#the dms

part 1/??? (i’ll add a number here when i’m done with planning) for the deep MOGAI study (or DMS)

Shut Up by Stormzy.

Hob is a literature professor. Dream is an underground electronic music artist who goes by Morpheus. They never would've met. Never would've even known about each other.

Except. Hob is bit addicted to Twitter. Except. Hob has a bit shit taste in music. Except. A student cancels her presentation because she got last-minute tickets to a Morpheus show and Hob looks him up and gets irrationally mad at a stupid skinny little goth that doesn't even play any real instruments or sing and whose photo of a sneaker drop, whatever that is, got a thousand retweets within hours.

This is the story of how Hob sends a petty tweet and then sort-of-accidentally starts iconic Twitter beef with Dream.

Death, acclaimed hip-hop artist and meddling older sister, is delighted by a random man in a sweater-vest rudely insulting her brilliant baby brother, and insists on catching up with Dream so they can collab on a diss track, because it'll be very interesting. Hob finds out about it at a lecture and plays it in front of his whole class. It's clever and funny and absurdly referential. He falls a little bit in love with the wrong person, because he thinks the lyrics are Death's.

He slides into Dream's DMs to tease him about his older sister to protecting him (and maybe ask for her number), and Dream cops to writing it. Hob reacts with so much earnest wonder that he has to swiftly follow it with calling Dream a pretentious cunt, just to balance things out. They continue talking, under the flimsy auspices of being mean to each other.

One day, Dream video calls him while stuck at an airport, wearing stupid glasses and a stupid hat like a some kind of celebrity traveling incognito - because he sort of is, Hob belatedly realizes - and that's when he sees Dream laugh for the first time. It's because of him. He realizes he wants to kiss the stupid skinny little goth. Wants Dream to be his stupid skinny little goth. Has no idea how to do that. He pines. Dream pines.

When there's a show playing near Hob, Dream sends him a VIP ticket, day-of, with no other message or context. Hob goes, of course, feeling tremendously uncool at the venue. But during the show he finally understands, in a way he didn't before, how Dream pulls whole worlds to life with his music, how he weaves something new and incredible from samples alone. How he tells stories without words.