and selected a bright red-and-gold tulip that was nearly vibrating in its eagerness to be noticed. A moment to assure the other plants that they were still doing fabulously—particularly a self-conscious little succulent that had rather drooped over the winter but was making a fine recovery—and he once more headed into Crowley’s bedroom.

Crowley had rolled over, and now sprawled on his back, sleeping soundly. He’d apparently kicked a bit, too, as the blanket had slid down past his stomach. Aziraphale smiled as he set the tray on the chair he’d brought in some months ago and got to work.

“It’s wonderful to see you again, dear,” he started cheerfully, carefully rearranging the objects on the little bedside table. “I have a few things for you again, I hope you don’t mind.” Just enough space to slide the mug and the little plate. Perfect.

“I received a package from Tadfield again. Everyone wrote a note and then gathered them all together, really quite clever. They’re all doing well, if a bit bored.” The table was nearly overflowing with little items now, brought in by Aziraphale to cheer the place up. Framed pictures of their human friends, quarantining with their families, clustered in one corner so tightly you could hardly see them anymore.

He pulled the latest out of the shopping bag. “Anathema has started a garden,” he explained, pausing to show the photograph to Crowley’s sleeping form. It showed the witch, kneeling outside her little cottage, working on growing several rows of herbs. “I got the impression she was off to a rough start, but she hopes to send us some mint in the next package. Although Newt warned me not to expect too much, as they’d already forgotten which patch is mint and which is oregano.” He set the picture with the others, and slid the potted tulip alongside it. “I’m sure she could use some advice from you, when you’re ready to share.”

“Nnnnh.” Aziraphale spun eagerly, but no, just Crowley shifting in his sleep again, rolling onto his side.

The angel paused to pull the duvet back up to Crowley’s chin, tugging it straight and smoothing a hand down his back. In a way, his friend was nearly unrecognizable, with that hair and ridiculous beard, but in another way looked the same as ever. That was always Crowley’s way, of course, constantly changing yet somehow always the same.

He lingered, taking in the shape of that face, leaning close, lips hovering above his cheekbone—

Aziraphale pulled back, quickly digging into his bag again. “Oh! Ah, the, um, the children have been making projects for their art class. This past month was sculpture, and they sent us some. Look!” He pulled out four little figures of oven-baked clay. “Ah, young Wensleydale has made a very clever model of a train car. Brian’s is…abstract.” He turned the next a few different ways. “And Pepper’s is, ah, either a very complex symbolic representation of the Patriarchy, or…a troll, I think.” They just fit on the edge of the table, all in a line, a very mismatched tableau. The fourth, on the end, was the best, in Aziraphale’s opinion. “Adam made a little Dog, and it’s very well done, don’t you think?” The canine figure posed with one leg raised and head cocked, ready to play, but the shadow it cast was just a little too large, too ominous, for such a small creature.

With a sigh, Aziraphale shifted the row this way and that. “I sent a letter to Warlock, over in America, but haven’t heard back since Christmas. I believe they’re very busy with something. Politics. You know how it is.” When the Dowlings had left England, they’d planned to return for a visit the following summer. A global pandemic had had other ideas.

“In any case, that just leaves Tracy and Shadwell. I understand he’s decided to hate the concept of literacy this month, so no word on how his war with the squirrels is going. And Tracy has declared she will spend the summer making a fairy garden. I thought her sketches looked very promising, and she promised to send us an update in June. I’m sure you’ll find it charming.”

“Hrrrrm.” Crowley sank under the duvet, nestling down a little deeper. Aziraphale smiled, settling into the chair with his plate and mug.

“Things are loosening up again,” he explained, taking a bite of cake. Delicious, if he said so himself. Sharp and not too sweet. “People are getting vaccinated, shops opening up. It’s really a lovely breath of fresh air, at least when you’re not wearing a mask.” A long sip from his mug, then he held it, fingers tapping. “It’s been nice walking through the park again, just in time for the baby ducks. And that record shop at the corner, they’ve had some wonderful new additions. Which reminds me.”

Putting aside his mug, Aziraphale dug through the bag again and pulled out a handful of square plastic cases. “They had a whole shipment of those little records the Bentley likes. Modern music. I picked out the ones with the rudest names. I’m sure you’ll enjoy them.” He pulled out the first disc and placed it atop Crowley’s phone. The device blinked in confusion a few times, then obediently copied all the music.

“Of course, it’s not all good news.” He stacked the rest of the discs atop the phone and returned to his tea. “Reopening means the customers are coming back. Yesterday, this one individual spent almost an hour browsing the same three shelves. And then he tried to make off with one of my books.” Another long sip. “Granted, he offered to pay, but still. What sort of establishment does he think I’m running?”

Aziraphale paused, waiting for Crowley to respond, not that he ever did. The demon’s eyelids moved a little, but no more.

Sighing, Aziraphale turned to his muffin. “You know, many times in the last year, I’ve wished you were there. Particularly during reopening phases. You could have posed as a customer, and then I’d be able to tell people I was at the capacity limit. Oh, and the people who would call to try and buy my rarest books. Collectors, or so they claimed, but then they just turn around and sell to anyone for twice the price! I’m sure you’d have some biting things to say about such people.” He smiled at Crowley’s sleeping face. “I’ve missed that, and your jokes. Rather more than I expected to.”

When his plate and tea were finished, Aziraphale set them on the floor and reached again into the bag. “Now, I have been attempting to teach my computer how to use the internet. I think it’s going quite well. Adam and his friends gave me a ‘homework assignment’ to find articles on recent news events, and I made the most wonderful discovery. Did you know that humans now share their news through humorous pictures? I printed out my favorites to show you.”[3]

He flicked through a few. “Ah, to start with, a few months ago there was this American politician with amusing mittens who showed up everywhere for a few days. It was extremely droll.” He leaned closer, holding them up for Crowley to see. “Ah, a few more from America. The murder hornets arrived, though by that point everyone had forgotten them. The election became increasingly confusing, and it all ended in a parking lot. For a little while everything was ‘This-or-That Total Landscaping,’ and before that everything was cake.” He showed a few extremely clever illusions. “I did try to make my own, but couldn’t manage it without miracles, which I felt was cheating.”

Really, leaning like this was starting to strain his back. Aziraphale shifted to sit on the edge of the bed, the better to share his pictures. “Ahhh. Also for a time everyone’s calendars were stuck on ‘March.’ And then earlier this year, a group of people learned how the stock market works, but sadly not how to spell it. The whole situation seemed very much like the sort of thing you’d be involved in. And…Oh, this angel from a television show was sent to Hell for…reasons.” He glanced at the shape beside him. Crowley had curled in slightly, pressing against Aziraphale’s back. “Yes. Various reasons. And then this musician, I suppose, went on his own. Both had many people extraordinarily upset.”

The next few images would really tickle Crowley, if he could actually see them. “The biggest news is that a large ship got stuck sideways in that canal in Egypt. Stopped half the world’s shipping for a few days while they dug it out! I’m sure you would have liked that very much. Exactly your sort of trouble. The humans were all very excited.”

The final photo was another of the ship, an image Aziraphale had made himself, printing out a blank version and writing on it in felt-tip pen. The hull of the enormous ship was labeled, “An eternity putting up with the tedious bureaucracy and frequently conflicting commands of my superiors until I begin to doubt my own judgement and sanity,”[4] while the small digger working steadily beside it was “Crowley.”

Aziraphale watched the demon beside him, not really expecting a reaction, certainly not getting one. He reached over, brushing brilliant hair back from Crowley’s forehead. “I think you’d have had rather a lot of fun last year. Or perhaps you’d have been upset you could only watch from a distance. Or…”

He’d leaned much closer than he’d intended, hovering just above Crowley’s forehead.

“Well!” Aziraphale stumbled to his feet. “I suppose that’s just about everything.” He picked up the tray from where he’d rested it on the floor, starting to re-load it with everything he’d brought in. Crowley’s cake and tea sat untouched, as always, but Aziraphale wouldn’t dream of skipping them. “We’re all very optimistic for the summer. Two months and everything should be just…just tickety-boo. Perhaps we can go for that picnic soon, if…yes…”

They’d made such plans for 2020. All the things they would do now they were free. Plans, and other thoughts carried in their minds, possibilities that would play out in their own time. Not too fast, just a slow, steady exploration of everything they could be…

“Well. Pleasant as that idea is, best not to—to plan too much, as the previous year made fools of us all. I just…” He turned away from the tray and watched Crowley sleep, hands clasped before him. “I miss you terribly. And I wish…very much…”

He picked up his shopping bag. One item still inside. The same one he’d been carrying for months, trying to find the courage to bring it out.

With a shaking hand, he reached in and drew forth a soft hand-made doll. He’d spent much of the winter on it. Simple white cotton for the head and body, wooly curls for the hair, and stiff white lace for the wings. Dressed in waistcoat and bowtie made from Aziraphale’s favorite tartan.

He still wasn’t sure why he brought it. He’d stitched several little toys, particularly a lovely black-and-red serpent with gold button eyes that had watched him from the sofa since November. But this, for reasons he couldn’t articulate, this one was for Crowley.

“I, ah…” He shuffled closer, doll clutched in both hands. “I made, um…” Back to the edge of the bed, one hand fumbling across the duvet. “…thought you might like…”

Crowley’s face stood out in stark contrast to the pillow, pale skin and bright hair. Aziraphale wanted to drink it in, memorize every detail, to hold him over until next month. The curve of his nose, the sharp angle of his cheekbones. His lashes flickering as his eyes moved. His lips, pursed ever so slightly…

“Bless it, Angel, are you going to kiss me or not?”

Aziraphale gasped, pulling back from the bright gaze of slit-pupil eyes. “You—you’re awake!”

“Nnnh. Half.” Crowley shifted, head moving across the pillow, eyes threatening to shut again. “Wouldn’t miss your visit.” One hand reached out, plucked the doll from Aziraphale’s unresisting fingers. “For me?”

The angel nodded. “If…if…you like it…or I could—I could just…”

Without a word, Crowley pulled the doll under the duvet and curled up, tucking it under his chin, a faint smile on his lips.

“If you were awake you—you should have said something! I’ve been going—going off like a fool all this—oh!” Aziraphale could feel his face turning hot as he recalled a few times his tongue had been a bit too loose for propriety.

“Mmmmmh.” The golden eyes were shut again.

“Crowley?” No response. “Crowley!” Aziraphale scowled. “Anthony J. Crowley, if you’ve fallen asleep again, I swear, I’ll—”

He’d do what? The angel fumed, but what could he really threaten? To stay away? Never.

“Alright then, I suppose I’ll see you in June. I’ve had several new requests for extremely rare manuscripts and I need to go pen some responses reprimanding these vultures for their cheek. I can—”

“You can stay.”

He spun around. Crowley had one eye barely cracked open. Gently, he pulled back the duvet, showing there was just enough space for Aziraphale beside him.

“I…I couldn’t.” But he stepped forward, not back. “I have business tomorrow, things to—”

“Just tonight then.”

His fingers brushed the mattress and pulled back as if burned. “You—you don’t really mean this, you’re just talking in your sleep.”

“Nah.” Crowley settled the doll by his pillow, making space. “Why else would I give you my key?”

“I…to…water the plants?”

“They take care of themselves.” Crowley held open his arms, eyes shut once more. “I missed you, too.”

Well. What could he say to that?

Aziraphale took off his shoes and slid into bed, into Crowley's arms. They wrapped around him gently as Crowley wriggled closer. “Mmmm. Y’r softer than the doll.”

“Oh.” He’d been called soft many times, generally as a way to imply he was a failure as an angel. But just this once, it made him feel rather pleased. “Soft is good?”

“Verrrry good.” Crowley twisted a bit, trying to find a comfortable way to rest his long limbs, and finally settled curled up against Aziraphale’s chest, tucked below the angel’s chin with a leg hooked over his knees.

The angel smiled. “And you’re…you’re noodlier than a stuffed snake. Err…”

A chuckle, just a stirring of breath across his throat. “Can’t wait to hear the story behind that.” Crowley nuzzled against his shoulder with a sigh. “Good night, Angel.”

Aziraphale swept the brilliant hair back again and bent down, pressing his lips to Crowley’s forehead. A soft, gentle kiss that made his friend smile a little more broadly. “Good night, my dear.”

Crowley drifted off again, burrowing close, as the angel continued to gently tease the back of his hair. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps tomorrow's work wasn't so very urgent. Perhaps a bit of rest would do him good. And perhaps...

Well. Don't plan too much. But for the first time, Aziraphale felt a bit of optimism about the coming summer and its possibilities.

“Sleep well, Crowley.”

[1] Crowley had invented pumpkin spice, and Aziraphale assumed he must like it. In truth, Crowley despised it, and regretted every autumn how it took over the entire world. He missed apple cider season. [2] Aziraphale had suspected since the early 1950s that Crowley secretly took his tea with several lumps of sugar, but would continue to pretend he didn’t know until Crowley confessed. Considering current circumstances, that was unlikely to be any time soon. [3] Aziraphale’s fax machine, revived after over three decades of disuse, had been somewhat confused to be asked to perform any task at all, much less to print memes onto photo paper with perfectly balanced color; but like the plants and Crowley’s phone, it couldn’t stand to disappoint the angel. [4] It was possible he hadn’t quite mastered this new form of communication.

124 notes · View notes

levathia · 3 years

Text

Forgive me those who'll find this AU rather strange

NEW DEMON SLAYER AU EXPLANATION

FEMALE (Y/N) CHARACTER INTRODUCTION

NOTE:

Regular Font - Speaking in Japanese

Bold - Speaking in a different language

Italic - Thoughts / Thinking

The Concepts in this AU Includes:

Magic

Fantasy

Witch

Witchcraft

Supernatural

Modern Reader

Time Traveler

AU Explanation: You do not originate from the time of the Demon Slayers. In this Alternate Universe, you are a girl who was born in 2006 in Australia. Before your drug addicted mother died from an overdose, she never once mentioned the special secret that your family had unless it was just to play with you. As a child, you wished so bad to be the main character with cool superpowers, but of course as you matured you slowly let that fantasy go. But it wasn't until after you turned 13 when you randomly remembered that Witchcraft was indeed a thing and felt nothing but interest for it.

You don't know how or why you suddenly felt drawn to it, but you really didn't care. If anything, you were the only person who you knew didn't find Witchcraft that big of a deal. You thought that everyone should just accept it and find it normal. Your interest grew very slowly, and it was only until a few weeks after turning 14 when you decided in the middle of school that when you got home, you'd start your research on its history and it's differences. Then, when you felt like you were well educated and ready, you'd finally start to practice it.

But, of course, good timing wasn't on your side that often. In fact, nothing ever went as planned for you in your life. On that same day, you had gotten into yet another argument with your abusive, alcoholic father. Not to mention, it was right in front of your closest friend, Lydia. You trusted her with your thoughts and interests within Witchcraft and therefore, told her all about it.

And lucky for you, she grew an interest in it as well.

She happened to come home with you on that day as you both expected your father to be passed out on the floor during most of the time, but of course, on important days like this, your father just had to be awake and fully functioning. It wasn't even the alcohol that made him act so violently towards you, it was your plain existence, the alcohol would just make it even worse. Your guys' fight was one of the biggest you'd have yet again, and it got so heated to the point where you'd snatch Lydia's wrist and drag her to the nearest room for safety. The nearest room was your father's, you didn't care if he'd become even more mad at the fact that you were now violating his privacy, you just wanted to make sure that Lydia would be safe and you wouldn't become even more humiliated than you already were by getting a full on beating in front of her. If you had to knock your father out in front of her, then damn would it suck to be him.

After locking the door, you quickly started to look around for objects that you could defend yourselves with. You armed Lydia with two empty and thick bottles of alcohol and made it clear that if he dared approach her with the intention of harming her, then to smack the lights out of the man. The next place to look into was under his bed, and that was when you spotted a strange object. Despite the loud banging and yelling from outside of the room and feeling every bit of panic and fear that Lydia was feeling(As the poor Empath you were), you felt drawn to the object and didn't mind giving it a minute of your attention. The object really wasn't that strange, it shouldn't have been.

It was just strange for your brainless and ignorant father to have something that other actual, open-minded, intellectuals would also have laying all over the place.

It was a book. A really old, dusty and thick book. It had no title on it but it did have a name and date.

Greta Ricco

January 1, 1790

Ricco was your father's last name, but you always stuck with your mother's. Even though they both severely disappointed you as a daughter, you'd rather be with your narcissistic mother than with your hateful and ignorant and pitiful excuse of a human you were, as you'd say, cursed, to call your father.

'1790??' You thought to yourself in surprise,'How is this not in a museum?'

You gently flipped the book open and read it's first page

'Hmm, it's in Italian…' Good thing you decided to educate yourself on your Italian blood without any of your father's help as the independent girl you were

"This book belongs to all of the future descendants of the Ricco family. For the blood of our Witch ancestors runs through our veins"

Your father was a witch? But how come he'd never brought it up?

"The ------ in this book will only work for those who possess their blood. To whoever the owner is of this book, you are to do whatever you can to hide it from nonwitches"

Curious, (Y/n) flipped to the next page

"Sleeping"

Under the title were little paragraphs of words arranged in a poetic type of format. You continued to flip through its pages until one caught your eye.

"Time Stopping"

"(Y/n)"

You started to read the Italian texts in your mind.

"(Y/n)..."

For some reason, you felt intrigued by the strange poem. You basically poured your emotions into every word of it.

"(Y/n)!"

Lydia reached her hand out to you and before she was able to touch you, you had already finished reading the poem. And at the same time, the banging had stopped, and the whole house was once again silent. You looked up at Lydia, and she too was staring at the door, wondering why your father suddenly stopped trying to break in.

"Why did he stop?" Lydia asked

"I don't know…" You replied as you continued to look through the book

"Time Traveling"

'Eh?' You thought to yourself,'Time traveling?' Once again, you started to read the 'Poem' in your head

You read the words with emotion, not knowing what was awaiting you and your friend at the end of it. Once you finished off the last stanza, well, you couldn't really find the words to explain what had happened next. It was as if you and Lydia had teleported. You were just in your father's bedroom one second and in the next, a forest.

"What the fuck?!?!" Lydia exclaimed,"What the hell- Where- (Y/n) what just happened?! Weren't we just in your home?!??"

All you could do at that moment was just stare blankly at absolutely nothing with wide eyes. That one word that you couldn't read on the first page of the book was unable to be read because you never thought about its Italian translation. This wasn't some diary from a distant relative of yours, nor was it a book of poems. This was a book of spells. It can only explain why your family's witch bloodline was mentioned in it.

And from what you could assume from the first page, you were a witch since birth.

You guys couldn't go back home now. No matter how many times you had tried. You had just discovered your powers and were still clearly unable to control them.

To make a long story short, you and your friend eventually found your way around and got used to the new environment and Era. One day, you and your friend decide to use the Teleportation spell to admire Japan's beauty. There, you two met a teenager by the name: Kagaya Ubuyashiki. You three grew close, and eventually you told him about your secret. Luckily, he kept it to himself and you even promised to use your abilities to an advantage to survive one of the most dangerous Eras in Japan, that you two didn't even know you were currently living in. The Taisho Era.

If your father or the global pandemic wasn't going to kill you, the demons sure as hell would. Because you still couldn't master your witch abilities and knew that you had to be able to defend yourselves if you were to ever run into a demon, you guys decided to join the Demon Slayer Corps. It was the corps that Kagaya was currently leading. Years went by, and you and Lydia never aged mentally or physically. Your wounds from the day you discovered the spell book never healed.

But your skills grew, and you were ready to defeat demons with or without the help of magic. You started to view Kagaya as both a best friend and a father figure for you. You were there to welcome the rest of the Hashira after they earned their spots and because of your thoughtful, caring, bright and energetic personality, you got along with all of them very well. You and Lydia lived together in your own, huge mansion, that could only be accessed whenever you use the spell that you made just for it. It was only Kagaya, his daughters and the Hashira that knew about your and Lydia's secret.

You'd think that you would be the Pillar of Magic. But Lydia took that title, and instead, you were given the title of: the Pillar of Positivity. In this Alternate Universe, you are a 14 year old, iconic, Gen Z, Australian girl who is full of optimism, humor, hope, open-mindedness, confidence, love and compassion, power and badassery. Unlike Shinobu, your smiles and happiness are genuine, you are as happy as a person can get. In the Demon Slayer Corps, you are either known as the Pillar of Positivity or the Moon Pillar, inspired by the line:

"You must be the moon, because you shine even when it's dark."

Being (Y/n) in my Demon Slayer AU Includes:

-Being Asexual/Aromantic af

-Yet shamelessly flirting with your friends and strangers 24/7

-"(Y/n), you're such a tease~!!" Zenitsu would whine

-Sending letters written on beautiful rose petals that you got from your oversized roses from your oversized garden

-Mother mode activated a fair amount of times

-Pillar of Positivity😊

-Being able to make everyone laugh without having to harm anyone

-Everyone loves your cooking and baking and look forward to it all the time

-Being surprisingly strong for a girl your size

-Accidentally roasting Lydia and the trio sometimes

-ZENITSU PROTECTION SQUAD-

-Being just as close to Nezuko

-Teaching Tanjiro and Muichiro the most out of everyone else about the 21st century

-Everyone by now is used to your and Lydia's Gen Z asses

-Going on rides with the trio and Nezuko at night on your big, flying lion and cat(Future scenarios will include explanations as to how you have such majestic creatures)

-So much affection to give and that's why you and Mitsuri get along so much

-Besties with the Master😁

-Being goofy af

-You just can't get pissed off😊

-You curse people with no hesitation and any second chances

-Badass

-"Slash my face, I'll slash your neck."

-Most of your injuries can heal within a day(Will always depend on its severity)

-Though, you can control the speed of its regeneration

-Nobody except for Tanjiro and Lydia know about your hobby for singing and dancing

-You're also a really great artist(You mostly draw your friends🥺)

-Animal and plant whisperer

-Meditating with Tanjiro

-Always a clingy thing but once you're done being touchy you're DONE

-Great at acting and keeping secrets

-The mind fucker, prankster, you love to fuck with peoples minds

-The most clever and iconic of them all

-Will always be like everyone's mom/caretaker

-But at the same time very childish

-Everyone knows when you're joking or not

-Unless you're pulling a little prank

-Inappropriate jokes with Sanemi all the time

-Thinks it'll always be only up to you when it comes to saving and helping people

-Has a habit of head patting and ruffling other people's hair

-If they aint distracted by your beauty or your outfit(Author gave you quite the taste in fashion😌), then they'll be distracted by your eyes

-You've had Complete Heterochromia since you were seven from an injury that your father gave you

-So instead of having two, (E/c) eyes, only one of them remain a beautiful (E/c) shade while the other had turned into a beautiful blue shade

-But you've started lying and telling everyone that it was just because of your genes

-And they all believe you

-Except for Lydia, you two have been close since kindergarten(two years before you were injured)

-Thoughts you've had of either you or your friends:

'Okay, Pillar of Bitchiness…'

'I'm the Pillar of Dumbassery'

'I'm the Pillar of Badbitchery!'

'What are you? The Pillar of Negativity?'

'Ugh, we should be the Pillars of Cuteness'

-Supportive friend🥺

-Never fails at lifting the mood or other peoples moods no matter how bad things get

-If anything, most of the characters would want to come to you just for comfort(you're great at it😊)

-Perfectionist when something's under your responsibility

-Good at holding your laughter in(Most of the time at least)

-The entertainer of your friend group

-Demon fights are just full of Inosuke's laughter and you smirking

-Can set objects and people on fire with your mind

⚠️🚨ONE MANGA SPOILER RIGHT BELOW THIS TEXT🚨⚠️ ⚠️🚨ONE MANGA SPOILER RIGHT BELOW THIS TEXT🚨⚠️

-It was only after Muichiro's death when you finally became skilled at turning your emotions on and off

-Your guts will always tell you if someone's lying or not no matter what

-Its almost as if people can't even imagine you being in a bad mood

-You're an Empath

-Always spoiling your lovely friends

-In easy words, you're just very well-rounded and unrealistic as a human being😌

PLEASE READ BISSES:

I am not planning on making a whole story/fanfiction of this with full chapters. I do not take requests as well💗.

71 notes · View notes