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sometipsygnostalgic · 3 years

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adventure time wizard city liveblog

well here we go

my last adventure time liveblog, i havent actually done one of these in MANY years... probably not since 2014

this takes place at the same time as obsidian?

DID-- DID CHOOSE GOOSE JUST DIE

DID BUFO JUST KILL CHOOSE GOOSE

yeah i know that’s bufo, they only made it enormously obvious, tsk tsk

@spaceacepearl joked about us seeing choose goose get sent to hell but i diDNT EXPECT IT TO HAPPEN

This music is i assume by one of the many musical artists Adam Muto listed on twitter, it rocks. It’s not as hardcore as Obsidian’s intro, but it’s suitably chill for the scene.

“get offa my bus kid”

Those wizards in the left and far right groups appear to be new!

OH MY GOD--

HELP?????? NEW PROFILE PIC TIME

HAHAHAHAH

THE MUSICAL CON DID ME GOOD, I DID REALLY LOUD AUDIBLE LAUGHTER

i bet hanna and co had fun making these signs

my favourite is the cat with “FAMILIARS HAVE RIGHTS”

cadorka..... wow

We’re not even four minutes into the ep and peppermint butler has already killed someone in front of a large group of witnesses

“this smells of DARK MAGIC” “yall kids know thats illegal right” peps watches the other kids nod before later joining in, LOL

i cant believe pep started the great gum wars and got killed by golb

SOMEONE has been playing Overwatch...

i-- i still cant believe choose goose is fucking dead

how long was he stuck in hell for, or was that recent to together again after new death showed up

i have to admit im not a big fan of spader, too perfect, and not in that funny way either. i hope they give him some characteristics that make him stand out.

im getting flashbacks to OK KO and Owl House here...

Cadebra using music is a reference to Abracadaniel’s love of interpretetive dance in Play Date.

“they only laugh because youre different” “i know” “SO STOP BEING DIFFERENT” oh my god it’s like talking to my own parents cadebra is actually... a LOT like me, less in her hyperactivity but more in her nonchalant enthusiasm and almost acceptance of the inevitable bullying because it means more time in people’s consciousness

ahhh - it’s quietly revealed here that she is responsible and a skilled magician, she is just bored of magic! i like that she parents abracadaniel instead of being downtrodden by his ramblings.

PEP NO--- oh i see the problem, he hasn’t got his Bug Milk... sorry Martin Olsen fans, no Hunson today. At least we get one more Phil Face for the road!

candy people in their natural habitat

Ahhh that’s Doctor Calidoneus! The voice actor was at the recent Distant Lands panel alongside Pep and Blaine’s actors.

“pretty sure hes just trashcandy” - i like you, sassy antler lady

the mystery of how he gets clothes

and once again spader is proving to be the most irritating distant lands character of the lot, there is no subversion here. where is the subversion?

NANI

what is going on here? are pep and peppermint the same person or not? im sure they must be, but there is something going on here with peppermint butler’s soul being trapped in the body of his child self who hasn’t got the same memories.

OH, HYNDEN WALCH DID A NEW LINE yes this is what im here for, special over

peppermint butler cursed himself... of course he did - Shado was correct!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WHAT THE FUCK

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

ROCK STUDENT, BLESSED ROCK STUDENT, WAS THAT POOR GUY WHO LOOKS LIKE A JAWBREAKER

love the reference to astral plane, of course pep cant astrally project because cursed pep is still inside of him

wow, blaine, wow

they have a crush

LITTLE DUDE! COLE SANCHEZ!

i love the dynamic between cadebra and abracadaniel, imo so far it’s the heart of the special. im not really gripped by peppermint butler’s school troubles. i imagine someone else probably will be but i want to run past that shit as far as possible.

TRDGFYGHJH

WE MADE A PREDICTION THAT WAS JUST LIKE THIS

PEPPERMINT BUTLER GETTING TURNED INTO THE FOUR COMPONENTS OF PEPPER MINT BUTT LURE WAS IN THE WIZARD CITY PREDICTIONS ART DRAW THAT HASNT BEEN POSTED YET

ILL SHOW YOU WHEN NICK POSTS THE VIDEO and then ill tell you who made the prediction because i... think it was nick himself, insanity

who plagiarized finn’s signature???

turns out pep really DID take over wizard city!!!!

i love this band

i understand your pain peps

you probably have a bit too much in common with your mother, and i imagine it isn’t easy being turned into a kid and not being able to do stuff that came so easy. you’re disappointing yourself! (he’s literally disappointing himself)

I’m less than halfway through the special, what the fuck. I wasn’t wrong when I said Wizard City had a lot on its plate. It’s noit that I’ve been particularly gripped up to this point, though to be fair I didn’t pause at all during the other specials barring Obsidian.

that... that poor kid is still a rock

and then the preview happened and bufo casually revealed to the audience that, yes, he killed choose goose

i dont know whats happening with pep but it seems he needs to be exorcised of... pep. which is a shame. i hope they learn to coexist.

i have to say the background work in this special is really good! like, really damn good.

WHAT

DID SPADER JUST DIE

IS THIS WHY PEOPLE THINK PEPBUT KILLED HIM

oh thats right - abracadaniel is cadebra’s uncle! this must be abracadniels sister. sorry, folks, he doesn’t fuck.

Where are they? Is this anywhere near Wizard City? It’s an unpopulated prewar wasteland.

THESE ARE JUST HUMANS

OF COURSE SHE WANTS TO PERFORM TO MILQUETOAST HUMANS

my child

is this an art style choice or did they get the people from that one studio to make this

HANNA FINALLY GETS TO FULFIL HER DREAM OF INSERTING KANEDA INTO ADVENTURE TIME

the red jacket he wears and his head pill shape is a big kaneda reference actually, which i suppose makes sense considering he’s a rival to our protagonist, but it’s a bit on the nose

bufo killed one of his own students? but why????

“MY UNCLE’S A COP”

“no one likes a rat”

i actually really like blaine, though im confused. did their VA change halfway through the special?

HOW NATURAL, NO WASTE, IT IS AN ENDLESS CHAIN

did doctor caledonius steal the trophy,,,?

EVIL SNAIL EVIL SNAIL

MONMSTER HUNJTER DISCOVERY NOISE, this time it’s a tetsucabra

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I HAVE QUESTIONS

god i wish this is what this special was about, i miss adventure time

these remind me of the comics with their art style :) i wonder who designed them? the one on the right with pb and pep, in particular, very comics-y.

fdgfhgf because he’s like 500

“pep can be kind of a jerk but he wouldn’t kill anyone”

sorry, cadebra, i have news for you

is doctor calednoius the true villain? if bufo’s out of the picture, she MUST be,

ANTS

oh no, he might gbe stuck in wizard city :(

HELP

the writing on the wall...

SPADER LITERALLY FUCKING DIED OH YM JESUS CHRIST

PEPPERMINT BUTLER’S OWN CULT????

THIS IS JUST OK KO NOW

okay im not surprised all the teachers at wizard city are cultists in worship of peps, maybe they killed spader and bufo because they bullied peps T_T

wait no, they thought spader had the potential, but sadly not

HE FUCKING KILLED HIMSELF

sorry, i was distracted by the pretty dope fight sequence and now the special is over????

fucking jesse, hes probably at least partly responsible for the cult nonsense

This credits art is by Maya Petersen!!!! Holy shit it’s adorable!

LRETGFDRGTFGMHGFHFG

LEAF MAN

DO YOU THINK THEY PUT HIM IN RETROSPECTIVELY

DO YOU THINK MAYA PETERSEN DREW THIS AND ADAM PUT IT IN THE EP RETROSPECTIVELY

HE LIVES

MAYBE THIS IS WHY CHOOSE GOOSE WENT TO HELL

okay, it’s over :)

first thoughts out of the way: not a big fan of this special. it’s like watching a completely different show. it’s not got the PZSHAHH of the normal wizard city stuff and there weren’t a lot of funny jokes or even hearty moments in the thing.

it suffers from a lack of invested character interactions, much like BMO did. there was not a single main cast member in the whole thing! and like i said before, much of peppermint butler’s character in the show is based on his very sweet relationship to his mother, princess bubblegum, so when they showed a single (hilarious) photo of them together it made me sad we didn’t get any scenes with them together. it would have STOLEN this episode. and they teased the hunson golf photo, and death!!! and jake appeared in a photo T_T last jake appearance.

it also suffers because Peppermint Butler is clearly not himself, imo he was way more entertaining in the Together Again special, where we seem him back to his “normal” self.

i dont think peps being a dark wizard was something to “kill off” exactly. i wonder what was going on there? was that actually peps, or was that a spirit he cursed himself with based on himself? we at least know in the future he does become a dark wizard again, and even princess :) this special didn’t answer those questions but lol.

THE GOOD STUFF, because yes, there was a lot of good stuff!

God, I’m with Aracle and Maya on this - I LOVE Cadebra and her relationship to Pep. I wish she was even in more of this - I would love to watch the adventures of Cadebra and Pepbut in their first year of school, like in the end credits.

That, imo, is where the heart of the special lay - Peppermint Butler’s attempts to impress himself, versus Cadebra’s self acceptance and desire to follow her dreams of being a goofy goober, no matter what other people thought of her.

It turned out that Cadebra is a responsible student and family member. I really liked that. Her scenes with Abracadaniel were, somehow, my favourite in the entire special!

I like that theres a lot of cool magic towards the end of this special, and a lot of HORRIFYING DEATH. It wouldn’t be adventure time if you didn’t randomly kill off child characters. Poor Spader, I hated you but damn, what a grim fate.

I like that Bufo and Caledonius had this crush/hatred thing going on, but they were part of the same cult in the end.

I didn’t like the giant peps scene at the end, the monster was extremely milquetoast compared to the madness we usually get in AT. Obsidian, for example, had the awesome Larvo design. Nemesis had some INSANE dark magic!!!! I wish they drew more from that episode.

Considering how much Steve Little appears in this special, I do feel bad for Mace (little Peps). He said he would have really benefitted from coaching, but recieved none. He had to re-record his lines 3 times! Judging from his description of events, Wizard City was a hard time for him.

The wizard school did remind me, heavily, of both The Owl House and OK KO. Personally I was hoping AT would offer me something more insane, but I do love both of those shows, and I know Wizard City was on a really tight schedule.

I think they should have spent less time on the school bullying plot, and skipped straight to MURDER.

We did have a cold opening, not on par with Together Again’s at all, but damn!

I am wondering where I would put this in the watch list? I do think it should sit after Obsidian as the third special. The intro scene makes it clear this takes place at the same time as Obsidian!!!

Well, that was it, the last ep of AT for the next few years at least T_T

i think together again was the better finale, definitely. but wizard city feels pretty detached from AT for me, despite the familiar characters it tonally isn’t like the show other than the awesome brutal death scenes. I thought the last 11 minutes was easily the best in the special! Which, honestly, is how it should be, though I do wish it gripped me more. Maybe I’m just not the target audience for Wizard City? It feels like something I would find very compelling if I was a bit younger!

#adventure time #wizard city #atimers

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averyscarlet-blog · 3 years

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Project Clypse

Hello there stranger! If you don’t know who I am, or you’re too lazy to read my name, I’m AveryScarlet! You can simply call me Avery or Av. And if you know me on fanfiction.net, mostly through my works Mercury Alchemist or Final Fantasy Versus XV, welcome! Now, for a while now, I’ve been wanting to write up my own original story. Issue with me, thanks to college in the past, I haven’t properly developed the mindset to write a full-blown novel. I’ve gotten so used to typing up a chapter or two in a month before publishing them that I can’t properly focus as an actual writer should.

As much as I want to focus on writing some of my fanfiction, I can’t because I’m focusing on studying for NCLEX. So if you’re waiting for the next chapter for FF Versus XV... It’s almost done! It’s just gonna take a while. But as you can see below, I’ve been working on something else. I’m sure you’re confused as to who these characters are in the chat and why I’m pushing so many out. Well. I’ll tell you. This is my way of practicing for a story I’ve been... REALLY wanting to write for a long time. It doesn’t have a definite name, so I’m calling it Project Clypse. Which partially comes from the group my main characters are in.

Now, I thought of writing up their character bio’s but..... I’m not really that good at it as I used to be. I used to for when I was active in RP’s but I’m so rusty that I doubt I can keep up with whomever I’m chatting with. So, I’m just summarizing certain details you need to know about them! Not all of it because that'd be spoiling the story of every character. Now, with all that’s said and done, let me start explaining key points of Project Clypse.

Premise/Background

The story is centered on a world called Avarus, which you can say is sort of like Earth, except it was made with someone else's version of life. Or, it used to be. Avarus is one of the few remaining worlds that has an active patron God, who has chosen to go under the alias Belial. The world was originally created and governed by another, Belial’s younger sister, Soleil. After Avarus’ creation, and the birth of man, she was killed by an unknown assailant. But before she died, she was cursed to experience an endless cycle of death and rebirth into various random worlds. She will live a short mortal life, then die from either natural or unnatural causes.

According to Belial, this curse is bestowed only to Celetials who have performed a dire sin. While there is no definite way to lift the curse, Belial hopes that by locating and retrieving her while she's still alive, or at the very least obtain her soul, then he could find the proper means to spare his sister of her cursed fate and return Avarus's true patron Goddess. Because of her demise, life on the planet started to decay. To prevent its destruction, Belial forced the planet to stop rotating, hoping to delay it long enough for him to find Soleil.

However, there were dire consequences to this act. His actions indirectly causing the world to cease rotating; time became non-existent as a result. This, inevitably, killed off most of the remaining life in the world due to the imbalance of the ecosystem as one half of the planet became stuck in perpetual darkness, and the other being dried up caused prolonged exposure to the sun's light.

The only life that Belial was able to salvage was her sisters creation; humanity. Those that survived after the planet ceased its rotation found themselves unable to age. They can still die, but their bodies will no longer decay. During the first Century since Soleil’s death, the God went through various countermeasures to keep the world and the life still inhabits it safe until he can find his sister.

However, a strange plague began to manifest. Soon, it began to devour most of the remaining populace, creating a dark entity in the process; the Astrals (will explain in a different section).

While Belial was successful in wiping out the infected, the God realized that he cannot keep the last remnants of humanity safe. Not while there are still Astrals lurking about. So he put them to sleep, sealed them in a place that only he knows. However, because of the sudden absence of time and life, the world began to deconstruct itself each time he departed in search for her in other worlds. Realizing he cannot manage Avarus and search for his sister at the same time, he found an alternative. Since his conception, he had noticed a peculiar type of living being popping up now and then in a variety of sentient species. So he sought them out.

Eventually, gathered enough to temporarily replace humanity and trick the world itself into thinking life still exists. At first, he gathered adults since he knew nothing can grow in Avarus once they’ve lived in the world for a certain period of time, but because of their attachments to the worlds they originated from, it was difficult to convince them to remain. Then he thought up of another solution, one which he knew his sister would frown upon. Children. With their young minds, they’ll easily forget their place of origin and can be easily trained in the necessary skill in traversing through different worlds. And, after learning that the Astrals have branched out to those said worlds, learn how to handle their sudden enemy.

Their goal is simple; to locate and, if possible, retrieve Soleil and eradicate the Astrals.

Main Characters

Note: Just in case you did not know... I. Cannot. Draw. As much as it pains me to do this, but I need you guys to have some sort of idea on how they look like. I cannot find the original artists of the artworks; mostly because google imaging is shit and Pinterest tends to... Send you elsewhere. So of you know the artist, please PM me so I can give them credit. If you know they don't want their works republished, I'll remove it and try to figure something out. I take no credit whatsoever on the art! I merely scoured the internet for any references I could use. If you're wondering why I'm not.using actual people... You know how awkward that is?

Anyway, much of these are concepts so expect changes in the future. I tried to discuss as little as possible about each character. And let me tell ya.... That was a lot I had to cut off, so if the explanation is a bit messy, that was from me trying to select what to remove to avoid revealing too much.

. . .

Sound

‘I have to be better. I have to be a better leader. I have to be a better lover. I have to be a better sibling. If I don’t... then I’ll lose everything again. If I must, I’ll sacrifice my identity for a third time if it means protecting them.’

Credits to: T0Q00(?) - Okay, on Pinterest it has the person’s name AND link to their twitter account. The thing is... it’s empty. Their entire page is empty. At least I found the artist’s name?

Also known as the Glutton King, Sound is one of the leaders of his faction, Tunera Clypse and a member of Mythral. He is a first generation Nors. While not as lazy as Noise, he’s not really a fan of getting involved in fights with people. When it comes to killing Astrals; that’s an entirely different story.

Outwardly, he displays laid back, playful, and very concerning outlandish behavior. And by outlandish, I mean his... eating habits. Sound likes to experiment with his stomach. He’ll do absolutely ANYTHING to eat whatever he deems as edible. He also - absolutely - lacks any sense of shame (ex. walking out of the shower and to his room without a towel, slapping Noise’s butt). Although limited to communicate via writing, he makes sure that every single thing he writes is worth reading. Many are even surprised at just how fast he writes his messages. Then again, after years of practice, it’s expected he’d adapt.

Sound is self-aware of the fact that he’s a fictional character and will randomly break the fourth wall, causing much confusion to his friends several times. While not as dark as his previous self, Fell, he maintains some of his views towards life and tends to be as vocal - via writing - of his previous self's beliefs.

As a Cursed Blood, his curse forces him to conceal his face behind a customized Fox Mask. Depending on the amount of facial skin that was exposed, a person can live up to several minutes to several hours before inflicted with sudden death. If a person were to see the entirety of his face, they will die on the spot from unknown causes. He has a Physical Curse as well, which causes him to inflict a certain degree bad-luck to whoever hears his voice. While it’s rarely anything life-threatening, Sound is forced to become selectively mute. Although he tries his best to remain silent, he tends to accidentally let it a few words or sounds slip. Which usually occurs when he sneezes, and when he does, it is immediately advised by his friends to duck and cover.

After undergoing the Ascension Ceremony, he joined the faction Tunera Clypse and then gave up his original name, becoming the next Sound. Unbeknownst to him, his actions later in life has caused him to unknowingly become the Vessel of Gluttony. It is unknown if his eating habits is the reason he became the vessel or it’s the other way around. Either way, he has shown to be fully capable of controlling the abilities that comes with being a Vessel. Sound merely chooses not to use them.

. . .

Ayane Koronashi

“If my brother had left the orphanage that day without me, I would simply smile. If Ulric presented me his latest girlfriend, I’d smile. Smiling is all I can ever do without being a nuisance. I could never show them my pain. I want to cry but my curse renders me incapable of doing so. But now it’s better. I’m better.”

Also known as the Black Fox. Ayane is the younger twin sister of Sound. Like her twin, she is also a member of Tunera Clypse and Mythral; as well as a first generation Nors. Despite being an active member, unless accompanied by her brother, Ayane is rarely allowed to participate in any scouting or combat-related missions. The main reason for this is her curse. While also a Cursed Blood like her brother and some of their friends, the unnatural causes that led to sudden conversion to a cursed blood caused her condition to be unstable. At the beginning, she was unable to retain her original form and would take the shape of a fox.

After some time and practice, she has learned to maintain most of her former human appearance, leaving only a pair of fox ears to replace her human ears and a tail (not by choice) as an extra ligament. Not only that, some of her internal organs remain similar to that of a fox. Because of this, she is unable to eat certain foods that are potentially poisonous to her (or generally unhealthy). She was told that eventually, if nothing is done, she will permanently take the complete form of a fox. She cannot surgically remove the fox parts as they will simply grow back.

Side-note: No, they did not try or plan to remove her fox ears. The curse replaced her human ears so they cannot remove them without indirectly making her deaf.

Her personality is the somewhat similar to Sound’s, but is far more excitable and outgoing than her brother. Just like a fox, she is clever and witty, which she demonstrates many times during combat. She has a tendencyto steal things without her knowledge. While this isn’t necessarily kleptomania, as objects appear in her hands at random, she still tries get over her childhood habit. She does have a tendency to be reckless, though this is stems from her need to be useful as her curse leaves her unable to perform all of the necessary abilities that is required of a Nors.

Another thing to know is her intense hatred towards cats. Which will be explored at a later time.

As a Cursed Blood, she can take the form of a fox. While the size varies, depending on her emotional state, she is commonly seen to change into the size similar to an elephant. If she performs multiple transformations, she will regress to a regular sized fox and sleep for an extensive period of time. She has been recommended to avoid constantly rely on her full fox form as it will hasten the progression of her curse.

After undergoing the Ascension Ceremony, she followed her brother and joined the same faction as him, but unlike him, did not join as a core member so she did not have to give up her original name. Because of the current state of her body caused by her Cursed Blood, her emotions has unknowingly lead her to become thenext Vessel of Envy.

. . .

Reihana Toelle Ur Kamaria

“Why was I born like this... what did I deserve to be cursed like this!? All I want is to hold someone without fearing I’ll crush them. I can’t be the receiver forever!”

Or Rei for short. Is a member of Mythral and is a second generation Nors. As a floater, Rei rotates between the three factions, but she usually works with Tunera Clypse. Known for her terrifying brute strength, Rei is feared by many and is challenged on a near daily basis. Because of her strength and seemingly indestructible nature, she is (much to her annoyance) sometimes used as a human shield. While she is able to take on an army by herself, Rei tries not to go all out in fear of accidentally killing her allies in the crossfire. In terms of mental maturity, aside from Xavier, she is slightly more competent and is level-headed enough to not participate in childish activities. Most of the time.

Rei prefers to ‘punch first, talk later’ when confronted, though the talking never happens as her opponents is either obliterated or immediately knocked out after one hit. While she can be aggressive at times, she merely acts out on this person's due to the rumors that were spread when word of her curse began to circulate. Those closest to her have witnessed her carefree and adventurous nature. She is also cautious and careful of her surroundings, becoming more thoughtful in the usage of her strength as a result.

As much as she loves the thrill and adrenaline that comes from combat, she prefers not to fight too often. Mostly because it usually leads to unnecessary mass destruction. She craves for proper physical contact, but due to her curse, she forces herself to avoid it as much as possible.

Being the physically oldest, next to Percy, she tends to act like the big sister of the group, which Rei has admitted she finds embarrassing. Still, she works hard in trying to act as moral support for her friends. That doesn’t stop her from losing her temper when a certain line is crossed.

As a Cursed Blood, she is cursed with immeasurable strength. Her strength doubles based on who or whatever is the strongest in a world that she sets foot in. That, of course, excludes Celestial’s as the strength of the divinity is almost non-existent. By default, back in Avarus, her usual strength is enough to crumble an entire building. In other worlds, it depends. To help control and regulate her strength during combat, she uses a large amount of Astral Dust to create form-fitting gauntlets around her lower arm. She was meant to become the Vessel of Wrath but was instead changed to be the candidate for the Vessel of Pride.

. . .

Perseus Vlahos

"I used to believe that being a hero will allow you to cement your place in history. But over time, I learned that the farther in time your name is shared in time, you become nothing more than a mere legend. Or worse, a myth. Stories can be altered, changed. If that’s the case, I’d rather not be remembered at all. I didn’t work this hard just to be written off as a bedtime story.”

Christened under the name ‘Percy the Naive’ by his best friend, later life-long rival, Wilhelm, he is the current wielder of the legendary sword; Excalibur, and member of Infernum Poncitator. Grandson of Rayner, Percy is one of the few third generation Nors in Avarus. He is a kind young man and is respected amongst his peers (well, most of them) and superiors, so much so that he has been offered the position of leader of the faction. Percy refuses as not only deems himself unworthy, but out of respect for those that have lived in Avarus longer.

He displays many the ideal traits of a knight, eventually becoming viewed as an ideal knight by others. However, deep down, Percy perceives himself as the opposite. He feels he is a dishonorable fraud and is not proud of his status as Excalibur's chosen wielder. If he was given a chance to do it over again, Percy would immediately abandon his decision never search and locate the sword.

After joining Avarus, in a short span of time, Percy was able to easily establish himself as a sort of leader figure within his faction. While serious most of the time, especially during missions, due to his time with other Nors, has displayed a degree of patience and tolerance towards whoever he is assigned. Still, he never forgets their main objective and takes charge if he deems the assigned leader incompetent. Which happens more times than he refuses to count. He tries to maintain a cool head, but will severely reprimand others if the situation calls for it.

Proficient in the ways of the sword, he garnered the attention of (the then Mongrel) Mitchell. He was very reluctant in taking in a squire. But eventually, Percy relented after the younger boy attempted to fight against an Astral and nearly lost his life. He plans to one day pass down Excalibur to Mitchell once he gains the strength to surpass Percy.

At the moment, Percy is the current Vessel of Wrath.

. . .

Noise (***** Rallus)

“I tried all of my life to give my dad a reason why he shouldn't be treating his body the way he did. I tried all of my life to keep my friend in line so I'd never have to be the one to discipline him. And yet... If only I didn't try so hard, they'd still be alive.”

Author’s Note: Yeah I... legit do not know who this belongs to. There’s the artist’s signature so that’s the good thing. Problem is....

After escaping from the confines of his original world, Eingesperrt City, and, with the help Sound, joined Avarus and assumed the title of Noise. Unlike others that were gathered in the past, Noise is a regular human being. Something only Sound knows. Regardless of the danger, he became one of the leaders for Tunera Clypse, later joining Mythral after adapting to his new lifestyle.

He wears one of the Artifacts in order to copy and use only one ability of his choosing. As long as a piece of original user is within the Artifact, Noise can use it for as long as he wants. However, if its been removed and replaced with something else, the previous copied ability cannot be used ever again.

Since his recruitment, Noise adopted an extremely lazy personality. He’s so lazy that somehow even snoring consumes too much energy. To make sure he’s awake most of the time, Sound forced Noise to set up a sleep schedule, so that when he’s ready, he has enough energy to do SOMETHING. However, no matter where he is, he’ll take every opportunity to take a nap. He doesn’t care. As long as he gets to close his eyes, Noise is fine to sleep wherever, even if it involves napping righ at the edge of a volcano.

He’ll get annoyed if anyone that dares try to wake him up and he’ll be in a fowl mood for the rest of the day. The only exception is the fox girl and his lover. Despite this, he displays a certain degree of kindness. It’s just really hard to tell if what he’s doing is truly an act of kindness or he’s just too lazy to do things such as delivering a ‘motivational speech’. He can be blunt when he has to be, and he tends to come off as a jackass rude because of his personality. However, this is his way of showing he cares. Noise will flat out tell you if he dislikes you.

Another thing to know about him is his crude sense of humor. Combined with his blunt and rude nature towards people, mostly acquaintances and strangers, it always leads to various... Misunderstandings. Worst case scenario? A fight. He'd improve if he could, but he won't.

Look, if you haven't figure out that he's lazy after reading all this, gooood luck.

For reasons unknown, despite becoming the next Vessel of Sloth, it remains dormant within him. They thought of extracting it to learn the causes that led up to its current dormant state, but Sound intervened in time as he knew that extracting it by force will kill the the vessel.

. . .

Michael/Raphael/Gabriel/Uriel/Saraqael/Raguel/Remiel/etc

‘Dragons are raised under the false pretense that they are the supreme species above all others. But that merely obscures the truth; the truth that we’re just as vulnerable as anyone else. There are various ways to kill aside from piercing our hearts with a spear.”

Author’s Note: Just so you know, HE’S BLONDE and has green eyes! This was the only option I have that closely resembles how I envisioned him! There was another because he gives off the same atmosphere when you look at him but... he’s from an otome game. And I only learned that recently so, if the same goes for this one? WELP. Oh and he has patches of dark brown scales on part of his skin.

Neither a Quietus Nors nor a resident of Avarus, Michael is a dragon. His version of his race if capable of transformation, but can only change into the form of the last creature they devoured. Whole. Rather than his true form, in order to remain working in Avarus, chose to work in the form of the former Prince of Edrakon, a world where dragons were enslaved and cruelly treated as mere objects. Despite his appearance not being his own, he maintains an intimidating and powerful aura, which is easily distinguishable even within a large crowd.

Due to the high esteem he holds towards his race and his pride as a Dragon, he can come off as domineering, even becoming critical towards other versions of his race if he finds something illogical or nonsensical in their appearance and their abilities. While he does act this way, he finds it absolutely disgusting to find dragons place themselves in a position of power and abuses their power in controlling another species. Another aspect of him is that he looks down on dragons with physical defects, which is mostly directly aimed as himself due to his extremely poor eyesight. Thus, forcing him to rely on his human form to watch glasses. He also has a very confusing naming system; where he changes his name based on the date, time and temperature.

Micheal held the potential required to become a Nors, but because of his age, he was unable to undergo the necessary steps to fully integrate into Avarus. While others are reluctant to have him join their ranks, several others, for different reasons, allowed him to remain. This eventually allowed others to accept his addition to the organization.

As the one in charge of organizing and handling most of Avarus’ internal affairs, a job the Nors, even the Ex-Anima/Animus, are reluctant in taking up such an important position; he takes his job very seriously. Although he does express some contempt towards humans, this does not extend to the people he works with. He cares about them to a certain degree, which is shown by he constantly reprimands whoever acts risky during a mission.

He is the current Vessel of Pride, something he only learns of later on. Despite the fact Micheal is a vessel, Belial believes this is only temporary. He isn’t particularly close with Belial, but he respects the God enough to follow his orders.

. . .

Ulric Soknawo

'In my tribe, I was considered an outcast. You can thank the unnatural union that birthed me. Now? It hasn’t changed much, but at least I’m no longer considered the runt of the pack.’

Whose other name is Kuckunniwi, is a former member of the Aniwaya Tribe. In their world, his people are Natives who worshipped a guardian Wolf Spirit. According to them, in return for their unyielding loyalty and devoted nature, it granted the people with the power to take the form of the spirit they have worshipped for many generations. So long as they use that power to protect the forest, it shall provide them protection. Ulric is the third, second youngest, illegitamate son of the Tribal chief Tamaska and grandson of Wolfram.

As per tradition, all tribesmen are given two names, one for their human form while the other is for their inner wolf. Despite being allowed to use either name like others of his tribe, he refuses to be use his wolf name due to the meaning behind it. After being discovered by Ayane, she brought and recruited him to Avarus. Ulric is considered to be a Third Generation Nors due the fact his father was (oddly) not born a Nors, or had to potential to be converted into one.

Ulric tends to act like the stereotypical lone-wolf, choosing to remain in solitude and observe from a distance. He likes to spend his quiet time alone, though he does allow others to sit next to him when asked. Many have pointed out that he never smiles, but, as much as he hates to quote Noise, states that if there is no reason to smile, there is no reason to put so much effort in abusing his facial muscles.

As much as he loves being a wolf, he finds certain aspects of his second nature to be... aggravating. Depending on the season and the weather, it deals a the effects his wolf instincts on his human nature. Because of the two separate natures continually clashing, he tends to act irritable and his temper worsens, especially during the night. Ulric holds a strong belief that one’s nature, regardless of your race, should never control a one's personal feelings.

He holds an unyielding loyalty to his loved ones, almost to the point of willing to kill for them if the situation calls for it, but his actions are subtle and tends to be the exact opposite of how he truly feels. Only two people in his life have been able to decipher his behavior, and he cherishes them for it. Ulric has a bit of a temper as well but is able to keep it in check. His temper, however, is what led him to becoming a Cursed Blood. His curse forces him to foresee the deaths of whomever he romantically falls in love (or at least feel an interest) with.

Any attempts at interfering will only hasten their death.

. . .

Xavier Wozwald Hawthorne

'Murderers are dumbasses, always killing because of their unchecked emotions and pented up desires. Hence why most of them clumsily try to hide their crime. Serial killers are more... sofisticated with their craft, but their ego always gets in the way. If they weren’t complete dumbasses, they would have lived a long comfortable life. I should know.’

Note: Yes, this is obviously Vflower. Did I know that before? No. Do I plan to change the art reference? Yes, but only when I find one that’s not a god dang real-life person’s online avatar. XD Seriously, each time I thought I found one... it’s an utaite or vtuber.

Is a member of Mythral and a First Generation Nors. Like Rei, he is a Floater, which allows him to particiate in mission for all three factions. However, he prefers to work with those in Tunera Clypse as, since they mostly handle scouting and recruiting missions. As long as he doesn’t remain in Avarus for too long, he's fine with accepting any mission related to Tunera. Xavier will still accept missions from other factions, but that's merely to fill up his quota.

Despite appearing around the age 12-14; which was not by choice, Xavier is in fact mentally older than most of his fellow Nors. Known for his sharp tongue, Xavier is one of the few known Nors to have been granted permission to travel outworld immediately after undergoing the Ascenscion Ceremony.

Due to the experiences his past life went through, Xavier has a very grim outlook of the world and displays little to no respect towards authority figures. And that includes his current patron God; Belial, which only worsens after being told by the God that he is unable to help Xavier grow into the appropriate intended size. Unlike most Nors, he displays a high degree of critical thinking and intelligent. He is, if not more, level-headed than one of his friends; Percy. Though that doesn’t stop the teasing. While confident in his abilities in terms of combat, Xavier knows the limits of his current smaller body.

In order to compensate, he creates an excessively large scythe as compensation, but he's too proud to admit this.

Because of his level of maturity, he has been labeled as a 'Midget Grandpa'. Which he fails at trying to prove otherwise by collecting certain tthings that are considered out of date by their standards. Eventually, it became a soft of hobby for him to collect such things.

Xavier tends to display a sadistic nature while in combat, choosing to taunt his opponent by constantly pointing our their obvious flaws deficits and toy with them until the last minute. Most times, he will use his child-like appearance to his advantage to further torment his opponent/victim. Comically enough, if his opponent is a cold-blooded criminal, Xavier will compliment and , depending on their actions, congratulate them; much to the annoyance of those involved.

Like Sound, he has both a Physical and Blood-based Curse, but unlike the latter, Xavier was born with both. His Physical Curse has caused severe permanent scarring on his right arm, making it appear similar to third degree burns. If freed from any type of coverage, such as bandages, his arm will painfully be set a blazed, forcing him to conceal his arm at all times. As a Cursed Blood, Xavier has a similar effect of a Siren, except his hypnotic singing forces someone to commit suicide. Every time he uses this curse, he temporarily falls into a coma.

. . .

Succu(bus) Kilmer

Like her name suggests, Succu is a succubus, but belongs to a different version of her species. Due to being a demon, she is forbidden to reveal her true name. Succu is neither a Nors nor a Cursed Blood. She’s more of an illegal immigrant after sneaking her way into a group of Nors when they were scouting for potential recruits. There have been many attempts in trying to relocate her back to her original world, but she is able to seduce her attackers and slip away. Eventually, Belial declared that she will be allowed to remain as a resident, so long as she contributes in their mission to locate Soleil.

While they do seduce those of the opposite sex, her source of food is not as grotesque as several others. She does seduce her victim, but moves her body in a way that her victims find alluring. Succu will then massage certain parts of their body as a means to relax them. To assure that they will not attempt to escape, she will release pheremones that nulls the victims senses. What she devours isn’t the flesh of her victim nor does she devour their soul, she merely devours the emotions she was able to invoke until her hunger is quenched.

Succu is flirtaceous and very... very.... VERY- Well, you get the point. While she doesn’t flaunt her beauty, she does know how to use it to her advantage. However, despite many approaching her, Succu has only eyes for one, and is willing to wait as long as possible for that person to reciprocate her feelings. Succu, although assertive and open with her feelings, is not the type to force them onto someone.

She does like to express herself by getting physical - very physical. Not the way that you’re thinking, you perverts. She finds it more convenient to allow her actions to talk rather than saying things verbally. Since she’s an outsider, she notices several things that not even Pery or Ulric have noticed, and both are outsiders as well considering the fact they grew up outworld before being recruited. Regardless, she remains silent for the sake of remaining by her beloved’s side.

Succu is often mistaken as the Vessel of Lust due to her nature, and, on her part, finds it’s tiresome to prove that she is not.

Side Characters

Tank Mortem

A former member of Tunera Clypse and Mythral, Tank has been assigned to act as one of the engineers in maintaining the Infernian Generator due to his body’s condition and the issues of his mental state. He seldom participates in missions but, despite being given strict orders not to, joins in anyway. Due to the limits of his mental capacity, Tank has difficulty interacting with others. Quite literally.

Beatrix Staccato

Is a researcher and inventor in charge of the tools and weaponry utilized by most Nors and Ex-Animus. Having taken over most of the unfinished projects since the passing of his master, Beatrix has dedicated all of his time in improving the welfare of the world and its inhabitants. However, most of his experiments tend to be a bit... over the top. If he’s not thinking of new potential products that may benefits the Nors, he’ll make whatever comes at the top of his head, and most of the time it’ll lead him to make the most outrageous and unnecessary items. Beatrix prefers to remain in his lab/home at all times, rendering his social interactions with the three factions to be limited via holographic meetings.

‘Nyx’ Pierrot

Leader of Vanidicus Persona, she is one of the oldest Nors - next to Constantine - making her the default leader of her faction. Much about her is a mystery. Even her behavior can be viewed as... questionable. Not outlandish, that’s Sound’s department. Her behavior is so odd that it’s enough to baffle even Belial. She takes her leadership over her faction very seriously, however, as part of her nature, the requirements in joining and maintaining your membership vastly deviates from the original. However, looks can be deceiving. Aside from her seniority, there is a reason why she was given the position of leader.

Mitchell Pierrot

He prefers to be called as ‘Mitch’ after being told, and proven, by his sister how much of a tongue twister his name is if repeated constantly in a single conversation. While he is the younger brother of Nyx, Mitch opted to become a submember of Tunera Clypse upon undergoing the Ascension Ceremony to be in the same faction as his mentor, Perseus Vlahos. Compared to the Nors in his batch, he is viewed as weak by many as he is unable to perform the abilities that is expected of him to develop after becoming a Nors.

Constantine L. Refrain

Nothing is truly known about him except that he’s a chronic smoker. Nobody truly knows who he is, no one even knows which faction he belongs to. It’s nearly impossible to question these things as he is constantly surrounded by a shroud of - barely tolerable - smoke. All that is known is that he’s been around longer than most of the Ex-Animus. Constantine usually frequints the Silent Siren Bar, staying there for hours until he’s either drunk or needs to receive another pack of cigarretes from Beatrix. He says they’re for medicinal purposes buuuuut...

I’m pretty sure black smoke isn’t normal.

Stefan Mal Sorcier

Is Percy’s second pupil. Although, it was more like Percy was forced into taking in another after his continual refusal to become leader of Infernum Poncitator. Outwardly, he is aloof and always appears smiling, which unsettles Mitchell even when they’re alone. His politeness is found unusual by many and causes others to feel wary around him. Even the dragon finds himself is unable to remain in the same vicinity as the young man. Despite being full of many secrets, Percy accepts him as is and tries his best to teach him all he can, which Stefan appreciates.

Kyline Necro

Considered as the mascot ambassador of Avarus, like the soul that was fused with her upon birth, she mostly lounges around and has little participation in any missions in and out of Avarus. This has caused her to be disliked by many, most especially Ayane. The only person Kyline has gotten close to is Noise; mostly because they share the same favored sleeping spot. On a side, she acts a physician, or surgeon if you like to get technical. She has a strange fondness of picking apart and replacing specific limbs with doll parts.

Yu-Yan Chi Ryou

Was once one of the strongest Nors from Xavier’s batch until he was inflicted by an unknown disease during one of his missions. While there is no name for the disease, it has caused much of his bones to undergo crystallization; rendering him immobile due to the pain that comes from even the smallest of movements. Since he is incapable in participating in any activities, Yu-Yan has since been forced to be confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life.

Anita Eine Kleine

Is the fighting instructor of the Mongrels and a member of Infernum Poncitator. Anita is a highly-skilled caster, able to conjure and manipulate various elements. She absolutely hates the term ‘witch’, even going as far as to cast a minor curse in making a person temporarily mute if they refer to her as one. Which Sound found rather offensive when he found out about the curse, something she deeply apologized for. She participates in some Scouting Missions but only if personally requested by someone from Tunera Clypse.

Victor Stein

Is Beatrix’s (only living) research assistant. He is the sole survivor of the Night of the Black Moon. Although having physically recovered, the damage to his mental state has left a deep scar on his psyche. He fears yet obsesses over the sensation of pain. There is not one instance where he isn’t found sowing over his own intact skin. While Victor knows his addiction found uncomfortable by others, he finds it extremely difficult to control his urges.

Wolfram

Grandfather of Ulric and most of his siblings, he is an Ex-Anima (or retired Nors) and a former member of the original Mythral. As the more experienced and one of the longest surviving resident of Avarus, he acts as a mentor to those who seek his guidance. However, in terms of combat, his skills are very limited as he has become permanently stuck in his wolf form. The only grandchildren he's ever personally met are Ulric and Seeing, who have both ironically became his favorite. While acting as a mentor, he is rather strict, constantly parting lessons in order to make sure none make the same mistakes he committed when he was younger, many of which he refuses to share.

Diantha Anemone

Despite being still a Liberi, Dia still participates in many activities meant to be done only by Nors. She originally wanted to become a part of Tunera Clypse due to the many adventures imparted by Sound. But after having a first hand experience in one, it traumatized her to the point where she wants to merely work as a Librarian, a position many people avoid.

Echo & Yell

Fellow teammates of Sound and Noise. As part of the four heads leaders that overwatch many of Tunera Clypse's activities, both in and out of Avarus. They mostly take charge of delegating the members while the other two take an active role in leading many scouting missions off-world. Contradicting her name, like Sound and Noise, her personality is the completely opposite. Due to her sociophobia, she is extremely shy and is unable to speak when talked to, only whispering her sentences as she talks. Yell, however, is the only one whose personality fits the mantle she inherited. Due to her curse, she has to raise her voice after every two hours. If not, she will fall into a coma, and she can only be awaken by *************.

Important Figures

Belial

Credits to: @airtrees0507 (Again, another artist who... disappeared from the internet. How do I keep finding refrences where the artist is just gone?)

Is a Celestial and the younger brother of Soleil. However, despite his godly status, he does not have any of the expected gifts. Neither a god of creation, life, or death, he has been given the title God of Void by his peers. Because of this, he is incapable of maintaining Avarus by himself, forcing him to use alternative (and questionable) means in preserving the world his sister created. Like his title, Belial is unable to express emotions, giving blank demeanor. He does, however, hold some semblence of emotions within him. Yet despite this, he has little to no understanding of life, death and emotions. Even after centuries since he over his sister’s role as Patron God, he still has no understanding to all living things, almost to the point of coming off as insensitive and heartless.

Belial has a deep devotion to his sister, having gone through great lengths to make sure to maintain her world and willingly sacrifice the lives of many. Despite knowing her distaste towards such acts, he holds onto the hope of one day finding her.

Soleil

Credits: Um... Lucare Eu??? Sorry, I’m just basing it off the signature. Once again, can’t find the artist themself so...

The true patron goddess of Avarus and the older sister of Belial. Aside from her status as the original creator and caretaker of her world and the life that once flourished within it, not much is known about her. While her exact cause of death is unknown, she was cursed to live an endless cycle of death and rebirth in various worlds. In order to restore the world she created and loved dearly, Belial dedicated his life in searching for her soul and freeing her of her curse. As a Celestial, she was said to have chosen to take the form of her first ever creation and first mortal friend.

It is said that, despite having blessed with the gift of creation, she was known to be a lonely goddess. Those that new her describe as someone that’s physically there but is spiritually detached.

The Oracle

Is a title given to those with the ability to commune and guide the spirits to the Empyrean Plain, more specifically Avarus’ residences due to the absence of Soleil. The Oracle acts as the divine anchor on the world to aid Belial in prolonging the world’s existence. They are also the main source of Belial’s divine power; both of which are maintained through her prayers. The gender and species of the Oracle is non-specific, but it if preferred by Belial if they are humanoid and have the ability of speech for the sake of communication.

The current Oracle is Aniela Fischl, who, unlike her predecessors, is able to foresee various futures. She does so by carefully peeking through the leylines and selects various possibilities that solely benefit Avarus. No one is allowed to meet her except Belial and her assigned Seekers.

The Seekers

The guardians, caretaker, and acting medians between the Oracle and the residents of Avarus. Their duty is to ensure that the chosen Oracle remains within the Spiral Tower and that he/she fulfills their duty, even going as far as to grant their wish regardless of the consequenses. Each Seeker has only one desire, and that’s to protect the Oracle at all times.

Races

Liberi

Age Range: Birth or 5 to 10 years

Although that is the official term, ‘Mongrel’ is what they are commonly referred as. It is the used for the for the children taken to or born in Avarus. Mongrels spend most of their young lives training within the safe walls of the Aldebaran Academy. They are forbidden from leaving as, according to Belial, they are the extremely fragile during this point of their lives. Regardless of their age, depending on how well they’ve performed in training, they will be given the right of undergoing the Ascension Ceremony. Those who fail are xxxxxxxx xx.

Due to their young age, their behavior is more sporadic than that of a normal child. Their reflexes are enhanced, almost to the point where it becomes difficult to contain them. Mongrels lack common sense so they tend to act out without fully understanding the impact their actions have. While childish and friendly by nature, Travellers are advised to approach with caution. Those who act beyond the expected norm are called Prodigies.

Quietus Nors

Age Range: (Physically) 14-19, (Mentally) 10 or above

Or simply called, Nors. After their graduation, every Nors is immediately sent to work. Depending on the final results of their training prior to undergoing the ceremony/procedure, each is individually assigned into one of the three factions ; Infernum Poncitator, Vanidicus Persona, and lastly, Tunera Clypse (formerly called Tunera). Those that are assigned to neither of the factions are assigned to more menial jobs alongside the Ex-Animus,

Despite their young minds, they have quickly adapted into their new forms. Due to time becoming almost non-existant in Avarus, Nors age at a rapidly slow rate. Though known to be childish by nature due to the gap of their young minds to their bodies, they dangerously lack empathy and display little to no compassion and remorse towards others. In worst cases, some act selfishly on their own accord. On a positive note, they lack any emotions that may hinder their mission in locating Soleil; such as fear.

Only two of the three current generations of Nors differ greatly from the first:

First Generation Nors - Are those converted or directly born within Avarus with the blood of two Nors. Those born in the first generation share two specific physical characteristics; raven black hair and golden eyes. They all share the same abilities upon conversion/birth, but it depends on the individual which ones they should master. Unless they happen to be a Cursed Blood, they are unable to obtain different abilities to call their own. They are required to undergo the Ascension Ceremony.

Second Generation Nors - In terms of personality, they are considered half as bad as those in the first gen. Unlike the previous, second generation Nors are considered slightly weaker, however, they have a better chance of obtaining other abilities outside of Avarus. Their hair is slightly lighter shade of black but their eyes remain the same. They too are required to undergo the Ascension Ceremony.

Third Generation Nors - While rare, they do tend to appear once in a while. It’s not exact how one falls into this category. The closest is being the grandchild or who has an anscestor that was a Nors. Because of their circumstances, these Nors are far weaker as they cannot use any of the standard abilities. Third Generation Nors are far difficult to locate as their potential doesn’t surface until they are of a much later age, rendering them incapable of taking necessary training to hone their abilities and undergoing the Ascension Ceremony. They do not share the common personality or physical traits of a Nors. One thing every Nors in this generation share are sky blue eyes, which emit a faint glow when in the dark.

Ex-Animus (or Anima for singular)

Age Range: (Physically) 30 to 40, rarely appears in their early 20′s

Are individuals who are retired from their duties as a Nors. Although Nors generally age at an excessively slow rate (due to the effects of Avarus), after a number of cycles (which refers to the number of batches that underwent the Ascension Ceremony), they will be given the order to retire. Regardless whether they are willing to or not, there is nothing they can do once the order has been issued. Once one becomes an Ex-Anima, they are completely cut off from their original faction and are unable to leave Avarus for the rest of their life.

Not only that, they are unable to defend themselves like they used to as they can no longer control Astral Dust and use the abilities from their time as a Nors,Basically. Basically, Ex-Animus’ are left to fend for themselves.

Factions

Every Nors is allowed to join any of the three factions; Infernum Poncitator, Vanidicus Persona , and Tunera Clypse. There is an option to not join any of the factions; they are called ‘Floaters’.

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watchmegetobsessed · 3 years

Text

🎶 putting my 2 cents in on WONDER! 🎶

this post contains my own, genuine opinion, if you can’t take a different point of view than yours, don’t bother to read, i don’t want to be attacked because i speak my truthful thoughts! keep in mind that everyone is entitled to have their own opinion!

elaborate thoughts under the cut

INTRO - he genuinely had me with it when the teaser came out. love a good bomb dropped on me and that’s what it feels like when that odd, buzzing tune comes in after he sings ‘lost in wonderland’ and it never fails to send a shiwer down my spine

WONDER - i already expressed my love for wonder, i loved it when it came out, love it today, it’s my second most listened song of 2020, i guess this fact talks for itself

HIGHER - at first listen, i genuinely considered skipping it. i don’t know, something just didn’t clicked for me, maybe because it sounds a lot different from the kind of music i’ve been listening to and if im being honest, i can’t see myself listening to it, but it’s completely alright, i always have at least one or two skips even on my absolute favorite albums!

24 HOURS - the instrumental of it often reminded me of the tunes they used in very old movies so it kind of felt nostalgic to listen to it, though i didn’t find myself getting engaged with the song, again, it’s just not my cup of tea, but i can see it just gently playing when im going something entirely different and i put the album on randomly.

TEACH ME HOW TO LOVE - i was skeptical at first listen, but gotta admit i grew fond by the end of it, kinda digging the groovy tunes, it has a slight Bruno Mars vibe to it for me and that’s why i imagine him performing it with a very vintage vibe, like a nice��‘60s feeling, very old school, wearing a colorful suit with a band behind him and an old TV show like set, i can totally see it, even him rocking a John Travolta hairdo from Grease!

CALL MY FRIENDS - it starts a little dull, but i love the turn it takes when that buzzing background comes in. it has a vibe that makes me want to get lost in a busy city in the night

DREAM - dream is it for me. the harmonizing sent chills down me immediately and i chimed in with his voice. i think it’s easily my fav from the whole record after Wonder and Intro. the harmonizing literally makes me feel like im floating and im obsessed with it

SONG FOR NO ONE - it’s very flowy and catchy for me, love the simplicity of just the guitar playing sometimes, but then i also adore the sudden change when the beat comes in, it gives the song a nice push and doesn’t let it get too dull by the end.

MONSTER - i’ve been very conflicted about this song ever since it came out, because even though i used to be a huge belieber back in my early teenage years, i still felt like Justin wasn’t a good add for the song. i would have loved it more if it was just Shawn, because i liked the concept and the base of the song, but for me, his voice is throwing off the vibe a little when he first comes in, though he clicks with the refrain for sure and it adds up by the end. i just feel like his appearance is a little abrubt with the sudden, rushed lyrics.i would have opted for an easier opening for him, that would have pulled the song more together for me

305 - the upbeat style is a bright change of pace on the album, but i feel like his voice is a little too blue, i feel like it lacks that same, chatty, vibrant vibe the instrumental gives away. though i think it’s a nice song, makes me bop my head for sure, the beat makes it catchy and that little guitar in the bridge almost feels like christmasy, which is a vibe i can never get enough of.

ALWAYS BEEN YOU - the start feels a bit like At The Ballet by Barbra Streisand, but then it surely changes up. im still savoring this song, not sure how to feel about it, though i definitely like the abrubt outbursts in the chorus. i feel like he could have gone a little heavier with the vocals, feels a bit lost in the background, but i like the effort.

PIECE OF YOU - already posted it, but i was waiting for Freddie Mercury to start singing ‘another one bites the dust’ when the beat started, it surely gave me that vibe, but it took a different turn and i think i like it as a whole. it’s a little different, less melancolic then the rest, a little... darker? if that makes sense. but i think it’s just the base of the song that gives me that vibe.

LOOK UP AT THE STARS - oh yes, this definitely warmed my broken little heart, and i was happy to feel that his voice matched the instrumental, the kind of thing i was missing with 305! love the tunes, the whole song definitely brought a smile to my face and it’s surely one of my favs.

CAN’T IMAGINE - im not a fond of the repetitiveness, the same lines over and over again, the song feels like a very random, on the spot made up one he would just mindlessly play in a backyard by the fire, which is not a bad thing, it surely has a lot of feelings behind it, but i guess i was expecting a different kind of song to be the closure in the end of the album. but i can still see myself listening to it.

overall, i think i get the direction he was trying to aim for, i get the vibe he tried to channel through the album. it’s clear he worked hard on it, the change can be felt in him, the maturing, he is making a point about growing up. i think Wonder is the album before the one that will hit different. he is trying himself out in a different field, finding his voice and true self as a real, mature artist rather than be a teenager in the spotlight. i think Wonder was much needed for his own growth and personal journey, and it made me anticipated to see where he’ll take it, because i think it’s kind of the point where it can easily go anywhere from here. it was definitely an experience, for him. and i respect that, because the art of an artist truly serves the purpose of forming the artist, to channel their inner, most personal thoughts and feelings they harbour deep down. it doesn’t exsist to please anyone else but the creator and judging from how Shawn hasbeen treating Wonder, i think this album fulfilled it’s purpose.

#shawn mendes #shawn mendes wonder #shawn mendes wonder the album #wonder experience #wonder the album

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himikou · 3 years

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ok so it's me again and honestly im glad tumblr ate my earlier ask cause it was VERY long but essentially i dropped yoi because i was pissed jj the canadian jetplane won gold while pichit, absolute king of everything, didn't even place i think not sure i haven't watched the show since the finale

i was also mad that the writers has the perfect opportunity, SEVERAL TIMES, to address or make a commentary on the racism and colorism in the professional ice skating scene, but NoOoO we just gotta let the white man with the mediocre performance win bc of "personal growth????"

the more i talk about this the more you'd think the writers DID sneak something in and i missed it, but i'd say i had pretty good critical thinking skills 2 (3? 4?) years ago so i should have picked up on it

another point, it's anime and that garbage industry is infamous for it's racism and colorism (among other things) so. fuck it all (obv im not saying every anime is racist/colorist but like. pichits a side character, clearly shown to be important to yuuri, shown to be on par and even above in skill to yuuri, kind, compassionate, full of art and life and love and he made SIXTH despite "a near flawless performance" so.)

Hi, I’m so glad you’re back!! 💗 Also, I found the previous ask once you sent this one; I just never got any notif for some reason? I’m putting this under a cut because it’s kind of long and not bnha related lol

Yeahhh that totally makes sense. Do/did you follow figure skating? From like 2011-2017 I was really into figure skating and gymnastics, and I definitely agree with you. They’re beautiful sports, but the judging is so corrupt. (Case in point: The Sotnikova/Kim controversy in Sochi 2014) Among skaters/coaches/etc, colorism, racism, and classism are all huge problems, too. I wasn’t really thinking about that when I was watched it originally, so I’m really glad you pointed it out.

I haven’t watched YOI in a while, but I genuinely can’t remember there being any commentary on these issues in it. Which, on one hand, does make sense. It’s meant to be a pretty upbeat show that centers Yuuri’s relationships and growth; obviously they’re going to steer away from portraying major controversies. On the other hand, Phichit was robbed for no reason.

It makes no sense to focus on JJ’s development over Phichit’s, especially when his success came at Phichit’s expense. JJ’s backstory is interesting, and I did enjoy it at the end, but there’s no reason for him to have medaled. (I checked and at the GPF, JJ got bronze, while Phichit was second to last :/) Arguably, it would have pushed more character development for him to have given his best after moving on from his mistakes and it still not being enough. It would have forced a lot more self-reflection, you know?

Or, they could have kept that storyline, but had some commentary about the judges favoring certain skaters/countries and intentionally boosting their scores (ie., Lipnitskaya’s solo performance in Sochi resulting in fifth place despite a disastrous short program). Especially considering that JJ is from Canada, a country that’s fairly influentially/favored by the ISU, while Phichit is from Thailand, a country that hasn’t made any major contributions to figure skating. (Note: I’m pointing this out because judges are known to favor skaters from countries that can contribute more financially/etc to figure skating at large. Basically, there’s no benefit to boosting a Thai skater, but they would have an incentive to boost a Canadian.)

Towards the end of the series, Phichit also takes a back seat to JJ’s development. Like you mentioned, he’s actually important to Yuuri, and he’s been in the show from the beginning. It is weird that he kind of fades into the background as the series reaches its climax. It’s especially frustrating because one of Phichit’s main goals is to make figure skating popular in his country, and he knows that in order to do that, he needs to become a very successful skater. JJ’s goals are just focused on himself. It’s fine to be selfish; I’m not judging that. But Phichit’s goals are more compelling, and I wish we had seen him succeed more.

Anime definitely has issues with racism and colorism, and it’s important to point that out here. When you’re surrounded by these prejudices, it’s going to affect your work. It’s important to critique it or you’re also going to absorb those biases. It’s definitely likely that colorism had a role in Phichit’s and JJ’s placings. It reminds me a lot of how female characters are randomly deprioritized to make way for a man. The exact same thing happens with key brown/black characters being downplayed to allow a white/light-skinned character to succeed. It’s so shitty, and we do need to discuss it. You can’t do better until you’re willing to acknowledge your current and past mistakes.

I’m so glad you sent this ask anon!! Thank you for sharing your perspectives on the series. When I first watched YOI, I was definitely not in a headspace to critically evaluate it. I’ve actually been planning on rewatching YOI for a while now, though, and I’m really excited to watch it with these thoughts in mind. I do love the series, and I think it’s vital to critique the things you love. Definitely feel free to send me more asks about it, or dm if you want!! Thank you again; this was so much fun, and it reminded me of how much I adore Phichit.

#Phichit supremacy 🤝 me and anon #also: hating professional figure skating it’s so corrupt it’s infuriating #i’m gonna rewatch yoi this weekend i think 🥰#messages #anon #yoi anon

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anaxe · 6 years

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Improving at Art

Hey, my name is Cameron and I've dedicated a great deal of my life to art, animation, and music. I'm by no means perfect and still have a lot to improve on, but I've learned so much from so many great artists over the years and I'd love to share with you all what they taught me, and what I personally believe about the process of improving.

I'll get straight to the point. To answer the question "How do I improve at art?" broadly, the answer is: repetition. Simply drawing what you see with your eyes over, and over, and over. Studies are absolutely the best way to develop the skills necessary to create the things you imagine in your head. It doesn’t matter if you want to be a cartoonist and create stylized illustrations or if you want to be an abstract expressionist. Drawing from life is an invaluable activity for all areas of art, as anything abstracted from reality is still directly based on reality and how we interpret it.

Studying

Draw from reference. Make it a routine to complete a certain number of studies every single day and I guarantee you will improve. Time your studies, avoid perfection, and study in volume. You don't need to enroll in art school and spend tens of thousands of dollars to get good at art. You just need the motivation and discipline to practice on a regular basis. Also, know that you will only improve at what you decide to study specifically. There are artists who can paint hyper-realistic portraits, but are completely incapable of drawing a car, or a building, or a background.

Artists talk about burnout a lot, but there is a big difference between creative exhaustion (art block) and studying. You have to think about studying exactly the same way you think about athletic exercises. If you want to be physically fit, you must maintain a routine of exercise. The dexterity involved in drawing works in a very similar way. A great deal of art is knowledge, but in order to execute the knowledge you have, you must also have dexterity.

One of the most common pieces of advice I see given to artists who feel frustrated with their artistic ability is to "take a break". Art can be frustrating, but if the source of your frustration comes from your skill level, a hiatus will not solve anything. The rate at which you improve is based purely on the sheer volume of time you put into practicing and studying.

Understand that I'm not saying I've never been frustrated to the point of stopping what I'm drawing to relax and get my mind off of the issues I'm having. By all means, take a walk, play some games, read a book. Drawing should not be a stressful activity. It should be fun and rewarding. One of the hardest parts about studying in art is getting the motivation to do it in the first place. Athletes will probably tell you the same thing. Once you actually create a routine out of an exercise, the frustration you felt with getting the motivation to begin goes away completely. You begin to perform these tasks somewhat automatically and without a sense of failure or lack of motivation. You just do it without thinking too much about it. Ideally your studying should be ritualistic in the same way you brush your teeth every single time you prepare for sleep.

Procrastination and Art Block

I'm sure you've experienced or heard of "blank canvas syndrome" where you sit around telling yourself you're going to draw, but you keep procrastinating and fiddling around on the internet and what-not. Not knowing what to draw is a struggle all artists can relate to. The key to avoiding this feedback loop of inactivity is to-- you guessed it: just draw! There are plenty of ways you can create ideas organically. You don't necessarily have to preemptively have a character, scene, or object in mind in order to draw something.

One of my favorite idea generation techniques involves a method concept artists use inspired by Rorschach tests. Draw a black blob or perhaps even have someone else create a geometric blob for you to avoid subconsciously influencing the intention behind the shape of your blob. Rotate it around, look at it from different angles. Paint over the blob and start blocking out three dimensional shapes somewhat randomly at first, and eventually you will start to see something appear.

Another example of creating ideas would be to start drawing lines without intention. Doodle shapes and hatching schemes until you see something coherent emerge out of the madness. Some of my favorite drawings came out of mindless scribbling and hatching while I was feeling uninspired to draw anything in particular. And for God's sake- if you just can't figure out for the life of you what to draw, do some studies! Studies are a perfectly fine way to spend your time if you can't come up with any original ideas. What better way to spend your time while uninspired than copying an image or pose? You don't have to come up with anything, and the time you spend studying will help you improve for when you’re feeling ready to create something original.

#art advice #guide #art #long #studying

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bwatkinsphoto · 6 years

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Anyone that knows me, knows that it’s no secret that I love Katy Perry.

When her tour was announced, she wasn’t coming to North Carolina. That honestly didn’t surprise me as we usually don’t get big acts to perform here. I acted fast and figured out that I would be able to see her in Atlanta nearly 7 months away from the date I purchased tickets.

Fast forward a month or so later and Katy had announced a Charlotte date. I was ecstatic! The concert would take place the week of my birthday and I was going to take one of my best friends with me to finally experience for herself what I had talked about nonstop. I was able to score dropzone (pit) tickets and had started planning, making sure that I would have the best birthday yet.

...that was until the concert was cancelled because of a scheduling conflict. Cancelled. Not rescheduled. Just cancelled. I was devastated. It may sound silly, but birthdays are not something I look forward to and this one was a BIG birthday. I remember celebrating my 21st with Katy, and thought it was awesome that I was going to be able to celebrate another milestone birthday with her. It was just my luck that this had happened, but fortunately I would still be able to see her in Atlanta.

Two weeks before the show, I entered a contest through her fansite. Entering was easy, all you had to do was leave a comment and from there 5 winners would be picked randomly. Simple as that.

A week before my concert, the winners were to be announced at 10 am. I didn’t receive an email, but it was okay. I had a fair chance just as everyone else did and knew that whether or not I won, I would have the time of my life at her concert.

Four hours went by. I was standing outside with my camera in my hand when suddenly my phone (that was in my back pocket) started to vibrate. I pulled it out and looked down, seeing the email notification. I had won a meet and greet.

My heart dropped to the ground. Was this real life? I couldn’t believe it. I immediately walked back to my house and started checking Twitter to make sure that I had in fact won. I saw that because of two generous Katycats who wanted to spread the love, two more winners were chosen and I just so happened to be lucky enough to be one of the two.

I will be forever grateful for those Katycats, the girls at katycats.com who run the website and organize things like this, and for Katy Perry who wants to meet as many of her fans as she is able to.

I wanted to tell my mom (who I was taking to her first Katy show!) in person but I couldn’t keep the excitement to myself any longer. I told her about 2 hours after I had found out and literally had no idea what to do with myself next.

The week leading up to the concert went by so fast. I stressed nonstop about random things but at one point said “It feels like I’ve already met her so I don’t know why I am so nervous.” - more on this later.

On Tuesday, December 12th, my mom and I loaded up my VW Bug and we were off to Atlanta Georgia. The drive took us almost 4 hours and once arriving at the hotel, the nerves started to flood back. We ordered room service where I picked over my salad and couldn’t eat, because let’s be honest, I hadn’t eaten much in that week leading up to this day. My anxiety was at an all time high.

We went to the arena around 6 pm and picked up our meet and greet wristbands at the box office and instructions on what to do next. We waited with everyone with anticipation to be taken backstage.

The meet and greet room was so welcoming and fun. Pop art on the walls, a candy bar, the Witness album playing on a loop in the background, lip couches and cool furniture, an arcade game, and a photobooth. I met with a bunch of other KCs who also expressed their nervousness and excitement over meeting Katy.

Katy (aka Latey) was running late, but we were informed she was on her way and would be there soon. The minutes building up to her walking in the room felt like an eternity. The group of Katycats stood back at the end of the line, as we were the last to meet her. Katy walked in and the whole room cheered.

I have seen Katy in concert numerous times before, but I had never been in the same room in an intimate setting like this with her. This caused a flood of emotions. I kept thinking how much this woman and her music means to me. She has been a part of my entire adulthood thus far, and has given me so much to look forward to over the years when I felt like giving up. Meeting her was at the top of my bucket list.

It was time for the Katycats to meet her, and none of us wanted to go first. Too many of us wanted to go last. It feels like a blur thinking back to it. I waited my turn and she walked towards me. I had a gift and card for her, and the guys that we all know as “the twins” who conduct the m&gs, said “I’ll take that”, referring to my hands being full. Katy exclaimed, “No, I want it!” and went in for a hug as she held her hands out to take her gifts.

The conversation started out something like this…

“Hi, nice to meet you. What’s your name?” “Hey, I’m Brandy.” “Brandy. Have I met you before?” I shook my head. “No, this is the first time.” “That’s weird because I feel like we’ve met before.” So, remember a few paragraphs ago when I said that it had felt like I had met her before so I wasn’t THAT nervous? How strange is that?!

She was so easy to speak to and listened to every word I said. I gave her an egg plush dog toy for her dog, Nugget, and as she asked what it was, I showed her pictures of my first KP concert. “Shut up! The angel egg.” She then said, “But I didn’t do that here…” and looked confused. I told her, no it was in Charlotte and that I am from North Carolina. I went on to show her more pictures from the concert and she zoomed in on her nails. “I want to see my nails. Those are my Tokyo nails.”

I told her I was a photographer and was so proud of those since I had just started out taking photography seriously. She scrolled through my pictures and I told her that she can see that my photography has improved since then and she agreed saying “You should be proud of these. You have some nice shots here!”

She then opened a small box that I had given her containing a bracelet I had made to commemorate the Witness era. I told her that I made it and make jewelry and she said “Girl, look at you go!”

Time went by so fast. I could’ve talked to her all night if time allowed. She is so down to Earth and nice. We took a few pictures and then she snatched my phone from my hands to take a few selfies. I thanked her and then it was all over. Time to gather my things and go find our seats.

Katy came out on stage about 20 minutes later and as usual, put on an incredible show. She acknowledged me a few times as I stood in the audience watching in awe. (I’ve always said you’ve never really been to a concert until you’ve been to a Katy Perry concert.)

During the acoustic part of the show, she sang both “Wide Awake” and “Thinking of You” as she floats above the audience, getting closer to ones who aren’t seated so close to the stage. After “Thinking of You” ends, she speaks about seeing a shooting star and how you are supposed to make a wish when you see one. She then asks if anyone would like to come on stage and make a wish.

Katy noticed a young boy shying away from all of his friends pointing at him, waving their hands, and jumping up and down while trying to get Katy’s attention. She invited him on stage, and at first I think he was too nervous, so he hesitated. Once he realized the opportunity he was presented with, he took off running towards the stage.

Katy welcomed him with open arms, asking his name and how old he was. She asked Jameson what he wanted to be when he grew up and he said “A superstar, like you.”, which made a smile come upon my face. Katy asked him what his one wish would be and he immediately replied without a pause with “A lot of world peace.” The audience cheered as Katy was taken aback to hear such a request from this young soul.

I later found out more about Jameson which made what Katy did even better. Jameson, 13, has autism. Katy did not know this when inviting him on stage. His mother, Amanda, told me that Jameson has made so much progress through the years from being a shy little boy hiding under a chair during his brother’s pre-k performance to actually going on stage himself, with one of the biggest stars in the word in front of 10,000 people.

You could see the shock, excitement, and happiness on his face and so many people were equally as happy for him that he was chosen to go on stage with Katy.

Whether she realizes it or not, Katy has had a positive impact on many lives. Many know her as a quirky pop queen with positive, upbeat songs with extravagant fashion sense. Katy is so much more than that. I hope she knows how much she is appreciated and loved by her fans. This was by far one of the best days I have ever experienced and I am so thankful for all she does for the ones who support her.

#katy perry #katycat #katycats #meet and greet #m&g #witness #witness the tour #wtt #witness tour #atl #brandy watkins #brandy watkins photography

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vroenis · 4 years

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Circa 2009 - 2019

Lede with a picture, righto...

In true style, that’s going to deter the lot, but gotta stay on brand.

To have this discussion, we’re going to need a list. A musical timeline of sorts with the exception of four key events;

2002 Balance 003 (compiled and mixed by Bill Hamel) 2008 Jóhann Jóhannsson, Fordlandia 2009 Telefon Tel Aviv, Immolate Yourself 22nd January - Charles Cooper dies Tosca, No Hassle Hildur Guðnadóttir, Without Sinking

2010 Jóhann Jóhannsson, And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound Of Bees 2011 Bon Iver, self titled 2012 Bat For Lashes, The Haunted Man 2013 13th January - Kentucky Route Zero Act I is first released Andrew Bayer, If It Were You, We'd Never Leave Darkside, Psychic The Haxan Cloak, Excavation 2014 Siavash Amini, Til Human Voices Wake Us 2015 Björk, Vulnicura Siavash Amini, Subsiding Jóhann Jóhannsson, Sicario (original soundtrack)

2016 The 1975, I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It 2017 Björk, Utopia Siavash Amini, TAR 2018 9th February - Jóhann Jóhannsson dies 29th June - Bill Hamel dies Andrew Bayer, In My Last Life The 1975, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships Siavash Amini, FORAS Skee Mask, Compro 2019 Siavash Amini, SERUS Apparat, LP5 Telefon Tel Aviv, Dreams Are Not Enough

While I’ve added a precursor of two albums to give context to two of the events that happen in the timeline, it is effectively book-ended by the two most recent albums from Telefon Tel Aviv. These albums form a frame in which so many things have happened - in my life, and seemingly in the lives of others. Some clearly in the events so evident and unavoidable, painfully so and still lingering in the minds and emotions of those they directly affect and us in the periphery who only have the most faintest of contact yet still seem to perceive ourselves significantly touched. By this I mean the death of Charles Cooper - if I feel devastated, having only ever been had an impression of his character via the channel of his art, there isn’t a universe in which I can possibly imagine what Joshua Eustis’ daily experience is, so I can’t and won’t speak to it.

And I guess that’s where the story begins.

In 2009 my best friend who remains so to this day plays me Immolate Yourself for the first time - bearing in mind they and I are slightly different people, probably me more-so than they. Our tastes in music have always been fairly broad. We’ve never been haters of pop-music at all, they’ve always embraced pop more than I but I’ve always appreciated pop. In by brief stint industry-side when I was professionally working, I did form an appreciation for the labour, but in general I still maintain a high appreciation for the craft. In any industry there will always be a valuable critique of culture and bad culture exists everywhere. We must always work to protect the vulnerable at all times, no excuses, and erode imbalances of power.

Back to 2009. The album blows us both away and I’m fairly confident in speaking for us both, changes us forever. We both have immense music libraries having purchased music constantly from young ages, but no matter what we cycle through or have in rotation, Immolate Yourself has always been evergreen. Not to say it’s in daily rotation constantly - it’s not exactly that kind of album. It’s highly emotionally charged and a demanding listen, and sometimes I am listening to it once a day for a given period, but it certainly is highly mood-dependent - more-so than some of the other music in my collection which is completely fine in that not all art has to be hitting at that level.

I remember our conversations about Charles, how shattered we were, our conversations about suicide, mental health - please be aware that at the time, it was rumoured Charles Cooper’s death was due to suicide but later several reports ruled that it wasn’t. That’s that. The purpose of bringing it up is to give context to R and my discussions. Some years prior I had my own mental health diagnosis clarified and had seen some improvements on and off with my personal management, but the rigours of life still presented challenges significant enough to cause extreme frustration, anger and anxiety. I’d say these days, in the year of our Synth Lordz 2020, I’m doing much better and on better medication management and that would still be true.

I don’t go looking for articles or interviews with Joshua Eustis about what his life has been life at all or how things are for him now. I do follow him on twitter and we’ve had a few great, unrelated exchanges. When I bought and had my first listen-through of Dreams Are Not Enough last year, I told him I wanted to delete the rest of my music collection which of-course is hyperbole and he knows that, but as I’ve mentioned elsewhere (this almost always means Instagram), I always want to have these extreme responses to art. It doesn’t have to be all the time, but it has to be at regular intervals, even if they’re separated by long periods of time. Art is so important to me. Sometimes I joke - love you don’t have to work to receive, but art takes labour. Maybe I’m not joking (typical artist wank :P )

Apparat (Sascha Ring) was one of those artists I never bought back in 2009 but he was always in the playlists, always at the festivals. Maybe he did remixes? Or his music was being remixed. I dug his stuff, it was pretty cool, but back then he was probably in the periphery for me. He, like many for me, faded into the background. Because I follow Joshua/Telefon on Twitter, I randomly see a retweet or an exchange between him and Apparat, probably about software or plugins etc., and think far-out, Apparat’s still around... and he released an album in March (2019). I’m going to go have a bit of a listen and if it’s good HOLY SHIT...

To help me characterise what I hear when I listen to LP5, I’ve included a very important album from Tosca, interestingly released at the beginning of our bookend; No Hassle. I don’t really know what the zeitgeist is on this album, but my completely uninformed instinct is to say it’s not popular. For me, tho, No Hassle is absolutely divine. It’s an astonishing listen because it’s in some ways *unexciting* - it’s a severely sober listen. There’s next to no energy in it at all, even when Richard and Rupert dare to tilt into a major key, they’re still listlessly meandering along as if they got up too late or are still sitting in an old sofa or are just happy enough to be strolling and the conversation is good enough at a moderate level before we head back down as the sun sets and the night swallows everything up. It’s an album I listen to almost exclusively in the car during night drives, or in either my house or in hotels, airports, any other environment but always when it’s dark. Cheesily I call these works “Midnight Albums”, and I tend to characterise them as serious listening, when I’m feeling meditative, pensive, neutral, dead-sticking, however you may wish to describe the sensation.

LP5 is along very similar veins for me and it strikes me as extremely interesting. Sascha didn’t exactly disappear for 10 years, his wiki page lists two other albums in 2011 and 2013 respectively as well as other collaborations and work, but to me, just the sound of this album strikes me as particularly unique to being distinct from the years gone by. That sounds like a redundant statement - that might be true of everything altho with art I often don’t think that’s the case at all, but when I first heard LP5, I thought Sascha - shit’s happened to you. I don’t know what it is, but then I figure...

Shit’s happened to us all.

Anyone well inducted into the Anjunabeats cult (lol it’s a joke, you can laugh - I’m a fellow cultist) of trance will be familiar with Andrew Bayer. A good thing the Anjuna label seems to be doing and more of of late, is funnelling some of their phat stacks of cash to their talent so they can actually record full albums if they wish, a venture which I’m sure isn’t profitable for them in any way unless they go on tour, contingent of-course on the material being shoppable. I’m sure that makes Spencer Brown a darling - not having a go at him, I love both his albums to death, they’re amazing, but I genuinely don’t think there’s any pressure on the artist to produce tourable music. I feel Andrew has the latitude to do whatever he wants, and he works at the shoppable remixes because it’s fun for him and they have a wonderful community of talent in constant contact with one another so the opportunities are there.

In 2013, Andrew Bayer releases his album which upon hearing I instantly buy. It’s a pretty neat departure from all things trance - it’s beaty, synthy, broken samples and pushing at ambient at times. Then I get to the amazing last track titled “Closing Act”. This is 100% without question inspired by and styled after the music of Jóhann Jóhannsson.

On the 9th of February, 2018, Jóhann Jóhannsson dies.

I’ve just come back from stepping away from this writing for about two hours. I appreciate people interact with art, artists, performers and people of varying level of exposure (read: celebrities) in different ways so let’s just bypass any discussion of how other people behave. It’s fine. As for me, I try to maintain what I believe to be a healthy sense of distance from people of cultural note. They’re still people; human beings, and I don’t know them. Actors and musicians had died before, artists I’d “grown up with”, admired etc., but Jóhann‘s death struck me with force. It still haunts me.

Why?

I don’t know him. I never knew him. For all I know, he may have been an arsehole to everyone around him. I had to and still interrogate my emotional response and I very much do it with the greatest of intent. Is it stupendously capitalist? Am I so entrenched in my lust for his music? His product? That is literally all I can say I know of him; what he produced - what he gave, what he offered. Is it because I want more? No - not really. There are artists still alive who have chosen not to offer more and I have no problem accepting this. There are artists who have more to offer and aren’t able to due to the economics of power and the power of economics and I’m certainly angry about that while they’re alive. I grieved for Jóhann. I was so upset. I shut myself in my studio and cried.

In some way, regardless of not knowing anything at all about the circumstances of his death, I felt that we had all failed.

Knowing even in the smallest element that mental health was a contributing factor to his life and death leads me to make assumptions about the kind of world he may have existed in, what his experience may have been. Regardless of whatever differences there might be between his experiences, now finite, and my own, I still believe there is justification to draw parallels. Not because he’s semi-famous, but because we are both humans, and that it is known he struggled with mental health. It is as much about known, documented and shared stories of services, medications and social experiences as it is about everything that is unspoken that all people with mental health concerns know. We may not know to what degree we might have commonalities, but the one thing we may have in common is that there are so many things we cannot share - speak, or expose, and there are things at times we feel we must not expose in order to survive. It is at this point I must emphasise that health professionals will always dispense such advise as “You’re never alone/you never have to carry burdens alone” etcetera etcetera and I value the intention in such actions. I’m here to appreciate the goodwill behind such advice, but purely by nature of existence, we are each of us alone - this is not an emotional fact, this is simply reality. You cannot inhabit our bodies and minds and live our lives for us - nor can you overcome our physiological concerns internally on our behalf. You can offer us medications but it is still we who have to bear the process of evaluating whether we can endure the experience of synthesising them.

Professionals need to always respect that fact and never forget it.

This is key when I interrogate my emotional response and reaction to Jóhann Jóhannsson‘s death. I don’t know what treatments he may have been receiving but I also don’t know what his life experience was, because treatment in and of itself is less than one half of the equation, perhaps not even a third. The total texture of a human’s experience is woven from so many fibres; and one of them is the cultural response of the people surrounding them, from the immediate individuals to generalised language in use within earshot to advertising unwillingly overheard to adopted via accepted use over time to idioms adopted when people have literally no idea what words mean and what they can mean and how they can directly affect others.

Am I blaming this nebulous spectre of Society? Of-course not. Am I wanting to focus a microscope on the microcosm of communities within this idea of Society or induce guilt on individuals? Also no. But there is still a sensation of endemic guilt and carelessness that we do not make better attempts, perhaps not even to approach a comprehensive understanding of mental health, but at least to triage some of the casual damage we do by being completely careless with it with poor cultural practice. It’s such a difficult thing to speak to because the terms are at one moment so specific and yet the next so generalised. What are we to do? How can we improve when it’s no-one’s fault and yet everyone’s fault? How can we be effective if we want to discard useless, terrible and outdated ideas like blame and backwards accountability and yet we haven’t even begun to understand how the shape of our behaviour is having such devastating effects?

The cost is literally human life.

The interrogation goes further. Why only Jóhann? Why don’t I mourn every death? At the risk of diverting to whataboutism, it’s still worth asking, because it’s clear I valued his life because of his art, and it can’t be avoided that I list Bill Hamel for the same reason. Balance 003 is for me the best collection of minimal trance in history and there has never been another since, the genre has evolved and as yet has not been revisited. Bill himself joined with some friends to work on some more upbeat and detailed music but then himself died in June of 2018, but I wasn’t to find out for months and again, was shattered. I didn’t know Bill either but there were more anecdotal accounts of his personality available online, and they certainly were glowing and positive, and that’s how I think of him - fondly, regardless of not knowing him.

Later in 2018 Andrew Bayer released his next album. It’s a collection of vocal pieces, and the final song is titled End Of All Things. Eerily but welcomed, many of its musical stylings begin to resemble Jóhann Jóhannsson‘s, and Alison May lends her voice to lyrics that include the following;

Roll down the aisle You were bold to go first With a fist to the earth

I don’t like to quote a lot of lyrics, and you can look the rest of them up if you want, but if you do, like me, you might interpret the song to be about death. I don’t know if Andrew Bayer wrote this for Jóhann Jóhannsson, or only for him or at all. He probably wrote it for someone else entirely, probably someone he actually personally knew. Maybe he just wrote it about death in general. It doesn’t matter because for me it was the first catalyst in musical form for processing Jóhann Jóhannsson‘s death in some dimension. It wouldn’t be until much later, when Justin/Telefon Tel Aviv retweeted Siavash Amini that I’d find art as powerful as Jóhann's and Andrew’s and of-course Justin’s own, but each artist is their own texture and I listen to them all in different ways when in different moods.

2019 - Dreams Are Not Enough

There is so much more writing I can do with this short list of albums. I’m at 2800+ words and I’ve barely scratched the surface. That first, dull image at the top of the piece is the directory structure of my music collection, replicated on the hard-drive that goes into my car and on my personal music player - I don’t use my phone for music. While I do listen to music from every directory over time, of late I’m gravitating more and more to two main folders; Ultimate and Survival, and almost all of the music from the list in this piece comes from those two directories with only one or two exceptions.

I’m a bit miffed I didn’t get to write about The 1975, there’s some great stuff to be said about their work and I’ve written about them before, but I have so much more to say, especially culminating with Love It If We Made It as a generational, cultural proclamation. We’re on the verge of the new album tho (time of writing is 29th February 2020) so who knows, maybe I’ll get the opportunity to be topical with that but knowing me, I’ll still bury it behind a wall of text but that will be for the better, I’m sure.

I need to close on Dreams Are Not Enough, tho, and also Kentucky Route Zero. I think I’ve mentioned it before - completing Kentucky Route Zero was the catalyst for me to start writing again, and it’s there in the timeline that the first act released in January of 2013. Last tumblr entry, I briefly touched on being in a holding pattern until KRZ was completed by its developer, Cardboard Computer, and since completing it, I’ve gone off socials which means I’ve greatly diminished my activity on social media and returned to long-format writing. This entry and the last on tumblr are very much evidence of that. Way back in 2013 when I first completed that first act, Kentucky Route Zero was one of those seminal experiences I felt was made just for me. After years of playing all sorts of traditional video games, I’d grown tired of their play dynamics in many senses. I still liked traditional games, and in some ways still do now, but I will always hunger for boundaries to be pushed, for greater things to be said, for things to be said and done in conjunction and in parallel; in layers and simultaneously; artfully, with complexity and subtlety, or with simplicity but with great humanity and maturity. I remember watching Serial Experiments: Lain, the first episode and feeling like it was made just for me, and then that feeling being amplified a million times over with Haibane Renmei and Texhnolyze. There are reasons these works are so rare and so unpopular. Again - I’ll reaffirm I still love a lot of pop and there’s nothing wrong with generalised and widely celebrated art at all, a lot of it’s cool. But when you find something so unique that speaks so much to your experience in a way that’s powerful to the point of dialect...

That is what Kentucky Route Zero and Porpentine’s Howling Dogs are to me.

That’s what these albums are to me, and Telefon Tel Aviv’s albums somehow have book-ended this period in my life. Each album captures a facet of turbulence, of emotion, probably a little bit of joy, or chaos and a healthy dose of hedonism too, but I have other music for that and I tend not to talk about it much. I’m sure joy and euphoria can be complicated for others and that’s cool, but it’s not something I feel drawn to discuss.

All of this art, this Art Worth Dying For, seems to be the only thing I can engage with at the moment, in the wake of completing Kentucky Route Zero. I have shooty shooty games sitting on the Playstation that I once did really enjoy and probably will again, I don’t know. But right now I can’t bear the thought of booting them up. I think about some of the films I was keen to see some months ago and right now they look like noise, indistinct, boring to the point of textureless, falvourless null-space. I don’t mean to insult these works in any way at all, I’m not trying to diminish their value by saying by comparison to KRZ, they’re bad. Not at all. I don’t seem to be able to process them. The closest thing I can describe is the kind of mood disorders, dysthymia being one of them, doctors used to try and diagnose me with before they knew I was bipolar; a literal chemical barrier that’s preventing me from comprehending and interpreting the data I’m being presented with. I’ve lost hold of the cultural frame I’m supposed to have to understand how to place these objects in reference to my sense of entertainment and engagement.

So instead I come here and talk to myself with barely an objective in mind, other than to perhaps share my thoughts with you. And some music that I’m hoping you’ll buy. I know I’m a pain in the arse for that, and I know buying music is an immensely privileged thing to be able to do - I get it. You don’t have to buy everything right away, but if you want me to make a case for it, let me know and I will, I’ll even make a case for small steps i.e., even when you can’t afford much and how to spend a really tiny amount. Otherwise proceed as normal and click onto the next visual diary, nothing to see here.

#chrono #2020 #music #Jóhann Jóhannsson #Bill Hamel #Telefon Tel Aviv #Apparat #Andrew Bayer #Kentucky Route Zero #mental health #psychiatry #language #art worth living for #art worth dying for #Dreams Are Not Enough #writing about music

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margoslxix · 7 years

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Why Everyone Should Join the New Albion Fandom

Alright, so I know some of my followers already know about New Albion. I’ve definitely been posting about it a lot lately. But not only is it a great work, but so far, the fandom is shaping up to be something absolutely special and unique, something worth keeping an eye on for those of us interested in fandom history and culture. It’s still a small fandom, but it seems to be growing fairly quickly, and I think this is as good of a time as any to make a post like this.

What is New Albion?

Good question! The short answer is, it’s a series of operas. Specifically, retro-futuristic science fiction operas. That sounds niche as hell, because it is. But the music is incredible, and the stories are extremely well-written. There’s also a good deal of LGBT representation, which is always a plus.

You can find the entire series here. As you can see, that looks extremely intimidating, but here’s a simple guide to getting into the series:

You should start with Dolls of New Albion. It’s the first in the main trilogy, and the most well-known. You can find a few actual performances on Youtube, which is a nice bonus. If you’re extremely into jazz, you can also safely start with The New Albion Radio Hour, but I don’t think it’s quite as satisfying without having Dolls as a basis. Dolls of New Albion is an epic, with each act following a different cast of characters in the same family line, and how all of their actions cause the downfall of a great city. The aesthetic is Steampunk, probably accounting for the popularity of this one in particular.

The New Albion Radio Hour is the direct sequel. It’s a much more compact, action-oriented piece. It’s Dieselpunk, so prepare for a lot of noire goodness. It follows a single family on a single night, and while the plot is completely separate from Dolls, it definitely does build on the lore.

Finishing out the trilogy is The New Albion Guide to Analogue Consciousness, a wild Atompunk ride. It’s a bit less linear than its predecessors, with Act 2 being a massive flashback that helps to explain the plot. It has a reputation of being the hardest of the three to follow plot-wise, so you definitely don’t want to start with this one, although it’s also very, very good. It also ties the plots and characters of the other two together in an extremely unexpected and interesting way, so it’s absolutely a great “end” to an amazing trilogy.

Once you’ve finished the main trilogy, your next destination should be The Room Beneath New Albion. It was written as a sort of love letter to the fans, and an epilogue for the series. Taking place during the third act of Dolls, it delivers on a plot point left hanging at the end of the trilogy.

All of this takes less than 6 hours, so this is not a fandom that will take you hours and hours to get caught up. If you were a latecomer to anything like Homestuck or The Adventure Zone, New Albion is incredibly accessible.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

You may have noticed that there are more than four albums on the Bandcamp page. Don’t worry. Just because the main trilogy is over doesn’t mean that New Albion is finished. Now is actually an excellent time to get into the fandom, as we’re all waiting at the edge of our seats for the third act of The Ballad of Lost Hollow.

The Ballad of Lost Hollow is a 3-act opera being released one act at a time, and Act 2 (”Uncle Raven’s Super Happy Funtime Carnival”) was released very recently. While it was a massive plot twist at the time, it is no longer a secret that this opera, while seemingly unrelated to New Albion, is actually the fourth full installment in the series, and seems to be heading in a Cyberpunk direction. Still, it’s taken a lot of detours through Weird West and a Carnival aesthetic, so it’s got a little something for everyone.

In addition, if you want to hear more, most of the albums on the composer’s Bandcamp do take place in the same universe! If you want to get additional lore, feel free to give a listen to nearly everything. Fairy Tales for the Lost and Wandering in particular actually includes a track called “New Albion 7,” an important side-story linking Radio Hour to Analogue Consciousness. If you liked that, there’s also Fairy Tales for Homeless Fairies, another album of fairy tales, but one with a more connected plot.

For more background on Uncle Raven, formally introduced to the New Albion series in Act 2 of Lost Hollow and quickly becoming the most popular character in the series, check out The Fallen and Shadows and Flames, both of which feature him pretty heavily. (He’s actually a very old OC of the creator, so there is official lore for him dating back to the 90s.)

If you want something a little different (and not necessarily canon), check out The Slenderman Musical or Cthulhu The Funksical, both incredibly weird and unique takes on pre-existing stories.

And if you’ve listened to everything and you’re still hungry for more New Albion, the composer’s blog contains a bunch of short fiction and character backgrounds for the series, providing additional context and lore notes.

How is this Fandom Unique?

This one’s kind of a long story.

You see, we have this Discord server (which I can give you a link to, if you’re interested). A lot of fandoms do. It was started by @sludge-bot, and I don’t think he expected it to get as big as it did.

Well, sure enough, it sort of exploded. Meanwhile, cryptic messages on Paul Shapera’s blog seemed to suggest that he was a member of the Discord himself, lurking and incognito. He promised that he would reveal himself in a Q&A session over voice chat.

And he did. Sonmi451, a person who had been a member of the server for a long time, turned out to be Paul Shapera himself. Turns out, he’s not just an amazing composer, he’s also a really cool dude. The Q&A went wonderfully, but we were all a little unsure of how things would go after that.

And here’s where things start to get wild:

Paul stayed.

We continued to behave as a normal fandom, producing fics and art and headcanons. We’re pretty active for a small fandom, partially because we’re a tight-knit community. We’re always welcoming of new members, but for the time being, this is a fandom where just about everyone knows everyone else.

Except that the content creator, The Guy Who Controls the Canon, is among us.

He frequently shows up to randomly declare people’s headcanons canon, or comment on our art and fics. The atmosphere is casual and friendly, and he frequently jokes about our shenanigans.

He’s also written the Discord server into the official lore, as an organization of mad historians and scholars (the New Albion Discordian Society, or NADS). In addition, he has named several characters after members of the group, and said that he will continue to do so.

The official support from the composer has made the New Albion Fandom Discord into more-or-less an “Official, Authorized Fan Club.” We also may or may not have our hands on some exclusive content, some of which may or may not be total game-changers for the lore.

Anyway, Paul Shapera is a really cool dude, and his engagement with his loving fandom has created a totally unique atmosphere with regards to how things like headcanons work, as well as answering questions and expanding our understanding of the lore.

That was long. Why should we join the New Albion fandom?

To summarize: Do you like amazing music? Do you like great stories? Listen to the New Albion series. It’s shorter to get into than a lot of other popular Tumblr fandoms, but it also gives you more depending on how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go. For this reason, it’s a totally customization fandom experience. Join the Discord server, and you’ll make a ton of cool friends, and have an already-established community to geek out about the series with.

I could see this potentially blooming into a large fandom, and I’m not entirely sure how that will change the current culture and dynamic. But honestly? It’s exciting, and I’m willing to find out. (Plus, Paul deserves a lot of love and attention, because his music is AMAZING.)

#new albion #fandom #long post #seriously its really really good you guys #its one of those things that i lowkey want everyone to know about it

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sssoto · 7 years

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Creator’s update #1

Hey guys! So I’ve decided to start actually blogging on this blog and tell a bit about the various things I’m working on, share WIPs, music I’ve been digging recently etc. I realise that I rarely post anything, so it seems like I’m super inactive - which is totally not true, I just have so much stuff going on and take a long time to finish things, and I’m also pretty picky about what I put up online lol! For the sake of keeping those of you interested in the loop, I’m gonna start this series of creator’s updates in which I’ll update y’all on the progress I’ve made on my various creative projects. The goal is to give an update a few times a month (hopefully lol)!

This past while I’ve been super inactive in the writing department, but very much productive in the art department, so my writing update will be mostly a summary of what I’ve been doing the past few years up until this point.

Mood: Feelin’ real good cuz my parents finally brought my comfy double bed over from my mum’s place this past weekend, which means no more sleeping on the couch yaaaaaas.

Music I’ve been digging recently:

Skye Sweetnam - Boyhunter So, the other day I randomly listened to this song on my way home from work, and I totally realised that Skye Sweetnam is the perfect voice for my character Caitlyn, and this song totally embodies what Caitlyn is all about lmaoooo. (The song isn’t very accurate to the time period Caitlyn lives in, but it’s super accurate to her character essence and personality, and I just find that so lit hahahah)

Fallulah - Out of It This song is basically my MC’s theme song?? It’s performed by a Danish artist and was super popular in Denmark a few years back as it was the theme tune to a Danish tv show (a show I loved!). The lyrics are just so Daniel, it’s not even funny. It mostly fits his mental state at the beginning of Renaissance.

Girl’s Day - Love Again Ugh I just love the tune of this song so much, I can’t really place my finger on it, the emotion is just so great. I love the guitar riff especially, and Girl’s Day is a four member girl group, so it’s one of those songs where I can imagine my main girls Annaliese, Caitlyn, Mary and Serena singing as each member lmao.

Nine Muses - Remember Another four member group now, this song is also one where I can imagine my main girls singing each member’s part lmao, and having that aspect to a song always makes it a little better for me! Forreal tho, this new release from Nine Muses slays, and we all know it. The music video haunts me.

Sistar - Lonely This song makes me sad and happy all at once, cuz I’m not ready to say goodbye to Sistar, but at the same time this ending is probably the best one any fan could’ve wished for because there was no drama or anger, just well wishes and hope for the future. I know these girls will go far, and this song just pulls at all my heart strings man. The melody of the bridge and chorus, Dasom and Soyu’s parts in particular, really works for me. And yeah, Sistar has four members too, and once again I can picture my main girls singing as each member lmao. It’s a thing I have, okay?

Moana OST - We Know The Way + Know Who You Are I recently watched this movie, and while I sorta felt like the plot was a bit rushed and tropey in many ways, I totally adored the visuals and the MUSIC OMG. These two songs are my favourite, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s vocals never miss, and Auli’i Cravalho’s high note is gorgeous! Also dat choir in the background tho, and in context with the movie scene that song just makes me irrationally emotional mkay. (That ending was the best twist ever, it definitely lifted the story up a notch for me!)

Writing

So I’m writing a book! You might have seen me mention it a few times already on here, but I’ve not really shared much insight into my process or what sort of book this actually is (other than talking about characters here and there), and as I’ve not been making huge progress lately (I’m in an art state of mind duuuh), I thought that I’d keep this section short and sweet, with a bit of an introduction into what my book project is all about.

I call it a book project because I don’t feel comfortable just calling it a book when I don’t have rights to publish. Technically my book is a fanfiction based on the horror video game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and as such I don’t own copyright of the small percentage of my story that features the canon elements. However, I take this as seriously as anyone else would writing their own book, because I’ve poured my entire heart and soul into it, and the vast majority of the content (plot, characters and world) is my original creation. It’s my own little big project lol!

You might be familiar with the game, and even if you aren’t, that’s not a prerequisite for reading my book since everything is introduced and set up just as in any regular book. The protagonist is an Englishman named Daniel, and we know little of his past through the game. I won’t go into too much detail on what the game is about (if you really wanna know, you can look it up), but the point of my book is to explore the protagonist’s life from his childhood up to the events of the game and beyond, and afterwards connect his story to the game sequels featuring other protagonists within the same universe. It’s a bit complex and elaborate, which is just the way I like it!

As the games are set at various points during the Victorian era (game #1 is set in Prussia 1839, game #2 is set in France 1858, and game #3 is set in England 1899), you can probably guess that the entire thing will be pretty long. That’s why I’m making it a series! I have at least seven books planned so far (though there’ll definitely be more, since I’m not near the end of the timeline I need to cover yet), and I currently have the first book written and am writing the sequel - however, the first book will need a complete rewrite once I’m finished with book #2, because I’ve since developed and changed a lot of stuff, and I have many new interesting ideas for a more fleshed out version of the first book. Still, the fanfic version is available online, so if you’d like to read it, you can find it here. You’ll get a pretty good idea of the general story and the characters, but keep in mind that it’s super outdated and will be very different after my rewrite!

For reference, this is the list of books that I’ve planned (and titled) so far, so you can keep up with what book of my series I’m talking about at any given point:

I - Amnesia: Memoirs

II - Amnesia: Renaissance

III - Amnesia: Voyage

IV - Amnesia: Noir

V - Amnesia: Encore

VI - Amnesia: Rogue

So what I’m doing right now with this project is revisions. Uuuuggghhhhh. Yes, that’s right, I’m stuck in revision hell. I’ve not even finished the first draft of Renaissance yet (I know, sacrilege, writing blasphemy, don’t start your damn edits until you’ve finished your draft dumbass), but I had some pretty major changes to make, changes so big that it would be a waste of time and effort to go on drafting without implementing them first. Mainly the changes are surrounding 1) a change of ages of my main cast (I aged many characters up a few years), and 2) changing and figuring out the specifics of the illness which my MC’s sister, Hazel, is afflicted with. She’s not such a major character in Renaissance, but she plays a big role in Memoirs, and since I had all these new ideas for the rewrite of that, I wanted to implement the ripple effects in the second book so it wouldn’t be too much of a hassle to edit later when Renaissance is a finished 3-400k first draft lmao (I have a lot of words okay?). These changes mostly affect the early chapters of my book - chapters I wrote about three years ago, which means that these early chapters really need a face-lift. In addition to the age and illness change, I wanna revise the first five chapters by cutting the fluff and tightening up the beginning so we get to the action a tiny bit faster. Adding to the fact that these early chapters are three years old, the prose also needs an almost complete rewrite. So long story short, all of the edits are taking a long ass time, and I’m not having a good time lmao. Doesn’t help that I had to stop drafting right at one of the juiciest scenes in my book?!?!? (that’s a lie, it gets juicier, but I was just getting to the real good stuff yanno?)

(Side note: for someone who said that I’d keep this short, it sure turned out long lmao. I just have too many damn words.)

Chapters edited: 2/16 (working on 3 right now and it’s an effin’ pain)

Current total word count: 120,591

Current total chapter count: 17 (the number will go down to 16 once I finish the revisions, as I’m merging two chapters)

Look at all the dumb shit I still have to edit for chapter 3. Look at it.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Art

Man, I’ve been doing a lot of artwork recently, and by a lot, I don’t mean that I’ve finished any.

I think I’ve been focused on developing my actual drawing skills rather than making finished illustrations, because I’ve been so overwhelmed with inspiration and I’ve wanted to try out drawing a bunch of different motives, so my mind is on a lot of different art projects at once, and I’m making baby steps of progress on each of them because I just wanna do everything lmao. I should probably take a step back and settle on one thing at a time, but at the same time, I feel like this is working for me because I’m so inspired and motivated and super excited for every single art piece; I don’t feel myself losing interest in any of them, in fact I just feel like my switching between different artworks keeps every piece fresh and interesting for me, yanno?

So here’s one thing that I’ve been slowly chipping away at for the past few months. I’m drawing a full body group picture of my main cast from Renaissance!

I’ve drawn the anatomy sketches of all the male characters (though I’m debating whether I should add some others), and now I’m adding the female characters one by one, so these are not all of the characters yet. But man, I just love seeing the characters side by side? The variety in their body language, body types and heights is just so interesting to look at, and it’ll be even better once I get around to actually adding their facial features, expressions, hair, attire, and then colouring them as well omg! I’m a sucker for this kind of thing, blame it on @juliajm15 and her amazing diverse character designs.

It’s gonna be a huge picture with a lot of characters, and I’m stoked for it!! This is a piece which I hope I’ll be able to show ya’ll the progress of bit by bit in every few updates. (also, if you feel somewhat familiar with some of my characters, you’re welcome to make guesses at who’s who (; )

Another project I’m working on is making official character portraits of my main cast (and possibly minor characters as well). I just think it’s nice to have official portraits as reference for anyone who’d like to see what the characters look like, and also for myself for whenever I need to refresh the specific features and expression of each character. It’s just a nice thing that satiates my very Type A personality lmao!

So the characters above are Owen Wright (to the left) , Daniel’s puppy bff with the fluffy hair, and then from left to right I’m colouring the portraits of the Armstrong siblings: Caleb, Caitlyn and Tristan. Their dad is a duke! n.n Caleb is the oldest, Caitlyn the youngest, and Tristan is the bland middle child. He’s a little brat LOL but I still love him.

Also, due to this glorious reference I found, I finally figured out how to draw Daniel. Bless this model, I never knew I wanted Daniel to have big puffy lips, but apparently I do.

He looks actually nice now? Which is nice? I’m amazed. Also his hair? I can never draw his hair, but this looks nice so yay? Also, I dunno why I never draw clothes on him, I guess I’m just lazy lol, but he’s gonna need to wear clothes for the official character portrait soooo... That’s a thing I’m gonna have to do.

Now that I’ve figured out his features, it’s gonna be fun to remodel all his family members accordingly. I sense that he’ll have gotten those cute puffy lips from his mum meheheheh.

I also did some Disney fanart of my two favourite Disney ladies; Esmeralda and Kida <3

I actually never really draw fanart any more, it’s been yeeeaaaars since I did, and when I used to do it, I was always very particular about staying as true to the original art style as possible. But now that I’ve spent the past couple years focusing on developing my own art style, I actually decided not to care about that so much and just draw the characters the way I’m used to drawing my own, and lo and behold - it looks pretty accurate to the Disney style?? I assumed that the characters would end up looking very different, but other than the eyes being smaller I feel like they look the exact same lmao. It’s interesting to me, because even when I used to do fanart, I usually did so of Japanese art and manga, not of Disney or any other western art. Also, I don’t consider my own style very Disney, but it pleases me a lot that the characters look so much like themselves even in my art style! The most important thing to me is to capture the essence of the character anyway, so any fan can recognise the character they love so much n.n

So that’s about it for this round! I’ve been working on other things as well, but I’d rather not disclose them to the public just yet - perhaps later, when I’ve made more progress, or (gasp!) actually finished something!! Bahahah, with the many things I’m working on, hell will freeze over before that day comes. *cries*

Youtube

I’m adding this Youtube section because, in addition to writing and doing artwork, I also like to record vocal covers (mainly of kpop songs, but I’ll do anything I’m in the mood for at any given point), aaaaand as of today I'm gonna be uploading speedpaints as well! Which is probably good since I don’t upload my covers nearly as often as I finish them lmao.

I’ve not uploaded any new covers recently (though I really should, I do have some covers lying around on my laptop mwerp), but I’m gonna list a couple of my favourite covers I have on my channel here so you can take a listen if you’d like!

youtube

And today I uploaded my very first speedpaint to my channel, so check that out if you’re interested in that sort of stuff! It’s the process of my Christmas portrait piece for Serena. I aim to be more consistent with uploads since I have a few unedited recordings lying around, so keep an eye out for that!

youtube

If you’ve read this far, thank you for sticking around and taking a look at my work, even if it’s only in WIP form. I wanted to start doing these updates because I’ve been watching my friends do them for a long time, and I always love reading their writing updates; they motivate me so much to get working on my own stuff, and I just wanna be able to perhaps do something similar for anyone else who’s watching me out there. So thank you sincerely to @coffeeandcalligraphy, @sarahkelsiwrites and @shaelinwrites for sharing your process with the world and being such an inspiration to me and many others, I love seeing you all make progress on your own projects <3

So that was all for this round, I hope you guys enjoyed a little sneak peek into what I’ve been working on! Until next time, folks!

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hypnoticharlequin · 7 years

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Hypnotist Posters (Again!)

I’ve done this once before, but there are so many interesting old hypnotist posters around I couldn’t resist showing off some more I’ve come across.

I covered the Flints in my previous post but I wanted to show this one off. I actually unironically love this poster as it reminds me of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s works due to the floral pattern and the lush skin tone used on Miss Flint.

What I have found out since the last installment was that Miss Flint was heavily advertised as a solo performer, getting her own posters and other things. According to one source I found, she was famed for her dress collection and women would attend her shows, just to see what dress she was wearing that night!

Also, she had the cutest nickname a hypnotist has ever had. Seriously, “The Little Hypnotic Subeam” is just fantastic and would actually make her stand out amongst her contemporaries who went for much more formal and authoritarian titles.

I think this poster is from the 1890s. At least that is the date I see linked to this poster when it is mentioned and the art style sort of fits that date.

Obviously, the first thing that draws your attention is Kennedy and his pose. Where a lot of hypnotists went for a more intimidating or solid pose, Kennedy seems rather fancy-free.

Also, it’s nice to see the moon from Majora’s Mask getting work. This was one of it’s earlier appearances while it was still young and fresh faced. The people on the moon are pretty cute, I like the woman in the middle, I mean it takes a lot of effort to be having so much fun you almost fall off the moon. This poster seems to fit in with a tradition that saw magicians hanging out with various magical beings on their posters. Seriously, the sheer number of posters that feature magicians just chilling with Satan is pretty mind blowing.

If I could sum this poster up in one sound, it would be never ending screams.

Now, I can’t find much about “The Amazing Ormond” but I do wonder if this is Ormond McGill, better known as Dr. Zomb. He wrote the book “Encyclopedia of Genuine Stage Hypnotism” which is still considered to be the bible of stage hypnosis.

This poster is honestly terrifying. I’m not sure if it’s partially due to the reproduction, old paper stock with a black background is notorious for its inability to scan well. But the black eyes mixed with the uplighting give this a seriously creepy vibe, Ormond’s face having an almost uncanny valley look to it.

But, I can’t deny it worked, I’m not able to go through my folder of hypnosis posters without this one catching my eye. In fact, one of the main reasons I am writing this post is so I can delete this image from my hard drive.

I don’t know why, but this poster reminds me of a perfume ad. I’m not sure if it’s the color palette or Miss Brandon’s slightly wistful look.

Joan Brandon is pretty famous in magic circles for being the first televised female magician. She was famous for combing her magic with orchestra music (played by her own orchestra) and was very well known for her signature trick, a magic cocktail bar (a variation on the Think-A-Drink trick.)

In hypnosis circles, she is most known for her books, The Art of Hypnotism, Successful Hypnotism, The Science of Self-Hypnosis and Help Yourself Thru Hypnotism and Self Hypnosis which are all still good reads even to this day.

The Art Of Hypnotism is also known for its rather amusing photographic illustrations. It’s easy to find online but quite often turns up for a few dollars on eBay or in second-hand bookstores and I thoroughly recommend it.

This poster is one of those I see around a lot and only recently bothered to look into the history of. It’s from 1966 and I always thought it was from later on. This poster looks just so very 60s I really had it down as a later parody of the style as opposed to actually just being of that era.

It actually took me a long time to find out even the most basic things about this guy but Merlin (real name William Joseph Rawle) was from Australia and was Australia’s oldest performing hypnotist.

I want to zoom into the text under Merlin for a moment, as it is rather glorious.

It really is a throwback to older posters to have a description of the acts performed front and center, but compared to some of the older hypnosis posters (which promised utterly insane things) this seems rather restrained. In fact, these are now considered stock hypnotist tricks.

What makes me chuckle is the onion eating trick. It’s done all the time but it always interests me to see which fruit is used as the replacement taste. In the UK it always tended to be an apple, and I’ve seen orange used a bit in the US. I wonder if you could do a chart of “onion taste replacement fruits” arranged by geography.

Being the oldest performing hypnotist, Merlin has several other posters over the years.

This one focuses more on his mind reading as opposed to his hypnotism, but I utterly love the design. It has this almost 3D effect which makes it look like the poster has a few actual physical layers, but I do suspect it might be the issue with scanning black ink rearing it’s ugly head once more.

While the last one was pretty joyous this one is practically metal, with its skulls and very industrial images in the crystal ball.

This poster seems very old school compared to the other two, mostly due to how text-heavy it is. But unlike some posters, the claims all seem pretty normal by today’s standards. The only one that sticks out to me is the one about treating children for nervous complaints while they sleep. All the methods I have seen for this involve just standing and whispering to your child while they sleep because nothing helps the nerves more than an adult looming over your bed whispering at you in the deepest, darkest night.

Virgil and Julie were a big magic act in the 1950s and 1960s taking shows containing a few hundred illusions around the world.

Hypnotism played a part but it was nowhere near the focus of the show, but this poster is something to behold, it really is a mish-mash of everything that was hip in the era. The B-movie Esq UFO and the almost eerie-cutie spacewoman flying around it.

Julie’s costume is very similar to that of the Jeannie from the Tv series I Dream Of Jeannie which debuted in 1965 and went a long way to putting the “harem” costume we know today into the public consciousness.

I want to end on this poster which became quite the rabbit hole for me and I’m frankly not 100% sure I’m correct on all of it.

I had a real good laugh when I saw the Reveer because he looks like every stereotype of a magician and hero cowboy got thrown into a blender. The turban and the Lone Ranger mask just look so silly together.

I also found it funny that his name was close to that of Reveen, the hypnotist famous for his performances in Canada who would have been performing at around this time.

Then I got to digging and found I could find hardly anything on Reveer, apart from some poster seller listing him as Tony Cole, a magician who apparently worked sharpshooting into his magic act which does explain the Lone Ranger mask.

Tony Cole also apparently had posters of his own, but all I can find of them is the following:

And no, Tumblr isn’t going weird, that is the only image I can find of one of his posters. I did, however, turn up a news article on him from 1977 from “The Independent Record from Helena, Montana” advertising a show he was going to do.

As you can see the resembelence is there so I presume this is the same guy.

As an aside, you might realize this picture is totally and utterly unreadable. The place I found it had the plain text of the article, unfortunately, it was made by OCR copying the document and the results are an utter mess.

Some highlights include:

To be able to make someone do what another person desires carl brln^a gleam .into the eyes of ambitious people.

This impression oF hypnotism's power is one of the mast fallacious and dangerous, according to Cole, who when pressed will admit bis lull name is Tony Colo, a hypnotist, magician ami entertainer.

In between all the weird OCR errors, we can see a recurring theme that Tony Cole doesn’t like to use his first name, which means he is the Cole from the latter poster and would explain why he would make a stage character.

M PEOPLE L'NDEH HYPNOSIS won t do anything they wouldn't do normally, " ttie Canadian-born entertainer said In an Interview In Helena.

Cole recalled ihnl a Groat Falls A A W manager had been hypnotized and was told he was Elvis Presley. The man began gyrating and singing, dulng spills and performing in the late-lfloOs style (bat endeared Presley lo the teen set. Cole said. He added that the shy A & W manager would not normally rarry 1 don't think a person has to put someone in an embarrassing situation or use anything smutty or not in clean family fun in order to entertain.

I’m sure we can all agree that Elvis’ late-LfloOs style was by far his best style and one that really became his signature. And all of the teen girls were into Elvis for his pet bat.

He tries, to Tony Cole, a hypnotist, magician and all-around entertainer correct any misconceptions about hypnotism, anri he hypnotizes willing members of the audience.

He tries to himself? Is that some artsy way of saying he tries to be himself?

On his stage, people might shiver In Ihc arctic temperatures he has described or away In Lhc breeze like palm trees.

And his chauffeur and helper, Wayne Adolph, emphatically added In his gravelly voice. "It's real."

I don’t know why that bit made me laugh so hard, but it really did. I’m not sure if it’s the fact the guy is called his “helper” or just the fact he decided to just randomly join the interview.

MORE AND MORE PEOPLE are believing in Ihr authenticity of hypnosis, contends Cole, who has certificates from at least three schools of hypnotism and who has been licensed to leach hypnotism Physicians, dentists, psychiatrists, pollliuUnH, ministers, entertainers, teachers, lawyers, salesmen, atnletes and pilots are among those, who are studying or using hypnosis, Cole said.

Some beneficial uses for which hypnosis Is being sLudled include easing childbirth, treating alcoholism, slopping smokers from Indulging and treating empbysemn and asthma victims to breathe properly.

All of these arc medical uses or hypnosis and "the practitioner must by certified as a hypnolechuician and receive a doctor's prescribed order before he hypnotizes someone. Cole said.

Yes, everyone remember to become certified as a hypnolechuician, that is a very important qualification to have.

But ask him about himself and the answers dissolve in shrugs and evasiveness. He doesn't like to use his first name.

Again, some more information that works with the idea that Cole had a few side characters he played sometimes.

He makes good money at hypnotism and his oilier entertainments as he travels across the country and into Canada.

However, I do not wish to see Mr. Cole’s oilier entertainments.

"I know I have a talent but that talent should he scared. ]f pc0pte |,ave a latent and don't share it they re ripping it elf."

And your guess is as good as mine on this last one.

So there we have it, The Great Reveer, hypnotist and fiction all rolled into one oddly costumed package. I wish I could find more on this as there seems to be an interesting story in here, but unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any records I can find.

However, if this taught us anything, it’s that if I get bored of hypnosis, I can just turn this into a bad OCR blog.

#hypnosis #hypnotism #stage hypnosis #posters #design #hypnotists #ocr

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afishtrap · 7 years

Link

I’m just going to link to the latest from @caramelcheese, but you might want to also read the previous in the discussion. I know there are a few posts from @soobaki in a similar vein, but (once again) this isn’t really a continuation so much as a branching, which is why I’m not posting this as a direct response.

Here’s the deal, from an athletic perspective: nearly every sport requires finding the right balance between power and technique. The athletes who are true world-class, Olympic-level champions are those who’ve mastered both. This (as usual) gets a little long, so behind a cut we go.

What most people don’t realize is that mastering both modes is difficult and rare; if you only watch the Olympics, you might have the impression this is common, but believe me, no athlete who’s made it to the Olympics is average, in any way. Even record-breaking athletes -- like Yuzuru Hanyu, Katie Ledecky, or Usain Bolt -- will still have a subtle preference for one over the other; you can see it clearest in their earliest competitions. On top of that, the more artistic sports will go through trends where one mode dominates, until the pendulum swings back.

I remember watching the Olympics in the early 90s as a kid, and the world of ice skating had tilted hard towards sheer power. Wave your arms around randomly a few times, skate really fast, jump, skate really fast some more, jump, repeat for three and a half minutes. Power was fully on display. Finesse and grace were an afterthought.

Finesse is technique; stamina is a huge part of power. If you lack power, then you make up for it with finesse. The better your technique, the more efficient you are, and thus the less power required to perform the same move as someone without good/excellent technique. How does that matter in YoI? Because the two Yuris are polar opposites in a lot of ways, in personality, background, and in their innate approaches to their sport.

When we meet Yuuri, he’s flubbing his jumps. Sure, he’s anxious (clamping down on his power), but we’re also inundated with comments about his incredible stamina. Takeshi, Yuko, Minako, even Celestino and Yakov all make direct or indirect comments about it. Yuuri certainly has power; he simply lacks the self-confidence. What’s important to note is that thanks to what’s probably years of practice (and that bit about how he’s had double the time on the ice of anyone else his age), he also has amazing finesse.

As a fellow athlete, I’d say Yuuri poured his heart into his technique, as if that could compensate for his anxiety about displaying/using his power. The thing is, personality-wise, Yuuri is like a textbook technique artist. He doesn’t get in your face; he hangs back and lets the art speak for itself.

In contrast, Yurio’s personality fits nicely with the kind that goes all power, technique be damned. Others may see Yuurio as the fairy of Russia, but as noted elsewhere in #yoi-meta, Yurio desperately wants to be seen as a tiger. Powerful. Why care about finesse when you’re seven hundred pounds of pure muscle and bone, and can tear prey apart limb from limb? But over and over, we're reminded of Yurio’s lack of stamina.

Put it all together and this is no Chekov’s gun, people. This is more like Chekov’s howitzer.

I’ve listened to Welcome to the Madness, and it’s no balletic symphony. It exudes power and aggression. The irony is that the story itself set up that this just isn’t Yurio’s path to winning. As Victor notes, Yurio doesn’t need the quadruple jump to win the junior’s; Yurio's victory proves Victor’s observation correct. The message here is that Yurio’s finesse has the potential to overshadow (and compensate for) his lack of raw power.

From a storytelling perspective, then: we have two characters, each who could naturally excel in one area that they’ve neglected to acknowledge, and who’ve pushed themselves to reach for (or compensate with) their secondary or less-natural skill. From the very beginning, Victor calls this out. Eros and Agape are expressions of love, but also expressions of the two modes. Victor tells Yuuri to put himself out there, push harder, be bolder; to Yurio, Victor insists aggressive displays won’t work, that Yurio must let the emotion (his technique) speak for itself. Victor can see, like any experienced athlete, where each excels innately, and he’s trying to get them to play to those strengths.

(Incidentally, my guess would be that Victor -- based on Yakov’s comments, among other things -- began his career with limited stamina, but a major flare for technique. Victor’s years of training, though, probably honed that technique into such phenomenal control that that he could overpower anyone, because they simply couldn’t use their energy as cleanly as he could. Also incidentally, the only story, anime or otherwise, that I’ve ever seen acknowledge this is Naruto, which states early on that Sakura has substantially less power than her team mates, but holds her own because she's perfected her technique. Most stories value power, coding technique as feminine, I think, and thus don’t realize just how easily someone with good technique and minimal power can defeat someone with good power but lousy technique. Technique really is all about efficient use of resources.)

Anyway, looking at the last few competitions (about ep 6-9), Yuuri is pushing himself via quantity and timing of his jumps to finally display his natural bold power. Combined with the finesse he’s learned over the years, he should be nearly unbeatable. Each time, too, when he loses -- or even just does less well -- it’s because he’s lost to his own anxieties, and not because his competition was just that much out of his reach.

On the other hand, we have Yurio, who’s damn near broken himself in half under Lila’s tutelage. Ballet requires power, but it is first and foremost (especially at Lila’s level) about perfect, flawless technique. It’s worth noting that Lila is quite unimpressed when she first meets Yurio; he’s been chasing after power and treating technique as secondary. When Lila talks about making Yurio a prima ballerina (once again coding finesse as feminine), her real goal is teaching him that flawless technique is his only option given his lack of stamina.

He doesn’t quite get the message. He’s still absolutely focused on raw power, and Otabek acts as a nice contrast. There’s no doubt Otabek is sheer power. The animation was sketchy on his pieces (and I am rudimentary in assessing ice skating performances, at best), but I got the distinct impression that if the ice skating world been in a power-heavy phase, Otabek would be at the top of the podium. With Victor dominating the charts, the world of YoI is clearly in a swing towards the artistic.

From an athletic perspective as well as a storytelling one, Otabek’s role isn’t just as an unexpected friend (and admirer) for Yurio. He’s also someone who looks at Yurio’s amazing finesse and doesn’t code it as feminine. He sees Yurio as that seven-hundred pound tiger, rather than a delicate fairy. Of all of Yurio’s interactions, this is why Otabek’s is the most important, development-wise. Yurio needs to have someone who doesn’t feminize him, but respects him as a fellow competitor, and it must be someone who does have the power Yurio covets. (Yurio and Victor are too similar in preference and style, thus Victor’s acknowledgement isn’t validation enough.) And, it’s why Yurio’s focused on Yuuri, too -- because, like Otabek, Yuuri has the strength that Yurio wishes for himself.

This brings us to the final two episodes. Going back to the Chekov’s howitzers sitting on the series mantelpiece, I expected two things to happen.

One, for Yuuri to finally power through the jumps with enough variety and quantity that there’d be no doubt he'd found the will to use his stamina to his advantage. I didn’t have a problem, on first viewing, with Yuuri doing less well in his Eros, since a low score reinforced the series’ message that love wins. When he stops thinking about (and expressing) love, he can’t win. So I was okay with that.

Two, for Yurio to either win with Agape or come very close, because it’s where he could shine. It’s about a minute shorter, so his lack of stamina is less of an issue. And if he could take his experiences of Agape, and express them artistically, then his victory lies in showing that grace (pun maybe intended). Although Yurio winning underscores Victor’s belief that Victor himself could’ve won gold with either performance, I’m not entirely sold on the idea that Yurio should’ve broken Victor’s record. I think I would’ve preferred a point or two less, just to give some leeway for future growth, skill-wise.

That said, it’d still be less that Yurio won, and more that Yuuri lost. Because really, the story has set us up all along for Yuuri to achieve his protagonist’s goals, which includes winning gold at the GPF, as we’re told over and over. And when you look at it all through an athletic lens, the GPF really should’ve been Yuuri’s to lose. Because ultimately, Yuuri’s antagonist wasn’t Yurio, or Christophe, or Victor; it was always his own anxiety and fear. If Yuuri could conquer that, the story kept telling us, he could conquer anything.

Then we come to the final episode, and the long program. This is where I expected the Chekov’s howitzers to fire. I fully expected Yuuri to have at least another jump in there. Something truly ridiculous (we’re talking Nathan Chen levels of ridiculous raw power), which would’ve shocked the hell out of anyone, and revealed just how much Yuuri had been withholding all this time.

I also expected Yurio to break apart. Not mentally, but physically. The story had set him up, repeatedly, as someone willing to work his ass off to master the art, but his body just doesn’t yet (or maybe never will) have the raw strength to push himself to Victor’s, or Yuuri’s, or even JJ’s, level. (Or even Otabek, for that matter.) And considering the amount he’d pushed himself in the short program, he should be close to empty. He should’ve lessened his jumps, maybe managed one (barely), and possibly skipped any jumps in the last half. Substitute a spin, or some difficult but elegant move that would boost his artistic scores... but his own monologue wouldn’t change much, really. ‘Cause he just doesn’t have the power left, and without that, he cannot yet truly compete. Breaking down on the ice at the end, then, wouldn’t be about -- well, whatever it was about, I never was quite sure -- but instead about desperately wanting to stand with the best, but knowing he isn’t there, yet. And also possibly recognizing that as much as he would like to be raw power like his idols/rivals (ie Yuuri, JJ, Otabek), he needs to find his own path, and make it his.

But instead the howitzers never went off; Yuuri skated flawlessly but it wasn’t enough to offset the difference. Yurio broke every rule of the physical world -- despite all the worry about ‘this is when he gets tired’ and ‘he can’t keep this up’ -- somehow pushing through in a author ex machina, enough to get gold. (And JJ, don’t even start with me on that, it really should’ve been either Otabek or Christophe.)

Which means the lessons each could learn, neither really learned them, I think. Instead, the story rewarded Yurio for believing he could power through, and letting him, when he should’ve been punished with silver at best, and a major injury at worst. (Or both, to be really dramatic.) And the story punished Yuuri, withholding gold despite the fact that it had set up his potential to be gold-worthy if only he’d master his own power.

That means we enter the mythical season two with Yurio believing that sheer aggression and power will win him the day. Meanwhile, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for Yuuri to dismiss his stamina and stall out on his jumps, 'cause neither seemed to make much difference when it mattered.

From a storyteller’s perspective, well, it should be obvious already just how ripped-off I feel about the story’s failure to deliver on just about any promise, howitzer or not, that it had given me.

But from an athlete’s perspective, I’m especially disappointed. For so many episodes, I had every hope that finally, someone out there actually got the tension between technique and power, and how we struggle as athletes to hone the one we naturally prefer, and master the other. For eleven episodes, I had every hope that this could join the ranks of sports stories where a non-athlete captured that essence of competition, external and internal. And then we got the final episode, and it all fell apart.

I’m not mad. I don’t hate the series, overall. But I am greatly disappointed, and somehow that’s harder to take.

#yuri on ice #yuri plisetsky #yuri katsuki #yoi-meta #yoi critical

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ecoamerica · 23 days

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youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

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patricksilvrrozartistry · 7 years

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Current Music Obsessions: April 1 - 15, 2017

MY WATCH LATER LIST IS FINALLY AT A REASONABLE NUMBER AGAIN! I finished purging my watch later list, so there’s A LOT of honorable mentions this time again. So let’s see what they were!

Nighon - Hammer Down Antillia - Shaman Last Leaf Down - Deaf Heart Claymorean - The Final Journey JayyVon - It's on You All but One - Coloured in Vivid POA (Plugs of Apocalypse) - Burn Everything I Love The Cranberries - Why (acoustic version) MindMaze - Sign of Life Damnations Day - Dissecting the Soul Seven Waters - Broken Images Avatarium - Into the Fire/Into the Storm The Holeum - Pictures of the Uncanny White Ward - Stillborn Knowledge Deadlift Lolita - Six Pack Twins Anomalie - Vision VII: One with the Soil feat. Heike Langhans (Draconian) Wolf Alice - Turn to Dust The Night Flight Orchestra - Midnight Flyer Bernice Nikki (of Blodwen) - Opera No.2 (Vitas) cover Waterland - North Star The Fall of Eve - If Even Angels Fall Cinnamun Beloved - Ride the Night Northlane - Citizen Lovelorn Dolls - Long Awaited Kiss Apocalypse Orchestra - Flagellants' Song Dylath-Leen - I'm the Crusher Brothers of Metal - Defenders of Valhalla Aftermoon - Cold Caliban - brOKen Mortal Love - Memory Unleash the Archers - Cleanse the Bloodlines

And here are my obsessions.

1) Orbit Culture - Sun of All

This was a random discovery on YT. Such a bombastic death metal track. It hooks you in right from the get go and is non-stop intensity. I've always been EXTREMELY picky about death metal, and these guys definitely exceded my expectations. It almost makes me think if Gojira went in a WAY more aggressive direction, it would be something like this. The vocalists cleans are absolutely wonderful; he has such a great voice. Definitely give this track a listen.

2) Xerosun - This Dark Rage

This is a band that I discovered when Astrid and I did the Name That Tune Challenge last month and I think it's my favorite of all the ones she sent me. It's just this really intense, female fronted progressive metal. For some reason the front woman's cleans remind me of Anekke van Gierbegen. I don't know why, they just do. But this song is a real ball buster and I highly recommend it.

3) Mono - Requiem for Hell

This post metal instrumental track is EPIC. It starts off slow and then begins to get intense, and when it's intense, it's INTENSE. I know a lot of people don't like instrumental metal tracks, but I love instrumental tracks for atmospheric and post metal songs. They just have this relaxing feel to them that just take you to another world, which is exactly what this song does. Just listen to it. It's so good.

4) Lacuna Coil - Blood, Tears, Dust

Delirium as a whole was a bit of a let down for me, but this (as well as three others) is one of the stand outs that is absolutely amazing. That's how I feel the album is like, either the song is AMAZING or boring and typical. This song is so simple, but it's executed so well and Cristina's background vocals in this track are absolutely gorgeous. Also, the red hair really suits her.

5) Narwhal Tusk - My Absolution

This is a band I discovered a while back through Unknown Power Metal on YT. They're a symphonic gothic metal band and so far, they are blowing me away. Everything I've heard from them has been so friggin beautiful and lovely. Their singer has such a lovely voice and she puts so much emotion into this song. Absolutely wonderful.

6) Amy Lee - Speak to Me

This is hands down my favorite ballad that Amy has ever put out. It tops any of the ones from Evanescence. It's so beautiful and full of so much raw emotion that it makes it intense. Also, can we talk about how fucking gorgeous Amy looks in this video? ABSO-MOTHERFUCKING-LUTELY STUNNING. I just love this so much.

7) The Charm the Fury - Blood and Salt

I was not expecting a song like this from them. Unlike the other songs I've heard from them, this one is really doomy and adds a cool dimension to their melodic death metal sound. Also, the cleans are wonderful. It's so haunting and oddly relaxing. I REALLY want to listen to this new album of theirs, because I'm loving everything I've heard so far.

8) Eye of Eternity - From Ash

This is a male fronted symphonic metal band that I discovered through Ruins of Elysium since their lead singer is featured on their new album. I REALLY want to hear more from these guys, because Travis' voice is so wonderful and beautiful. There really needs to be more male fronted symphonic metal bands like these guys and Ruins of Elysium. In other words, WE NEED MORE TENORS. Highly recommend these guys!

9) The Fallacy - Lost in Disguise

This is the second song I've heard from these guys and so far, I'm really liking them. This form of gothic metal always gets me feeling a certain way. It's almost like a metal version of a lot of goth music and I absolutely love it. The catchiness of this track is part of it's charm and even though it's so simple, it's execution is wonderful. Definitely am gonna look more into these guys.

10) Doll$Boxx - Take My Chance

This is a song I rekindled my love for. It's so good! For those of you who don't know, Doll$Boxx are an all girl Visual Kei-ish metal/hard rock back from Japan. The lead singer has such a powerful that hits you right in the face. This is one of those bands that genuinely looks like they are having fun while performing and the song itself is so much fun, ESPECIALLY when the electronics kick in and that guitar solo is EVERYTHING. Most importantly, the video is ADORABLE. GO WATCH AND LISTEN TO THIS MAJESTIC, WONDERFUL PIECE OF ART.

11) Sonata Nocturna - The Darkest Winter

This is a female fronted gothic metal band that I randomly discovered on YT one day and I absolutely adore it. It's such a beautiful song and it's really making me want to get back into listening to this style of gothic metal more often again. Like it gives me those early Xandria vibes and I love it so much.

12) Lunatica - Emocean

This is a song I wound up rekindling my insane love for recently. It is my FAVORITE song by them and it's absolutely wonderful. If you haven't listened to them, let this be the first song you hear, because it is EVERYTHING. It's so beautiful and powerful. It's symphonic power metal at its finest. AND CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE TITLE??? The title alone is everything!

13) Banks - Crowded Places

I REALLY need to look up more stuff from Banks because I am LOVING everything I'm hearing from them so far. This song is absolutely lovely and is amazing to just chill out to. At first, I really wasn't feeling it, but after listening to it a few times, I became insanely obsessed. It's so good and so catchy and wonderful.

14) Enemy of Reality - I Spare You

I randomly started thinking about this song one day and was immediately reminded why it was one of my favorite songs from the Arakhne album. The drama, power and beauty of this track is so epic and amazing. What's even better is that I FINALLY FOUND THE LYRICS TO ALL THE SONGS FROM THE ARAKHNE AND THE REJECTED ALBUMS. It happened randomly and made my day, so yeah, expect a vocal cover of this song and another of theirs soon!

15) End of the Dream - Defile

BRUH. This is the first song that End of the Dream have released prior to the release of their upcoming album, Until You Break, and it is so fucking good! The hype for their new album is beyond real since hearing this and the title track of the album (which the video for it was released the other day and will be on my next obsession list) and I can't wait to hear more! Micky's voice has improved SO MUCH since the release of their debut album, All I Am, two years ago. Also, Micky is drop dead gorgeous and I want to be her friend.

That is it for these past two weeks! Starting next month, I’ll be FINALLY getting around to beginning listening to the first set of albums that have been released so far this year, so be prepared to hear about some albums in the coming weeks!

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dandelliongirl · 7 years

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Poetry

with grandmum.

Last week was a bit busier with work. I had three meetings and one briefing to a group of students. I spent a few hours at the office on Tuesday as well. Other than that I worked on reading stuff for my thesis and studying video games for our game studies group. I also had ballet, taught my dance classes and went skiing.

I finally got my N7 jacket in the mail. It was quite the adventure and the post office staff had to call the delivery people on several occasions. I got the announcement of a package waiting for me on Monday, and going to get it on Tuesday I found out they didn’t have it. Also, the barcode that was supposed to be on the package was stuck on the paper with the corresponding half of the barcode so my package wasn’t logged in any of their systems. I went back on Wednesday and still no sign of it. They promised to call the delivery people and managed to call me back on Thursday. They said the delivery guy had “accidentally” put the piece of paper into my mailbox, and tried to fix their mistake by putting the other side of the barcode sticker on the paper as well. Obviously this couldn’t have been true because a) if they didn’t have a package for me, how could they have known my first name or randomly decided to write down my address out of everyone else in this city, and b) if they had made a mistake there is no way they would’ve been able to fish out the paper from my mailbox and put the other side of the sticker on it. Also c) if they did fish out the paper why did they put it back if it was a mistake in the first place? I called the lady at the post office on this delivery person’s bullshit and she promised to call them back. She was very sceptical at first and kept asking me if I was sure that I hadn’t already gone to retrieve the package. You’d think I’d known if I’d gone to the post office..? Anyway after like 15 minutes she called me back saying they found the package and it was on their shelf all along - just without a code like I knew it would be. I went and got it after my meetings on Thursday and I’ve basically been wearing the jacket ever since. It’s really nice. ♥

Me and dad went skiing on Thursday and it was a lot of fun. We did a 4-ish kilometer ski trip and I spent the rest of the day watching TV and napping at home. It was awesome ♥ I had ballet in the evening though and all this skiing and pointe shoes have my feet aching real bad.

Friday was packed with a meeting from 8 to 9 am, our game studies group meeting from 9 to 10:45, my briefing from 11 to 11:30, thesis seminar from 12 to 2pm, and finally a quick lunch and packing stuff for work from 4pm to 6pm. I went to stay the night with mum and dad, and spent the first night in my renovated room. It still doesn’t have lights but other than that. It felt super weird to think that nothing (apart from my bed) that made it my room is there anymore. I’m kind of sad I didn’t take pictures before - in a way - my childhood was demolished. It does look really pretty though but I feel weird, almost as if it hasn’t hit me yet. I can’t believe last Christmas was the last I saw of my room as I’ve known it for more than ten years...

Another thing that I felt really weird about was obviously Trump’s inauguration speech. All that talk of “America first” and “patriotism” and strong metaphors of “we all bleed the same red” or whatever just made it seem really really scary. It was genuinely upsetting to watch so I focused on making fun of his weird hand gestures. We’ll see... Our historical research methods class is going to practice discourse analysis on his speech on Wednesday so that should be interesting. He is such a populist. Imagine if everyone in the world only cared about themselves the way he wants countries to?

So we went grocery shopping and skiing on Saturday morning. It was a nice and sunny little ski trip despite my feet being so achey and tired. Dad made spaghetti bolognese and granny came over. We talked for a while and in the afternoon mum took me and granny to my apartment to record the final versions of our poetry project. Now it’s up to me to find background sound effects and to edit and burn the CDs. I already told granny we’d have a big party for when the CD comes out. It has been so special working with her. She’s an artist and there’s so much meaning behind her words when she recites a poem. You can tell it’s what she loves to do, and what she wants to leave us with when she’s gone. I was trying to persuade her to write some kind of an introduction to the project with a few words about her life with poetry. She seemed a bit apprehensive but I hope I can get her to do it since it’d be so valuable for future generations to know the thought behind the project and to know something about her as well. Even I don’t know a whole lot about granny because to her talking about herself is selfish and rude. She’s always been a listener and I’ve inherited that from her. Anyway I love her to bits and I can’t wait to hand her the finished product. ♥ We’ve spent my childhood performing at kindergartens, organizing events and her telling me endless amounts of stories. She helped me with the poetry part of my IB finals and she recited a lovely poem at my confirmation party. Now this could very well be our last art project together. I have to make it count.

Next weekend will be my big training for my job of doing social media at the world championships. I don’t know yet if I’m going to be taking the bus or driving over there. I’ve planned to spend Tuesday at the office again and I’ve got my methods lecture on Thursday. Oh and a group meeting on Friday.

My guy’s about to return from his parents’ and I promised to go meet him at the bus station in about 30 minutes. I should also go over a DVD of Coppélia since our spring show theme for my dance school is a toy factory and I’d love for us to do something related to that. Coppélia is one of my favourite ballets alongside Giselle and the Nutcracker.

I’m starting to feel the Dragon Age Inquisition hype again. I’d really want to play but I need to go to Halamshiral next and I hate the place with a passion. My guy just did Priority: Thessia in ME3 and has been really into the multiplayer, which doesn’t leave me much time with my PC, heh. In ACNL I just got my golden fishing rod and I’m trying desperately to finish my mermaid set by visting the island daily. So far they’ve had 90% cabana seres since Christmas with like the mermaid chair or the mermaid bed on there a few times. I’ve also got over 300 medals because I take at least one tour every time I visit so... I’m scared of the eventual launch of a new Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch since I can’t just leave Sonetia behind and start a new life in a new town but I can’t possibly manage two at the same time! I will also have to buy the console because since it’s portable I won’t be able to use my guy’s Switch for it.. Yikes.

Now I really have to hurry off to the bus station. I can’t believe January is coming to an end already! Wow..

#personal #diary #January2017

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funkaliciousfrog · 3 years

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I’m bored, so I’m temporarily turning into a seasonal anime blog for a single extremely long post.

I’m checking out more new anime than usual this season, and I’ve been in the mood to write lately. So, I thought it’d be fun to record my expectations for each show and my impressions of their first episodes. Even if no one but me ever reads it.

Joran the Princess of Snow and Blood

That one show I’m watching partially just cause Aoi Shouta is there. I’m interested to see if he can pull off a female character who dresses as a man, which as he put it himself is the “gyakku-pattern” compared to his usual roles. Tbh watching shows just cause Shouta is in them hasn’t worked out super great for me in the past (I didn’t really like 2.43 or Kimi to Boku, and Hamefura was just alright), so we’ll see what happens here. It’s an anime original so who knows how the story will end up. But going off the trailer, at the very least we’ll get some cool aesthetics and sick fight animation.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the plot of this show is gonna involve some politics, since it takes place in an alternate 1930s where the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate hasn’t ended yet. Yeah, you might need to skim a Wikipedia article or two on Japanese history for this one. The main characters are assassins, working undercover for the shogunate and fighting some group of superpowered shapeshifting animal people. The protagonist works in a bookshop by day and lives with her very young sister who does all the housework. She also has some kind of crow-related powers that haven’t been explained yet. In fact, there’s a lot of things about the setting that were only touched upon and I guess will be elaborated on later.

The character designs and background art are very nice, but something feels off with the actual animation. Things move in weird stiff ways, some of the special effects are kinda ugly, and the fight scenes in particular are disjointed at points. Although I think that disjointedness came more from the storyboarding than the animation itself? I can’t say for sure since I’m not one of those sakuga expert people. But, I can still tell the production value here isn’t quite as high as it appeared from the PV. The premise has potential, but as the story unfolds we’ll see if it’s good enough to carry the less than stellar animation.

And as for Shouta, all he really got to do this episode was be dapper and talk in cryptic insect-themed metaphors. Oh, and randomly pull out a lightsaber, since I guess they have those in this show? I’m mostly curious to see how the people who don’t pay any attention to voice actors will react when his character’s actual gender is revealed.

Mashiro no Oto

Hibike Euphonium was one of my first anime and remains one of my faves. So, I’m always interested in shows about classical music and/or playing instruments. The manga has won multiple awards so it should be a good story, and hopefully this adaptation is just as good. As another show about a traditional Japanese instrument, the Kono Oto Tomare comparisons will be inevitable. But honestly, I’d be happy just learn some stuff about the shamisen cause I think it's cool.

This was quite the whirlwind first episode. Our main character Setsu has been playing shamisen with his grandpa since he was a little kid. But, turns out his grandpa is displeased with his grandson’s sound, so he makes it his dying wish that Setsu stop playing shamisen. Once his grandpa does die, Setsu feels distraught, impulsively gets on a bus to Tokyo, ends up living with a random gravure idol for a week, picks fights with her no-good wanna-be rockstar boyfriend, at the very end a SWAT team shows up... it’s a lot.

And I don’t really know how it will proceed from here either. After speeding through this escapade in Tokyo, I think (or hope) that the pace will settle down starting next week. And going off the poster we’ll eventually end up in a high school shamisen club, somehow.

I really enjoyed the bits and pieces of shamisen music in this episode, it just sounds so cool! I hope to eventually get more specific information about the instrument and its repertoire. All I really want from these shows about extremely specific topics is to be educated! They also played either the OP or ED at the end, and it sounded pretty neat. Unlike Kono Oto Tomare they actually put the instrument of question into the song, which I appreciate (though I still like all the Kono Oto OPs and EDs).

The art in the PV didn’t seem like anything that special, but the episode itself actually looked very nice in the important moments. I especially liked the snowy background art from the beginning. They also took an interesting direction with the character designs: everyone is drawn with very thin lines and most of the time without cel shading. Sometimes it looks like an aesthetic choice, and other times it just looks kinda cheap. The animation itself is nothing crazy, but at least from my uneducated perspective the shamisen playing looks pretty believable.

After 2.43's Fukui-ben from last season, I guess this show will be my new source of Japanese regional dialects. Apparently Setsu’s accent is so strong that the girl he’s staying with asks him if he’s a foreigner, which I thought was funny. They don’t mention where he’s from, but he and his family use the same “-be” ending as the main character from the Great Pretender. Which isn’t helpful cause I can’t remember where he was from either. But anyway, for some reason it just amuses me every time someone says “dabe”.

(A footnote about Setsu’s accent: I’ve done a bit of research, or rather literally just typed “be” into jisho.com, which I can’t believe actually worked, and it seems to be some type of Touhoku dialect. His voice actor, Nobunaga Shimazaki, is from that area so I guess that checks out? Although according to the Wikipedia page it’s used as a generic rural accent in media, so maybe they don’t care about the specific region as long as he sounds like a country boy.)

Farewell, My Dear Cramer

Finally, an all-girls sports anime! There are a few out there already, but I haven’t seen any of them yet (except maybe Chihayafuru, which has a mixed gender cast but an awesome female lead). As far as I’ve read, most have mixed reviews and tend to lean into other genres and/or have a lot of fanservice. So, I’d really like this show to be the female version of a straightforward realistic sports show like Haikyuu that is missing from all our lives. But it looks like it might be a drama about sports instead, which potentially could be just as good. It did come from the Your Lie in April mangaka after all, if you couldn’t tell from the weird lips. Besides that, the art in the trailer looks really nice.

So apparently soccer, especially women’s soccer, is an unpopular sport in Japan? The protagonist Nozomi thinks she’s too good for girl’s soccer after playing with the boys for all of middle school, but is convinced to join the girl’s team in high school anyway. Then we meet a couple of her new teammates who were similar prodigies in middle school, and jump right into a scrimmage between the first and second years?

It’s kind of a weird first episode. While it does technically establish the setting and characters, after the first few minutes it kind of feels like we’ve just been thrown into the mix of things. There’s also a noticeable lack of music in a lot of scenes which makes it feel even weirder.

The character designs are less of a problem than I thought they’d be, although the lips and sometimes the eyes still do look a bit strange. The simple, almost graphic quality is actually kind of interesting. It’s also very refreshing to see a variety of female characters that just look and act like normal high schoolers. They’re really just here to play soccer, not to be sexy or cute or really attractive to the viewer in any way.

Although we do get some nice soccer playing in the ED, the animation in the episode itself definitely isn’t at Haikyuu levels or anything. They avoid actually animating a lot of the action with speed-line backgrounds and barely-moving shots where only the hair and clothes flap in the wind.

Nozomi has the same voice actress as Kaede from Gal and Dino, and her performance there was one of my favorite parts of that show so I’m looking forward to more from her. Aoi Yuki and Tomoyo Kurosawa, definitely a couple of notable names, also show up in this episode.

Fruits Basket Final

More Fruits Basket, lets gooo! Second season was awesome so I have high expectations. I’ve already been slightly spoiled on a few things about the ending, but I’m still looking forward to seeing the specifics of the mystery of the Soma family curse wraps up.

We pick up right where we left off last season with Kureno dropping the ~big reveal~ about Akito’s gender on Tohru. Turns out she’s a girl, but raised as a boy by her mother from birth for yet unknown reasons. Then he talks more about her parents: her dad Akira seems to be dead (yet another mysterious white-haired Akira Ishida character for the books), and her relationship with her mother Ren is messy to say the least.

Finally, best girl Saki shows up and saves the day! She brings Tohru back to her house, and along with Arisa gives her the reality check we’ve all been waiting for: she is going to burn herself out if she keeps on putting others’ needs before her own.

Interestingly, even though she seems to be a pretty bad mom, Ren is in the right here about the unhealthy relationship between Akito and the zodiacs. Is she really being kept inside because of physical and mental illness, or is that just Akito’s excuse for locking her mother away? I suspect it’s the latter. Akito loves a good power trip, and if Ren were allowed to talk to the zodiacs she could possibly undermine the hold Akito maintains over them. It could also be a combination of both reasons, so I’ll just have to wait and see.

The OP is awesome! The photo backgrounds incorporate the 2D characters well and it just looks very nice. The song’s R&B-ish sound also stood out instantly from the pop ballads Fruits Basket usually gives us. Once it comes out on Spotify, I will be adding it to my playlist along with Chime and Eden. Btw, if you haven’t heard the full version of Eden I recommend you check it out cause it really goes some places you don’t even get to hear in the TV-sized version.

On a side note, this show has some real fashionistas. Rin, Haruhatsu, Saki, and this episode Arisa have great outfits. That cropped shearling jacket with the skinny scarf? 👌 It’s also adorable how Saki and her little goth brother coordinate their looks. I will never forget that time they casually rolled up to an okonomiyaki restaurant rocking black opera gloves.

Zombieland Saga Revenge

More Zombieland Saga! The best part of the first season imo was the comedy, but I’m guessing we’ll get more into the mystery/drama part of the show here: more information about Kotaro and his motives/methods, Tae’s identity, etc. We’ll see how it goes. I’m also hoping for more bops like Adabana Necromancy and Saga Jihen.

Oh how I missed this show’s manic energy...

Since the end of the last season, it seems Kotaro got overzealous and booked an arena for a concert that only sold 300 tickets, putting the group into a whole bunch of debt. So now the girls are all working part-time to pay it off, and they’re not nice jobs either: factory worker, farmhand, construction worker... milk-deliverer? Do they even have those in Japan? Now there’s some #commentary on showbiz.

As for Kotaro, the whole thing has left him in such a haggard state that he’s managed to grow his hair down to his collar bones in a month flat. Now he spends his days bar hopping and rambling even less coherently than usual (although Mamoru Miyano is clearly having as much fun as ever). Franchuchu are left to prepare all by themselves for their anniversary concert at the tiny venue where they made their debut. But, they decide they’ll use it as a chance to sing the unperformed encore song from the arena concert for Kotaro, thinking it might relight his spark.

We do get a drop of new information about the plot: turns out there’s a strict deadline on the Zombieland Saga Project, which is the real reason why Kotaro so upset. Maybe whatever necromancy he used on the girls will wear off after a certain amount of time and turn them back into corpses? The bartender at his favorite spot is apparently in on the whole zombie thing, and he’s the one who finally snaps Kotaro out of it. He sprints over to the anniversary concert and literally starts throwing hands with the unreceptive metalhead audience. To finish out the episode we get a glorious slow motion brawl sequence as Franchuchu sing the encore song.

I don’t know if that encore will be the OP or ED, or if it’s just a insert song. It was alright I guess. To be honest I liked Iron Frill’s songs more than Franchuchu’s in the first season, and I feel like that will continue to be the case this season. I’m excited to see the new OP tho, even if it’ll be hard to beat the iconic Adabana Necromancy. And on a vaguely related note, it was cool to see the real Zombieland Saga ost album, Franchuchu The Best pop up in the episode.

Pretty Boy Detective Club

This one has people intrigued because it’s written by the author of the Monogatari series (which I haven’t seen yet) and animated by Shaft. There’s also the extremely Ouran-esque setup, with Maaya Sakamoto even voicing the cross-dressing main girl. Also I just think the title is funny. Honestly I don’t really know what to expect from this one besides the usual Shaft aesthetic, so we’ll see what happens.

Mayumi wears glasses to keep attention away from her pretty eyes, but while stargazing on the roof she gets caught without them by Ayumu Murase in a detective hat. He ropes her into the Pretty Boy Detective Club, a shady secret organization at her middle school. We enter the clubroom and meet the members, a bunch of over-the-top eccentric tropey characters that wouldn’t be found in any non-anime middle school in a million years. Shoutout to that one guy in the hot pants. Then Mayumi reveals that she’s been looking for a star she saw once on a family vacation, and the boys decide to take up her case.

I knew I was really in for something when I was hit with musings about Voltaire right out of the gate. Although from what I’ve heard about the Monogatari series, this kind of ~intellectual~ monologuing is totally on brand. And I don’t know if anyone else picked up on the subtle hints they were dropping in those monologues, but I sense that, maybe, perhaps, beauty is going to be a theme in this show...? Maybe it’s going to be some kind of #meta #commentary on pretty boys anime? That could be interesting, although there’s also a chance they’ll just play it straight. They even have an idol-anime-esque ED sung by the the main cast, so honestly it could go either way.

As expected from Shaft, the visuals are all on point. I love both celestial and geometric imagery so this show’s aesthetic feels made just for me. The shifts in art style are also pretty neat. As for the character designs, my favorite part is probably the snazzy school uniform with the galaxy printed ties and striped pants and skirts. Although Murase’s character momentarily sprouted one of those flesh-fangs that I HATE they look so NASTY.

I has a pretty fun time with this episode, it was just so absurdly Anime. I liked hot pants guy and his poses (tho I don’t love that he’s 12), and delinquent guy who was just tired of everyone else’s nonsense and casually ate food off the ground. They were at the beach too, so it probably got all sandy? And when this popped up I died laughing; truly words to take to heart.

(A footnote about the ED: I thought I had spotted an Elements Garden member in the songwriting credits, and then of course I had to find out if they actually made it or not. The lyrics were written by RUCCA, who isn’t actually in the group but collaborates with them frequently according to the Google Translated version of his Japanese Wikipedia page. He’s written for quite a few Elements Garden produced Aoi Shouta songs, which is where I recognized his name from. The composer is Masatoma Ohta, who as far as I can find isn’t associated with Elements Garden but did a pretty good job emulating their sound. Both of them have done a lot of work for seiyuu, idols, and seiyuu-idols, so I guess that’s why I instantly understood what this song was going for lol.)

#i'm also planning on watching yasuke and way of the househusband #but those are both netflix short series so not counting them with the ~seasonals~#ALSO this post is about the first episodes #but by now the second eps of joran and mashiro no oto have both aired and they were both pretty big improvements #especially mashiro no oto: if you watch only one of these shows i say go with that one #original

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