Nothing is always absolutely so.

In honor of the last ficlet that got posted, here's a couple of breakup songs that fit thematically.

I didn't actually have a playlist when I was writing Lorca (I know it's not the title - which itself is a reference to a Federico Garcia Lorca poem called "Gacela of the Remembrance of Love", but it's the filename I saved it under so it'll always be Lorca to me; this was one of the few ficlets that didn't start with multiple attempts and random lines. I knew exactly what I wanted to write for this one, so further inspo wasn't really necessary.

This past weekend was a productive one on the TEF front (three. whole. PAGES!!!) but it came at the expense of me actually taking care of myself like an adult. I had two meals yesterday, one of which was butter and marmalade on toast in the morning, followed by an energy bar at, like, 9 in the evening. That's the price I pay for three pages that might be completely changed by the time it's actually published. Which is a long ways out, since those pages are from, like, the second-to-last chapter :'D

I got on that kick though because the past few days I've been overcome with the urge to write a kiss scene. The problem is, I'm running out of kiss scenes in the ACTUAL FIC to write. (Draw what conclusions you will.) This itch to write kiss scene after kiss scene isn't helped by all the amazing fanart racketballs has been posting (yo), so I'm just, like, Okay, fine brain, you win. I guess I'll write a fucking kiss scene just to get this shit out my system.

Shout-out to racketballs for obvious reasons, as well as the anon who reminded me of the "Butch's escalator" joke from City of Clipsville that acted as the launching off point for this scene. It involves Buttercup taking Butch to an old mall. I wrote an uninteresting set-up to get them in the locale, then realized I was wasting my writing energy on something that's not going to get fleshed out into a bigger story, so I jumped ahead to focus on the kiss scene instead. I also listened to Phoebe Bridgers' cover of Friday I'm in Love on endless repeat while taking down the notes for what this eventually turned into.

Also, this is not part of TEF-canon, but the characterization is TEF-adjacent. Just flexing those kiss scene bones, since TEF proper doesn't give me enough opportunities to write 'em.

( Two ghosts )

I keep trying to write the lighthearted, fun parts of this next chapter, but nope, apparently all my brain has wanted to do is write angst for the past few days! (I attribute this to the absolutely stellar fanart y'all have been making. ♥)

I did manage some fun, today. I also read through a little of the stuff I'm cutting, and while I hate to lose some of it, most of it just... doesn't work. That also got me thinking about the original pass I had done on ch10, and I'll have to dig through that and post it as a tfr post at some point so y'all can get an idea of just how FUCKING TERRIBLE this shit was before.

I still need to get back to a lot of the incredibly sweet PM's and asks I've received since the chapter went up. Consider this a group Thank You for now until I can make time this weekend to respond. You all are wonderful, truly.

For now, since the Reds didn't get a lot of love the last chapter ("Brick ain't shit," lol y'all are fantastic), here's the most recent addition to my Reds playlist:

Lyrically, this is obviously too sweet a song for the Greens. It'd be more at home on a Blues playlist. But the spirit of the song – the discovery of self emerging from this particular relationship – I feel like this is everything going through Butch's head & heart under the surface that doesn't manifest itself as words or any healthy form of expression simply because he doesn't have the emotional language to understand it. It kinda goes back to my selection of Til Kingdom Come for the Greens. It's reflective of two lonely people connecting and the loyalty and feelings that arise from that connection. Although the feel of this song is much happier. Happy Greens song! Why not?

For those of you who enjoy your Greens with a heaping side of sentimentality, this song is one of my go-to's for just that.



I'm not usually one for Coldplay these days, especially since what I hear of their current stuff leans on heavy production that imo really doesn't fit their sound. But this song, oh. (The story goes that this song was intended to be recorded with Johnny Cash before he passed away.)

My early Greens songs were always selected on, well, very superficial attributes – there are a lot of allusions to an intense, violent romance (Kiss With A Fist being one of the better examples for that aspect of their relationship) but they don't tend to delve into the meat (no, uh, violent pun intended there) behind a couple that resorts to those levels of violence because some inner part of them feels so terribly alone in the world. So you might notice a lot of my current picks for Greens songs tend towards that direction – songs about connecting with and understanding someone else, and feeling this deep loyalty and desire to protect it. Sometimes at the expense of romantic love.

Predictably, I also just like the juxtaposition of sweet, softer songs against the Greens' hard edges.