Models: Eilyam (@eilyam_model), Pauline Gérardin (@poki_razowski_grdn) - Camille Kirner - NownOow - Adèle Senninger - Aurore Sincek - Lindsay Toffano - Elodie Villa
via Mathieu Degrotte
Monday, August 18, 2025
Sunday, August 17, 2025
Ava Max - Sweet but Psycho
Music Appreciation
Ava Max, born Amanda Koçi in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Albanian immigrant parents, emerged as a rising pop force in 2018. Influenced by early 2000s pop divas, Max began recording music at a young age and eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue a full-time career in music. Her breakthrough came with the release of her debut single “Sweet but Psycho” on August 17, 2018. The track quickly catapulted her into global recognition, topping charts in more than 20 countries and establishing her signature blend of theatrical pop and bold visual style.
“Sweet but Psycho” was co-written by Ava Max, Madison Love, Tix, Cook Classics, and producer Cirkut. The song explores the duality of being misunderstood or labeled for emotional intensity, particularly from a woman’s perspective. Musically, it combines a punchy electropop production with catchy hooks and dramatic flair. The lyrics play on the stereotype of the “crazy girlfriend,” flipping it into a declaration of empowerment and self-acceptance. With lines like “Oh, she’s sweet but a psycho,” Max toes the line between satire and sincerity, making the song both provocative and an earworm.
Around the time this song came out, I was at the tail end of a relationship with a woman I loved deeply—someone who struggled with mental illness. She had schizophrenia, chose not to take her medication, lost her job, and turned to alcohol to cope. While I never believed she would hurt me, one night pushed our relationship past the edge. She threatened to end her life, and when I returned home, I found her in bed with a slicing knife hidden under the sheets. A few days later, I ended things. She didn't take it well and made several threats afterward. To this day, I still get the occasional message from her—often about a dog we never even had. This song, for all its pop gloss, hits close to home. She was sweet—and yes, a little psycho. But what made it hardest to leave was the intensity I found myself drawn to.
The music video for “Sweet but Psycho,” directed by Bengali American filmmaker Shomi Patwary, features a vibrant and stylized visual narrative. Patwary used saturated colors, intentional lens flares, and vintage anamorphic lenses to give the video a retro, dreamlike quality. Model Prasad Romijn plays the male lead, who finds himself on the receiving end of Max’s unpredictable behavior. The video follows a storyline where Max is seen swinging between loving and aggressive acts—tying him to a chair, smashing objects, and dancing seductively—mirroring the song’s lyrics. The visual plays with horror tropes and psychological thriller aesthetics, reinforcing the song’s commentary on gendered perceptions of mental health and behavior.
Sources:
Wikipedia
https://www.billboard.com/music/latin/music-of-roma-oscar-nominations-8494323/
Saturday, August 16, 2025
Friday, August 15, 2025
Thursday, August 14, 2025
Sayaka Murata
Literature Appreciation
Born on August 14, 1979, Sayaka Murata (村田沙耶香) is a Japanese writer originally from Inzai, Japan. Her father served as a judge and her mother was a homemaker. Murata has described her childhood as unhappy -- she was shy, lonely, and began writing at age 10, drawing inspiration from science fiction and mystery books borrowed from her brother and mother. Her mother bought her a word processor in fourth grade after she attempted to write a novel by hand. After completing middle school, the family moved to Tokyo, where she graduated from Kashiwa High School and later studies art curation at Tamagawa University.
Murata debuted with the novel Junyū (Breastfeeding), winning the 2003 Gunzo Prize for New Writers, and subsequently earned the Mishima Yukio Prize, Noma Literary New Face Prize, and Akutagawa Prize for Kombini ningen (Convenience Store Woman) in 2016. Her style often merges everyday realism with speculative or dystopian elements, unflinchingly exploring taboo subjects such as asexuality, adolescent sexuality, and reproduction technologies.
In a recent The New Yorker article, Elif Batuman profiles Murata's unique worldview -- what Batuman calls "defamiliarization," using science fiction to reveal the absurdity beneath everyday life. Murata is depicted as an outsider who treats the world like an aquarium -- examining it with emotional distance and analytical clarity. Batuman highlights Murata's speculative work Vanishing World, a fictional universe where sex is replaced by artificial insemination and communal parenting -- an inquiry into biological norms and societal expectations. Vanishing World polarizes its audience -- readers either embrace the chilled speculative vision and its shocking climax or find such extremes off-putting.
ai generated, based on Vanishing World
Sources:
Wikipedia
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/14/sayaka-muratas-alien-eye
https://japanincanada.com/sayaka-murata/
https://www.wired.com/story/writer-sayaka-murata-inhabits-a-planet-of-her-own
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/09/sayaka-murata-i-acted-how-i-thought-a-cute-woman-should-act-it-was-horrible
https://eliflife.substack.com/p/the-scambusters
https://www.patreon.com/posts/sayaka-muratas-126334276
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