Intolerable Egomaniac

You're the daughter of the silent watching stones You watch the stars hurl all their fundaments In wonderment, at you and yours, forever asking more

You are that space that's in between Every page, every chord and every scream You are the driftwood and the rift You're the words I promise I don't mean

Day by day, oh lord, three things I pray That I might understand as best I can How bold I was, could be - will be - still am, by god, still am

Remember me, I ask. Remember me, I sing Give me back my heart, you wingless thing

Not even lying when I say this song changed my life

Something very specific about how Jaskier's bi/pan sexuality was portrayed really resonated with me.

The scene with Vespula when they talk about him having a crush on Radovid...

I am a bisexual femme, married to a woman. I have only had serious, meaningful relationships with women. I have only casually dated, slept with, had crushes on men. My feelings for/attraction to anyone at any given time has never negated my feelings for/attraction to anyone else. For the most part, my partners have understood that. Sometimes, talking about my crush or experiences with one person has even been a kind of foreplay with another person. I don't think I've ever seen that specific thing portrayed before.

Vespula is telling Jaskier all about himself, talking about this crush he has on this other man, whilst crawling into the bed to sleep with him again. She not only accepts his crush on someone else, she playfully teases him about that crush and uses it to flirt with him; all while acknowledging that Jaskier having that crush does not take away from how excited he is to be in bed with her in this moment.

I felt so seen.

I'm not saying this is everyone's bi/pan experience. I'm just saying this is something that was extremely familiar to my own life and I was blown away seeing it depicted.

And i wonder how much of that was Joey Batey's input. The way he talked about avoiding stereotypes and how he had to personally rip the first drafts apart and explain how to handle this story properly, I can imagine how that relationship was originally handled. I can imagine a draft of the script where Vespula addresses this crush and accuses him of not being genuinely into women at all or some other bi/pan erasure bullshit that is all too common with bi/pan characters. It was refreshing to see this portrayal play out. And more than refreshing, it felt like my actual life.

Me about three months ago: Oh yeah sure I’ll listen to that song you suggested, gimme a minute.

Me now: Oh, sorry, is only one person singing at a time? There aren’t two sets of lyrics being sung simultaneously? There’s no harmonies? The lyrics are simplistic and don’t contain about five levels of meaning? There’s no guitar going so hard it sounds like the entire soundbooth’s falling apart? Where are the violins? Oh there aren’t violins? Do the singers not sound like they’ve accessed another dimension that holds vocal notes previously unknown to man? Where’s the aching? The yearning? The feral tenderness? Sorry not interested.

Seriously anything I have listened to since I found The Amazing Devils has been against my will. I don’t need any other music any more. 

Cannot believe this album exists. Cannot believe they blessed the world with that cover photo. Cannot believe how the quiet, deliberate, oh-so-careful The Rockrose and the Thistle gave way to the almighty crash of The Horror and the Wild. CANNOT BELIEVE they gave us "Welcome to the stooooooorm, I AM THUNDER, welcome to MY TABLE, BRING YOUR HUNGER" and expected us to just cope with it!!! And then there's Wild Blue Yonder, which is basically "relationship in crisis, but fun" versus That Unwanted Animal which is "relationship in crisis, but feral." One song has a robot vampire, the other has erotic cannibalism, just because they COULD. Cannot believe Fair and Marbles exist in the same damn album, like Madeleine and Joey were like, oh while we're here, why not raise the fucking bar for romance and commitment just to see how many people dissolve into puddles of yearning? The audacity, honestly. Then they decided to also turn a pair of rainy day footwear into a symbol of tenderness and grief, because why not? And in Battle Cries, they're like, we're gonna deal with breakups, and also aging, and we're gonna help you find the poetry in both. The whole album is poetry, actually. BUT ESPECIALLY FAREWELL WANDERLUST. Holy shit, Farewell Wanderlust. Every other song by The Amazing Devil could be erased from my memory except for Farewell Wanderlust, I'd still be their biggest fan on the basis of that one (1) song alone. It's no exaggeration to say that there's magic in that song that saved me in so many ways. I cannot believe it exists.

The Horror and the Wild isn't really the kind of music you just listen to, it's the kind of music that happens to you. I am so so glad, if still in stunned disbelief, that it happened to me.

Yes. This. My new obsession. This music crawled into my soul. 

This was legit hilarious. 

Come crawling faster, obey your Master, your life burns faster, obey your Master! Master!

This is going to live in my bones.

TARON EGERTON “Black Bird” | Season 1, AppleTV+ (2022)

Good morning, Mr Egerton 👀👀