#I’ve been falling down into the music rabbit hole as of last year.

[tashi-d0t-png]

nice music taste

Thank you 👍🏽

#I’ve been falling down into the music rabbit hole as of last year. #And man. It’s gotta be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life! #tashi screams into the wall #ask #scribblez

[asurrogateblog]

Cannibals, Pirates, and PhDs: How Did I Get Here?

I mentioned in some tags earlier that I’ve only actually been a real fan of Pink Floyd for under a year, and that the confluence of events that led up to it is pretty absurd. Some interest seemed to be taken in this, so I though I’d elaborate.

I didn’t know how to shorten this timeline and have it make any sense, so it’s... long. But idk, I think it’s pretty funny. If you’re nosy like I am this is for you.

My Backstory Timeline:

early childhood: my parents essentially mainline me and my little sister with The Beatles. I know almost no songs written past the 70’s until at least sixth grade. I develop a childhood crush on Paul McCartney, a joke that the universe really decides to play the long game on.

2014: my dad calls me over one night, and gravely tells me he’s been waiting to share something until I’m old enough. I brace myself to be told about sex or secret half-siblings. Instead, he tells me I need to listen to The Wall. Irritated at the idea of wasting an hour and half of my night, I nevertheless comply and go up to my room and put it on. I do not come back from this, clearly having inherited some sort of generational curse.

Around the same time, I am also secretly watching Hannibal every time my parents send me upstairs because Game of Thrones is “too gory”. This will trigger three important things: an interest in psychology, a love of horror media, and a classical music phase will train my attention span to last well past the three minute mark.

2014-2023: Over the intervening years, I become a casual fan of Pink Floyd, but make a deliberate point not to learn anything about the band. I like being able to imagine my own meanings for the songs. Also, I am motivated against this by a childhood memory of being deeply frightening by a picture of old Paul McCartney (LOL). I do not want that to ever happen again, so no learning.

Cut to April of 2023: I am finishing up my first year of my PhD program studying media psychology. I am in a bad place mentally, and am going through another horror movie phase to fill the hole. As a result, I get very into American Psycho. The main character, Patrick Bateman, is a fan of superficial 80’s pop music, particularly Genesis. I decide to start listening to Genesis to see if I agree with his tastes. While researching “best Genesis albums”, I come across The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. I listen to it, and am blown away. I had no idea that the Phil Collins band made music like that. This sends me down the prog-rock rabbit hole. I still won't learn any lore.

Summer of 2023: MEANWHILE, I am also going through another pirate phase. I have a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of 18th century piracy (and am still quite active in the Black Sails fan community). Around this time, I get really obsessed with this one random guy named Dennis McCarthy who was hanged in 1718.

I decide to work poor Dennis into a science fiction story I’ve been working on. The premise is essentially that the universe is an abandoned simulation, and a ‘glitch in the matrix’ starts to, among other things, bring people from the wrong time periods back to life. The format of the story is vaguely monster-of-the-week, in which the characters have to solve various problems caused by mistakes in the code. I think, “hey, you know what would be perfect for this? that fanfic I wrote about The Wall in high school.” Said fic (which that stupid fucking beatles movie stole from me) is about a world in which Pink Floyd never existed, but a wannabe rock-star discovers a box full of their records and decides to copy them. While he is touring his plagiarized version of The Wall, he realizes that the events of the album are starting to happen to him in real life. By working this concept into my new story, I go through another one of my periodical The Wall phases. It's in full swing when fall rolls around.

September of 2023: This semester, I take a grad-level narrative theory class in the English department. I decide it would be helpful to follow along with a specific example, so I choose The Wall. Using the terminology I am learning in the class, I start to realize that The Wall is…. incredibly narratologically fucked up. To help orient me, I watch the bootleg concert recordings, and the trick with the surrogate band sends me so out of my mind that I decide I must break my rule about never learning band lore.

This is where the two plot-lines converge. I don’t remember which came first, but around this same time, I think to myself “hey, if Genesis was hiding such an incredible album under the 80’s pop, what must Pink Floyd be hiding?” On that whim, I put on Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which equally sends me so out of my mind that I decide I must break my rule about never learning band lore. I needed to know what the fuck happened to get them from Piper to The Wall.

September-November: In the two months between the onset of this and finally making another sideblog, I dedicate all of my free time to learning as much about Pink Floyd as humanely possible (and writing a 20 page essay for that narrative theory class). As you can imagine, this is a lot to unpack all at once for someone who didn’t even know who Roger or Syd or any of the rest of them were. Luckily, I am over-educated enough to be a very fast learner. Aside from the band lore itself, I of course also fall in love with the rest of Pink Floyd's discography musically-speaking. Having this interest to latch onto genuinely pulls me out of my depression.

Cut to February 2024: I am really enjoying myself, and want to keep this going as long as possible, but I am starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel on Pink Floyd lore. I decide I need to feed the fire by supplementing with lore from another band. The Beatles seem to have a strong fan presence on tumblr, why not revisit a childhood favorite? The universe laughs at my expense.

That about brings us up to date. I have gone through so much character development over the last eight months, it’s crazy. Pink Floyd is definitely one of those things that is less of a “phase” and more of a permanent part of my mindscape. Weirdly enough, since I am studying media psychology, all of this has also been really good for my career? I never took an interest in -real- media figures (as opposed to fictional characters) before, and I feel like I have a much clearer sense of things now. It's definitely influenced my research, so whatever domino effect this has on my future is bound to get even funnier.

Anyway, that’s my backstory!

#it’s interesting re-examining how my relationship to The Wall has changed over time. #strange how you can love something as a kid but not really personally relate to it. and then you grow up and suddenly you’re like... #...oh shit. there -must- have been a door there when I came in #// #that makes it sound less fun than its been tho #god. i've had so much fun. im actually glad i took so long to get into band lore so I could learn all this -now- #i had kind of worked myself into a (very silly) mental spiral of 'what if I've run out of new things to discover' #and it's been so. idk... healing for me to realize all of this has been here the whole time #(clenching my teeth: ....emotional vulnerability....)

[2-lines-and-a-circle]

My otome game journey

Note: So, I’ve been thinking lately about my journey from playing otome games and I just wanted to put it out there. Mainly because I was so curious if anyone has done the same thing as me.

Let’s see, I started with Midnight Cinderella, and I remember the first route I ever did was Alyn’s, which was pretty chill. The ending in a way traumatized me because if I remember correctly, he actually went off to war instead of being with you. For Alyn it made sense because he’s a knight and all that but, I didn’t know at that time that sometimes it’s not always a happy ending.

After that I ventured into the world of wizardess hearts, I actually played several routes. Yet, I don’t remember much other than really liking the MC because I thought she looked cute. Yeah, I can't exactly say much about that one…

It was then that I found my forged wedding and started playing a bunch of voltage inc games. I absolutely love my forged wedding, it’s one of the few otome games where I recommended playing everyone’s route. Seeing as I loved my forged wedding, I continued playing a bunch of other games from them all the way to Irristable mistakes.

During that time, I heavily invested several hours into several different game titles and fell in love with many of the suitors. Some shoutouts would be Star crossed myths, My last first kiss, seduced in the sleepless city and many more. Of course, I came to find another game which was not mystic messenger. I actually was not involved in that because I had a sister who was too invested in that. Let’s just say, I didn’t want to wake up late at night because of their game events.

Anyway, I came to invest my time in Mr Love: Queen's Choice, but it was very short lived. Why, because during that time I was too far down the kpop rabbit hole. Even though I was a big kpop fan since 2011, I reached an all-time peak. I still do enjoy kpop now, just not to that level of extreme. When I say extreme, I mean following several groups and watching everything that they had. Anything they appeared in I felt like I needed to watch that, but more on my kpop journey later.

By now it was late 2018 and I rekindled the flame for Mr Love: Queen's Choice but it wasn’t just that. I fell down the rabbit hole of the Chinese media! I grew to love c-dramas and their music. I kid you not I was in a whole different league of my own. So next thing I knew I repeated my kpop trash days but with everything c-pop instead.

Then, for a very brief time period in 2019 I grew to love Thai series because my mother had a liking for Thai BL. Then I went back to watching C-dramas and watched the series called the Untamed with my mother since she really liked the actors.

Finally, we arrive at the year 2020, the pandemic and such made life crazy. I also started to hear about this game called Ikemen sengoku and I was like hey how interesting. However, I was busy and never got back to the game after finishing a couple chapters. Yet, I heard about twisted wonderland, and I became more consistent with that instead. I love twisted wonderland and thought that I should find another game to give my life to.

This is when I finally decided to try ikemen vampire, I thought it was a pretty crazy idea. I was like, did someone drunk come up with this idea because I want what they were drinking. Now, we are in our present timeline.

I have finished over half of the suitors, routes and I’m very happy I did. This game made me fall in love with otome games all over again. However, every now and then I get a craving for something crazy. That’s when I play games from voltage inc. I highly recommend Ikemen vampire for those that like angst.

Aside from ikemen vampire, I tried out ikemen prince and romance MD as well as Her love in the force. Out of those three I just named, I recommend the latter two rather than the first, especially for those who want a breath of fresh air. Well, that’s all for my progress so far, but it’s not the last!

#otome game #my past #personal post #otome #ikemen vampire #shall we date wizardess #ikemen series #ikemen prince #ikemen sengoku #ikemen villains #twisted wonderland #kpop #I was crazy back then #voltage inc #voltage games #my forged wedding

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Jordan Martins

Jordan Martins is a musician, organizer, educator, and visual artist whose works have been shown in Chicago and Brazil. While he has played steel guitar and other instruments for years with the singer / songwriter Angela James, his first solo album, Fogery Nagles, was released by the Astral Spirits label in the fall of 2023. In his review for Dusted, Bill Meyer wrote, “Fogery Nagles arrives, seemingly out of nowhere, but just at the right time.”

Sarah Davachi — Cantus Figures Laurus

I’m a sucker for long-form droney music in general and as of late I’ve been bathing in organ music of this kind as much as possible. I had really enjoyed Davachi’s other works but fell fully under her spell with this box set of works from the last few years with over four hours of heavy tones unfolding in various ways. I like to listen to this as loud as possible to feel these sounds as vibrations. There are several shorter tracks that focus on a particular palette or tonality, with the later tracks being from live recordings of longer performances. Even though the set is a compilation joining these sets of works together after the fact, I love this body of work as a sequence of experiences.

Caetano Veloso — Araça Azul

It’s hard to pick a favorite Veloso record, but if I had to it would be the utterly unique Araça Azul, recorded in 1972 when he returned to Brazil after being exiled by the military dictatorship years prior. The record is markedly outside of the original zeitgeist of the Tropicalia movement — less ecstatic, hopeful, collaborative, and postmodern in the mixing of styles — but at the same it’s maybe the purest expression of the experimental range of sounds and poetry that the movement ushered in. There are other musicians playing on some tracks, but the whole thing feels like a single creative brain tinkering with ideas and sounds until they take enough shape to be a “song.” There’s a fundamental collage approach that I love — where he engages in field recordings, musique concrète, dissonant orchestrations overlapping on simple folk melodies, and transformative and ballsy covers of classics by singers like Monsueto and Milton Nascimento.

Angelika Niescier, Savannah Harris, Tomeka Reid — Beyond Dragons

I had the good fortune of seeing this trio play at Elastic in Chicago this past spring. When they finished their set, my wife leaned over to me and said “THAT WAS HOT SHIT” which is maybe the most accurate thing to say about these players and this music. Niescier’s compositions are somehow tight and specific while simultaneously giving each player ample room to flex and explore with abundant space around the components of each piece. I love their ability to charge into a piece full steam with an almost aggressive sense of urgency and then allow their interactions to gradually fragment and dissolve into textural interplays and quiet call-and-response improvisations.

Paul Franklin— solos on “Together Again”

A friend hipped me to a video of Paul Franklin soloing over the Buck Owens classic “Together Again” and I’ve since gone down YouTube rabbit holes watching as many clips as I can find (and I see other people in the comments on the same journey). Franklin is a Nashville legend who has played pedal steel on hundreds of recordings since the seventies. As a member of the Time Jumpers, he plays as a sideman to Vince Gill at local venues in Nashville covering classic country songs, often playing this tune which originally featured Tom Brumley playing a quick steel solo that used some very innovative voicings at the time. Franklin’s playing is so technically brilliant, but it also illustrates the ways in which the instrument can be psychedelic and disorienting, even in a conventional setting. His solos always follow a basic architecture but there’s subtle variations, improvisations and flourishes in every version where you can see him trying to find new ways of cracking it open. My favorite clips are the ones where he goes out on a limb and the audience is noticeably giggling as they experience the sonic floor drop out from under them like they’re on a carnival ride.

Nicholas Britell— “Unto Stone We are One”, funeral “March Song of Ferrix,” season 1 finale of Andor

I sometimes dabble in the questionable array of new Star Wars projects and absolutely loved Andor’s vision of a bureaucratic fascist space empire, not spending a second on jedis and lightsabers, instead examining the interrelationships of imperial occupations, military contractors, and resistance movements. The last episode is masterful in part because the tension of the entire season simmers to a boil during a funeral procession with working class miners playing junky space orchestral instruments. The score of this funeral march by Nicholas Britell is a haunting, yearning motif that steadily builds but the stroke of genius is how perfectly out of tune the instruments are! Such a simple and surprising choice does such heavy lifting in terms of adding a sense of materiality to the setting and imbuing the dramatic build up with a subtle unease beneath the gorgeous arrangements.

Terry Riley— Music for The Gift

A very early work by Riley experimenting with tape loops, with an approach that is uncannily prescient in the way it does a live remix of a jazz quartet as they improvise around tunes. The fact that this particular quartet was Chet Baker’s (with trombonist Luis Fuentes, drummer George Solano, and bassist Luigi Trussardi) is a surprising interlocutor in all of this: it would maybe seem more fitting to for this to involve an unorthodox voice rather than a more straight ahead, idiomatic jazz player for these out-of-the-box experiments. But I think the music works precisely because of the nimble-swinging of the group as Riley cuts up and repeats their melodies and phrasing back onto them in a slurry of loops that piles up and interacts with their improvising in unexpected ways. The clarity and charm of Baker’s playing is a perfect fit. Peter Margasak wrote a great piece about it for Sound American that you can find here.

Macie Stewart and Lia Kohl— Recipe for a Boiled Egg

Two of my favorite improvisers in Chicago. They are so emblematic of what I love about the creative scene here in the ways that they endlessly collaborate across a range of genres and scenes, whether improvising or composing, playing songs or deconstructing forms. This is a biased pick because they recorded this at Comfort Station, the small and idiosyncratic multidisciplinary art space I run in Chicago. The thing that first drew me to Comfort Station was the building’s unique vibrant acoustics and the porousness of sound that you get with an old building directly facing a busy street. Macie and Lia lean into that context in stunning ways on this recording, narrowing in on their voices and their bowed instruments reverberating and inviting in sounds from the outside world instead of recording in the controlled environment of a studio. You can hear ideas take shape as each listens, responds, builds, grows, dissolves into the other’s playing, with a recording quality that grounds them to a particular time and place.

Olivier Messiaen — “Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus,” from the Quartet for the End of Time

This is probably the single most impactful and cosmic piece of music I’ve ever encountered. Messiaen wrote all the movements for the Quartet for the End of Time while he was in a Nazi POW camp, and the entire work is on another level. But the sixth movement — just piano and cello — brings me to my knees every time I hear it. The first time I heard it was somewhat random and personal: during my freshman year of college, my mom was coincidentally the staff accompanist at the conservatory of the university I attended. And I would often borrow her car to run errands while she was rehearsing with music majors preparing their senior recitals. On one such occasion I was tip-toeing back into her studio to return her keys and heard a bass player (bass majors often adapt cello pieces for their senior recital) bowing the opening notes of the melody which seems to ask for a dissonant response from the piano. Instead, I heard my mom play the slow, pulsing major triad chord that entered in response, settling the piece into a hypnotic journey. I felt like the floor gave way in an instant and I had never experienced anything like it. Susan Alcorn has adapted it for solo pedal steel in a really unique way melding the harmony and melody together, and Atomic included it on their 2018 release of covers, Pet Variations, playing with deep restraint that the piece calls for while also letting the energy bubble up restlessly.

Jeanne Lee — Conspiracy

It’s hard to find a better expression of vocals and poetry integrated into a free jazz setting than this brilliant 1975 record, with Jeanne Lee leading a killer ensemble including Steve McCall and Sam Rivers among others. I had never heard Lee’s work before coming across this album when it was re-released by Moved-by-Sound in 2021 and I was struck by how much sparseness there is (somewhat similar to some of Caetano Veloso’s delicate moments on Araça Azul even), and how simple utterances give way to grooves and freakouts with the rest of the players wrapping around Lee’s command of the sonic space. If I’m being honest, I think these kinds of approaches to free form improvisations can often collapse into a kind of cheesiness or ham-fistedness, and this record NEVER once gets close to that, everything feels so purposeful even when the exploration is at its outer limits.

Olaibi — Mimihawasu

Although I had heard her playing on works by Japanese band OOIOO, this is a musician/project that I hadn’t heard of by name until someone I follow on Instagram posted that they had passed away this October (coincidentally on my birthday). Something in the way they eulogized her touched me deeply and I listened to all of her records in the days after (and often since). Maybe it is because my exposure to her music was immediately tied to her recent death, but there’s something so profound, tragic, beautiful, frail, intimate and loving about her music all at once. I wish I had heard her more before her passing, but I’m grateful that in the wake of her death this world of sounds has entered my life.

#jordan martins #listed #dusted magazine #sarah davachi #caetano veloso #angelika niescier #savannah harris #tomeka reid #paul franklin #nicholas britell #terry riley #macie stewart #lia kohl #olivier messiaen #jeanne lee #olaibi

[infisonicosm]

Omg, I'm gonna do this on anon, so there or no biases, but I would love a ship!❤️

I'm 5'4 with long wavy/curly hair, green eyes, and a curvy build. I used to play sports but quit in high school. But don’t let that fool you I am still very competitive and am so grateful to be coaching the younger generation!! I’m pretty reserved and introverted but I hold my own and don’t let people push me around. I’m also the eldest child in my family so my friends have always called me the “mom friend” I always have everything in my purse at all times and whenever someone need something I am prepared! Also being the eldest I’ve always been pretty nurturing. I love the outdoors especially the beach. The beach is truly my happy place where I can connect and feel so at peace. I love love love animals and currently have 4 dogs of my own. When I’m not studying or coaching I can be found reading, binge watching new girl or drag race, listening to music or falling down a rabbit hole of some random special interest of mine. My music taste is mostly rock, country, folk, metal, and indie/alternative music. IM adding this in last minute but I also collect pins! Anytime I travel I make it a priority to get one or if a pin just catches my eye it’s coming home with me!

I'm going with my gut here and I'm shipping you with Danny!

I can't shake if that I just think you and Danny would be adorable together. I can see him being a coach dad in the future, sports season would be a BLAST in your home! You guys would be such a great team. I think of your home being a lot like my cousins, full of noise, laughter, love, and a little bit of screaming too :P

On the weekends if you're not at a ball park, you'll be camping! Danny's Mom talked about how they traveled for 7 years in their RV and made so many memories! I can see him wanting to do that with his family too! Camping on the beach??? A DREAM!

Since he's infatuated with your love for pins, he will make it his mission to get you one from every place they visit on tour. It would be his favorite gift to give you. It's also a gift for him too though cause he falls in love all over again watching you excitedly go through them.

#shelly's saturday sleepover #shelly ships #greta van fleet #gvf #danny wagner #danny gvf

[yeah-sure-why-not-you]

I went to the Wonder Tour in Seattle! Here’s my experience.

Backstory:

I became a fan of Shawn Mendes at the beginning of my freshman year in college, back in 2018. This was during the time he was promoting Shawn Mendes the album. I saw YouTube videos of him performing and was like “Wow. He’s amazing at performing.” And then I spiraled into watching his other recent  performances and interviews. I found myself going through his Instagram page. I knew of his music before (mostly the radio hits) but I never really paid any attention to Shawn as an artist. After falling into my Shawn Mendes rabbit hole, I was instantly hooked onto his music. Moving through college, I kind of fell out of my freshman year obsession with Shawn. But when he announced the Wonder Tour, I had to get tickets. On the first day of my final year in college, my friend and I ditched class to buy tickets. The concert would be on June 28 of the next year and that date felt so far away - it was after our last finals as undergrads and it was after our graduation ceremonies. But June 28 came by way faster than I had anticipated! 

Concert:

I got the silver VIP package. Those with VIP waited in line separate from general tickets. The silver VIP package included a nice tote bag, a tour passport, and a poster. We had the opportunity to go through an interactive museum that displayed articles throughout Shawn’s career - outfits, guitars he owned/played, awards, etc. There were also backdrops and props from album covers that you could take pictures with. It was cool but honestly, it was underwhelming. I only got the silver VIP because of the seats. I would have bought the VIP tickets that included meet and greet but they were out of my price range in Seattle. I’m sure those are more worthwhile. 

I sat right next to the catwalk of the arena stage setup. When I got to my seat, there were already fans standing right next to the barricades. Security made them sit down until the show started though. It had something to do with the fact that people who didn’t pay to sit in that area were taking other people’s space (from what I heard). When Dermot Kennedy (who was the opening act - his voice is insane) finished performing, the lights came back on. But when the lights dimmed again and Wonder album Intro played, we were all screaming with excitement! Fans rushed to the barricade. The lights began strobing in tandem to the intro music. And at the center of the stage was a dark silhouette growing taller. Once Shawn appeared, I could feel tears forming in my eyes. I didn’t cry. But damn, this was something that I had been dreaming about since I was a freshman in college. Now I was fresh out of undergrad, experiencing a Shawn Mendes concert for the first time. Based on videos and pictures, you can see that Shawn is an attractive person. But on stage? In real life? That man is absolutely glowing. He’s beautiful. 

I’ve been to other concerts where there’d be backup dancers and large choreographs. Those are always super fun to watch. Still, I would have to say that watching Shawn perform was even better. You can tell he loves what he does. He just has so much energy on that stage. He fills up the entire space with that energy. And he goes ham on that guitar. I’m surprised the strings don’t snap. And his VOCALS? Don’t even get me started. His voice is absolutely amazing. All of the songs sound even better live than in studio. Those high notes are killer - and he hits a lot of high notes. You don’t have to be a fan of his music to admire his talent. He’s magnetic on that stage. He also looks so comfortable on the stage. And it’s not comfortable in a bad way or a lazy way. Shawn looked like he was home. 

Shawn uses up the whole space during his performance. At some points, he performed solely on the main stage. During some songs, he walked up and down the catwalk. For other songs, they were sung at a smaller stage at the end of the catwalk. He performed one song (Can’t Imagine) in the middle of the catwalk. He also engages with fans a bit! Some talking while transitioning songs. It’s the usual that you would get from a performer - thanking the city and the audience for being there, explaining what a certain song meant to them, etc. He also touches fan’s hands as well and engages with any props that fans bring. Also, if you’re lucky enough, you’ll come home with a guitar pick he tosses into the crowd. 

The final song was In My Blood. Near the end of the song, Shawn got off the catwalk and went by the barricades to touch fans, hug them, etc. I wasn’t lucky enough to have the chance to touch him but my friend did! She hasn’t washed her hand since then. She had it vacuum sealed. 

Overall, it was an incredible experience. Shawn Mendes is an amazing performer. It exceeded my 18 year old expectations. It also launched me back into my Shawn Mendes fangirl phase. 

My only wish is that he interacted a little bit more with fans. Take Harry Styles for example. I think he does pretty well with interacting with fans while he’s on stage. There are points in his show where he’d have a short and funny interaction with a fan and they’d even talk! Or he’d respond to a funny poster. I think that would be fun! 

Also, I just want to add something here about the postponement of the Wonder Tour: take the space you need for yourself, Shawn. 

Tips: 

- If you want to hug or touch Shawn at a concert, buy tickets next to the catwalk and be at the barricade. He interacts with fans a lot there. 

- If you want to stand out even more at the catwalk barricade, make a funny poster. My friend did (it was my idea! I think it was pretty good) and I’m sure that’s why he started at her area when he came off the catwalk to hug fans. 

- If you bring a poster and you want Shawn to interact with it or you, make sure it’s something easy, like “blow me a kiss” or something. He doesn’t engage too much with fan posters. He’ll definitely see it though. 

If you have any questions about my experience of about his concert in general, comment! 

#wonder tour #shawn mendes #wonder the tour #wonder

[thisaintascenereviews]

Red - Rated R

A lot of modern hard-rock bands seem to go down one of two paths these days — the alt-right rabbit hole or falling into obscurity (while still having a good enough fanbase). Skillet and Trapt are apart of the former, as they have gone down the alt-right pipeline that’s either in a Christian sense and uses their religion to say some really bad stuff, or just has some very hateful views and decided to be open about them for whatever reason over the last handful of years. You could be a band like Three Days Grace, or Red, which are two bands that were popular around 15 years ago, but their popularity has waned in the last decade, yet they still have a dedicated fanbase. That’s not a bad thing, as plenty of bands that were once popular are doing their thing. Three Days Grace lost their popularity from replacing their longtime lead singer and none of their stuff being as good as their earlier work, but it’s hard to say about the band Red.

I remember listening to these guys about a decade ago, but I only listened to a couple of their albums. They were in the Christian rock scene, but they weren’t explicit about it. They didn’t make their faith their brand, as other bands did in that vein, but they were just a straightforward alt-metal / hard-rock band at heart. They were really big around the mid-00s, but their new album, Rated R, is their first album in a few years and I had no idea they even put out an album in 2020. Nonetheless, I saw they put this album out and I thought I’d listen to it, just to listen to something a bit different from what I’ve been playing lately. The album is also only 34 minutes, which makes for a very short listen, so what’s the worst that can happen, right?

Nothing at all, honestly, as Rated R (despite its cringy title) is just fine, but that’s its problem — that’s all it is. This is definitely an album that you can listen to, but it lacks any identity outside of being a hard-rock album. I mean, that’s fine if you’re just wanting a hard-rock / alt-metal album and that’s it, but its lack of variety is kind of taxing and boring by its end, only because they don’t go anywhere with it. There are a couple of cool riffs, and the hooks aren’t half bad, but this record just sounds like it’s repeating itself most of the time. Everything runs together and sounds the same, ultimately making for a very boring listen. Thankfully it’s so short that it never becomes a real big problem, but by the time the album’s over, you don’t even realize it, because everything just runs together.

I suppose it’s interesting to hear what Red is doing these days, and Rated R is a decent album. It’s not an offensive album that says anything horrible, especially in the vein of Trapt or Staind (you could not pay me to listen to that new Staind album; not only is Aaron Lewis a terrible Trump-loving weirdo these days, Staind has never been good to me), but it just falls through the cracks of rock music. They’re no Cannibal Corpse, who can make the same album over and over again, and they inject small doses of new ideas into each album to make them fresh, but this album isn’t bad. I wouldn’t recommend it, though, unless you’re a diehard fan, or you just want to hear what this band has been up to after all these years. You won’t be surprised, but you may be entertained, albeit it for its duration, ultimately forgetting about it.

#red #rated r #rock music #hard rock #alternative metal #alt metal

[tn4na]

14012023 thoughts from bed

i am without my journal. feeling bleh. i had many things i wanted to do that i have not done.

before winter break, i had some thoughts. like. oh, i’ll try to draw over break. and journal, and develop my perception of the world. i have not drawn, i have not journaled. i think i have had some interesting thoughts and observed some things that i will think about. i think i will redownload tumblr so i can collect all my things in one place. maybe i will post this there also.

i hate that i’m so affected by instagram. i think that it plays a consequential role in my feelings of bleh. not that my post didn’t do well, but it still doesn’t really make me happy to think about. i like that it’s there on my profile, but i wish i would stop having thoughts about it beyond that.

my laptop has increasingly become a place where i click the same three buttons and feel nothing inside. my phone use i’m not bothered by. i redid my homescreen so there’s not much there. it’s not like i want to use it, but that sometimes i can’t handle just sitting with myself.

with this much time on my hands, i’m reminded of fall junior year, when i made my first active effort to get off my phone. it was so difficult. but now i don’t have those same instagram rabbit holes i used to. progress isn’t linear, i suppose.

with this much time, i just don’t know what to do. suppose i get off my phone and laptop. well, i guess there’s things to do. i’ve been reading a lot. staring out windows, at ceilings. i really want to play the piano. or draw, or write, or go for a nice walk. but these things require more of me.

i wonder if things would be different if i were alone. i wonder if the bleh comes from the fact that i’m really just here to spend time with my family, and everything else is extra, and sometimes these things are hard to do for reasons i do not wish to control.

i do miss playing the piano. i was never amazing, but i could work hard and be good. and i miss the feeling of having something to work towards, the feeling of craft. i always loved being able to perform a piece, even just for myself. i miss it. and it’s difficult to start again. it’s always difficult to start things just by myself. i still think about that last chopin etude i played.

it’s difficult to start things by myself. that’s why it’s good to have friends, and school. but i feel like i should be a self starter. the only thing i can do by myself is write these personal things that are not meant to be performed anyways. though i do appreciate that. to write without performance is wonderful. it feels almost pure, like breathing. i like this about myself, my ability to write what’s on my mind. even if words don’t capture it all, i’ve tried my best.

and i think i do try my best. did i ever outline goals for 2023? i forget. i only pulled out my journal one time.

i want to draw. i don’t know why. maybe i just want another piano type thing in my life, that’s maybe a bit easier to do on the go. maybe i want to say i draw. maybe i want my doodles to look a little better, or to be able to put my visions down as i see them. the last option makes the most sense. maybe in the future, i will understand these things enough to want to make art, but i doubt it. i feel like i’ve seen an okay amount of art—paintings, sculptures, etc. these things don’t make me feel so deeply though. i mean, just in general. some stuff does make me feel. but for the most part it’s books, movies, music. the natural world. water. more than anything, light. i want to capture light. light and water.

nothing is as striking to me as these two things, although a lot of things about nature are also striking to me. a truly deep breath of fresh air is also very profound.

maybe i start my artistic journey in search of capturing light and water. how they make me feel. i think that makes a lot of sense. like what it feels to stand at the edge of the ocean. to walk into a cold lake. to listen to the sounds and smell the salt. to walk into a room and be struck by the lighting, to look at the trees and see the lush green, to wake up early on a winter morning and be accompanied by nothing but the sun…

it’s really more about what these things bring out in me, isn’t it? is that the point i’m getting at? can’t be sure. trying my best to understand.

i think i should also try to think more about photography. i’ve liked trying to capture things for a while just on my phone, but maybe i should try something more serious. or even just look back at what i have to see what i’ve been doing. i’m gonna buy a hard drive so i can take stuff off my phone and laptop, too. i’m running out of storage.

i should look at the world and think about what i want to capture. in whatever it is i do. the next step is figuring out how. or maybe just learning basic skills first.

i kind of hate how much more i can write when i write on my phone. i think it’s even better than when i type on my laptop, too. it feels more honest. i love the feeling of pen on paper, but it does tire me out. maybe that’s why i was into voice recordings for a while.

i feel better already after typing all this. it feels like i’m with myself again. it’s so difficult to be truly alone. even now, i’m not really alone. i checked my email once while writing this. but i’m less alone lately. it’s nice, very nice, but it makes me feel a bit like i have nothing for myself. i guess reading helps with that, too.

for now, my main purpose is to enjoy time spent with family. i really shouldn’t worry about all this. it stays in the background. time with these people is precious. and so is rest. i forgot to mention, i’m in a period of rest.

#writing #long #journal #mine

[mothunmuted]

orchid, sage, chamomile

from this ask meme (gonna get long)

-

orchid ⇢ what’s a song you consider to be perfect?

lmao, whenever I get a question like this I immediately forget every song I’ve ever heard, and then I tie myself in knots with questions like “well what would make a song perfect?”

Anyway I’m gonna pull out a Boring Classic and choose Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles. I know it’s kindof a boring choice but I feel like anything “perfect” would almost have to be?

I also find myself feeling like “perfect” will also mean “short”— one of the easiest offenses a song can make is padding itself out and overstaying its welcome.

anyway, it really cuts through the noise in the sense that it can make me feel more in its first 5 seconds than most anything else can in that time, especially if you’re going with the video from Yellow Submarine. it is a Mood, and I can’t think of anything else by any artist(s) that’s doing quite the same thing.

another choice might be ol’ J.S. Bach's “little fugue in g minor” (BWV 578) which has lived rent free in the back of my head since I was like 6 or 7. here’s a decent video of that.

-

sage ⇢ what ‘medium’ of art (poetry, music, fiction, paintings, statues etc.) is the most touching to you? why do you think that is?

I mean it’s gotta be music, anybody who knows me knows it‘s gonna be music, right? (though video games get a significant nod)

like I appreciate other media, they’re great and they can do some wonderful things, but I don't think a painting or sculpture has ever ripped my heart out or started building spiderwebs in my mind quite the same way.

—but maybe that has more to do with exposure than disposition? Maybe the film that would bring me to my knees is out there and I just haven’t quite found it yet! Or maybe I haven’t built the same framework for interpretation of other media that I have with music?

Jacob Geller's video essay “The Future of Talking About Games” touches on that last part. While it is (obviously) primarily about video games, a fair amount of it comes from engaging with them in ways similar to how we engage with other art forms.

(I’ve been watching a lot of Jacob Geller’s videos over the past week or so— I saw “Who’s Afraid of Modern Art: Vandalism, Video Games, and Fascism” years ago and imo it’s the OG classic, but I recently watched his most recent video,“Every Zelda is the Darkest Zelda” and started falling down a rabbit hole. “The Golem and the Jewish Superhero” is pretty good, and “The Game That Won’t Let You See All Of It” has got me thinking about all sorts of stuff.)

anyway this question is a little weird to answer when I’m currently hitting a noted spike in Depression™ and find it hard to feel “touched” by anything in general, oops, but I’m workin’ on it

-

chamomile ⇢ what kind of things do you like receiving as gifts?

in order of preference:

Thoughtful well-considered surprises that I would’ve asked for if I’d thought to, or sometimes if I’d even known such a thing existed

Media that holds meaning to the person giving the gift, that they are sharing with me without necessarily knowing how I’ll like it. Even if it ends up not being My Thing, that kind of connection always feels nice

Things I specifically ask for— historically these have largely been media like CDs (rip 😭), books, games, etc., but occasionally more practical considerations like “socks” will find their way into the list

cash.

I decidedly do not like receiving physical souvenirs, knick-knacks, tchotchkes, etc., in the vein of “I was thinking of you!”— I get paralyzed with not wanting them but also not wanting to get rid of a gift from somebody who cares enough to get me a gift.

#m.m. #asks

[tilynation]

Miss Americana

Submission:

Gaylor truther here, obvi. My gf and I went down the rabbit hole over the last few months, and always thought there was someone else after the realistic Karlie timeline. And the Tily timeline fits sooooo well. We just really dug into it so this might have already been talked about, but I needed to bring it up somewhere . . .

We watched Miss Americana when it came out and just felt like it went nowhere, didn’t really say much, was generally pretty surface level. But we just watched it again, and with the Tily timeline . . . it feels like the documentary could’ve actually been building up to coming out with Lily.

There’s a lot of “gay pride” and “gay rights” references that don’t make sense with the actual finished doc. Same with a lot of the language about being a good girl, doing what the GP and people around her think is right, etc. “I’ve been misunderstood in the industry the past 15 years but now I can be myself….” (Misunderstood HOW!?! Taylor?) But if you add in that she could have been in a serious relationship with a woman, it seriously tracks. The segment of her meeting fans in Tokyo? Why was it even there? The part where after a show she starts running toward someone? It was awkward and not very affectionate. The doc just felt like nothingness until we watched it with a “Tily” lens.

Then Tily breaks up. They have to edit the doc and change the storyline (to whatever tf the point is). And as a whole, it’s now just kinda pointless.

The Miss Americana doc seems so disjointed until you realize what’s missing from it - Lily! It really was mind blowing going from segment to segment and being like, “This makes no sense….” until it makes PERFECT sense.

Analysis:

Miss Americana takes place from the later stage of the Rep tour in 2018 through the Lover album recording in 2019. This NY Times article does a good job analyzing it. It was released on Netflix on January 31, 2020.

To me, something seems off in Miss Americana. As the NYT article mentions, Taylor is portrayed in the doc as surprisingly alone/sad/whatever you want to call it. This is surprising for me to see. Yes, her relationship with Lily or Joe was supposed to be private and thus not a big part of the doc, but Taylor still seems like she’s going through a lot during this time period. We know Lily went to the final leg of the Rep tour in Tokyo in November 2018. (See here) We know some scenes from Miss Americana were filmed at the Tokyo shows. (Video) Showing Lily, even if just in the background, would have made sense and could have been a nice gesture to remember that point in time. But Lily is erased entirely in the doc, except for maybe the British chair shown in Taylor’s house (“At every table I’ll save you a seat, lover”), which in the doc is seemingly for Joe.

With Miss Americana being released on January 31, 2020, it’s possible Lily saw the movie beforehand or was told she wasn’t in it. “The Man” single was released on her birthday just four days before. Lily deleted the “AT” (A-Team reference?) and red heart ♥️ from her 2016 birthday post for Taylor in early January 2020, just a few weeks before Miss Americana was released.

January 2020 seems to be the final end of Tily. Lily had been liking some of Taylor’s posts on Instagram in November/December 2019, but all public interaction stopped by January 2020. It’s possible Lily was hurt by seeing herself removed from Taylor’s life in the doc.

The Anti-Trump/Blackburn Post

I bring this up for timeline purposes. Taylor’s social media post was done on October 7, 2018. The American Music Awards scenes from Miss Americana were filmed in LA on October 9, 2018. For more Tily analysis of this time period, see here.

The Driving Scenes / Falling in Love

There are a few scenes that could be seen favorably through a Tily lens like the driving scene below which looks like Lily’s “My Uber Driver is So Pretty” snapchat of Taylor.

And the “Call It What You Want” performance by Taylor on the floor, which was filmed in London in 2017 and where Taylor is wearing the Victoria’s Secret angel ring.

But, all in all, Miss Americana is a sad documentary and seems to mark the final end of the Tily relationship.

#tily #gaylor #gaylor swift #lily donaldson #miss americana #netflix #rep era #lover era #tily masterpost

[rose-of-pollux]

So, I ended up down a metaphorical rabbit hole and had a twofold humbling experience last evening.

I was looking up stories of Hollywood ghost sightings (...as you do...) and saw an offhand mention that among the ghosts seen in Hollywood is Lon Chaney Sr.  I just got through reading a biography about him... which included a story of how he saved a whole bunch of baby birbs, so, you know, that got my full attention really quickly--

Kudos to the man for doing exactly what you’re supposed to do when you find fallen nestlings--put them back in the same tree as close as you can to the original position.  The Audubon Society tells you to do that to this day.  But I digress...

I know that one of Lon Chaney’s most famous roles was Erik in Phantom of the Opera.  I had my Phantom phase from 2005-2007, and while I was mostly stuck on the 1986 musical, I did watch and appreciate Lon’s portrayal of Erik in the 1925 movie.  However, I did scoff--and continued to scoff--at all the stories of people getting shocked in the theatres and swooning during the famous unmasking scene.  My thoughts were basically, “Pffft, yeah, that’s not that scary.”

Fast forward to last evening.  I got intrigued by the mention of Lon’s ghost being spotted and looked into it further.  What I didn’t know was that one of the websites I was looking at had a gigantic header of Lon as Erik in full fury that was taking its own sweet time loading.

Cue Humbling Experience #1: the header finally loads, and I effectively get jumpscared at the very same make-up job I’ve been scoffing at since 2005 and nearly yeet my laptop across the room.

...Mr Chaney, Sir, I sincerely apologize for everything I said about your Erik look since 2005.  I 100% deserved that.

Anyway, so, I get over the scare and keep reading about the sightings of his ghost--

Ok, yes, that makes perfect sense that he’d be frequently revisiting a place he had some attachment to during his mortal life.

But the studio is gone now, as noted in that blurb.  I knew that part of it (but not that Lon frequented it in the afterlife) because I was ranting about it to Ksturf the other day about how they callously got rid of an iconic piece of film history.  So I looked into it, wondering “what bunch of idiots” decided to get rid of it and what dumb thing they dared to put in its place--

Cue Humbling Experience #2: the realization that the thing responsible for the destruction of an iconic piece of film history and Lon’s visiting grounds is a thing headed by Nintendo--a presence that has been in my life for as long as I can remember and has fundamentally shaped me into who I am, and that one of the “bunch” who was involved in the discussions for Nintendo World is very, very likely to have been the late and venerated Mr. Satoru Iwata, whom I also hold in very great respect, as he was actively involved in the many parts of Nintendo that shaped who I am today.

...Mr. Iwata, Sir, I meant no disrespect.

There’s no way of knowing, of course, whether Mr. Iwata knew they were tearing down the historic Phantom stage for Nintendo World, and while I’m sure he’s not the one with enough clout in this situation to blame, anyway (that falls on Universal, who could’ve spared the Phantom stage and chosen a different location for Nintendo World), I still have incredibly mixed emotions about this becase, on the one hand, iconic film history gone forever, but on the other hand, one of my most favorite things in the world is going to have a presence there soon (they’re saying Nintendo World will open in Los Angeles next year).

And, of course... what’s Lon’s spirit doing now with all this going on?  The stage is gone, so he has no more catwalks to pace.

Mr. Chaney, Sir, whether you move on or stick around, I hope you find peace.

#random #don't mind me #lon chaney #nintendo

[prettylittlebutterflie]

It All Started With A Break

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31840603

Okay, so I have fallen down the rabbit hole known as MariBat and I just can't stop all the ideas I have because of this and decided that enough is enough and I am doing it.

This is my very first fanfic - or any fic actually - but I hope you guys like it and be WARNED that some of you may find some part of this story that's similar with another and that may've been because I really liked the idea when I read it and wanna have a kinda similar thing here and the same goes with some trope of this fanfic in the future, but I'll do my best to keep it unique. I am also new to the DCU, but I'm doing research and planning to binge watch stuff and if you could please help this poor soul find a way to navigate and somehow get an idea on how that universe work (especially abt the batfam), I'll be forever grateful to thy savior.

This fic is canon until S4 Ep 1&2 (Truth & Lie) of MLU and as for the rest, I'll let you guys know.

So yeah, that's all. Enjoy and hope you guys like it. (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

P.S. Sorry I kinda ranted, this is my first time actually posting smth so bear with me people

SYNOPSIS

It’s been four years ever since Hawkmoth, who now goes by the name Shadow Moth, began his reign of terror in Paris. Four years worth of akumas that have brought pain and suffering. Four years of no rest in controlling their emotions, afraid of what may come if they were controlled.

After four long years, the Miraculous Team can finally see a ray of light. Everything they have sacrificed for that one goal they all share is finally going to be repaid… Not.

Locating Hawkmoth was easier said than done, and the frustration is finally getting to them. With that, it was decided that they need a break from their hero lives — ok, maybe not. After all, Shadow Moth is proving himself to be a workaholic (like dude, don’t you have anything better to do than destroy everyone’s schedule?) — but anyways, it was clear. THEY. NEED. A. BREAK. Away from Paris. Away from Hawkmoth. Away from the frickin akumas.

So yeah, that’s how it was decided (more like forced) that they are going to America to relax, let loose, and have some fun. After all, who knows, maybe a break is all they need to get things to start getting better — or worse.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

PROLOGUE

“Alright. So, we are going to take a break—”

“For two months.”

“For two months. And because it’s supposed to be a break, that means—”

“No thinking of anything Moth related.”

“No thinking of anything Moth rela— Moth related?”

“You know, Hawkmoth, Red Moth, Shadow Moth, those Moths.”

“Right. Moths. Aside from Moths, it also means—’

“No thinking of akumas.”

“No thinking of akumas. For this entire break, we’re not going to think about—”

“Anything Miraculous related.”

“Anything Miraculous related. Alya, do you really need to do that every time I’m about to say it?”

“It’s because she knows you. We know you. It’s ridiculous, utterly ridiculous, how you always promise not to worry about something, especially anything Miraculous related, just to break it the moment anything related to it comes up. So, yes. She needs to say it and repeat it as much as possible for it to go through that head of yours.”

“Guys, I swear, I’m really going to follow through with this plan. I did agree that we need to unwind ourselves since we’re getting way too stressed and that won’t help us focus on our job.”

“Only after we bugged you about it. Get it? Bugged. Pfft—”

“Hey! Puns are my thing. And you shouldn’t be saying it like that. You’re making it ape-solutely obvious and that makes it not punny anymore”

“Dude, do you really have to do that? That’s so not paw-some. Pfft—”

“All puns aside, it is true that we had to convince you, Mari-hime, to agree on taking a break. Although I rarely take a break from fencing, my Mother and I are aware of the importance of having one and may I also remind you that you were the one who taught us that.”

“And that’s why I told you guys to go have one.”

“But you plus the kitty are the ones who need it the most. Remember what future-me said? About you two always leading us and how she— or rather I am the last one called upon? That means you guys are always gonna work while the rest of us may or may not be needed in some fights.”

“There is a 97.6% probability of you two showing up in fights.”

“Because we have to. It’s our responsibility as the one leading our team.”

“M’lady’s right. Besides, there were only the two of us in the beginning and with all the akumas, we just got used to it.”

“But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to rest. The music I’m hearing from both of you is filled with the stress you guys have and it doesn’t sound nice. Maybe you two unwinding will help make it more beautiful and even more powerful than before.”

“Fine. We’re all taking a break—”

“Especially you and Adrien.”

“Especially Adrien and I, for a month. Now, does anyone have any ideas on how we're gonna do that?”

“Ooh! Me, me! I have a competition coming up this summer break so I can’t really go anywhere too far since I have some training to do.”

“I’m sticking with the ape. Gotta keep an eye on him if I don’t want him messing up with the timeline. Plus, it’ll be pretty fun beating him up every time he asks for a challenge.”

“Hey!”

“The same goes for me. Someone has to make sure the correct time is recorded with not a single millisecond of it missed. Kwami knows how many times he messes it up whenever he does the recording himself.”

“Okay. So Kim, Alix, and Max will be staying in Paris. Are you guys sure that you’ll be able to take a break even if you’re in the city?”

“Yeah, we're fine. And I am totally beating you next time, little bunny.”

“Whatever. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming, y’know.”

“Anything else?”

“Oh, I have an internship in America this coming summer. The one at the Daily Planet. I just got the email and I was finally given an invite!”

“Really? Cool! Told you you’ll get it, babe!”

“Yeah! That’s really awesome, Alya! So I’m assuming you'll be accepting that?”

“You got it, girl! I mean, this is the Daily Planet we’re talkin’ about. I’ll learn so much about writing and journalism there, I’ve just got to take it.”

“So Alya’s going to America. Anyone else with plans outside of the country?”

“There will be an upcoming world-class fencing competition this summer and Mother and I have discussed my participation in it. It will be held in the States as well, specifically Gotham, two weeks before the end of the summer break. Maybe you should participate in it as well, Adrien. That way, you’ll have an excuse for your father to leave the country. I’m sure Mother will be happy to convince him as well to let you participate in it. That way, at the very least, I’ll have someone I know who’ll be an actual challenge.”

“Really? That actually sounds great! I’m sure Father would agree if your mother’s the one who suggested it. Thanks Kagami!”

“Okay. Kagami and hopefully Adrien will have a fencing competition in America too.”

“My Dad is having a tour in America right now. He’ll be having the last one at Metropolis during the summer break. He actually wants me to go with him, but I declined. It’ll be great if we all could go there and see it.”

“Dude, that’s so cool! Maybe you’ll even get to perform with your dad on stage. You did make that song with him that reached the record chart’s top. I’ve even made a playlist based on it.”

“Okay then, that makes Alya, Kagami, Adrien, and Luka going to the States. Chloe, do you also have plans to go there this summer? Maman said your mother was thinking of inviting you to be one of the models in an upcoming fashion show there.”

“She did mention something like that, but I wasn’t really paying attention to details once I found out that it’ll be outside of Paris. I’ll discuss it with her again then I can have my much needed vacation in the States.”

“So now that makes five of you going to America. Nino?”

“Well, I don’t really have any plans this summer. Just chill out and relax, y’know, make some playlist, listen to some music.”

“Ooh! How about you come with us, babe? That’ll be so cool and not all of us will be doing something most of the time while we’re there. You can just chill and relax there and maybe you could even study the kind of music they listen to and make a playlist out of it.”

“I would love to go, but I don’t think I really got the money for it. ‘Sides, my parents might not allow me to go out of the country.”

“You’re already 18 and if your parents ever say no, just tell them that you want to really relax, without keeping your emotions in check and have the freedom to let it out. I’m sure they’ll understand and unlike my Father, they actually listen to you.”

“As for the money, I have some savings and if you want I can lend you some-”

“But-”

“Lend. I’m not just giving it to you. You will have to pay me back, alright? And if you try to say no again, I’m going to insist that you don’t pay me anymore.”

“You sure? You're the best! Thanks, Minette.”

“No problem. So now that makes six of them—”

“Seven.”

“What?”

“Seven. We’re including you.”

“Me? But Alya, I already got plans this summer.”

“Plans? What plans?”

“I was planning on working on my commissions this summer an— Guys, can you all stop rolling your eyes on me and no, Chloe. I don’t need you doing it again.”

“Girl! We all agreed that we’re going to take a break this summer. How does doing your commissions sound like a break to you?”

“You all got your own thing to do this summer and mine just happens to be those. Also, the break was for anything Miraculous related. My commissions don't exactly fall under that.”

“Nope. We actually all agreed that for you, commissions should be added to the list of things you get to take a break from.”

“Adrien! I thought you’re supposed to be my partner? So much for the two of us against the world.”

“He is still your partner alright. But also, as someone who truly cares about you, he decided that you really needed a break. And besides girl, this could be your chance!”

“Chance? What chance?”

“Your pen pal! Doesn’t he live in Gotham? You could go and finally meet him. Who knows? Maybe something might happen.”

“Ooh, he’s from there? That’s awesome! You should totally go meet him. Maybe you could even go on a date or two-”

“A date?! Kim, he’s just a frie-”

“You stop right there, Dupain-Cheng! It’s ridiculous, utterly ridiculous! All of us already had enough with Adrikins always calling you ‘just a friend’ when it’s pretty obvious how totally untrue that statement was. We don’t need you ending up just like him, thank you very much.”

“But he really is-”

“Yeah right. If he really is just a friend, then why do you guys stay up all night talking to each other? You always immediately check your phone whenever a notif comes up and you smile like a love-sick fool whenever you read his messages for you. And don’t get me started on the way you gush about him non-stop.”

“There is something beautiful in your music whenever you talk or even think about him.”

“Your smiles are much brighter compared to before the two of you got to know each other.”

“Markov and I also have a record of your heartbeat and we have observed your heart beating faster whenever we talk about this certain topic.”

“And it's been more than a year since you two have become pen pals. The two of you are now so close that it’s a wonder why you guys still haven’t video-called each other just because you insist for your first time seeing each other to be in person.”

“I think it’s rather romantic. They’ll look into each other’s eyes for the first time then BAM! They’re finally together. But I still plan on giving him a shovel talk the first chance I get. Can’t have him break my twin’s heart without him knowing I have the god of destruction on my side.”

“What do you mean shovel talk- I mean, what even gives you the idea that he thinks of me that way for you guys to assume that we’ll end up in… in that kind of relationship?”

“He’d be an idiot if he still hasn’t fallen in love with you.”

“Literally almost everyone I know had a crush on you or have you forgotten already that my boyfriend’s one of those people?”

“I know for a fact that that’s true since I’ve already admitted that one of my reasons why I began bullying you back then was because I had a crush on you.”

“I must admit, I think I also had the same feeling towards you at the beginning of our friendship until I really got to know Luka and you helped us get together.”

“Oh! There’s also that. Do you actually know just how many people you’ve helped get together, buginette? Alya’s even written an article about it at the Ladyblog of how you are also known as Paris’s own cupid and how all of the couples you’ve paired ended up living a happy life together.”

“Everyone’s been saying how Ladybug’s the next best person they can go to if they ever want to find love after Andre.”

“And yet every time you try to pair yourself with someone, the magic just doesn’t seem to work.”

“So we all decided that we’ll be Ladybug’s cupid and pair her up with the boy she just can’t seem to get off of her head.”

“Now, you coming or what? I won’t be taking the money you’ll be lending me if you say no. I’m only going with these dudes if you also come or else I’ll just end up getting bored when there’s no one who can go around the city with me.”

“...”

“““...”””

“Fine. You guys win—”

“““YES!”””

“So here’s the final plan for the break. Kim, Alix, and Max will be staying in Paris for Kim’s competition, while the rest of us will be going to America doing our own stuff—”

“With you finally meeting your pen pal.”

“Yes. Alright. I’ll go and meet my pen pal. And during the break, no thinking about anything miraculous related. If ever there’s an akuma, only those who’ll be needed will go. Max will bring us to the akuma’s location and if there is anything going on that we can’t be excused of or if the fight goes longer than expected, Alix will bring us back in time making it look like we just went to the toilets, the usuals. Any questions?”

“““Non.”””

“Good. Operation: Taking a Break is good to go.”

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Yay! Finally got to post it. So comments? What do you guys think and who do you think who is saying what? I know there will be new holders in S4, but I decided I’ll either make them a temp or they still don’t know the other’s identities bc of stuff, so yeah. Still thinking abt it. Adios (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31840603

#first post #maribat #marinette x damian #damian x marinette #maridami #marinette dupen chang #damian wayne #batfam #batfamily #team miraculous #miraculous team #ml x dc #miraculous ladybug

[smiting-finger]

alive, and back on my usual nonsense

So after getting preoccupied with other things and temporarily falling off the face of the planet (for like an entire year ಥωಥ), I was thinking about the kdrama Mr. Queen (which I've been meaning to watch), and the Chinese novel it was based on (太子妃升职记, which I read a few years ago and very much enjoyed), and this popped out--

Wei Wuxian’s first thought is that there seem to be an awful lot of female voices around, for a bedroom inhabited by two men. Did he drink too much last night? It wouldn’t be the first time he’s overindulged on a trip to the town and woken up in a strange place the next morning, but that kind of problem has been cropping up a lot less frequently now that he has Lan Zhan around to ferry him home.

(Sometimes literally, on his back. His broad, strong--)

But perhaps Lan Zhan had gotten drunk, too? In which case, Wei Wuxian should consider them lucky to have woken up surrounded by people, rather than chickens, rabbits or, notably, on one occasion, mounds of resentful cabbages.

The chatter around him continues, pitched high with youth and - is that anxiety? It's interspersed with the odd interjection from what sounds like one (calmer, if more exasperated) older woman and a man. Probably not a nunnery, he decides. Perhaps the back rooms of a pleasure house? Although, if that’s the case, this amount of excitement over a mere two men is honestly a little excessive.

He reaches out tentatively, but pats all the way across the mattress to the edge without finding his usual bedfellow. A much less tentative venture towards the other side produces similar results.

Hm.

Wei Wuxian cracks open an eye and heaves himself upright, absent-mindedly scratching at his (unusually soft - as much as he hates to admit it, maybe Nie Huaisang has a point about drinking less and training more) side and squinting into the too-bright light until the person-shaped blur in front of him sharpens into focus.

“Niang niang!” a complete stranger cries tearfully, clutching at the sleeve of his other arm. “You’re awake! Thank Heavens, you’re awake! Physician Liu, quick, quick!”

A cushion is produced from somewhere and thrust expectantly between Wei Wuxian and the elderly man sitting at his bedside.

He sighs. It’s probably not worth fighting.

Wei Wuxian smacks his upturned wrist onto the unusually lavish brocade and is only a little surprised when it’s covered by a cloth before the physician reaches to take it.

(Do they think he’s diseased?)

((Is he diseased?!))

(((Is that why Lan Zhan isn’t here?)))

He looks at the row of young girls (+ 1 matron) kneeling along the wall to his left, dressed identically to the first and also now beginning to prostrate themselves and wail about “Niang niang!” and blessings and deserving to die.

Not a pleasure house, then.

He looks around at the rest of the richly-furnished room and its intricately-carved wooden furniture, the wealth of jade carvings and the obscene amount of gold that's gilding … everything (so shiny). The opulence of it all would put even Jin Guangshan to shame.

So, not a nunnery either.

He looks down at the small hands, delicate wrists and - he clutches one abruptly just to make sure his eyes aren’t deceiving him - breasts of the body that he certainly was not inhabiting yesterday.

“Well,” he says aloud, unable to stop himself from wincing at the high, soft voice that emerges despite fully expecting it. “It’s not the first time this has happened.”

===

Two days, one diagnosis of shock-induced memory loss and some discreet enquiries (as well as some indiscreet enquiries) later, this is what he knows about his situation:

He’s the main consort (unfavoured) of the crown prince of whatever place he’s landed in;

Three days ago, following a disagreement with one Consort Yun (favoured, main competitor for husband’s affections);

In the course of this disagreement, both women somehow fell into a palace lake and mostly-drowned;

Consort Yun (admittedly quite pretty) was revived at the scene, but Wei Wuxian took a full day to “miraculously” recover;

Angered by the unseemly behaviour of her daughters-in-law, particularly upon learning that the Crown Princess’s first act upon waking was to stumble upon a chance meeting between the Crown Prince and Consort Yun in one of the pleasure gardens and bodily throw herself between them (a tactical error on Wei Wuxian’s part. He’d been trying to throw himself over the battlements to freedom, but he’d gotten lost and scaled the wrong wall), the Empress (Crown Prince’s political opponent, not particularly fond of either consort) grounded both of them to their respective residences for a month, with no visitors allowed.

Which brings him to his current position, feeding the fish in his personal pond as an excuse to be alone. Not truly alone - he shoots a pointed glance at the maids watching anxiously from the other side of the courtyard - because he’s apparently a “suicide risk” now (and honestly, yes, he’d meant to throw himself off that roof, but he hadn’t meant to die - it’s simply that this new body’s cultivation level is not what he’s come to expect even from Mo Xuanyu’s modest abilities), but alone enough to start planning his next move.

Direct escape is out - he didn’t have a plan for what to do once he’d gotten out anyway, and honestly he’s better-resourced for finding out how he got here in the Palace than anywhere else, so it’s no great loss.

“What do you think, Master Fish?” Wei Wuxian asks a gold and black spotted koi with particularly sage-looking whiskers. “Shall I just stay here for the time being?”

It’s not a terrible place to be for the time being, he must admit, throwing more food into the water and watching the fish swarm. Being grounded, he’s at no risk from the Crown Prince’s amorous attentions for a month (a salute of gratitude to the Empress for the inadvertent protection). And thanks to Consort Yun and her voluptuous figure (and if the Crown Prince is more partial to that than the Zhao Feiyan style of willowy fragility that Wei Wuxian seems to have inherited, who can honestly blame him?), he’s at no great risk from them after that, either (a salute of gratitude to the unknowing sister-in-arms, taking one - and hopefully a great many more after that - for the team).

According to his maid (sleeve-clutcher extraordinaire, who even now is boring two holes into his skull with her woeful gaze from across the way while he does nothing more suspicious than scatter another handful of feed towards some latercomer fish), the body he’s inhabiting comes from a powerful military lineage. In particular, her father is (was?) a powerful general who currently commands more than half the nation’s military forces and has the absolute trust of the Emperor. So that more or less keeps him safe from the machinations of the majority of the nest of vipers in this palatial cesspit.

That just leaves the Empress, who - if his servants and the smuggled letters from the Original Goods’s mother (a salute of gratitude to the worthy woman for spelling it out so that even such an interloper as he can understand) are anything to go by - would definitely kill him to damage the Crown Prince’s political standing or throw any sort of roadblock in the way of him from becoming Emperor.

Less immediately - if his secret informants are anything to go by (a salute of gratitude to the resourceful host for cultivating such a valuable resource if not her dantian) - it also leaves the Crown Prince, who, upon cementing his power as Emperor, would also definitely kill his current Crown Princess in order to wedge his beloved Consort Yun into the Empress role.

Really, the only road to any sort of security for someone in his position is to raise the next Imperial heir, outlive the Original Goods’s faithless husband and become the Empress Dowager.

Hopefully Wei Wuxian will be long gone by then, but if leaving means the Original Goods will return (from … Mo Xuanyu’s body? The Ether? Or???) - well, he doesn’t want to repay her hospitality by leaving her house in a mess, so to speak. So he’ll try to set her on that career path, if he can.

But that’s an aspirational goal. First, he has to not-die before he can find out how to get himself home.

And find out how to get himself home.

If getting himself home is even possible.

Wei Wuxian dumps the rest of the fish food in the water and yells.

(It startles the maids, the fish and the poor eunuch the Crown Prince has sent as a spy into falling out of the tree he’s been hiding in and into the prickly bushes below.)

===

The problem with “staying for the time being” is … well, how interminably boring it is. The approved list of hobbies for an Imperial consort seems to consist of: eating (but not too much), sleeping (but not too much), embroidery (which he can’t do), reading (but only texts on female virtue and the occasional terrible novel), playing music (but not the flute), conversing with his maids (who are very sweet, but are all like, 12) and walking in the gardens (which he’s not allowed to do).

Honestly, it’s no wonder all the consorts turn to scheming and murder.

It only takes a week of confinement for him to snap and sneak himself out for a nighttime adventure, setting off to explore the grounds and see … a night-blooming flower, a ghost, a rat, he’ll take pretty much anything at this point.

In the end, he finds none of these things, but the walking is still pretty nice, and he even hears the faint sounds of a guqin wafting over from one of the other consorts’ residences. (He should probably learn who lives where at some point, but it’s not exactly a priority. What’s he going to do with the information when he can only visit during the nighttime? Peep?) When Wei Wuxian wanders closer, the notes resolve themselves into the familiar strains of Flowing Waters, and his breath catches on a sudden surge of longing to hear the same song, played by a different set of fingers.

(First played on a familiar guqin and then, later, accompanied by soft humming between soft, worn sheets, played across the edges of Wei Wuxian’s ribs, along the dip of his spine, and finally lower, into--)

((Is Lan Zhan thinking about him?))

(((Is Lan Zhan looking for him?)))

Stumbling blindly on, he’s so caught up in missing Lan Zhan that he misses the first few stanzas of the next piece, and it isn’t until the music starts to rise in a familiar refrain that he freezes.

He knows that song.

He’s one of the only two people who know that song, which is in fact how he got caught out the last time he found himself in a farce of an identity charade, by the only other person who knows that song, who must be - who must be -

Lan Zhan, his blood sings in his ears as he takes off in a dead run towards the source of the playing. Up ahead of him, small courtyard glows softly with the light of the only burning lamp in their vicinity. Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan-

He scrambles up the wall with the ease of a lifetime’s practice, using bloody-minded determination to make up for the lack of muscle memory.

“Lan Zhan,” he yelps, forgetting to whisper in his excitement as he flings himself over the top and into the branches of a convenient, wall-side tree. “Lan Zhan, it’s me, I-”

This is, naturally, when his foot slips. He manages to catch hold of a branch, but his tender hands and puny wrists, unused to holding up anything heavier than a chicken leg, fail to maintain their hold through his weight, and he tumbles down the trunk into a sad puddle of fabric on the ground.

“Lan Zhan,” he gasps, fighting to untangle himself from the ridiculous train that, admittedly, made a considerable contribution to cushioning his fall. He clambers up onto his hands and knees--

--and looks straight into the wide-eyed stare of Consort Yun.

===

“I cannot believe,” Wei Wuxian growls, palming the ample softness of one exposed breast with one hand, while shoving the other deeper into the many (too many) layers of fabric between them and between Lan Zhan’s splayed legs, “that after everything that’s happened, you’re still taller than me.”

Lan Zhan huffs a laugh that turns quickly into a moan, and Wei Wuxian swallows it, smothers Lan Zhan’s gasping breaths with his own parted lips and sucks them greedily down even as he coaxes out more with twisting fingers here, another tug to Lan Zhan’s poor, abused nipple there.

He slides his fingers back between slick folds and then upwards again, pushing in and out in a few languid strokes before curling them to make Lan Zhan arch harder against the wall behind him, tilt his head back and expose a beautifully vulnerable stretch of neck to Wei Wuxian's teeth.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan murmurs, and his voice is different, the shape of his lips is different, but the way Wei Wuxian’s name fits inside his mouth (tender, beloved), the way he tucks the flyaway strands of hair behind Wei Wuxian’s ear, the look in his eyes when their gazes meet (warm, open, knowing) are the same, same, same.

===

===

I am entirely too lazy to write the rest of it, but afterwards they regroup and it turns out LWJ has been in this world for exactly one more day than WWX, having woken up in Consort Yun’s body when she was “revived”. Consort Yun is the daughter of a high-ranking Minister in the Treasury or something, so Lan Zhan been using his new position as the daughter of a ~scholarly family~ to build a reputation for being really into Buddhist scripture, and eventually he’s going to request to be allowed to go to a nearby Temple to attain some virtuous brownie points for the Imperial family via prayer as his penitence.

That there’s also an elderly monk living there who’s got a reputation for being super good with the divine mysteries and spiritual lore about curses and whatnot is totally immaterial, if Lan Zhan happens to run into that guy, it’ll be a total coincidence, yeah.

So WWX also starts on the divine penitence route, and if everyone thinks it’s because the Crown Princess refuses to be outdone by Consort Yun, then even better, and two weeks into confinement they wear the Empress down into letting them make the trip, and when they get there, turns out the monk is Nie Huaisang.

(NHS: “OH THANK GOD, I’ve done the research but the lynchpin of this mess is definitely somewhere in the Palace and I could not for the life of me figure out a way to get in.”

WWX: “That's nice, but seriously, how come you got to stay a man?”

NHS: “My friend, I may be a man, but my balls are currently swinging somewhere around my ankles.”

WWX: “...show me.”

And LWJ is like “NO.” except WWX can tell by the look in his eye that he sort of wants to see, too).

So they return to the Palace and WWX whirls into one of their morning audiences with the Empress, distraught about a ~dream from the ancestors~ where they warned him about disrupted ley lines or accumulated resentment or an offended minor god that needs investigation by someone, and “How convenient, because we met just the guy!” And the Empress looks like she was Done Five Years Ago, but the Empress Dowager, who’s old and doddery, is like “oh no, you must bring him!” and the Empress mutters “to fucking what, offend some major gods and really do the job properly?” and that’s how they find out the Empress is Jiang Cheng.

In the meantime, the confinement edict expires and WWX+LWJ are allowed to return to their regular programming, which means that as the legal wife, WWX can continuously summon LWJ to his residence for increasingly tenuous and spurious reasons. The best thing is, it’s not even out of character for the Crown Princess, who used to regularly summon Consort Yun to subject her to not-so-veiled barbs and petty torments. So WWX summons LWJ, and then immediately expels both their entourages from the room, instructing that no one is to enter on pain of death.

So LWJ’s maids are gnashing their teeth helplessly while all sorts of piteous moans, pained gasps and the occasional scream emanate from behind the closed door, and when their mistress finally emerges there are no marks on her body, but she’s weak-kneed and having trouble walking straight, so who knows what kind of terrible tortures the Crown Princess has visited upon her.

The Crown Prince obviously hears about this, so he bursts in one day without warning, only to find the two sitting together, the Crown princess’s arms around Consort Yun’s waist, her cheek pillowed on one heaving bosom, and although she’s smiling besottedly at him now, he could have sworn that he felt killing intent being directed at him only a second ago? And to tell the truth, he’s not really in love Consort Yun either, it’s all an act to keep the two consorts (and their families) pitted in a power struggle against each other until he can finally outmanoeuvre the Empress and cement his position as heir to the throne (and also to protect his actual favourite, a third consort who’s a nondescript nobody with no political backing). So the fact that “It was all a misunderstanding, we’re friends now,” his Crown Princess says sweetly (and did she … rub her cheek against his Consort’s chest? Must be his imagination) is not the worst thing (at least neither of them/their families can be enlisted by the Empress in support of her son, and if they’re caught up with Being Besties, then at least they’re not bullying his actual favourite), but for some reason he still feels kind of … threatened? Like someone’s making moves on his wife, which is absurd because they’re both his wives, but the vibes he gets from the first one in particular are kind of … off?

In any case, the crew solve the mystery, find the lynchpin object (which turns out to be a jade dildo belonging to one of the Emperor’s favoured consorts because of course it is), and wake up in their real bodies, in their real world, to a very apologetic hermit-inventor-cultivator whose property they stumbled onto while pursuing a resentful beast. Turns out they triggered the glamour/enchantment/psychic maze world he created as a security system because, “I just didn’t want to risk people getting into my stuff, you know? I’ve got some things that could be very dangerous in the wrong hands”. WWX is like “oh yeah, for sure” and JC is like “WHAT DO YOU MEAN FOR SURE? HOW IS THIS AN UNDERSTANDABLE RESPONSE, IF YOU’RE AFRAID PEOPLE WILL TOUCH YOUR SHIT THEN JUST ENCHANT SOME FUCKING WARRIOR GOLEMS LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.”

#CQL #The Untamed #mo dao zu shi #Wangxian #fic #not-fic

[juliathephantom]

JATP Fanfic Recs: Multichapter Edition

* indicates complete

'Stupid Cupid, Stop Hitting On Me' by Bluefire510

Juke

Luke, a troublemaker cupid, meets Julie, who is also one of Love HQ's toughest cases to crack.

She claims to have no desire to fall in love.

But Luke is always up for a challenge.

Let's see if he could get Julie to fall for her Perfect Match by next Valentine's Day.... and maybe teach her all about love while he's at it.

*Operation Hashtag Rulie by where_you_go

Reggie/Luke/Julie

“Explain yourselves,” Caleb ground out.

“Uh…it’s not what it looks like?” Reggie tried, wincing.

“Oh really, Reginald? Because it looks like two of my most popular band members from a family-friendly band are fornicating in public!”

-

Julie and Reggie get caught up in a PR misunderstanding that leads to them "dating" for a few months. It's not a big deal, or at least it wouldn't be, if Luke would stop acting so weird.

*Unexpected by Phantom_Lover

Luke is determined to breeze through his senior year and onto mega stardom (which means avoiding school, and Principal Lessa, as much as possible). That is until he's forced to work side-by-side with quiet good-girl, Julie Molina, on the big end-of-the-year talent show. The two struggle to see eye to eye, and meeting the all-important deadline seems impossible until something unexpected happens between them.

keys to the cage (and the devil to pay) by HearJessRoar

Juke, Willex

Julie Molina has always thought it would be rather exciting to meet a pirate.

Unfortunately, she's right.

"Julie, Julie Patterson, I'm a maid here in the governor's household," she bluffs. And she wishes that Luke's name hadn't been the first that she'd come up with, because the long-haired pirate's eyebrows raise immediately.

"Luke got married?" he says, sounding oddly betrayed.

His blonde companion looks equally gutted. "He didn't even tell us."

Piss Off Your Parents (Date Me To Scare Them) by TheNameIsBritney

Willex

Alex Mercer doesn't want to go home for Christmas; but if he has to, he's certainly gonna raise a little hell. Enter: Willie, the cute guy in his history of English class who would be the perfect fake boyfriend candidate.

So if you wanna piss off your parents, date me to scare them, show them you're all grown up. If long hair and tattoos are what attract you, baby then you're in luck.

*i'll hold your music (here inside my hands) by musicals_musicals

"Your soulmate must love music just like you do”

Julie is 3 years old, enthusiastically playing a small plastic piano, the first time she sees her string.

It makes sense that music would connect her to her soulmate.

or

How Julie finds her way back to music, joins a band, falls in love, and meets Luke Patterson (not necessarily in that order)

*a masterpiece in motion, more beautiful every day by fairylightsandrainydays

Willex, Juke

Alex Mercer is a merboy with a fascination for the human world. Willie is a prince who he saves from a storm. And Caleb Covington is the sea witch who is going to make Alex's dream come true.

So long as Caleb gets what he wants.

*days go by and seasons change (lets try again next winter) by itsagamefortwo

Juke

julie's ready for a year away from home, studying and trying to re-find the magic in music. luke's about to start on a summer tour around europe opening for a band. they meet one night, sparks fly and emotions run high. now they've just got to try and see if they can maintain a long distance friendship.

Who Could Deny These Butterflies? by xxPrettyLittleTimeBombxx

Juke

“I know this is going to sound kinda crazy…but, could you maybe pretend to be in love with me for a few minutes?”

—

When Julie Molina approaches Luke Patterson at a bar and asks him to pretend to be her boyfriend, she never expects to find herself in a position where she and Luke have to keep up the ruse for longer than five minutes. Figures that out of all of the strangers she could have approached that night, she’d gone and picked the one guy who just so happens to be in a rock band that’s on the brink of blowing up.

*relight that spark by @ruzek-halstead

Juke

julie molina has had nothing but a tough life. after losing both her parents early on, she was left in the care of her step-monster karen and her two step-daughters. while working at her late father's diner, completing household duties and being at karen's beck and call at all hours, julie was well on her way to getting accepted into the college of her dreams and having enough money to move out.

and then one day she received a text message from an unknown number. it started out innocent, crossed wires based on a flyer she put up three years ago.

this is the story of julie molina and her prince charming, and everything in between.

i never saw you coming (and i'll never be the same) by ruzekhalstead (@ruzek-halstead)

Juke

julie molina, a new student to uc berkeley, secures a job at a tiny, run-down grocery store, where she meets a group of people who inadvertently become some of the most important people in her life.

there's nothing like suffering in the workplace with your co-workers to solidify a bond.

a look into julie's life in a brand new city, as told by the customer service experience throughout the months.

an oddly specific grocery store au that no one asked for but i'm writing anyway to satisfy my brain

*Love Drunk by captainkippen

Juke

Thirty-two missed calls. Fifty-eight texts waiting. Over one hundred various social media notifications. A deep sense of foreboding took over. Julie swallowed. Slowly, she lifted the phone back to her ear.

"Flynn… what happened last night?"

After a night out in Vegas, Julie and Luke wake up to find themselves married. Hijinks ensue.

*So that's how it happens by echocharm (@echocharm17618)

Juke

But it had to be today. Julie had this crazy feeling in her stomach. Not nervous butterflies. More like fireflies that were trying to zap her (Do fireflies electrocute people? She should google that). It felt like that moment her parents spoke about all the time. The day they met. And when they first spoke to each other. Her mom always says that an intense zap went through her whole body.

Are you new or nervous? Julie has been waiting a (short)lifetime to hear those words be said to her.

She walked down a few more steps in the auditorium and found a spot. It was one of the few seats left in the room that wasn’t all the way up in the back. She sat down and settled into the uncomfortable, hard, plastic chair and took a deep shaky breath. The prof was nowhere to be seen. But there was a cute boy in the seat next to her. He had sort of long brown hair that was covered with a grey toque. And he was wearing a cut off t-shirt and you could see his very nice arms. Julie’s breathing was still shaky, and his attractiveness wasn’t helping the situation.

*we're too young to know things like love by Ephemeral_Joy

(@lydias--stiles)

Juke

The various ways and situations people notice the connection between Julie and Luke, whether that be a close friend or a complete stranger.

(started as a 5+1 fic and then i kind of went rogue. oops.)

*and i know i've kissed you before, but i didn't do it right (can i try again?) by Ephemeral_Joy (@lydias--stiles)

Juke

Some things just can't be fixed with a song.

(Julie and Luke break up.)

*The Infamous Tale of Luke and Julie's Grand Trip Across America by Ephemeral_Joy (@lydias--stiles)

Juke

In any normal situation, Luke wouldn't let this random girl hitchhike with him across America.

Then again, he wasn't normal. And neither was she.

(or: the roadtrip!au no one asked for)

*We Found Wonderland by ICanSpellConfusionWithAK (@pink-flame)

At the end of season one Julie isn’t able to save the boys and they are jolted out of existence. But what if there was another way? Julie finds herself back in 1995 with a chance to stop the boys of Sunset Curve from ever dying at all. But will she be able to find her way home afterwards? Will she want to? Or has Alice really gone down the rabbit hole this time...

A Moment of Quiet Conversation by JackONeillisTheMan

Juke

Julie and Luke talk about how he was the one who introduced her to rock. Then just fluff, more and more fluff.

*Feels like I've opened my eyes again by ICanSpellConfusionWithAK (@pink-flame)

Juke

After the whirlwind her life has been since the boys showed up it’s not that surprising that Julie would be a little tired. But is it normal that she’s more exhausted than she’s ever been? With Nick acting weird, Alex and Reggie both wrapped up in their own problems and her relationship with Luke still a big question mark, she has her work cut out for her if she’s looking to sit back and relax.

Basically my ideas and speculation about what season 2 might hold, or at least some of the things I would like to see.

find the strength, find the melody by sunset_phantom

Juke

An AU in which the boys are alive, Julie has been kicked out of her music program, and she somehow ends up falling in love with Luke in three days while he simultaneously brings her back to her first love of all: music.

after silence, wake me up by Vargynja

Juke

Julie hasn't been able to make music after her mother's death. She lives in New York working as an assistant for Luke, working hard to move forward in her career.

Luke finds out he's about to be deported back to Canada. A panicked lie leads them to fake a relationship to get married so he can stay in the country. Despite working together for two years they aren't close but a trip to Alaska to visit Julie's family might change that

Based on the premise of The Proposal (2009)

#jatp #jatp fanfic #juke #julie molina #willex #luke patterson #netflixwewantjatp2

[cyberloops]

I think it’s not just pandemic fatigue that’s been making it hard for me to work lately. I think I’ve been feeling disconnected from my music. I keep sitting down with a guitar or at my keyboard and noodling around. Lately I just haven’t been able to sit down and open up Acid or any other DAW and start fiddling around in there.

I was thinking about using my stimulus money to finally take the plunge and actually buy some equipment. Up until now the only real equipment I’ve bought are things like keyboards that plug into computers that I already own, and software to do things with it. But there’s a disconnect. There’s a layer of abstraction between me and the sounds I’m making.

I tried to see if I could solve that by making my own digital synths, so I downloaded Synthedit and played around with it a while back... but all it really did was make me want to get into making actual modular synths, not just emulating them. And in the long run, that’s a hell of a deep rabbit hole for me to fall into, both in terms of time, space in my house, and money.

I’ve spent most of my life on the edge of poverty, so the idea of just... spending money on something that I want is completely foreign to me. I know in my head that I have the money. It’s there to be spent. I can afford it. I can’t afford actual vintage synths, of course, those are way too *&%ing expensive. I also don’t have much space in the house, since both my spouse and I had to set up an office in the house during the pandemic. The space on my desk next to my computer keyboard where I was going to put my small MIDI keyboard is now taken up by my work computer. The room that was supposed to become half art studio for my spouse and half recording studio for me is now half office, and the drawing table and the spare desk that were supposed to be for our personal use are shoved in the corners. So whatever I buy will have to be small.

But the last couple of days I’ve been looking at what’s there. Looking at what’s within my price range. I don’t expect to spend thousands on a modular synth right off the bat, hell, I’d barely know what to do with it. But I think I can afford a small setup. Something that I don’t have to boot up and start a program and fight with audio drivers to use. Something that I don’t have to stop playing, go back, listen to the track, and click with a mouse to add points where I want to raise or lower one single attribute at a time.

I think if I start with a couple of cheap Behringer analog clones, I can at least get some bass and drums for pretty cheap, then figure out what else I want from there. It looks like the TR-3 and RD-6 are coming out in new colors, so I can even get them in purple. (which is generally the first question I have when I’m deciding whether to get something. Does it come in purple?) A decent synth that can do polyphony for chords will be a little difficult to find in my price range, I might have to settle for something like the Yamaha CS or DX Reface for that. (Yes, I know that the Korg Volca FM is half the price, and is a great imitation of the DX... but it only has 3 note polyphony. I like having the option to make richer chords, or to have a solo or bass line in the same instrument going while I do chords with the other hand.) And I definitely want at least one decent analog synth, but anything within my price range is only going to be monophonic, or like the Korg Volca line, they won’t have enough polyphony to do more than three note chords. The only decent ones that are polyphonic are generally over 300 dollars, and even with the stimulus money, I’m not sure I can justify spending that much on something that will likely not earn me any real money. And on top of everything else, just getting a decent multi-track recorder will probably cost as much, if not more, than a small synth. Most of the ones that are under 300 dollars will only record two tracks at a time, which won’t work well if I’m trying to hook up 3-4 synths and maybe a microphone. I’ve got a few spare speakers around the house that I could probably use as a monitor, so at least I’ve got that covered. (I hope. I haven’t actually plugged any of those speakers into anything in years, who knows what condition they’re in?)

On top of all of that, my spouse is trying to find an excuse to actually use the art table, and so we’re thinking about also using their half of our stimulus money to get a couple of webcams to stream video of them doing art. So if I do set up a small live synth studio in the desk in that room, we can stream together, with me making music on one screen, and my spouse drawing on another.

Over the last decade or so, I’ve been so afraid to actually spend any money. And for probably 8 out of those last 10 years, for good reason. I genuinely couldn't afford to. I only have an electric guitar because it went on sale and was incredibly cheap. I only have an effects pedal for it because I got lucky and found a halfway decent one that had multiple functions on sale used. I only have a full sized MIDI keyboard because my spouse gave it to me as a combined birthday/christmas present. But not being able to spend money just to survive meant that I couldn’t afford to get the things that I need in order to really live, and not just survive. I need musical instruments that I can touch and feel and use. But I think right now I also need to set up a spreadsheet and figure out what I can actually afford.

... anyway, I realized I got to the end of this huge rant and never mentioned anything about the piece I just uploaded. Short version - I was trying to use digital instruments similar to the sort of things I was looking at buying, and seeing what kind of music I could make by just quickly working up a sound and  a couple simple loops for them. So one of the basses is just a pretty generic synth that happens to have a sequencer that is similar to some of the analog synths I was looking at. The other is a digital clone of the TB-303, which is also similar to one of the synths I was looking at. I only used one drum machine synth on this one, since I can’t justify buying more than one when I start this physical setup. And the solo, chords, and arpeggios were all using similar sorts of synths to the real ones I’ve been looking at and researching online lately. All of the loops that I would have put into a sequencer while using a physical synth setup were the ones that I went into the MIDI files and manually quantized everything to match exactly what I would have done with a sequencer. For the solo lines and a few other sections I only fiddled with the MIDI timing enough to fix any errors due to input lag. And I tried to throw in a few tweaks to the synth settings on the fly like playing with the filter or whatnot, y’know, the kind of thing that I’d literally be able to do with one hand while I’m playing with the other if these synths were actually sitting on the desk in front of me. But of course I had to actually do those afterward with the mouse, since I didn’t have the actual synths in front of me, with actual knobs and sliders that I could touch.

#synth #synthwave #retro #retrowave #cyberpunk #cyberpunk music #cyberpunk soundtrack #synthesizer #music blog #synthpop #should i actually do it #should i bite the bullet #vaporwave #cyberpunk aesthetic #aesthetic #synthwave aesthetic #retrowave aesthetic

[struwwelzeter]

For a variety of reasons, I got into a bit of a rabbit hole about Richard's guitars, and my brain went "oh I know someone who will probably have opinions on this" so essentially, if you feel like it, pretty please talk RZK guitars to me? Favourite? Retired one that needs to come back? (Though I probably already know the answer, that fancy black one?)

Allrighty, buckle up because this is gonna be long. After much consideration I have decided to split it up in two parts because I don’t think I can make it fit into one post that is still vaguely tumblr appropriate, and I really wanted to do it some sort of justice. I still feel like I don’t. But oh well. Full disclaimer, I am NOT a guitarist, but I lived with a few, two of my best friends are pro players and I’m a sponge so I kind of soaked some bits and pieces up over the last 15 years. But in case any lost guitar hero finds this and disagrees with me over the finer points of tone wood: I know honey, I oversimplified, and I am wrong. I tried? 💜 for easier read I formatted everything specific to Richard’s guitars normally and anything general about electric guitars in cursive.

My main sources besides watching about a 100 a month of guitar tube videos (that is youtube for guitarists) with my ex, my main sources will be this interview and this.

Richard Z. Kruspe (of Rammstein and Emigrate)’s Guitars - In Order of Appearance, Part 1/2

Diamant (Les Paul Style)

“I traded the acoustic for a guitar called Diamant, which was like a Les Paul version in East Germany.” - RZK

Now I’m skipping the acoustic he started out with, because it’s basically impossible to know what that was, and go straight into the electric. Now presumably, it would have been something like this, a soviet build Les Paul rip off. The irony is that these still go for several thousands up on reverb today for being historical and collectors pieces. The thing is, that while anything east build might have used cheaper materials, I would assume this thing isn’t worse than any of the beginner/intermediate models sold today, if not better, and kids all over the world do decent stiff with those.

Something general about electric guitars is that you don’t really so much play the guitar, you play an entire system. The instrument doesn’t make the sound, it only influences it. You play a guitar - but you even more so play the amp. Which makes this a bit tricky, because an e-guitar is a slab of wood and a copper coil, and amps are way more complex. You can make the exact same guitar sound so many ways. Still - there are tendencies. The fact how and why and to which degree the shape and wood of a solid body (a guitar without a hollow wood piece) influences the sound is highly debated and can get a bit esoteric sounding to sane people non-guitarists, but there are some differences in how the general set up and build of the guitar changes things, and tendencies how they are traditionally outfitted. Les Paul style guitars are normally humbucker guitars, Stratocasters and Telecasters normally are outfitted with single coils. Usually a guitarist can switch - between using the bridge, the neck, or both (or more) pick ups and depending on where the pick up is located they pick up different frequencies, different aspects of the sound. Humbuckers produce a richer, deeper or fuller sound than single coils. Very roughly speaking, think the Stones vs. Metallica.

Fender Stratocaster

“Then in East Germany, we had this imagination to get one of the great guitars, to me it was always the Fender Stratocaster because it was the Jimi Hendrix guitar. I didn’t know anything about pickups or humbuckers or whatever. So there was this guy that I met in a café in my old hometown and he was buying all these books because he could get all the books out through customs and he would store them in my apartment. So we became kind of acquainted. He would come over and pick up the books. So one time he came over and I asked him if he could get me a guitar and bring it over. In East Germany, if you exchange money from East to West it would be like 1 East mark and 20 West mark. SO everything I had, I changed it to West Mark and I gave him the money and I gave him the money and asked him to please buy me a Fender Stratocaster. I gave him the money and I didn’t hear anything for like three months, nothing. I wasn’t able to call because we didn’t have phones and stuff like that – it was a different time. So I thought fuck, I gave him 1400 west mark and now he’s gone and never coming back. [...] Then my imagination was so high, I thought the guitar would just play by itself and I wouldn’t really have to do anything, which I found out was bullshit. I was really happy that I had the guitar but it wasn’t really the sound that I had in mind.” - RZK

The first time I heard that story, I literally went “no, no, no, don’t be stupid, don’t give him your money, you won’t even like that guitar, stupid, lost dumbass.” I can not, for the life of me, imagine him play anything other than humbuckers. He apparently does use single coils for some things today again in the studio, but still, it’s so obviously wrong. He did play one again sometime during the late 90s, but I couldn’t find anything on the pick ups he used with that, but can hardly imagine he kept the original, unless he needed it for a specific sound maybe in one or two songs. I get it though. For many, many people the Fender Stratocaster is THE guitar. Jimi Hendrix is the main reason for that, but it’s also the countless idols that picked it up after him for the same reason, people who ended up plastered on the walls of angsty teenagers in their own right. This totally has to do with the whole amp thing aswell. You see your idol play that type of guitar ... but it’s not even half of the sound, and it won’t sound the same. Maybe probably they changed the pick ups, they have an effect rig, the spend hours fiddling with the knobs on an amp you can never afford. It’s never the same. Which is why ...

Fender Telecaster Black Gold

Then I had a guitar that I was very fond of. It was an older black and gold telecaster – there weren’t very many of them made at that point. I put a Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck SH-4 in there, like a humbucker. I remember it was like my beauty guitar and I needed someone to put that pickup in and I was with Paul and he had more experience with that stuff than me so he would get out a hammer and a chisel and he start banging away on it and I was like ‘Fuck! Fuck! Don’t do that!’ but we put the thing in there and it was one of my favorite guitars” - RZK

... this one first didn’t really make sense for me for him. It’s even more a classic single coil guitar than the Strat is, and it only really started making sense for me when I learned he Paul indeed put a Humbucker in there. It’s a stunningly beautiful guitar, and weirdly non-modern for him. I don’t know why and this is completely instinctual on my part, but I find it fitting he played it during that time after the wall came down, which seems to have been a rough time for him generally, it seems like a somehow super emotional guitar, this relic. Telecasters were some of the first electrics ever build, it’s such a pioneer, but it’s also one that alot of punk bands used, possibly because they were old and cheap in the 70s and noisy and people customized it and put other pick ups in. The whole putting a chisel to it and adding a humbucker into it is such a “I’m gonna make whatever I have fit for me, and I’ll love it” move. If you look at it, a double coil pick up is really something you have to force to go in there, you really have to break it open. There is also this:

“... and then I think I had to sell it because I needed drugs or something. I was really sad that I sold it because I was at a very low point in my life.” - RZK

If I would get the chance to do one thing only for him to thank him for his music, I would go back in time to that Richard who is just sad about selling that guitar and hug him, and tell him he doesn’t need to worry, because they will name guitars after him in the future. It breaks my heart so fucking much. But of course, it’s what opens the doors to what happens next, which is ...

ESP 901

“That led me to my very first convention in Frankfurt. With guitars, it is like with women, you have to fall in love. Sometimes you get a guitar and you fall in love later but there has to be some sort of connection with it. So I was walking around that convention and I saw that guitar hanging at the ESP stand. It was a 901 ESP Sunburst and I was looking at it because it was such a beauty. And I was walking around for hours – they probably thought I was some weird guy who wants to steal the guitar. I bought that guitar and that’s how I got connected with ESP.” -RZK

He might have fallen for it because it is pretty, but it did come with a ESP double humbucker set up, with an added condensator to muffle up the sound, although not yet an active one (more on that later). It was a 90s metal guitar, one of those things marketed to the Metallica generation, something loud and heavy and full. Also, and this is where I will put in another general insert, there is something else about the choice of electric guitars that we haven’t talked about yet.

Now, I’ve discussed that you can push or pull the sound of a electric quite far in one or the other direction with what pick ups you use, what effects, what amps. But what this ignores is that especially standing up a guitar is a really shitty asymmetrical piece of equipment. And what that does to your body is that it needs to fit you, your hands, and your playing style. Some people prefer it chunky, others like sender. Guitarists, especially the 80s shredders, like to talk about a “fast neck”, which is another one of those things that get slightly esoteric, but which usually means a slimmer neck and slightly bigger frets, that need less way for your fingers to press until the string gets stopped. Someone who plays very bendy blues might dislike that and prefer something to dig in their fingers more down to the fretboard to get more control over how they bend the string. There are different neck profiles, there are different neck lengths, and all of it contributes to how comfortable someone might find their guitar.

I am mentioning this, because until today, Richard’s guitars are build very similarly to that ESP 901. His Eclipse Model is a tad different (again, more on that later), but the one he uses the most, the RZK I, has the same neck scale, similar frets, and that comfortable ESP slender neck. Even the shape seems to be inspired by turning it upside down. He has said in interviews that he hasn’t got very strong hands, and it makes perfect sense to me. I bought my own electric (again, more on that later) purely because I wanted to own one and not even so much because I ever had any real ambitions of learning to play it, but my friends at the time (10 years ago now) forced me to try out alot (!) of models (despite me knowing what I wanted), and the only guitars that I tried that had slimmer necks were Ibanez guitars, which in turn were wider. Ironically Frankfurt is my hometown, so the place to try a lot of different models is That exact convention Richard went to, and I haven’t skipped a Musikmesse in the last 15 years. I was at atleast one were Richard was too (I just didn’t care at the time, yikes), and it somehow greatly pleases me he found “his” guitar at that particular convention. Things have changed in recent years, but electric guitars always were in Hall 4.01, with ESP being left of center in the middle, and I don’t know, I can just see him walking in circles around it, and it makes me so emotional for him because it’s what musicians do at that place. It’s really loud, everyone is playing, there is someone better noodling around at every corner, and it can be quite an intimidating setting I think. And every year you see that one kid coming back and back again to that same stand, staring at that one guitar until they finally work up the nerve and ask to try it (or the staff takes pity on them and offer). And it’s the same everytime, they think “oh god they must think I am crazy” but really, nobody does. Everyone in that hall who owns a heart knows what those dreams are made of, and all it maybe does inspire is a “oh god, I hope that one makes it”. I digress. I think it’s more common now to look for different neck styles and companies started caring about it, but especially coming from Fender and Gibson guitars, that neck is honestly just very, very nice for weaker hands.

This is where I will stop, because it makes a good moment for a break and this post is honestly getting too out of hand otherwise. There will be a part 2 - where Richard starts using active pick ups, starts playing my favorite guitar in the whole wide world (and stops playing it), and finally, set up his own signature.

This is him with that 901 though: when he must have had it pretty much brandnew, while he used it, and right before he sold it.

#richard kruspe #rzk #richard zk #rammstein #esp #electric guitars #can you tell I love him very much #although i might love the guitars more than him #i keep meeting guitarists and I never know if i like them or the fact they play guitar