#DM is refreshing though it’s very charming and colorful

[tariah23]

One of the main reasons why I used to avoid Isekai’s, and fantasy works in general, like the plague is because of how over saturated they’d become with things that didn’t feel like they even belonged to the genre to begin with… it’s not too hard to find works that stand out but so much of those works have been pushed down and forgotten, it just sucks.

[madimpxssible]

hey!! my name is jinx and i’m an amelia pond enthusiast -- i’ve been playing her for 5+ years and i just love her so much. i hope this word BLABBER makes sense!! i’ve decided to parallel some canon because why not, so see if you can catch it. please like this if you want to plot and i’ll slide into those DMs!! 

Amelia Pond grew up in the Scottish Highlands for the first 5 years of her life to two Purebloods who were way in over their heads. They were Unspeakables who decided to try to bring some of their work home with them. This caused their house to become a magical black hole and as it started to break apart -- it wasn’t safe for anyone, especially not a child. Amelia was drawn to it. She was interested, she was fucking scared, she was also infinitely curious, always trying to break into her parents study where they worked, often succeeding. One night, Amy realized she was home alone much later than usual and waited on the front porch for her parents almost all day every day for seven days -- unbeknownst to her they had been on the run, having been caught smuggling their work home, hoping to shake them off and pick up their daughter when the coast was clear. Amelia waited. She brought her meals out, she dragged a mattress into the front of the house outside, some of her books and toys. No matter how cold, how wet or rainy, she waited for them. A little bit before her fifth birthday, Aurors came to seize the Ponds home, the magical artifacts and scripts they had stolen as well as their daughter. The Ponds came back, tried to fight them, needless to say this did not go well -- the Aurors eventually won, arresting them and taking Amy into custody. Luckily, they got ahold of her aunt who begrudgingly took her in. 

The magic she was exposed to warped Amy’s reality -- in fact, due to it, she doesn’t remember her parents even though she sometimes desperately tries. Mentally, this has taken a huge huge toll on her and did especially as a child-- all she remembers is a piano, a few glowing cracks in her wall, and waiting for a week. Sometimes, flashes come to her in her dreams, but she doesn’t know what to trust, the feeling of them heavily disorienting her. Her aunt was a Squib and addict, who despised magical society, living on the outskirts of Godric’s Hallow in the muggle town bordering it. Every question Amy asked about her parents was ignored, she was either yelled at or met with a scowl. In primary school, Amy talked about how she’d seen magic, how she’d seen broomsticks -- everyone thought her crazy. Her teachers eventually brought her to the school doctor who recommended she saw a psychiatrist -- her aunt, who could’ve easily stopped this, who could’ve easily explained, didn’t want to intervene so she let them. 

As a child, she doubted a lot of her reality but Amelia was fucking stubborn. She saw what she saw, she knew what she knew, she felt what she felt and that was that. Four psychiatrists couldn’t tell her she was telling tall tales or lying, that she was delusional -- magic was real. It was all real. She wouldn’t give up. How could she? It was the only connection to her parents, it was the only thing she knew she had of them and her childhood, these scattered memories, this random knowledge. Deemed the weird crazy girl at school -- Amy ran with it. Fuck them. She didn’t need anyone. She had her stories, she had her magic, she had herself -- that was all she needed. Spending excessive time by herself, in her own head, exploring her surroundings, she became something of a loner -- her doctors became worried about her but her aunt just wanted nothing to do with her, often leaving her to her own devices. 

Some days, Amy believes meeting Rory Williams saved her life because the fact was? She needed someone to believe her. To believe in her, to love her for all that she was, crazy maybe, eccentric, loud, lively, headstrong. He did. More importantly, he believed her. Even after the doctors diagnosed her with mild psychosis ( they hoped this childhood obsession would go away soon ), he didn’t think she was crazy -- at least not in that way. He was her first friend, her best friend, when she got her Hogwarts letter, had McGonagall come to her home and explain everything -- it was the first time she weeped from relief. While Amy believed she wasn’t crazy, after being told you are, bullied, neglected, she had the deep rooted fear that maybe she was. This confirmed everything for her, this gave her purpose. Amelia was right, magic was real, and Rory was going with her. Her life was finally going in the direction of wonder, magic, everything she believed in and she started writing about it. Amelia decided on her first day, on the platform of 9 3/4 that she would now go by Amy. Amelia was the crazy girl who lost her parents, Amelia was the little girl left, the girl who waited but Amy? Amy was cool. Amy was who she’d be at Hogwarts, who she wanted to be at Hogwarts, Amy was her new life and a new chapter. 

Easily, her outgoing personality, her curiosity, her brashness and her undying love and loyalty for others who earned it made Amy quite popular at Hogwarts. Being sorted into Gryffindor was perfect for her, Amy fitting into her house like a glove. Part of the Charms club since her first year, she’s extremely proficient in Charms and loves History of Magic ( even though Binns as a teacher is a snooze fest ) -- though she’s not always the best student in every subject. Amy tries, but school has never been a good place for her even if it’s magic. She had friends in every house, she was known for giving cheek as easily as professors gave homework -- her vibrant personality was for once appreciated. The girl who was a loner, who wasn’t good at playing with others, the weird girl transformed into a redheaded bombshell especially when she hit puberty. Amy had trysts with people of every gender, her popularity expanding as she talked with and met more people. Some professors found her annoying, some thought her to be effervescent and refreshing, either way she was one hundred percent undoubtedly herself. Some days, Amy cannot fucking believe that this is her life, that magic is real, that people actually like her and other days she knows it’s what she deserves, she has an extremely high regard for herself and who she is. But it fluctuates, more than she’d care to admit. 

If you notice, if you really do, you’ll see the cracks underneath the surface -- the way her romantic relationships never last more than 3 months. The ways she barely drinks at parties and doesn’t touch a single drug at them. The little ways she avoids questions about her home life underneath sass, sarcasm, cheek, jokes. The fear of being left by almost everyone she loves, the fear of investing herself in someone so much only for them to leave or worse, forget about her completely. Nightmares plague her and have since she was a child, this last year she’s tried to do research on her parents, who they are, coming up short. In her seventh year, Amy is extremely scared about going into the real world, feeling like she’s not prepared at all. She loves writing, sure, but working at the Daily Prophet? An internship working for people who will most likely not appreciate her work or let her write anything actually worthwhile? Sounds shit. All of her insecurities, her fear, she hides under personality, having an extremely hard time admitting that she’d clueless about the future because it’s admitting a weakness she doesn’t want to expose.

ABUSE, NEGLECT, DEPRESSION TW.  In the last few years, Amy has found herself dealing with depression which flares up especially during the summer when she’s with her aunt or really, when she’s being neglected by her aunt. Even though they moved to Godric’s Hallow, the wizarding section, a few years ago, she’ll spend a lot of time alone if she’s not with Rory or a few other friends. You can find her in her bed for days on end, sleeping, reading, writing, in her head completely, only for her to come out of it seemingly fine and like nothing happened. Being at home brings up feelings of worthlessness due to her aunt’s neglect and gets her in a very dark and bad place. Paired with her fear about entering the real world and leaving Hogwarts, Amy writes and writes and thinks about her future with both excitement and intense dread. 

NOTES ( some analyzations from canon ): 

One of my favorite aspects of Amy’s character is her empathy & intuitiveness. While sometimes lacking social grace and not always the best with interpersonal relations, she can see people for who they are deep down, their intentions, the emotions she feels like she feels from others often overwhelming but something that does lead her. A gut instinct magnified. She’s intuitive and empathetic because she’s got such an active imagination paired with a creative mind, she’s able to put those two things together, not only painting a picture of who someone is, painting colors on them they might not see themselves. Maybe this is a bit naive at times, maybe even a bit dangerous if it steers her wrong ( which is why Rory Williams is so important to her, her impulsiveness paired with this can get her into tough situations and he always has her back, always by her side ). Amelia is not always one to think before jumping into situations if she feels it’s the right thing to do, a prime example of this is her running off with The Doctor EASILY. Both as a kid and an adult. Luckily, not many have taken advantage of this as she can be extremely closed off emotionally. She’s a good judge of character and if she puts her faith in you, know while it could be surprising, it was a very much calculated, thought out, and a felt through choice. Amy’s extremely stubborn so good luck getting her to do something she doesn’t want to do ESPECIALLY if she doesn’t feel it’s right. Amy is usually able to connect to anyone and everyone some sort of way when she tries due to all of this, usually better with connecting to people than the ( Eleventh ) Doctor himself is.

[ EMOTIONAL NEGLECT MENTION, ALCOHOLISM MENTION ] Verbal, straightforward, blunt, but it when it comes to her emotions, the ones that hurt, the ones that can’t be wrapped in something beautiful or lightly joked about are the ones tucked away. Amy’s got serious commitment/abadonment issues as well, as shown throughout Doctor Who. I play her Aunt as a high functioning addict, growing up she was never really home much less attentive to Amy ( also due to the whole crack in Amy’s wall thing, but, that’s a whole other topic ).

Despite being a rather fearless person, due to this, she will make fear based decisions as well as decisions based on her insecurities that she’s not enough, that she’s more pain than she’s worth, out of not being able to give someone she cares about what they need. For example, when in canon Amy breaks up with Rory because she feels so guilty she can’t have biological kids when she knows he ALWAYS wanted kids. She was scared if she stayed with him, he’d hate her, that she was keeping him from having a fulfilling life, that she wasn’t enough and didn’t fit into what he wanted. Rory deserves everything to her, she couldn’t give it to him, when he gave and gave and gave to her. She didn’t feel worthy, but she didn’t express that fear either, making Rory feel completely shut out because she was shutting him out. She’ll self sabotage easily, because commitment & abandonment are scary to her and she’d rather be the one leaving than being left. Amy can’t stand to wait for the worst to happen, for the other shoe to drop, she isn’t the fucking girl who waited – not anymore.

Amy is diagnosed with major depressive disorder previously diagnosed with psychotic features added on as well until the Doctor came back but after having 4 psychiatrists in her youth, Amy definitely fits into having MDD. There are many evidences in canon besides her literally going to psychiatrists that suggest that Amy is mentally ill / ND, another hint in the episode ‘Vincent and The Doctor’. Amy empathizes with Vincent Van Gogh ( my Amy is an extreme art history lover as well, especially Vincent Van Gogh ), she says she’s been where he is, that she gets it. [ SUICIDE MENTION ] She is physically effected when he talks about dark shit and in another episode with the Dreamlord, she talks about how she doesn’t want to live in a world if Rory’s not in it, then killing herself in the show. The way she does it in my head ( and in the show ) is extremely steely, easily done, because Amy has dealt with mental illness, because she’s been in dark places & suicidal ideation. [ END OF SUICIDE MENTION ]  In this RP, I have her as mentioned dealing with depression and such too though not yet having reached out for help for it, Yet. 

SHE IS A SAGITTARIUS and it fits her perfectly. 

[depechemodespiritera]

Sep 27, 2017 – Phoenix, Arizona – AK-Chin Pavilion

Depeche Mode Never Let Us Down at Ak-Chin Pavilion

Take off your hat, sir.”

I've come to enjoy the security theater that happens outside Ak-Chin Pavilion every time I go see a show there. The security staff at Ak-Chin is really committed to their roles. Like the finest of ham actors, they know not to let an opportune moment pass them by.

Warpaint are already playing inside the venue. Their dancey yet moody music spills out into the parking lot. A swarm of black-clad revelers are amassing at the entrance, eager to get their Wednesday night goth club stomp on. I'm standing behind a gentleman wearing a blue baseball cap, who's rather nonplussed that the security guard is asking him to take his hat off.

“Dude, what could I possibly have under this?,” Blue Hat asks. The guard shrugs and flashes him an “I know, right?” grin. But the guard still insists he take it off. I imagine Blue Hat plucking off his cap, revealing a razor blade Scotch-taped to the bald spot on the top of his head. But alas. He was contraband-free. 

Walking past the cops lined up at the entrance, the mood changes instantly into one of conviviality inside the venue. People look stoked to be here, more so than at most shows I've been to. Perhaps it's because the crowd skews older – the average age here has to be early 40s. People move about, buying beers and merch, with purpose: They had to pay babysitters so they could be here, they had to take the day off work tomorrow, so you can bet your ass they're gonna groove to some dark jams tonight and get lit.

By the time I get to my seat, the quartet of ladies in Warpaint are wrapping up their set. A set of screens that look like windows loom behind them, with smoke curling around their sides and lights flashing purple, blue, and yellow across the stage.

The handful of songs I get to hear them play leave a powerful impression, though. Tracks like “New Song” take their ghostly vocals and moody atmospherics and give them driving rhythms and pop energy. For a band that sounds so spectral and introverted on record, they have the volume and the presence to hold a stadium crowd's attention.

The stage is cleared for Depeche Mode.

A tall elevated stage/backdrop is set behind the instruments, including an array of guitars, keyboards, and a peace-sign decorated drumkit. Throbbing electronic instrumentals kick and snap through their preshow. When the lights cut out and the fuzzy strains of The Beatles' “Revolution” starts playing, the crowd leaps to their feet. It's only fitting that the first thing we see onstage is feet: a pair of cartoon white legs, striding purposefully forward on a projection screen hanging over the stage.

As the band enters, the backdrop comes to life with a brightly colorful Jackson Pollockian splatter image. They begin playing “Going Backwards” and Dave Gahan enters, dressed in black.

Throughout the entire show, Gahan is the only one onstage without an instrument. But he doesn't need one – more than his voice, his body is his instrument.

He sashays and chicken-walks and spins and struts onstage. You can tell that he must have studied the great rock 'n' roll frontmen the way guitarists study Hendrix and Clapton – he had all their moves down cold. The Bowie Thin White Duke poses, the Pete Townshend windmill, the messianic Bono lean, the Mick elbow-on-the-hip, the cock rock crotch-grab (a move nobody could miss because the Jumbotron cameraman lingered on it — he knows that you gotta give the people what they want).

Speaking of Bono: Seeing Gahan with his slicked back hair, leather vest, and Claude Rains mustache made me wonder if he was one of the models that Bono used for creating his decadent Fly character during the Achtung Baby/Zooropa years.

Onstage, Gahan embodied a kind of sensuality and cheerful sleaziness that you don't see much of anymore in modern music – few people have the charm, the chops, or the chutzpah to pull it off. But Gahan is so good at it that it's criminal that nobody's cast him as the Master of Ceremonies in a post-punk production of Cabaret yet.

The band worked their way through their later work for the first half of the set, supplementing impassioned live performances with video projections and backdrop changes.

During “So Much Love,” a video of Depeche Mode as a trio appeared behind them, playing the song in black and white as they stood in front of a chainlink fence. Later on, Gahan would appear onscreen as an astronaut walking around town as the group tore through “Cover Me.”

The best multimedia moment of the night came during “In Your Room.” Starting off with the image of a woman reclining on a velvet couch getting felt up by a dude with a mohawk, it turned into a ballet. The two of them danced in a crumbling apartment, their bodies spinning and intertwining and breaking away as Depeche Mode played their cacophonous tune.

That was perhaps the most surprising thing about their set. Depeche Mode are fierce live, far louder and rocking than you'd ever imagine from listening to their records. They even strike some interesting stage pictures, like the way Martin Gore would sometimes play a guitar shaped like a sparkly silver star or how they introduced “World in My Eyes” by having purple lights overhead shake and tremble like the beams of lights were having a seizure.

After “Cover Me” ended, Gahan headed offstage for a bit. In an interesting departure, Gore took up vocal duties for the next two songs: “A Question of Lust” and “Home.” The former was a highlight of the set. Backed only by a spare keyboard arrangement, Gore's plaintive and moving vocals inspired the crowd to singalong. As great as it was to see Gahan showboat, commanding the stage like a goth Joel Grey, it was a refreshing change of pace to see the more reserved Gore seize the stage with such a different approach.

Gahan returned to the stage with “Where's the Revolution” (a bit too heavy-handed a song for my tastes) and “Wrong.”

Following those numbers, Depeche Mode closed out their set with four all-time classics: “Everything Counts,” “Stripped,” “Enjoy The Silence,” and “Never Let Me Down Again.”

“Everything Counts” inspired a singalong as fervent as the one that broke out to “A Question of Lust” with people shouting along to “everything counts in large amounts” as the band made sprightly video game sounds onstage. The cameraman swooped around the crowd, showing people looking positively jubilant and dancing to the music. One lady even held up a license plate that read DM DVOT.

“Enjoy the Silence” stood out with a series of arresting images of neon-lit animals onscreen — cows, pigs, chickens, dogs, and rabbits. The song dissolved into a synthy, noisy jam as it lead into “Never Let Me Down Again.” Had the band ended the show right after that point, it already would have been a pretty great gig.

But then there was the encore.

I normally hate encores. They're often so perfunctory: “Here's two more songs that you knew we were gonna play!” Credit to Depeche Mode. Their encore was the rare one that dazzled. It was basically a second mini-set.

The encore opened with another Gore vocal turn – this time for “Somebody.” Gahan came back on to do “Walking In My Shoes” as a video of a trans person getting dressed for a day out on the town played behind them.

The band played a subdued, wintry cover of Bowie's “Heroes.” A black flag rippled on a white screen as they paid their respects to one of their biggest influences. The band, for a moment, sounded like they had morphed into New Order — early New Order circa “Ceremony,” when they were still trying to shake off the ghost of Joy Division.

Depeche Mode ended with the one-two punch of “I Feel You” and “Personal Jesus.”

For a band famed for their synths and keyboards as poster boys of New Wave, many of the evening's most memorable moments came from guitar licks. As much as “Personal Jesus” is defined by Gahan's insinuating vocals and the electronics twitching in the background, it's Gore's weird, loose-spring guitar riff that makes it such a classic tune.

It was the perfect song to end a night of music that made me want to reach out and touch faith. Or at the very least, it made me want to lose some weight so I could pull off wearing a leather vest the way Dave Gahan can.