#Clockwork mention

[bluerosefox]

Always Favors You

Another Sibling Danny and Jason idea!!

"Are you Jason Peter Todd?!" demanded a deep and commanding tone from the strange glowing being in front of them.

All the Bats stiffened and tensed, no doubt gearing up for a fight against the being that somehow knew Red Hood's full name.

Jason, Red Hood, decided to put on a brave front despite no doubt cursing in his head and wondering how the heck did this thing know his full freaking name.

"Whose asking." he snarled out, his hands twitching for his gun when the huge glowing knight with purple flames coming out of his helmet and cape, who was riding on a nightmare looking horse while they all had been in the cave going over tonight's patrol.

The Knight didn't seemed bothered by his response nor did he even seem to care or flinch when Batman made his own demand on 'Why was he there and who was he' or when Damian unsheathed his sword and pointed it towards him. Instead the strange glowing Knight reached to it side and pulled out... A glowing scroll? Huh. (Also he completely unnerved everyone in the room when the Knight didn't even react when Batman had tossed a Baterang when he reached for his side)

The Knight opened the scroll and spoke clearly with purpose.

"Jason Peter Todd,

You are hereby invited as a special guest of honor to the crowning of our future King of the Infinite Realms.

Daniel Phantom, once Daniel Jackson Fenton, and once Daniel Austen Todd.

Prince of the Infinite Realms, the Keeper of Balance, The Peacekeeping Halfa, the Defeater of the Tyrant King Pariah Dark, The Great One, Youngest of the Ancients, Ancient of Space, The Bridge between Life and Death.

You, the half-brother of our King, have been given the highest of honors for your past actions and will be given housing and food in the Realms and Phantom's Keep, for the week long event. Personal servants and attendants will be at your disposal and a seamstress will be on hand to tailor make your attire for the Coronation.

Signed: Clockwork. Ancient of Time. Watcher of the Infinite Timeline. Kronos. Mentor and Adviser.

PS: I shall have Fright Knight ("Me" the Knight bluntly said for a second) leave this scroll along with a personal one for you from Daniel to read over and once you make up your mind sign the bottom of the scroll.

I do hope in time you will pick the right choice Jason Todd, we of the Infinite Realms would like to reward you for your actions. After all, if you hadn't gotten young Daniel away from your father that night all those years ago, we would never had gained our Prince nor be free from our once Tyrant King.

Ah, one more thing.

The Infinite Realms will always favor you Jason."

Jason felt like he couldn't breath as Fright Knight? Rolled up the scroll, pulled a letter from his side, and held out the two items for him to take.

[narabea06]

" I can't believe you right now, do you realize how reckless that was?! Revenant, you could've gotten hurt if Clockwork wasn't there! You had us all worried sick, you have no idea -- Mouse, are you even listening?! "

" . . . I thought it was a good idea at the time - "

[bet-on-me-13]

The Fentonworks Mega-Lab.

So! AU where the Fentonworks Labs actually stretch Miles upon Miles below the City of Amity Park.

It started when the Fentons wanted to add a simple addition to the original Lab when they ran out of space to store their more dangerous weapons. They didn't want their (at the time) young children getting their hands on their experimental Weaponry, it could blow up in their faces!

So they built a different Wing of the Lab to hold all those Inventions.

Then they ran out of space and added a few extra Storage Rooms. But then they decided it was a hassle to have to carefully transport their Dangerous Inventions all the way to the Storage Rooms, and built a Lab specifically for Dangerous Experiments near that same Section. Then that Lab was occupied for a while, and Jack wanted to start a different experiment as well, so they built a few more.

In the end they just never stopped building onto their Labs.

There are sections of the Mega-Lab that are entirely walled off because a few of their more unstable Experiments contaminated the area. Walking into them was not recommended, else you could walk out with an extra eye or 5.

In other sections, their Captured Ghosts had taken over a few Labs and created a sort of Mad Max style civilization using their discarded weapons and vehicles.

In another, all Ghosts became Humans and all Humans became Ghosts. That was a weird one, to this day they still didn't understand how they pulled that off.

In another, some type of Eldritch Time Ghost had been born, and now sort of always existed and never existed, and began experimenting with its powers. They nicknamed it Clocky because it liked to carry around a stopwatch.

And so many more. At one point a failed Portal Experiment messed with the internal Space of the entire thing. Now there was literally no way of Mapping it. The Fentons still somehow managed to navigate it perfectly.

When Jazz and Danny grew up, they too learned how to navigate the Labs, which is how Danny managed to show his friends the Portal Experimentation Wing in the first place.

Unfortunately, it wasn't safe for anyone aside from the Fentons to enter the Mega-Labs, so one day when the Fenton Family+friends left town on a Week Long Camping/Road Trip, they put up a few Ghost Shields to keep both Humans out and the Ghosts in.

This drew some unwanted attention after some tourists saw the giant Glowng Green Building in the middle of an Illinois Town, and rightfully called the Justice League.

Now, the Justice League had tried to call the owners of the house, but nobody picked up the phone. (An incident with Jack and a Canoe had knocked most of their phones into the lake. They weren't even at the lake yet.)

When nobody picked up, they decided to investigate personally.

After getting into the House, they quickly found a door labeled "Labs: Do Not Enter (unless it we are late for Dinner)" and went into ignoring all the warnings.

They quickly regretted it.

[zylev-blog]

Bruce was sitting in front of a fire. He had just gotten done cooking his dinner, and had began eating. A teen he didn’t recognize sat next to him. Bruce barely paid the teen any attention; in this time period, kids were more fiercely independent than the teens of his age were.

“So,” The teen drawled, getting his attention.

Bruce internally growled. He didn’t want to make small talk. Just as he was about to tell the teen off, the teen continued speaking.

“What’s Bruce Wayne doing in 1732?”

He choked on his food. He hadn’t heard that name in years. He had gotten stuck in the past during a League mission, and apparently, nobody could save him… or maybe they didn’t know when to look. He had covered his tracks well, since he didn’t want to disturb the timeline too much.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He deflected.

“Oh? So we’re playing it like that?” The teen hummed, swinging his legs. “You won’t be born for over two hundred years, in a city that doesn’t exist yet, to fight crime as the vigilante known as Batman.”

The teenager was a time traveller. Hope sparked him his chest. Maybe… maybe he could go home. “You’re a time traveller.” He chose to ignore the part where the teen knew he was Batman.

“Yeah,” The teen said. “I’m Danny. I’m from your future, about, uh, five years after you vanished? Dick adopted me. Found me dead in an alley and brought me back to life. Brought me into the fold, and stuff. I have powers, and one of them is to travel in time. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to find where you went.”

The teen looked like adoption bait. He could understand why Dick would’ve adopted him. But then again, he was still stuck on the part where Dick had adopted a kid at the same age he had adopted Dick.

“Are you here to take me home?” He asked.

“If you want to.” Danny hummed, “But uh, can’t be to the time you left. Timeline disruptions and all that, yknow? I can take you to my time. It’s like… ten years after you vanished.”

“Please.” Bruce begged. And how far had he fallen to beg a teen?

Danny grinned. “Dad’s going to be so jazzed!”

[demonic0angel]

Dpxdc: Danny x Supergirl. Kara and Danny are pining hard for each other. They both want someone stronger than them and believe it's the other but not themselves.

“Who’s the lucky girl?” Jazz teased, gesturing to Danny’s grand and elaborate present of colorful roses, strange alien flowers, and at least a few other plants from space.

“Jazz, she’s the absolute best! She’s so strong and she knows so much about space and she can cut me in half and—” Danny gushed.

Jazz interrupted, “Are those Kryptonian carnations?”

Danny cleared his throat and nodded. “Yeah, I asked Clockwork if I could go back in time and pick some flowers.”

Jazz raised an eyebrow, her smile widening. “Wow. Wait until Sam and Tucker hear about this, you’re never going to hear the end of it. Does she like you back?”

Danny blushed. “I don’t know. That’s why I want to give her these flowers and see.”

Jazz cooed, “Aww! Well, it can’t go too badly, right? I’m sure she’ll like it!”

“None of you get ittttt,” Danny whined. “She’s so perfect! She’s strong and brave and lovely and fast and she’s so cool! She’s absolutely amazing, how am I going to even compare to such a perfect being?!”

“Kryptonian carnations and power enough to make you impressed? Don’t tell me… are you crushing on Supergirl?” Jazz gasped. “Oh! Dani’s going to be so happy! She always wanted her as a sister-in-law, but I guess she can have her as a sister-in-law this way too.”

Danny looked at Jazz with a blush. “W-Who said I’m marrying her?! I didn’t even ask her out yet!”

“Puh-lease,” Jazz said, rolling her eyes. “Clockwork almost never lets us go to the past to do anything but fix something. If he’s letting you take flowers from Krypton, he probably has a plan, and you’re most definitely going to be able to ask her out. C’mon, Danny, confidence! Go and ask Supergirl out!”

She then moved to push him out the door. “I heard there was a robbery just half an hour ago! Maybe she’s still out there! Go, go, go!”

Danny quickly transformed and flew off with a quick, “Thanks!” before disappearing to find Supergirl with the bouquet of flowers in his hands.

Jazz shook her head as she watched him go. A sticky note appeared in her hands and she looked down before giving a snort.

‘Wedding date is in 2 years, 10 months, and 21 days. Prepare well. — Clockwork’

[charlietheepicwriter7]

"Probably because they don't have a grave," Danny said, pulling out his vape. "Final resting places are--HEY!"

Nightwing held the pilfered vape above his head. "Where did you get this?" he asked, scandalized.

Danny jumped for it, but Nightwing was too tall! Even at 5'7 he'd have to use his powers to reach the vape; he had no chance as a 9 year old. "We're in Gotham! You're lucky I didn't get cocaine instead!"

[trappednyourheart]

The wrong DNA test

( what if, Sheila wasn't really Jason's mother? The system is already corrupted, then what about the test?).

A huge brawl containing every rogue had started at the time of Halloween, causing the people from downtown to fled there home's as joker had clownized the whole neighborhood with his goon's.

Every bats had taken to groups to take out the three parts of Gotham's as the rogue's had started to make alliances, some had lasted quite long while had conflicts, and causing a big damage to Arkham asylum,

It didn't take long before they captured all of them, none of the bats questions as they observed Jason glowing green eyes starting to flick, they thought it was the pit again, growing wary of the cooperation, but Crime alley was involved and that mean business to Red hood's turf.

Catherine todd love her son as her own even if not biological, Jason knew that. But her thing with drugs couldn't make her stop.

Sometimes after that, they could hear Jason humming a tune,a nice melody from Damian's statement saying that Jason muttered to him “ lullaby” as Jason continued to read his book, maybe it could be from Catherine,

they knew how Jason's past with Catherine todd, his mom even if not related, Catherine loves her son like her own kid but her doing drugs and... overdosing couldn't be stop.

Maybe Jason just remembered his mother maybe reminiscing atleast something familiar...even if it was a bad time.

Jason had constantly have been hearing a woman's? Man's? Voice, singing him a lullaby...it soothing, like as if he known and loved this melody...and that's where the dreams kept coming, there was a person, giving him kisses, Talkin to him stories, singing him lullabies and soothing him, he could dream that he was actually a baby, a baby from a normal couple, well don't count the luxurious baby room.

Jason had took out a conspiracies why he was getting this dreams, ( he swears he's not becoming Tim) and voices, maybe like a misshapen memories from the pits of victims? No it's to peaceful for that, maybe magic? He already contacted Constantine but surely hang up after knowing who it was-

Just how is he getting this dreams? Unless it wasn't.... So he proved again his point, he started a DNA test, again but none had records...of Sheila being his biological mother...that was weird, last time he had a test was from the time as robin..and before his-

So he went to that hospital who had said where Sheila had given birth to him, and most of shock is that no one knows a mother giving birth named Sheila haywood but had a document of a baby, of one Jason jay nightingale, the most believing part was that it's the same day he was born in.

His mother, Daniel F. Nightingale was said to be trans as the doctor who help his mother safely delivered him, And saying that his mother loved him,

one Sheila Haywood had the constant trick to get him and taken him as his own, because his mother's family was a wealthy one they practically sold him to her.

Jason had thought that maybe his mother's family never wanted him to have a son with a man from Gotham's crime alley.

Meanwhile Danny had just been YEETED to the DC universe before the start of Batman's justice thing and had been adopted by a very wealthy fruit loops couple as there kid, so he stayed as the couples daughter even pretending, because he owed ghost writer a favor for the last time, and as DC universe exist so it's story, and one thing for sure the child he had to give birth in this universe has a very complicated fate,

he did the one night stand from his supposed friend Willis Todd? He had to befriend him as Dalia F. nightingale the supposed Wealthy daughter who fell in love with a peasant trope, and gotten pregnant making it a scandal, and reaching to his ‘parents’ circle and getting that drama.

But he never thought he would care for his child, his little jay, his ghost side would purr in delight when they held Jason, he was a very hard sucker especially from his pacifier or his breast, it's so weird being in a women body,

but the way his ‘parents’ sold his son to the women who was supposed to get his son killed and being revived by cheap parody ass of ectoplasm.

He went feral, he had an argument to his ‘parents’ but all fell deaf ears, he couldn't find his son in one of the hotels nearby where that BXtch was.

And that time was where his part of the script was fulfilled, ghost writer already took him, both sides of his, were angry.

He. will. get. his. baby. back.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 262

Pondering Ghosts are Dragons, and just rotating each design in my head I have for them. That is the ghosts we see in the show more than just once or twice lol. Just pondering each of them and potential types and descriptions and how the people of Amity see them, as they’re used to the dragons around, vs say someone from Outside, crossover or no, who are Not used to the maybe slightly eldritch undeath interdimensional dragons around everywhere. 

That is not normal for other people. 

To the Amity Parkers? Boxy is simply a chonky dragon with small boxy wings and covered in blue scales. To people just coming into the city, it’s like seeing a giant komodo dragon when you’re just walking home- not something you exactly want to see and something that is dangerous. 

Kitty’s and Johnny’s weekly relationship tussle? Par for the course really. But to visitors? Two giant wyverns tearing into each other, shimmering greens that could be scales, could be tendrils, and shadows lengthening and thrashing like a living beast all its own. 

And this is just the small dragonlings, not even beginning with larger ones like Pandora and Fright Knight, chill as they may be. 

Outsiders don’t understand that they’re more than just animals. Amity is used to this, but people who have no clue what’s going on? They don’t.

They call the police, the heroes, the government, for help, for answers. And that? That the GIW can use. 

[nelkcats]

Space-Time apprentice

After many conversations with Clockwork, Danny decided to be his apprentice, partly because Clocky was the closest thing he had to a grandfather, and partly because he really wanted to travel back to the time of the dinosaurs.

Clockwork was well aware of that fact, which is the reason he made his lessons as difficult and cryptic as possible. And although it frustrated him, in the end Danny succeeded. Due to his core, at the end of the lessons he ended up becoming the "Master of Space", which was not the same as Clockwork but quite similar.

He didn't realize that being a "master" of literally anything was lonely. They also didn't inform him that being a halfa would give him immortality, Danny sighed sadly, at least Clocky kept him company.

Perhaps the reason for his future actions was due to that feeling of loneliness; After watching a new dimension being created, both Clockwork and Danny witnessed a baby wizard being born in Egypt on that dimension, he had immense potential (Danny found it curious that many events tended to repeat themselves as a constant in the progress of different dimensions, like the egypt creation for example)

Since he had never witnessed anything like this before and it reminded him a bit of Tucker, the Master of Space went to congratulate the little wizard. But when he said goodbye, he followed him! Like a duckling. Danny saw this and plead his mentor for help, Clockwork just shook his head, Nabu would be a future lord of order, but right now he was just a curious and lonely kid (and Danny got a headache thinking about the intricacies of the dimension).

Resigned, Danny stayed in Egypt for a couple of hundred years, he began to teach Nabu space magic and other arts he had learned over the years; Clockwork seeing that his apprentice had taken his own ward, decided to taught Nabu a bit about future vision, a useful gift for the boy. When Nabu eventually disappeared, they both decided to leave without leaving a trace behind, it was like they never existed, even if the people remembered them.

Danny just didn't expect his little Nabu to have turned into a ¿spirit? trapped in a helmet and other artifacts thousands of years later, of course he'd made some dubious decisions but thats was a little cruel for a punishment, even if he was not sure if Nabu did that to himself; The halfa felt lost, there was no manual of "I met my pupil after a long time and he is trapping people with his helmet and other objects to possess them"!? He swears, he checked on Ghostwriter library!

For their part, the Justice League was confused when the respectable and usually unflappable Dr. Fate began to jump on his heels impatiently as he looked out of the Watchtower, waiting for something, or rather someone.

[summerfox1988]

This is my first and last Dead on Main prompt. Any and all writing prowess has been consumed by drought. Not sure if this variation has been done yet, but:

Danny as John Constantine’s whatever, and he gets roped in to filling in for John. Shows up dressed in the above.

After AGiT, he was trying to help Clockwork figure out what went wrong.

Traversing through the Realms, he keeps encountering this weird dude that keeps getting into verbal arguments with random citizens of whatever city Danny is in that CW sent him to. This dude kept bartering horribly, and swindled his way out when he realized he couldn’t get what he wanted the proper way. Not liking the way this guy did things, Danny confronts him. Since Danny utilizes Proper Communication, he doesn’t get his ass handed to him by who he now knows is The Laughing Magician. Lame name, but Danny isn’t one to talk. Anyhow, turns out he was getting materials to figure out the same thing Danny was sent to search for.

Danny talks his way into a team up. John was Not having it, he isn’t fond of babysitting. Soon figures out that Danny can hold his own, and concedes. A few stops in alternating times and dimensions, they get a lead. Narrowing in on a whisp of CW’s power that he didn’t sanction, they come across Valerie Gray. She’s been using her stolen Medallion to traverse the Realms and finding teachers who can help her fight the supernatural.

She sees them and takes off, and they go on a what surmounts to a loony toon style chase. In the end they only caught up to her because CW managed to wrangle enough power into Valerie’s Medallion to send her to a Time Period where the people sucked. They save her, and John surprisingly talks sense into her. (He maybe brings up Asta, or some other personal story that gets through to her.)

They go back to the Ever Moving Now. They patch up CW, but by then time has moved on in Amity Park.

Danny took to staying in his unaging ghost form after one dimension made his human form ill. The Realms helped sustain him when ever they stopped to rest, so his human half was only malnourished and slightly dehydrated. (Frostbite will have a field day figuring that out, but we’ve gone on another tangent!)

Valerie’s time was stopped while she wore the Medallion. (After her self appointed quest, CW gave her a modified version so that her lost time didn’t catch up to her too quickly).

As they’d already separated from John because he came from a different dimension, they had this discovery in CW’s lair. Danny contacts Jazz one last time. He tells her what he’s done, and not to worry. He made a new friend who owes him now. They have a heartfelt goodbye. He couldn’t bring himself to do the same for Sam. (Whether she and Tuck moved on is up to you).

Valerie stayed behind in Amity, she wanted closure and to give it. Danny went back to the Realms. There were more worlds to help, and in the time he’d been gone Amity had advanced enough to where he wasn’t needed anymore. Not to mention his rogues had settled down when they realized that with Danny gone the humans only got more vicious in retaliation. If they couldn’t blend in, then they didn’t visit.

Danny goes through multiple self discoveries and emotional upheavals. He ages on and off and is no longer sure how old he is. At this point he doesn’t really care. About anything really. He’s getting better though. But since John was around most of his latter formative years, Danny emulated the man more than he should. Which is why, in one of his better moods, Danny got them matching pajamas. (The attached picture) That was a fun time.

Because Danny runs into John a couple more times on his adventures, they exchange favors and earn them in turn. Which leads to the scenario in which Danny gets summoned in John’s place.

Zatanna was trying to summon John for whatever reason. However, due to John helping Danny create his summoning sigil, John had finagled it to where Danny can get summoned in his place if John is unavailable. Danny Will get him back for this.

At the end of this, Danny has new friends. Along with a new favorite dimension. He pops in from time to time. Eventually for whatever reason, he winds up in Gotham. He meets Jason when he crashes through his window. Danny was heavily concussed the night before, and has a severe headache now. Yay healing factor. The lights hurt, he’s wearing his new glasses*. Along with his favorite pjs. When this brick shithouse crashes in and makes his headache worse. He gives him lip, and grabs one of his dropped guns. Normally RH is never that sloppy, but Danny’s wall wasn’t the only one he crashed through in that fall. Throw. However he got there by whichever villain/rogue.

Danny proceeds to use his powers to fix his wall and window. He kept Hood’s gun in hand in case whomever caught up. They didn’t, he gives back the gun. Patches him up and sends him off.

Jason tries to find him again, an unknown magician in Gotham, his Bat Paranoia demands it. Only Danny knows magic now, he can’t be found by Bat Stalking. He can however be found by coincidence. CW meddles, of course.

They meet, over and over. They get closer, and I am at my limit. Have fun with this whomever!

[canmom]

music and narrative {[0]}

so. as part of the ongoing music researches, I've for a while wanted about the relation between music and narrative. that's going to be a long project! but to begin with I wanted to run down the examples I know, and maybe solicit a few more~

now, on some level, nearly any song has some degree of narrative. your basic love song introduces us to some characters - singer, object of their affection - and furnishes them with emotions and desires. moreover, music can play a role in a narrative without literally relating events - indeed, the art of soundtrack design is definitely a subject I want to look into at some point. even songs addressed directly at the real world, such as political songs, construct some kind of narrative.

however, for these purposes, I'm interested in songs that go a bit further in the direction of telling a fictional story, especially when those link together into whole albums (sometimes called a concept album, though this is a slightly broader concept). which can work in a lot of ways!

for example, Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid tells a sweeping scifi story of an android fleeing an oppressive society and becoming an unintentional figurehead of revolution. it sketches out a wide-reaching set of influences in constructing a scifi world, but you'd be hard-pressed to boil it down into a simple series of events - it prefers to leave a lot to interpretation. by contrast something like Splendor & Misery by clipping. deals with kinda similar subject matter - a scifi story, an escaped slave, artificial intelligence - but with a different musical approach and perhaps a slightly clearer narrative arc; sometimes directly narrating the thoughts and actions of characters, or slipping into memory, but also drawing less direct musical parallels with e.g. gospel tracks and slave spirituals. both excellent albums - both solve the problems of conveying a story musically in different ways.

of course, the largest pool of examples here comes in the context of musical theatre, and further back opera. (the exact transition from one to the other is something I'm going to need to research). particularly interesting to me are sung-through musicals such as Les Misérables, in which there's no spoken sections in between the songs. this restriction means the songs (and staging etc.) have to do all the work of conveying the events of the story.

there's a lot to be said about the various traditions of musicals (for example). there's even more to be said about the history of opera - both the Western traditions and other musical traditions that have been given the label such as Chinese opera. but that will have to wait for later day in the project because otherwise this entire post would be a huge list of musicals, and I want to try and wander all over the shop.

what I'm most curious to find is music that tells a story all on its own - no actors or staging, but more similar to oral narration. of course, in the present era, music is often released along with videos, and these can tell quite elaborate stories that will become part of the overall 'message' communicated by the song, so the lines are a bit blurry! but since the aim of this series will be to look for ways to convey narrative using music, I'm looking for examples where the music does most of the heavy lifting.

music that tells stories is something with a looong tradition in folk music, pretty much the world over. in Europe, the ballad was a common form for it, a word that survives into the present. it seems that most cultures have had some kind of tradition of wandering itinerant musician-poets - for example, at various points in history, there were biwa hōshi in Japan (pictured) and griots in West Africa, medieval Europeans had minstrels, the Celts had bards, the Occitans had troubadors...

moreover, work and marching songs such as sea shanties would also have a certain degree of narrative to them, in addition to their main function of keeping a group moving in time.

in modern times, people will sometimes attempt to reconstruct how this kind of music and lyric poetry would have been performed. you can naturally only go so far with the archaeological evidence, but I'm fond of Peter Pringle's recordings of segments of the Epic of Gilgamesh, using period instruments if not necessarily a period musical style!

in the modern age of recorded music, these traditions have become much more niche, but there are still artists who use music as a vehicle to tell a fictional narrative. (fair warning: I'm a huge nerd, so most of the examples I know are like, supreme nerd shit. also about ten years ago I was given an assortment of metal from a friend which included a bunch of what I'm about to put below.)

to begin with I've naturally got to talk about my friend Maki Yamazaki (Dr Carmilla) and the band she founded but later left, The Mechanisms. They tell a story of a sprawling gothic scifi universe, with the band playing the role of travelling space pirates who observe the (invariably tragic) tales that unfold. The Mechanisms' music starts as folk song pastiche, but gradually gets more original, although narratively they keep the approach of crossing over mythology with genre storytelling (fairy tales as space opera, arthuriana as space western).

The Mechanisms got a significant measure of international fame washing back after their frontman Johnny Sims got really big on some podcast or something.

Maki's solo music as Dr Carmilla took things in (from a narrative sense) a more abstract direction, using elaborate production and an incredibly textured sound to tell a (so far!) fragmentary story of the tragic space vampire Dr Carmilla and her doomed relationship with another vampire Lorelei (for example). And I'm gonna have lots more to say about them all, in the future, but this is just an overview so let's not get ahead of ourselves!

In a related vein (though I'm much less familiar with them) comes indie band Decemberists, who often create narratively driven songs - for example, The Mariner's Revenge Song depicts a sailor's motivation for extracting bloody revenge on someone who wronged him, with the actual violence conveyed by an energetic instrumental break. A subject that reminds me of the Clockwork Quartet, now long gone, who managed to record just three of their songs from a larger project, yet stand out as way more interesting than most of the steampunk milieu - with for example The Clockmaker's Apprentice giving a very fun antihero-revenge narrative to the ticking beat of a clock, and The Doctor's Wife a compelling tragedy of desperate medical science.

There's definitely something in common with this type of storytelling and the subgenre termed rock opera, which has a pretty long history going back to the late 60s (SF Sorrow by Pretty Things and The Story of Simon Simopath by Nirvana, thanks wikipedia), with notable examples including some incredibly popular albums like Pink Floyd's The Wall (which was adapted into a partly animated film using animations by Gerard Scarfe, c.f AN86) and My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade. In many of these, the connection between songs and narrative is fairly abstract and metaphorical - most of the examples mentioned are about the psychological arc of one character.

Calling this a genre or subgenre is kind of a stretch recently - just in those four examples we see a pretty wide range of musical styles, so it's more like an approach to album writing. Still, for want of a better word, there's definite overlap between this 'genre' and musicals. For example, the history on wikipedia cites The Rocky Horror Picture Show as an example of rock opera, which in my head it's just a musical. (Anyway, exactly the taxonomy of regular opera/libretto, rock opera and musical theatre is not that important anyway, because we want to look at the techniques of all of them!)

A more direct narrative comes in the work of The Protomen, who have the 'no way that would work' premise of creating a huge, dramatic, emotional story based on the plot of the Mega Man games. By putting the focus on the tense relationships of the fought main characters (scientists Light and Wily and robot boys Proto Man and Mega Man), and their sense of rejection and betrayal by the broader society, they somehow pull it off.

Moving gradually in the direction of (progressive) metal, we encounter Ayreon, whose entire career has been telling psychedelic and occult stories of time travel, aliens, warnings projected into the past, out of body experiences, and the history and direction of humanity. I'm not sure if all of their albums fit together into one big story exactly, but certain ideas seem to keep coming up - for example, future societies or aliens sending warnings to humanity to fix our shit before it's too late. In some of their albums (e.g. The Electric Castle) they follow the device of having each member of the band play a character in an ensemble cast, bringing it a bit closer to something like a radio play.

Also in metal land we find the rather unique project Charlemagne: By The Sword and the Cross, best known for that time Christopher Lee shed the blood of the saxon men. This is using music as a vehicle for a (more or less) historical story, featuring an old Charlemagne (Lee) reminiscing on the various awful things he did over the course of his life. Apparently they made a sequel to this album, which I never realised!

As well as history, metal also likes to lean on literature and poetry. For example, Kamelot (classed, apparently, as 'Power Metal') have a rather fun adaptation of the story of Faust into two albums, Epica and The Black Halo. Iron Maiden famously took on the Rime of the Ancient Mariner in a 13 minute song. And that's not even to get into all the songs dealing with Tolkien.

Moving on from metal before we start listing a hundred songs about vikings, it's worth looking more broadly for music about history, since it's a pretty major overlap with fictional storytelling! For example, the Boney M song Rasputin tells an incredibly catchy account of the assassination of Grigori Rasputin. Another rather more charged example comes in Nakam by Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird, about the unsuccessful paramilitary plot to poison six million Germans as revenge for the Holocaust.

If you go looking, you can find an impressively long list of historical songs compiled by 30 users of lyrics website Genius - though many of these I feel don't really count, since they were describing contemporary events when they were written.

Of course, there is a heavy overlap between this subject and political songs - in many cases the historical subjects are invoked to comment on the present. For example, Wernher von Braun by Tom Lehrer was written at a time when von Braun was leading the US space programme. In many cases, the songs simply invoke a historical event to express a feeling, assuming you already know what happened. Others may recount events more or less directly, before seguing into a verse or two at the end about why it matters now. Most of the songs in this list focus on recent (20th-century) history, sometimes they reach further back - mostly to talk about colonialism.

Historical songs can also be quite oblique. For example, Mili's song Salt, Pepper, Birds and the Thought Police is about the life of Korean poet Yoon Dong-ju, but you wouldn't necessarily know it from the content of the lyrics unless you were already familiar with Yoon's life. More on Mili in a moment - most of their songs are more fictional.

One thing I'm curious about is whether there are examples of more historical fiction in music, which tries to imagine the thoughts and feelings of historical characters... well obviously there's Hamilton, and perhaps that illustrates why there aren't a lot more songs about non-recent history, because the vibes can be off.

Storytelling is still a powerful mechanism even in a contemporary, political song. Take Construção by Chico Buarque - the story it tells is of the pointless death of a construction worker; with the lines ingeniously remixed over the course of the song, this turns into a wider illustration of the ruthlessness of the system that killed him. Its lyrics are absolutely fucking genius, even if you don't speak Portugese.

Speaking of language, most of the examples I've covered so far are in English, since well, that's my native language. It's naturally a little harder to access a story in a language you don't speak, but in these days of subtitles, we kinda can! So for example I can encounter projects like MILGRAM, something of a combination of music project and voting-driven story, in which we are introduced (by character song) to a number of characters facing execution - and then invited to vote on who should die. Heavily illustrated, it is somewhere vaguely in the space between album and straight-up anime.

I mentioned Mili already, but many of their other songs have a strong narrative arc to them, and sketch out the contours of a fictional setting. For example, one of their best-known songs is world.execute(me), which portrays the failure of a bdsm relationship between an AI girl and her creator. Which is relatively grounded by Mili standards - other songs depict for example the relationship of a jiangshi and a mad scientist cooking food, or a witch reanimating a knight with scientific methods to kill on her behalf.

And I think that will suffice for now. But we are of course only scratching the surface - this is by no means supposed to be an exhaustive list but I'm sure there's stuff that I'll be kicking myself for not mentioning. Mostly, however, this is a request for recommendations - particularly, of music from genres I haven't addressed in this post, and especially non-English languages, or that convey their stories in especially creative or unusual ways.

This project will likely be a long time in the works - it's something of a supplement to the Music Theory Notes (for science bitches) series - but my aim will be to pick out a few of these to examine how they go about conveying narrative through songs. Because I think that's kind of one of the big things I want to do with music.

ok canmom out i gotta go play some music. see you next time!

[bluerosefox]

Little Danny's Big Adventure

New idea.

Okay now hear me out.

-Pulls out AU idea cauldron and tosses stuff into it-

Let's put in some Ghost King/Prince Danny.... But also some deaged to toddlerhood Danny that gets yeeted into the DCverse!

Like imagine, tiny baby Danny with his tiny crown of ice floating above his head and his galaxy cape wrapped around him and uses it like a baby blanket. He didn't mean to fall into a different universe, a natural portal opened up and he was being a curious little thing! He didn't mean to trip and fall in during his nap time.

Nor was he expecting to fall into this realm during a rogue attack and knock out said rogue cause they were being a meanie and harming people and now Danny just wants his nap time cause he spent a lot of his tiny engery and he wants to find a nice spot.

Danny finds a place to crash, snuggling himself into his cape and the astronaut bear Danielle got him during her last visit that he takes everywhere since.

He's out like a light as the door to this safe house that belongs to one of the Bats opens up.

Meanwhile. In the Infinite Realms, Queen Regent Jazz is going into Mama Bear Jazz Mode trying to find her deaged brother, keeping the Realms in check, and is resisting the urge to put CW in time out Soup Time because he's being cyptided again about Danny whereabouts!!! UGH!

[tanglepelt]

Dc x dp idea 16

The observant are done watching. They want to command the infinite realm. With the king sealed away they decide the time is now.

They discovered a way to twist the ancients. Doing so hitting both pandora and clockwork. Pandora now seeks to help free evil and wreak havoc. Clockwork is now actively trying to find the worst timelines to force to happen.

The observants didn’t get frostbite as Danny was figuring out his ice core. Which means now he had to deal with those two ancients as well as overgrowth. Maybe even vortex makes an appearance.

The observants game plan is to make all the powerful ghost look bad so they get locked away. The only one who can fix the personalities of the ancients is the king. Take out those powerful and no one can free pariah to defeat him.

Danny returns to amity to find time frozen. Danny the little thief he is stole three time medallions (clockwork let him). Pandora is preventing him from getting to sam and tucker releasing evil from her box.

Danny gets out of amity. Leaving Sam as overgrowths “daughter” his friends and family frozen then guarded by evil beings. He heads out human so they can’t track his ecto signature.

With two extra time medallions he sets out. He finds the justice league. Wonder Woman immediately wants to help. She wants to help free pandora. Superman also heads to amity to help out. Both have rigged up Spector deflectors so they can’t get overshadowed.

John is the one who figures out what caused the personality switches. Bad news the only person who can fix it is evil. Danny was ease-dropping (they had him making anti ghost weapons, Danny only made non lethal ones)

Danny being Danny leaves his time medallion and takes off to free pariah.

John and Batman follow the child. They try and stop him from summoning and freeing pariah. Danny is just like chill i sealed him up like 3 months ago I’m sure i can handle this.

No explanation he just transforms and frees pariah. John and Batman can’t do anything to the ghost king as Danny traps him and the king in an ice dome. No point risking others getting hurt.

Danny wins. Frees pandora and clockwork. Wonder Woman had managed to trap pandora (pandora was definitely fighting the spell and resisting as much as she could). Clockwork just knew it was gonna happen. The observants were silly to think he wouldn’t.

The justice league now monitor amity park for when the next earth destructive ghost escapes. Danny has been forced to take lessons. The first one is risk management and the importance of disclosing powers. It’s just a lecture made by Batman.

[bet-on-me-13]

DPxBNHA Prompt

@evilminji recently made a Post about DP x MHA and I'm in love with the idea of those 2 fandoms together. (I'm gonna tag this dpxdc just to spread it around but there won't be much dc in it. Maybe a few crumbs here and there)

So! Quirks came into existence the same day Danny became a Halfa. He wasn't directly responsible for it, but when the Portal opened it released a truly Massive amount of Ectoplasm into the world at large. The Dr's Fenton didn't notice it at first, because Amity Park had always had that level of Ectoplasm and all of their Sensors were within the City Limits.

The Ectoplasm released onto the world quickly and integrated with multiple Humans across the Planet, and eventually enough Ectoplasm gathered in a single Human to form the first Proto-Core, aka Quirk. That human was the Glowing Baby.

This phenomenon spread across the world as the situation in Amity Park devolved. The GIW knew for certain that these "Meta Abilities" were the result of Ectoplasm Contamination, and doubled down on Amity Park to try and fruitless contain the spread. Not that it would have worked, the Portal opening had sent a Shockwave across the fabric of Reality, creating mini-portals that continued to feed Ectoplasm to the Earth.

Eventually the day came when Amtiy Park was Evacuated from the Mortal Realm by Clockwork for it's own Protection. It's disappearance was blamed on a newly awakened Quirk destroying the entire Town, which was used to feed the flames of hatred in the Early Dawn Era.

Then one day, Amity Park returns. In Japan of all places.

Clockwork had dragged the entire Town through Time, to an Era that would accept their abilities. It was placed in the countryside of Japan. Clockwork had considered putting them in a dimension of Heroes, bur decided that would like to stay in their home dimension for now.

Thats the basic world building, but there are other parts we can expand upon in this AU

For Example, OFA and AFO

All for One was the first True Core in the 1st Gen of Quirks, but he was born with a Defect that made him unable to generate his own Ectoplasm. He felt a Hunger that could never be satiated, and eventually found a way to feed that hunger by absorbing the Proto-Cores of other people into his own True Core, stealing their Quirks.

One For All was the Opposite, born as an empty True Core but without the insatiable Hunger that his brother had. Then AFO force fed him a Stockpile Core and it fused with his own, giving him the power to Generate and Stockpile his own Ectoplasm.

He also had the power to Pass On his Core to another Body, basically just passing on his power. Then his Successor did the same, and their successor, and their Successor. Eventually we reach the 9th Holder of OFA, and the Singularity.

In this world, the Quirk Singularity isn't just an event where Quirks grow too powerful for their Bodies to handle, it is an event where the Proto-Cores of Quirk Users experience an Apotheosis, and change from Proto to True Cores. True Cores which the Human Body can't handle having.

But it's different for OFA. It was a True Core from the beginning, born within a Human Body, and it has the power of 6 other Proto-Cores within itself all ready to Apotheosis into True Cores themselves. When OFA is passed onto zuku Midoriya, it floods him with 7 Cores worth of Ectoplasm, and turns him into a Halfa.

When Danny and the rest if Amity Park reappear in Japan, they find not only a world populated by mostly Liminal Humans, but also a Powerful Halfa who doesn't even know he is a Halfa. Maybe even 2 if All Might also experienced the same Apotheosis?

Thoughts?

[killerlittlerejects]

I didn’t wanna be the one to say it, and please know that I mean no disrespect to anyone.

But I’m getting frustrated with how many people are like “oh we should respect the wishes of clockworks creator cause she’s his vent oc and shouldn’t do these certain things” which fine. If that’s what you wanna do, that’s what you wanna do.

But I personally don’t feel comfortable with having to step on glass for the comfort of an abuser. I’m not gonna respect the wishes of a hypocrite who demands people to do certain things when he turns around and fucking hurts/traumatizes someone else.

If ya’ll have no idea what I’m talking about, go see this post here. Be mindful of trigger warnings. It’s been out since march and the lack of attention is honestly concerning.

I will happily respect what everyone else wants to do, this isn’t a call for everyone to start hating clockwork and everyone who wants to respect the wishes of the creator. I just want it to be known why I don’t feel comfortable doing so.

[koolaidoverliving]

a little ficlet i posted on ao3, but decided i might as well post it here as well! :)

THE COAT IS BETTER ON HER

✦ Ticci Toby / Nina the Killer ✦

CW: Light Angst, Ticciwork Mentioned

Words: I don't remember... 400~?

Nina and Toby are waiting outside of a concert venue. It's cold. And it's easy to reminisce.

"This is so unfair, Toby!" Nina whines. "It's so, so unfair! Why does the line have to be this long?"

Toby chuckles. "They really want to see Iron Maiden."

"It's stuuupid, Tobes. I bet they can't even name five songs..."

"Oh... Yeah... Stupid fake fans!" He can't name five songs either.

While he isn't a metalhead like his girlfriend, Toby listened to Iron Maiden's entire discography before the concert. He knows how much music means to Nina, and he wants to mean just as much. If Toby could, he would rent the concert venue for him and her only. But Toby can't, so he just pulls her closer, the warmth of his coat making up for what she lacks.

"Why aren't you wearing a coat, babe?" Toby asks.

"It would ruin my cute outfit," Nina replies, leaning into Toby's warm body. "Plus, I know it's gonna be, like, a total oven inside the venue."

"Wha—alright then! Just promise you won't get frost-bite?"

"Mhm, yeah. Frost-bite's got nothing on me."

"Gooood." He rests his head on-top of Nina's. Her outfit is cute, but very impractical for the winter.

Toby remembers when he still dated Natalie and how cold she'd get in the winter-time. She hated to admit she was freezing, but Toby could tell by the chatter of her teeth and the frost on her shivering hands. Natalie never did wear enough layers to survive Toronto's harsh winters. And whether she asked for it or not, Toby always gave her his coat.

While deep in thought, Toby feels a hand tug on his sleeve. "Toby! Th–The line's moving!" Nina exclaims through grinded teeth.

"It is?" Toby snaps back into focus. Slowly but surely, the line moves. "It is... That means we'll be at the concert in no time, babe!" He grins, ear to ear.

Nina makes an attempt to grin back at him. Her face is so clearly reddened and wet from condensation. For a split second, Toby sees a different person.

"Awh, you're cold," Toby says.

"I'm not cold," Nina retaliates. "I c–can totally last until we make it inside!"

"Oh, come on, silly." Toby starts unzipping his coat. "Let me give you my coat, okay? You can take it off when we get inside. You'll still have your cute outfit, you'll just be a 'lil warmer."

"Hmmm..." Nina presses her lips into a small, coy smile. "Okaaay! Fine, I'll take your coat."

Toby puts his coat over Nina. It's big on her and makes her look smaller than she is.

"Warmer now?" Toby asks.

Nina nods. "So much warmer." She puts her arms into the sleeves.

Toby admires his girlfriend, enjoying the way the pale fur makes her dark hair stand out. He loves her with all his heart, and he'll never be afraid to admit that. He loves her smile, her quirky humor, the sound of her voice, her green eyes...

"It looks good on you, Natalie," he says softly.

. . .

The line moves. But the two of them are still.

"I didn't mean—"

"Did you just..."

"I'm so sorry—"

"It's whatever, Toby! Don't ruin my concert night!" Nina retorts. "I don't want to do this right now." Nina turns around and moves with the line, her hands in the coat pockets.

"Wait, babe—Nina!" He follows her. "It was a mistake."

"I told you I don't care! We can talk about it later!" She continues to walk away, ignoring the fact she's now moving faster than the line is.

"But—Wait—..."

Toby doesn't say anything else, but his hands twitch, and he swears he can feel his stomach twisting. He follows her in silence. He painted himself as an idiot, but it's fine. Nina said they'll talk about it later—later.

So it's fine.

He'll listen to the concert with her and everything will be fine.