Literally all I listen to while driving (still) is TSWGUIW delover (that was a deluxe typo but I'm right anyway) edition, and so I think about Unhinged Instagram Lives Era every time, so I've gotta finally SAY the shit's that in my head:
Catra writes crying after sex (cw: blood on the album cover art) after chapter 8, when she tries having sex with someone else and it's a disaster because they can't give her what she needs but she doesn't know how to change
Adora writes Confidential (mostly, there are some changes, "It felt like you knew me, in a past life or a movie" becomes "We both know you knew me, in a past life like a movie") in between practices for the Mirrors tour, like literally running between a take in the middle of the room to her phone to write something down as they reset
Shortly before the tour starts, Catra does her first live performance since writing crying after sex and she performs it stream of consciousness style, like it's a possession she just has to get it out (i mean, that's what the song is). When it ended up on the deluxe of the next album there were very few changes from that first performance where it was fresh and raw, because fresh and raw were all that song was meant to be
Adora hears crying after sex and immediately goes. Right okay I need to get in the studio. So she works with her collaborators however she can around the tour prep that just got a wrench thrown in its final act, and they get the fully produced version of Confidential made, alongside working on the tracks for the deluxe version of the Mirrors album ("Mirrors [Polished]") that was already in progress
First night of the world tour, she has a way more involved outfit for her final outfit change, so she walks up to the mic and asks "Are you ready to get deluxe?" as a dancer runs over her for her guitar. Deluxe album hasn't been announced yet but everybody who hears her understands and starts screaming. She puts on the guitar strap and tells the crowd "Don't tell North America about this. Let's keep it... Confidential" and then runs into the song (because the entire North American tour missed out on the deluxe's performance). At the sax solo, she gives up the stage to the saxophonist and goes backstage to scramble for her last outfit change. The long solo and reverting to just the backing track during it ends up being perfect for the outfit change, which lets them finish off with something a little flashier.
That first performance she knows Catra is going to see, even if it's just via TikTok, so she is possessed for it and to this day some people prefer that phone fancam over the official music video because of how much she is putting into it.
Throughout the course of the tour the other deluxe songs get released and then the album, yada yada, Catra is fucking dying that Adora just did that when she wasn't even on the same continent as her. She barely manages to last two weeks past when she knows Adora is back in town - and she actively has a girlfriend at the time, too, they kind of break up on day 15 because. Duh. Catra is not putting anything into the relationship. On day 16 she texts Adora and neither of them mentions at all how they terrorized each other via live performance but Catra does not, in fact, cry after sex
this got so long I should have just made it a chapter. whatever
Save The Bullets, Baby! is Catra's first song after their relationship goes public, and it's ft. Adora Grayskull (backing & playing). The promo leading up to it is her spraypainting the song's name on the side of a building overlooking a really busy major road in the city (sanctioned promo but with a rebel vibe), and then her posting a lot of imagery of being shot with pink "blood" (aka paintball. like the cover of the single is a real gun held to the side of her head and pink bleeding out from her hair like she's already been shot. The promo image she posts to announce the song is her lying "dead" on the floor with a puddle of pink paint pouring out from her head and the song's name written on the floor in the 'blood' using her finger). Day of the song's premier the final promo is her posting a TikTok of her "vandalizing" her own mural by shooting it up with an automatic paintball rifle with all pink paint.
With the name and all the promo, people are expecting a pretty aggressive song and she knows that. Her pinned comment locked in the second it posts is "ive always crossed genre & this is just one song on the album chill. take it from me, a little pop on your tongue hits sometimes 👅". People of course still complain about her selling out/going pop but it is honestly just that one song, which is the final song on the album, but it's one she wrote for Adora, so she wrote it in Adora's preferred style, and they also wrote the music together quite a bit.
All the pink was a real commentary no one realized until afterwards, about "bubblegum" pop, about how watering herself down like that would feel like dying but sometimes it's what feels right, about how her music is intense and things "light" like pop feel like being killed for how they cage her, about how things associated with femininity (pink, love, nurturing, care) felt like they were killing her while the song is about realizing they weren't.
The deluxe of the album has Crying After Sex (Reprise) on the same track number that it was before and this time it's about crying positively, tears slipping out and being noticed, being held and nurtured, worshiped and loved. It's still in the same style of the original, but instead of raw and jagged, there's a breathiness to it like it's being recorded in the middle of being fucked I mean what,
One day I'll tell y'all about THOSE GIRLS. One day. As if I haven't come back to this fic enough LOL
