open water iv.

[deadwine]

Isn't it only normal to listen to the psychedelic fever dream that is Smoke Sprite and think: what else has this same heady, moody feel to it?

Something I said on twitter when the song first dropped is that Smoke Sprite rearranged something in my basic makeup the same way Rihanna's Same ol Mistakes did when I first heard it and something about the songs are very similar to me except Smoke Sprite is just, better to me. I would loop the instrumental to this song for days if I could. If I was given access to those instrumentals.

I didn't fully get it though. The song or that crazy MV. Until Soyoon went on Daebak Show and talked about it and described the video as a representation of how fragmentary and disconnected every scene feels when we're dreaming. I love that the song is so good I was already thinking along the lines of dreams before I heard the explanation. Just great...vibe-setting? I don't know if there is a technical term for this.

I described song as akin to Dark Pines as soon as it came out so in a way I worked a little backwards creating this list this time. Usually I go from song to fic but here I wanted both Dark Pines and Smoke Sprite in it no matter what and I had to work around those parameters. A pretty interesting and satisfactory list, if I say so myself!

So. Dark Pines. EXO fic. Dreamy, dark, beautiful and really a fic that fully represents this song. Or Smoke Sprite is a song that fully represents this fic...since it came later. Semantics really. The Genshin fic has such gorgeous writing I go back to it sometimes. Just for that. For the way grief is woven into the character and the objects she holds close. There's a crow metaphor there somewhere. Mind you, I don't know shit about Genshin. Aaand the Iwaoi fic. Inception AU cause a dream metaphor is incomplete without a reference to that. Also think the fic really evokes these lines of the song: I don't want a comeback, If I can't make you awake. I know you'll be right back, I just know.

Lastly, one cannot have a conversation about dreams and dreamsharing and inception without mentioning the single-most influential inception AU I have read yet, that I had the pleasure of discovering on ao3 years after I first read it. Every conversation about dreamsharing becomes about turnout by windowright but I can't help it. It's just that good.

Smoke Sprite - So!YoON! ft. RM

Watch on YouTube

"Take on my knees

Stuck with you in your dreams

Tell me more I could die

Take on like a beast

Fire to the low, lower, low, ah, yeah

Don't run away, run away, yeah

Come to the low, lower, low

Drown in you, all the way, all the way, yeah"

i. Dark Pines by Klavier

Fandoms: EXO

Pairing: Byun Baekhyun/Park Chanyeol

Rating: M, 50k

Summary: Sentient forests. Horrifyingly beautiful. Eerie and gorgeous and the fic of my dreams. The fic for every TRC-obsessed adult out there. Honestly if you're my friend and you haven't read this I am under your bed shaking you awake at night. READ IT!

Favourite Line: From the trees he hears his name.

ii. the goddess in a glass bottle by xiajin

Fandoms: 原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game)

Pairing: Ningguang/Zhongli

Rating: T, 5.3k

Summary: Ningguang character study. Really cool narration style veering between dreams and reality. also...grief.

Favourite Line: there’s certain magic to legends, maybe. sitting down at the edge of the fire and listening to a dirt-faced woman rub her hands over the wide-reaching flames, her eyes a dark pool into an infinite universe. waiting for her to talk, her words a mumbling croon of a rotting prophet, a promise of the future, a look into the past.

iii. non, je ne regrette rien by zhennie

Fandoms: Haikyuu!!

Pairing: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru

Rating: T, 9k

Summary: Inception AU. Non-linear narrative. Limbo exploration. Dream death hell yeah.

Favourite Line: It’s perfect in the way that only something imagined can be perfect. That is both its beauty and its fallacy.