#{Hear... feel... think.} (musings)

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Does

Does Barnaby

Does Barnaby tell the others to get off his lawn when he's angry

psh, who do you think he is, an old man? he'd Bark, like any lively young dog

[aparticularbandit]

The way Nagito is asked Can you hear me? when you switch into his POV in Case 4.

The way Hajime is asked the same thing by Chiaki when you return to his.

The way that Monika has one of the hidden poems that only says CAN YOU HEAR ME in all caps, and the way that the first thing she says when you are able to hear her is Can you hear me? even though she has no way of knowing if you ever will or not.

The way the Narrator in The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe says It's different when you press the skip button. You'd think it wouldn't be because I'm still rambling, but I need you to be listening, I need you to hear me. It's how I know that I'm not fiction.

[mad-hunts]

i like how barton went from being like... a hippie in terms of how he viewed sex in his early twenties, then kind of abstained from it for a few years / became sexually repressed, which... definitely isn't such a good thing. BUT then he became even more of a freak (and i do mean that in the good way this time LOL) around the time he started residency because WOW is that shit stressful. though that was also unfortunately around the time when he really started to spiral as well 😬 but we don't need to talk about that ahahhh

like the way this man learned how to express his sexuality REALLY came full circle in the end considering he was like 'yeah, back in the early days that i was in college, i was a freak. but now i'm not anymore... though do you want to see me do it again anyway?' like 💀 JSJSJ if he weren't so demented, i'd almost be inclined to say good for him, y'all LMAO feeling comfortable with your sexuality and perhaps even having a bit of fun with it (though maybe too much in barton's case, because he literally weaponizes it in order to lure in his victims. BUT once again, we don't need to talk about that right now psshhh. i actually fully intend on talking about that in the tags NGL) is more often than not a good thing after all

[remyfire]

I've had a lot of really lovely experiences in this fandom, but I do think one of my favorites has been the amount of people who used to dislike or be ambivalent toward Beje, but who are now quite fond of him just because they've enjoyed spending a lot of time with me. Every time someone tells me that, I know I've got to be doing something right, at least

[snickerdoodlles]

there's a lot of things people blame for why fandoms feel like ghost towns these days, but no one's really talked about the way discord's contributing to it

[94erz]

Moved on to j-hope's MAMA performance and my heart aches for 2022, nothing will ever top what Jack In The Box did for me. I don't think I'll ever get to experience a genuine thrill quite like that entire era from him.

Not that I think he peaked there just that it was just such a specific time and experience that I don't think anything will ever be like that again.

[starpros-sunshine]

I have no personality and am entirely uninteresting and I am most definitely too mentally well to be considered fascinating which brings me to the question of how do I become less of a nothingburger of a person

[racke7]

I was re-reading "In Flight" (because I have literally nothing better to do, stuck at home sick), and I started to think.

Like, gabriel_blessing's Shirou Emiya is an... interesting character. He's not a very good "Shirou Emiya", but he's an interesting character who happens to share that absolutely unhinged lunatic's name.

I can't even entirely blame the author for it, because Shirou is a... very complicated character to do right by. It's a knife's-edge of trying to balance "too traumatized to consider themselves human", and "thinks that this is normal", and trying to fit that into an entertaining (and not trauma-focused) narrative is... not easy.

But. Looking at a character who's called "Shirou Emiya" behaving in ways that don't mesh with "Shirou Emiya"? It's weird. And it sometimes makes me step back and go: "what the fuck kind of Sekirei-story could you write with the actual Shirou Emiya?"

Pre-War Shirou? He's basically just a traumatized nice guy with the ability to make a crowbar a little bit tougher. He kind of disappears into the background, is what I'm saying.

Fate-Route Shirou? You put a Sekirei in front of a man who's sworn his heart to another? You try to steal him away from his beloved Saber, who he must always search for until his dying day? Jail! Jail for the author for a thousand years!

(I could see him being good friends with Miya or Kazehana, who both know what it's like to love and lose. But he didn't really lose, did he? She's still waiting for him, even now.)

UBW Shirou? Do you really think that Rin would ever give up on a promise she made? Her promise to watch over him and guide him away from Archer's path? Rin would rather try to raze the Clock Tower to the fucking ground, than give up. And Zelretch would probably think that that's too fucking hilarious to not reward, so trying to split them up is just... very much a long-shot.

HF Shirou? He's already happily married, dude. He's not gonna fuck your aliens, he's too busy being satisfied with his life.

It just-... There's just no Shirou that really meshes well with Sekirei, because he's already made his choices by the end of the Routes, and those choices don't include ecchi-aliens.

BUT

But, there's one idea that struck me.

HF Rin comes back from London, and stumbles across a young boy desperately searching for his little sister. A boy who is clearly not human, and whose sister is very likely to be targeted sexually (because Sekirei-Ashikabi are romantic bonds).

HF Rin who knows some of those horrors from the suffering of her own little sister? Of fucking course she helps. She'll turn the entirety of Shin Tokyo upside-fucking-down if it means she can track down that girl faster and make sure that she isn't being hurt.

Which made me think about "how would she track Kusano down?". And the answer to that is blatantly obvious: "Shirou is a goddamn blood-hound for magic, and he'll probably owe her like half-a-dozen favors at this point".

And if we'll be involving Shirou by calling him over from Fuyuki in order to track down someone's little sister? I feel like we need to up the absurdity-value of Shirou's entrance.

So, rather than calling a young man who looks very friendly and reliable, Shiina's new Ashikabi calls a tiny little girl with pink hair.

That's right, Emilya von Einzbern is dragged into this mess, and Sakura (who absolutely refuses to have her senpai out of her sight for longer than five minutes) comes with her (and Rider plays chaperone, as always).

So now, we have a very pretty tiny little girl with pink hair. A tall and very sexy-looking (almost unnaturally so) onee-san with glasses. And a young woman with very sizable... tracts of land.

Of course they're going to be mistaken for a group of unwinged Sekirei.

(And then Sakura murders the poor Ashikabi who tried to flirt with her cute senpai.)

As for the rest of the story? I have no clue. But like... what a fucking entrance.

[sunburnacoustic]

Muse’s Matt Bellamy: ‘I felt that we could do no wrong. Obviously, we could’

By Mikael Wood in the L.A. Times (pasted because paywalls)

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Matt Bellamy wrote Muse’s new album in a Santa Monica recording studio painstakingly decorated to resemble the so-called red room from “Twin Peaks.”

Crimson curtains, leather armchairs, black-and-white zigzag flooring: The 44-year-old frontman of one of England’s biggest rock bands reproduced every detail of the otherworldly chamber from the cult-fave TV show he remembers devouring during Muse’s first tour on a bus back in the early 2000s.

“It just sets a certain tone, you know?” he says, looking around the space with obvious pride on a recent afternoon.

Yet as Bellamy sat composing amid a thicket of electric guitars and vintage synths — including an old Roland model he says was the same used for the “Stranger Things” theme — what really inspired him was the tumult unfolding outside the studio, which he observed through an enormous one-way mirror in the building’s front wall.

This was mid-to-late 2020: Bellamy, who’s written for years about the menacing encroachments of technology and government, watched (without those on the street being able to see inside) as shops went out of business during the pandemic, as Black Lives Matter protesters marched through the city, as riot-gear-clad police and National Guard moved in to shut down demonstrations, as a man took up residence in a car parked right in front of the studio. Helicopters seemed to be circling constantly; a drone hovered over Bellamy one day as he loaded gear in through a back door.

“It was like being inside a scene from ‘RoboCop,’” he says now. “All the anxieties and the dystopian strangeness that had always been kind of speculative in our music — suddenly it felt like it was all coming true. It was actually happening.”

The result of his observations is Muse’s ninth studio album, “Will of the People,” on which Bellamy rhymes “a life in crisis” with “a deadly virus” and “tsunamis of hate are gonna drown us.” (Sample song titles include “Kill or Be Killed” and “We Are Fucking Fucked.”) But if the LP confronts a brave new world, it also knowingly looks back: Musically, the band—rounded out by bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard—dials down the fluorescent electro-pop vibe of 2018’s “Simulation Theory” in favor of the harder, more guitar-oriented sound that made Muse a prog-metal sensation more than two decades ago.

Muse performing in Philadelphia in 2013. (Owen Sweeney / Invision via AP)

What are those so-called worst parts of Muse? Probably a tendency to veer off and experiment in areas that we’re not very experienced in. Most of [2012’s] “The 2nd Law,” for instance — classical dubstep, weird clarinet solos, whatever else is on that album. I think we felt we’d achieved so much with [the 2009 hit] “Uprising” that we could do no wrong. Obviously, we could.

You produced “Will of the People” yourself after collaborating with the producer Shellback on “Simulation Theory” and with Mutt Lange on 2015’s “Drones.” With people like that who are so successful, I think sometimes we’ve gone in the studio and been a little bit like, “OK, we’ll do just whatever you say.” In hindsight, I wish I’d been more involved and put more of our stamp on it. So we’ve kind of gone back to our safe space on this album. If we’re in complete control, it may not be the most cutting-edge or the most modern-sounding thing, but it’s the only way to guarantee that we’re gonna love it.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

June 2020 was a heck of a time to bring a baby into the world. I came to America in 2010 as a single person looking to experience L.A. for a bit — and, boy, have I had an experience. Ended up with a Hollywood actress [Kate Hudson], had a baby together and the whole cliché scenario of the ups and downs of celebrity life. Then married a Texan [model Elle Evans] and had another baby. Been evacuated from my house during wildfires. Then the pandemic and the full January 6 Trump meltdown. It’s just been an unbelievable period to be here.

“Will of the People” suggests it hasn’t left you terribly optimistic about the future. It depends what your definition of optimism is. To me there’s a fighting spirit in the music, which is a form of optimism. It’s like the moment in “Rocky” when Adrian tells Rocky to win.

Do you think it’s clear to listeners who you’re fighting? In the new song “Compliance,” you’re singing sarcastically about people falling into line and doing as they’re told. It could be interpreted as an anti-woke anthem. I never thought about it that way. I thought about it in terms of the rising authoritarianism that we’re now seeing is a real thing— Trump in this country, but also Putin and the China situation. These ideologies, I feel like we kind of tested the waters in the 20th century and realized that fascism and communism are both just absolute disasters and that we don’t need to go near that stuff ever again. And yet it’s emerging.

What’s your reaction to that? I have an anti-authoritarian nature. My parents say that when I was a young child I was never very good at being told what to do. I don’t like the idea of vast centralized power that’s very far away from where I live. I come from Devon in England, which is a couple hundred miles from London. But when I went to see where my wife’s from in Paris, Texas, it’s like, Holy s—! It’s thousands of miles from the places of power in America. So the resistance to someone deciding how I should live who has no idea what my day-to-day life is — I can understand it, even though there’s a risk of it being hijacked by more extremist factions that have gone down roads I don’t agree with.

Have you considered becoming a U.S. citizen? I have. Overall, I actually think the United States’ structure is really amazing, with all the different ways to make laws at the local level. It seems like every month my wife is voting on some sort of proposition. I’m looking at that going, Wow, England is so behind on that front. We don’t ever get to vote on policy.

The oddest thing about that late-2020 period where things in America and California seemed so chaotic and crazy was that I felt my connection deepening. There’s something going on here that is critical to what’s happening in the entire world. America has become a kind of center point for this idea that there’s an empire on the verge of collapse, and how do we save it? Or how do we know which parts to save and which parts to let fall away?

For some people — Dom, to some extent — it made them want to get out. But for me it had the opposite effect. It’s everything I’m interested in, and it’s massively creatively inspiring.

Has becoming wealthy shaped your political views? I don’t think so. I remember all my feelings of what it was to be from a poor rural background with no opportunities and all the disadvantages. And I still have some views that would be considered pretty socialist by some. Universal health care is an obvious one; I can’t even believe there’s not universal healthcare here. I’ve also come to the view that maybe land shouldn’t be privately owned.

Can you relate to music that’s unambiguously joyful? Coldplay, let’s say. Absolutely. Chris [Martin] is a friend of mine. I love what they do. I wish I could write more songs that enter the love sphere. But I think it might be against the nature of the sounds our band makes. When the three of us are jamming, it’s like Rage Against the Machine riffs are coming out all the time. I can’t imagine hearing those riffs with Chris Martin singing about peace and love on top.

What’s the happiest Muse song? “Starlight” is pretty positive. I think “Verona” on the new album is pretty nice — little bit of “Romeo and Juliet” in there.

Do you think rock music is in good hands with the generation behind yours? My 11-year-old son likes Slipknot and Metallica. My stepson Ryder from a previous situation [with Hudson], he’s 18 and he’s really into rock. He turned me on to Willow Smith.

Can you envision touring in your 60s and 70s like Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones? Yeah, but Metallica is the one that’s really made me think we could do it. The Stones and McCartney, they have universally uplifting music. But Metallica — I’m not sure how old they are, but they’re up there — that’s really heavy music and they’re still out there. The great thing about rock is that, even though the genre is largely irrelevant in the mainstream, you can actually grow old with it. You can make a real life career.

[aparticularbandit]

Yes, I did go back to the cosplay cafe episode. Just for the cosplay cafe scene. Just to hear the character voice switching from Konata to Haruhi and back again.

Like that's seriously impressive and voice actors are amazing and Lucky Star is a treasure.

[kerorowhump]

[emerson-grimes-apologist]

Happy Deep Thoughts Thursday! I'm bored and thought this would be fun.

[ashtcnirwin]

🌻

[glorious-blackout]

Just back from Arctic Monkeys and....yeeeeah my prediction that seeing them so soon after Muse would put them at a disadvantage turned out to be correct 😂

I will say though that the songs from TBHC and The Car sounded soooo fucking good that I'm honestly offended there weren't more of them in the setlist. I need them to do a theatre tour one day where they play both albums in full...

[tvrningout]

guess who just finished delwyn's bio B)))

[bronzebtch]

unrelated, and i know nobody asked but skjkjsdf if you're ever writing anything that's related to theme of : alcoholism, effects of poverty, abandonment issues ( specifically abandoned mothers and spouses ), addiction, generational trauma ( also from the effects of poverty, alcoholism, addictions, etc but honestly, i do think it still generally expressed this quite well even without relating back to those topics ), possibly a lot of unspoken rage and grief from broken familyhood, i would recommend the discography of III by The Lumineers so badly.