#I do still write midi stuff from time to time to help around other people I know who need music for a project

[kittybroker]

Okay so I don't normally do self promotion here but I have an older soundcloud with some of my older midi music, and a few things I've done in the last year or two. I mostly write classically notated music and I might release piano scores or some of that in a bit if I set it up but for now all I have is my old midi stuff. Not the happiest with all the pieces as they are somewhat outdated now, and I never got my head around how midi instrumentation worked. I'll get around to sending out piano scores and maybe a small chamber ensemble piece or two once I have a proper way to share those.

Would very much appreciate if people listened at all, even if I rarely write music like this any more.

[flowerwrites06]

mint ocean — myg

Plot: Yoongi clashes with a lyricist. 

Pairing(s): Music Major!Yoongi x Lyricist!OC (Name: Kiku) 

Rating: G | PG | M | R 18+

Type: Drabble | Oneshot | Two Parter | Series

Word Count: 3k+

Genre: College | Fluff/Angst

Tags & Warnings: coarse language, sexual references.

Authors Note: i didn’t realize people would like this little oneshot so much but here you go! 

“Another party?” Yoongi scorned, throwing his head back as he sat on the chair trying to rest his eyes from the books in front of him. How Namjoon managed to organize so many fucking parties in a year almost terrified the mint-haired male. “Didn’t you just have one like yesterday? With the jelly shots and shit.”

“Yoongi, that was a month ago.” Namjoon corrected, fixing his pink tresses while looking at the mirror. “I think it’s nice to have gatherings…you know to consolidate relationships.”

He scoffed obnoxiously. “You just want to fuck that singer with her little plaid skirt still on.”

The younger male immediately glared at his roommate. “Don’t talk about Minnie like that. She’s a nice girl, alright?”

Despite the light smirk on his face, Yoongi took a step back from his commenting. He didn’t know too much about the girl truly but from what he saw she was extremely beautiful to say the least and had a kind smile. He never really talked to her one on one. “So what’re you trying this time?”

“I’m not trying anything, it’s just doing a bit of socializing.” He shrugged.

Yoongi gagged mockingly at the ‘s’ word. His pink haired counterpart definitely proved to have more social skills in his one pinky finger than he did in his whole body. Which was something he both envied and took pride in. Knowing people was always beneficial clearly since Namjoon got a lot of opportunities from it but interacting with far too many people meant being worried about too many useless feelings. “I’m only coming for the shots.” He mumbled, tapping his pen against the open notebook scribbled with a few bits from yesterday’s lecture.

Namjoon chuckled. “You say that but I still manage to see a pretty someone sneaking out of your room in the morning.”

He pointed at the man with his pen. “It’s ‘cause of the shots.”

“Sure.” He grinned knowing the mint-haired male despite his demeanor did like a little bit of attention when it came to him.

-

“A party?” Kiku peered through the glass, whispering in the serene silence of the library while skimming through a few sources for her next essay. Blue tresses falling over her face despite the loose restraint of her long ponytail.

Minnie nodded sitting on the other side with her laptop open on her right and her notebook adorned with the neatest writing. “Namjoon said it was a small gathering so no need to worry about too much noise and all that.”

“You know what he’s trying to do, don’t you?” She leaned in so she could raise her voice a little but not have it echo throughout the entire room.

“Not this again.” She lowered her head, doodling a little on the corner of her page with her brunette waves framing her face.

“Please tell me you’re being careful.” Kiku searched the others’ expression. Namjoons’ intentions were a little blurry since she found him to be a decent student at least in the music classes and various music projects they shared. But anyone could be great at school work and terrible at treating women. It made her extremely suspicious especially since his attempts always involved a party with booze.

“Of course I’m being careful.” Minnie muttered, tapping her pen against the table. “There’s nothing wrong with going to a party.”

“A lot of college girls would disagree.” Bitterness laced in her tone as she scribbled a few words on the corner of her notebook maybe hoping to add some of them in the new song.

“Namjoon isn’t like that. He fights about stuff like that, you should hear the kind of music he makes.” Minnie defended.

Kiku sighed. “Speaking of music…how did they like the song?”

“They loved it as usual.” Though the girl did not sound enthusiastic in the slightest. “How long do you expect to keep your identity secret from everyone else? What if someone finds out before you can come out?”

“Then they find out.” She shrugged. “Everyone loves you and your voice. Let them think it’s some mystery producer that no one knows about.”

Their conversation got shorter and shorter about this whole situation. Minnie would try to convince her to show her real self to the public instead being under an alias. Kiku simply suggested that she preferred not being bothered about her songs. Writing songs without the credit allowed her to be more personal.

“Will you at least come to the party with me then?” Her expression grew a little desperate. Okay she did really like Namjoon. The two had been conversing and trying to spend time with each other for a couple of months now. “It’ll be better if you were there so nothing bad happened.” Namjoon would never let anything bad happen but it was more to reassure Kiku.

After a moment of thought, the blue haired girl spoke. “Fine. An hour.”

-

Regret seeped into Kiku’s body quicker than she expected when they walked into the loud and slightly crowded house. Minnie held onto her hand tightly to ensure no one got lost as they slid through following Namjoon to a circle of couches. Sweaty bodies all around them, Kiku wished she had not just opted for a fitted crop top and some baggy pants.

“You can sit here.” The pink haired male smiled patting the space next to him.

Kiku suppressed the urge to roll her eyes as she sat on the other side of Minnie, eyes struggling to meet the gazes of all the people in the group. Two girls were sat around a mint-haired male while two other boys sat on the floor in front of the coffee table centering them. If it weren’t for the loud music and people making babies in the kitchen then this would have resembled a quiet game night.

“Minnie, you know Yoongi.” Namjoon spoke softly gesturing towards the mint-haired male who gave the two a small smirk. “I made him listen to your songs, he loves it.”

She giggled nervously while Kiku merely smiled. “Thank you.”

“You write really well seriously.” Yoongi commented, eyes flickering over to the full head of grey-ish blue sitting quietly next to her friend. “What’s your source?”

“Honestly my producer writes most of the lyrics.” Minnie kept her voice pretty gentle despite the booming of the beats. She accidentally glanced over at Kiku when talking about her producer. “She’s the talented one.”

“Well you’re the one who’s singing it. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of random words on paper, isn’t it? A page from a diary instead of a real song.”

Namjoons’ smile disappeared hearing his friends’ comment and attempting to give him a warning look but Yoongi did not see him.

“Lyrics are still important though.” Minnie explained softly, not really wanting to see Kiku’s reaction anymore.

“Yeah they are.” Namjoon continued knowing Yoongi thought the same thing.

“Of course…when added. By itself, it’s nothing.”

“They can’t just be ‘nothing’” Minnie still smiled and it made Namjoon even more angry at his friend.

He knew Yoongi despised these parties and made it a mission to show how bad they can get but in front of the girl he liked?

“He’s right.” Kiku spoke up this time, all of their eyes flickered over to her now.

Minnie’s brows furrowed silently trying to tell her not to bring herself down in that manner. So many people found it easy to diss on her lyrical ability because she never actually showed herself to them. So they both had to quietly sit there and tolerate the incessant commenting until headaches ensued.

“Lyrics are nothing but random words without the song.” Kiku continued with a neutral expression. “Just like rappers are nothing but drug using whores that talk fast.” She smiled at the man whose smirk slowly disappeared. “Or MIDI producers are nothing but fingers tapping on a fake keyboard.”

Her comment injected silence amongst the group including a proper glare from Yoongi. One of the girls muttered something about Kiku being extremely rude while Minnie did not know what to feel. “I’m gonna go get a drink.”

Barely ten minutes into the party, Kiku already regretted being there and even trying to converse with someone who had the personality of a grain of sand. What kind of a music student talks about lyrics like that? Who the fuck did he think he was? Lyrics took so much time and energy. She could not even count the amount of times she cried or got angry whenever she wrote them.

“I need to go check on her.” Minnie muttered to Namjoon gently. “Sorry.” She touched his arm lightly hoping he understood why she had to prioritize Kiku tonight. Aside from literally helping her in her career, she always tried to keep her safe no matter what.

Namjoon stammered as the wonderful girl walked away from him to check on her friend. An immediate glare now shot to Yoongi.

“What?” The mint-haired male winced. “She said things too.”

“Because you were acting like an idiot with Minnie.”

“I’m not the one who’s desperate to impress her.” Yoongi shrugged.

“That doesn’t mean you’re allowed to be rude. You’re my best friend, I wanted you to like her too.”

The older male sighed as one of the girls leaned in to tell him it was okay but he knew it wasn’t. If Yoongi—god forbid—ever wanted to be with someone seriously then Namjoon’s approval would be top priority. The two went through so much together and there was no reason to dedicate themselves to someone if the other didn’t like them. Namjoon must have really liked Minnie for him to be so adamant on Yoongi liking her too.

Slithering through the heated crowd, Kiku finally stumbled towards the drink table where she poured herself a glass of vodka and some cranberry juice. She hated how one simple conversation still lingered in her mind like a disease. Hopefully a few chugs of the funny tasting juice burned through most of the memory.

“Hey…” A slurred voice lingered on her left followed by a trail of alcohol stench breath infecting the air in her personal space. “What’re you sitting here so lonely for?” The snap back man hummed sneaking closer so his shoulder almost pressed against hers.

Kiku immediately moved away with a roll of her eyes as she attempted to walk back to the circle of couches. But something held her arm back. “Don’t touch me.” She yanked away from his grip, briskly walking towards the couches now until she saw Minnie walk straight towards her.

“I thought you left.” Minnie smiled a little, moving the pair over next to the stairs where there was less of a crowd. “Look don’t worry about what Yoongi said, okay?”

“I’m not worried about him.” She shook her head, feeling like her words were a lie. “People have said worse. I honestly expected worse, he’s kinda soft isn’t he?”

“Hey! I was fucking talking to you.” The same slurring man stumbled towards the pair again, standing uncomfortably close to Kiku. “Do you know who I fucking am?”

“Someone who desperately needs a mint and better social skills.” Kiku snapped in a gently vicious demeanor which of course only angered the stinking beast. He grabbed her by her arms again this time enough to cause pain before trying to slam her against the side of the stairs.

Before Minnie could jump in, the attacker was pushed off of her and dropped onto the ground with a thud causing a deafening silence amongst the crowd including the music.

Standing in front of Kiku­­—at least from where she could see–leather jacket and a head of mint hair, back facing her.

“You know the rules, Kwan.” Yoongi spoke calmly though his body radiated even more frustration than normal. The party was irritating enough but a few frat guys seemed to think it was a breeding ground for assault. “Play nice or get out.”

Kiku rubbed her sore arm absentmindedly as she watched the drunkard struggle back on his feet while all eyes were on him in judgement. Namjoon already stood by Minnie’s side keeping a close gaze on Kwan.

“Just having a bit of fun, Min. No harm.” Kwans’ reddened eyes flickered over to Kiku who only glared back at him.

“I feel bad for everyone who had the misfortune of fucking you if you thought that was fun.” Yoongi smirked. “You had your drinks, get out.” He nodded to the exit.

Kwan looked around at all the faces staring right at him knowing it would be embarrassing to be chased out in this manner but even more so if he just stood here. So he simply chose the first option and walked away.

Once the beast was gone, everyone quite easily faded back into their normal atmosphere of dancing and drinking while Yoongi turned to face Kiku.

“Good rule.” Kiku muttered, folding her arms over her chest.

“Kwan just invites himself sometimes.” He glanced over at the entrance to check if he was out yet before facing the girl again. The question lingered at the tip of his tongue for a while before he spoke. “You okay?”

She nodded though her arms still had a dull ache.

“You think you should stay here for the night?” Namjoon suggested glancing over at Minnie.

Kiku slowly held onto Minnie’s hand. “No, that’s fine.”

“Ku, it’s okay.” She muttered, patting the back of her hand.

“Sorry that didn’t sound right.” He scratched his head, chuckling nervously.

“What my awkward friend is trying to say is Kwan might still wait outside after the party’s done so you can stay here till morning. We’ll sleep on the couch and you can take our rooms.” He gestured upstairs. “Gonna take all night to clean this shit up anyway.” He glared at the clear mess of booze and a few bras on the floor.

The more cautious side of her screamed to the top about a possible trap which may lead to extra problems then just going back to their dorms. But not a lot of frat boys would place literal protection rules in their house during parties. Hell they would be just as drunk and intense as that Kwan idiot. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea staying. Besides Kiku brought her work in her bag just in case the party got boring anyway.

Still keeping a firm grasp on Minnie’s hand, she nodded. “Okay.”

-

The party settled down after a few hours and all was left were the remnants of a whole lot of bad decisions. Kiku even spotted a used condom laying around on the hallways as they were led to the two bedrooms.

“Fucking hell…” Namjoon hissed looking inside his room making Minnie giggle a little.

“I told you to lock your room.” Yoongi spoke as he unlocked the door and led Kiku inside his private room.

A little untidy which was not surprising. His study table littered with papers either readings from his units or just scribbles that were hard to decipher. Bed somewhat unmade and his closet overflowing with unfolded clothes.

Yeah it was a mess. But Kiku couldn’t really judge him, it was heavy assignment season and her side of the dorm looked exactly like this too. Pushing off her shoes she placed it neatly next to the door. Padding over to the bed she sat down quietly while Yoongi grabbed whatever he needed so he didn’t have to disturb the girl.

“If you get hungry, there’s—water in the mini fridge.” He smiled nervously as he looked inside the little bar.

“Good to know.” She couldn’t help but mimic the smile.

“You can—use a T-shirt or something if you want for sleeping. Use the ones on the rack.” He gestured over to the closet. There was a subtle awkwardness behind him that Kiku could not understand considering how he acted in the party tonight. Did he never have guests in his bedroom before? Or maybe at this point he would be doing something else with the guest by now instead of acquainting them to the area.

Either way Kiku felt kind of safe with this new side of his behavior. “Thanks.”

Yoongi hummed in acknowledgement before padding out of the room, cursing a little under his breath at the mess made.

-

The whole night spent out with Kiku working more on her essay and then proceeded to jot down some ideas for Minnie’s songs. She tried to label them properly so she didn’t mix up the school work from the paid work. Sleeping in someone’s else bed proved to be more difficult than she expected despite putting on a comfortable black T-shirt that was offered to her kindly.

The surface of the bed was now just as littered as his study table but it allowed Kiku to concentrate a bit better.

Rummaging and vacuuming echoed throughout the whole frat house which would have been distracting if Kiku did not feel bad for the boys having to clean all that mess by themselves. They did organize the party but the aftermath still was not deserving of anyone.

Fixing her glasses back up on her nose bridge, the door opened behind her with a messy haired and clearly annoyed looking Yoongi walking through.

“Sleep well?” He asked.

“Didn’t really sleep.” Kiku smiled nervously. “You could’ve just slept here, you know.”

“Would you have been able to resist my charms?” The cheekiness seemed to seep in a lot more when he was in an inconvenient position.

“It would have been incredibly difficult but I could power through.” She stretched a fake grin before looking back at her work.

Yoongis’ eyes flickered over at some bold words written ‘For Minnie’ with a pending title next to it. Brows furrowed and head tilted, he looked closer at the words on the page. “Is that a—is that a song?”

Her heart jumped quickly looking at the page and trying to grab it but Yoongi beat her to it. Kiku practically flew off the bed, following the mint-haired male to try get the lyrics back. “This is invasion of privacy.”

“You’re in my bedroom.” He retorted, still reading the words intently. “And all you did was study…well—study and write a whole ass song, do you do this often?”

The blue haired girl averted her gaze in annoyance. “Yes, I write a couple of her songs.”

“A couple?” Yoongi raised a brow. “Funny, the last time I checked the credit for all her songs there were only two producers. Minnie and someone called Chrys.” His bottom lips jutted out skimming through the song again. “I just thought it was a fancy way to make Chris interesting but I’m guessing it’s short for Chrysanthemum. As in…Kiku.” He smirked handing the paper over to her now.

“You feel real smart, don’t you?” Kiku took her paper back and stuffed it back into her files before tidying everything else up.

“Not that smart. I’m surprised people don’t talk about you more.” He shrugged, fluffing up his hair a little.

“Well it’s like you said…” Kiku sighed. “Lyrics are nothing but words on a page, right? Why would people talk about me at all?” She smiled sadly, keeping her gaze on her things rather than the mint-haired male. This partnership and her own decision went on successfully for a long time without the girl feeling like she was being exploited or taken advantage of. Why was it that saying all of this to Yoongi out loud made the whole thing sound so wrong now?

Yoongi let out a deep sigh as his words replayed back in his head. “I didn’t actually mean to say that.” He muttered a little shyly. “I was…” Wow he sounded so stupid already. “I was just trying to be an asshole.”

“It worked.” Kiku unzipped her bag before facing him again. “But you made up for it too so it’s okay.”

He nodded before rubbing his face out of exhaustion. “Your lyrics are really good though. I’m not surprised you’re the only producer Minnie trusts.”

“Are you just being nice now?”

“No that’s too fucking tiring.” Yoongi chuckled and she couldn’t help letting one out as well.

“Thank you…again.” Kiku played with her fingers. “Did you need some help with the cleaning?”

“Namjoon owes me a few hours of cleaning, he decided to abandon me for a while to f—uh entertain Minnie.” He gestured towards the door.

Kiku raised her brows not being able to control the small smirk tugging at the corners of her lips. “So are you here to entertain me now?” She teased.

“No, no no—oh…” Yoongi cleared his throat.

“Don’t freak out, I won’t pounce on you or anything.” Kiku giggled lightly. “Besides seeing the girls who were stuck to you at the party you and I wouldn’t work.”

“And why’s that?” Eyes unintentionally flickered up and down her body. It only took him now to see his T-shirt hugging her curvy body, plump boobs and luscious curves poking out even in the slimming color.

“One too many assholes spoil the soup.” She pretended not to see that wild gaze running down her form.

“On the contrary, it makes it more tasteful.” He smirked. “You know…spicy.”

“Spicy…” Kiku chuckled. “Sure.” She turned on her heel to check on Minnie, fully aware that Yoongis’ wild eyes would follow down.

You’re a respectful man, Yoongi. Put your eyes away. It didn’t really help when that beautiful ass swayed as she walked and her gorgeous waves bouncing a little. Fuck he wanted some of that soup.

[teenyweenynightghost]

A breath of fresh air

 Chapter 2

Warnings: Anxiety, mental health issues

The summer passed slowly. Everyday my mother would drag me to a new place, either getting some medical tests done, or academic ones. She took me shopping for new clothes so that I could make her proud at my new school. As if that mattered.

I no longer managed to find myself within nature. I would get anxious when I tried to enter the forrest, or I would simply be so distracted I couldn’t even notice what flowers were around me. Same thing with photography. Nothing caught my attention, nothing seemed worth it anymore. The world was running around me, leaving me far behind, fallen on the ground.

The day I would leave finally came. The fight was no different to those I took when flying to my grandma, but this time I was scared. I wasn’t flying towards comfort and peace, but rather going to a whole new place, a land of uncertainty and doubt.

My cab pulled up in a gigantic driveway. I could see kids of all ages running around, talking and greeting new people. I started feeling anxious again, my breath was caught in my neck and i started suffocating in silence as my door suddenly opened. Outside stood an old woman, her face wrinkly and lean, looking at me with a soft gaze. “Why don’t you step out darling, I promise no-one here bites”. I tried to force a smile and push my way out. 

Now standing in front of her, I noticed that she was tall. Much taller than me. She was wearing a light blue blazer and a matching midi-skirt, with a white ruffled blouse underneath. Her hair was dark brown with streaks of gray, all tied up in a tight up-do.

“My name is Mrs Henson, i am the head-mistress of the school. You must be Aurora Gardner.”

“Yes, I am. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I reached out my hand and met hers in a tight shake.

“I’m glad you made it here safely. Now, there will be staff coming to pick up your luggage and taking it to your dorm. Meanwhile, I would like to introduce you to your roommate, who I’m sure will be nice enough to give you a tour of the campus.”

With that, we started walking. I noticed that the drive-way extended into a big circle, further being guarded by the surrounding buildings. It all looked old, but similar to the things you see in movies. The architecture, the atmosphere, the flowers. But I couldn’t focus on all that right now.

We made our way towards a green area, filled with students chatting. I saw a rose bush on the side, and tried to examine it. Before I realised, a girl came up to us and started talking to Mrs Henson. My attention slowly shifted to her, as she was smiling brightly at us. I think my whole face fell upon seeing her. Her bright blue eyes captured my own, her nose ring complimenting her face perfectly. Her hair was all different types of shades of blond, reaching a bit lower than her shoulders. She had a nicely kept fringe and wore large cross earrings. I would have lied If i said that was not the most beautiful girl in the world.

Caught up in my own thoughts, I felt her place a delicate hand on my shoulder. “You still here, puppy?” My face turned red at that nickname, and my mouth suddenly felt very dry. I couldn’t do anything other than slightly nod at her. Upon seeing my reaction, she smirked and hugged me. “My name is Victoria, but you can call me Vic.” She let go and fixed her gaze back at me. “I’m Aurora” I responded quietly, my mind having been shaken from so much contact. I loved hugs, but It brought back memories. It was reaction I didn’t even know I had developed until now.

“Alright” she chuckled softly, a devilish look in her eyes “how about I show you around.” Before I could nod again, she grabbed my hand and lightly tugged me towards the main entry, not letting go even after making sure I was with her. I felt red again, this time worrying about my hand being clammy as well.

The tour was not that long. She mentioned that we had the same classes so she would come with me everyday, thus not needing to show me the academic area today. Instead, she took me to the library. It was a gigantic room, lit by crystal chandeliers and torches. In the middle, there was a large staircase splitting into two, one side leading to more books, the other leading to a study area. While I was taking it all in, staring in awe at my surroundings, I caught her looking at me from the corners of my eyes, I turned my gaze towards her only to be met by her bright eyes once more. She smiled again and said “I knew you would like it here, puppy” Again, my face turned an embarrassing shade of red and my knees started feeling weak. What was wrong with this girl and why could she do this to me? I looked away quickly and made my way towards a book shelf, thinking that the only reason i felt such a spark in me when that girl talked was anger.

A few hours later, she finally took me to the Sleeping Area. We climbed up two flights of stairs, and made our way down a dimly lit corridor. She pulled out a key which clinked in her hands when it met her numerous rings. Unlocking the door, she stepped away and made me room to enter. I looked down as I passed her, feeling her hand on my lower back, guiding me inside. Once again, I was as red as a tomato. 

“I already took the bed on the left, and it surely does seem like a lot of work to move all my stuff again, so you can either sleep on the right one or sleep with me.” At those few last words, I I almost choked on my spit, and turning away so that she couldn’t see the clear effect she had on me. Nevertheless, I didn’t need to be facing her to know just how much she was smirking.

I wobbled towards the right side of the room and sat down on the bed, looking at the window above it. “This one is just fine.” I heard her snort before she retorted back “I was kind of hoping you would say the latter.” This girl had something with me. I just couldn’t tell what yet.

On the wall opposite to me, I noticed a tall wooden cabinet, next to which was my luggage. I opened it and took out my pyjamas and hygiene kit, before turning back to Vic. “Do you know where the bathroom is?” She lazily pointed towards a door in our room I had not noticed, and smiled at the annoyed expression on my face. “Well princess, now that you’re all settle down, I’ll leave you to it. I have to go practice with my friends.” With that, she gave me a wink and left the room. As soon as I was alone, the atmosphere changed. It was gloomier, and it reminded me of an empty room before you would move houses.

To my surprise, the water was warm and the pressure was pretty good. After finishing all my business in the bathroom, I quickly stumbled towards my bed and covered myself with the heavy duvet. I was shivering from the cold air trapped in the room, but I noticed it only helped me relax faster.

There were still so many things in my head, a permanent buzz plaguing my brain. I weary and troubled, but I had no place to go. I glanced up at the window, the stars barely showing, and a tear fell down my face. I missed my grandmother and her soothing words, the way she waited for me every night and reassuring me that I would never be alone. As I felt my consciousness slip away, I wished for one thing; to not be alone anymore.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OK so here is chapter 2. I had fun writing it and I can’t wait to do the next one, where you will get even MORE vic stuff. and blushing of course.

LOve you babes and have a wonderful day

@fuckim-so-gay

[atlafan]

Take it Slow - Part Fifty-Seven

a/n: okay this is my first shot at a harry:y/n fic, and it will be multiple parts. y/n had a bad experience with an ex over a year ago, and finally accepts her coworker and good friend Niall’s invitation to go on a blind date with his friend Harry.

Warnings: Smut and Fluff.

Masterpost (all previous parts can be found in the masterpost)

As promised, Wednesday after work, you and Harry went to the tattoo parlor so you could get your nose pierced. You picked out a white gold stud, and picked out a few hoops you’d want to interchange with once you could.

“This one is so cool, it has diamonds on it. It could be for like special occasions.”

Harry couldn’t wait to see you with the hoop once it was time. He was already parched just thinking about it. You grabbed some thinner hoops for work as well. He watches you look over the naval piercings. He points to a few he likes and you grab one of them. Your name gets called and you go to sit in the chair.

“Which side?”

“Left, please.”

“And you’re doing this so you can have a hoop later, right?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, so I’ll do it a little lower down. Now, don’t twist this like you would an ear piercing. You need to let this be so it can heal properly.”

“Okay.” You reach out for Harry’s hand as the man cleans up your nose. You close your eyes, and Harry almost thinks to take your picture because he think you look so cute.

“Okay, here we go.”

You grit your teeth and white knuckle Harry’s hand. He places his other hand on your shoulder.

“Son of a bitch!” You yelp as the needle goes into your nose.

“Almost done.” The man reassures you.

Your nostril felt numb, but you were happy with it when he showed it to you in the mirror.

“Looks great, love.”

“Alright, Harry, you ready?”

“Yup.” He hands him a piece of paper from his pocket. “I’d like that on my forearm, where there’s space.”

Harry sits down in a chair as the man cleans up his arm. You sit next him.

“What are you getting?”

Before Harry can answer, the man puts a piece of paper over where Harry wants it and peels it back. You see a very small, very detailed sunflower.

“A sunflower, for my sunflower.” He winks at you.

“Oh, Harry…are you sure?”

“Positive. Will yeh hold my hand?” He smiles.

“Don’t make fun of me.” You pout. “It really hurt.”

“I know baby.” He puts his hand out to you as the man gets to work. You’re amazed that Harry doesn’t even flinch, but he had so many he could hardly feel it anymore.

Thirty or so minutes later it was done. You take a picture of it for him before the man bandages it up. You each pay separately for your things and head out.

“So my nose really looks good?”

“Yup, can’t wait to see the hoop in it though.”

“Six to eight weeks.” You smile. “I can’t believe you got my favorite flower tattooed on you, that was so sweet.”

“S’not weird?”

“Not at all! It’s so special, like, something for the two of us.” He takes your hand in his and kisses it.

//

Harry had confirmed your double date with Rachel and Mariah. The four of you agreed on a trivia night at a local bar. You all meet there Friday night after work. It was a little weird for Harry to be hanging out with someone outside of work, but he got on with Mariah pretty well, so it wasn’t totally awkward.

You and Rachel told stories from college, and Mariah talked about getting into photography. Rachel explains why she wanted to be a high school art teacher.

“I just think kids that age lose a lot of the fun in their lives. Art is important at any age, but when they’re getting ready to go to college, I wanna help them destress with my classes.”

“That’s so cool.” Mariah says and Rachel blushes.

“Mariah, what was it like when you and Harry first met?” You were a tad tipsy.

“Oh god, I was terrified of him.” She laughs and his jaw drops. “But then when he shook my hand and I saw the bright pink color on his nails, I knew wasn’t so scary.” She giggles. “I’ll never forget, after the first two weeks, he comes over to me and he says, ‘I think you’re the only person here other than myself that isn’t a blithering idiot’.” Everyone at the table laughs at her impression of him. It was pretty good.

“I was right though.”

“Very true. God, it’s so annoying when someone else tries to set up a shot for you, isn’t it? Like hello, I have a vision.”

“Exactly! If it was as easy as just snappin’ away, anyone would do it.”

“So was everyone scared of Harry?” Rachel asks.

“I think they were mostly intimidated. Everyone talks to each other and gets together, but H always stuck to himself.”

“Not the type of people I wanted to be chummy with.” He has a disgusted look on his face, thinking of Mykenzie. “I quite like Isaac though, he’s been a good addition.”

“Love Isaac, he always gets us everything we need.”

“He’s always so nice when I come to visit.” You say.

“He’s got a huge crush on Harry.” Mariah giggles.

“Stop it.” Harry says groaning.

“You know he does.”

“Thought he just thought I was cute or somethin’. Didn’t think it was a crush.”

“Well, I’ve never asked him personally, so he could easily just be attracted to you. I’ve heard him talk about it with Julia and Dana.” The sound of Julia’s name makes you want to vomit.

“Jesus, Harry, does everyone at your work have a thing for you?” Rachel asks.

“Everyone except this one.” He winks and nods towards Mariah, making both girls giggle.

Trivia starts and you all pick a stupid team name. You and Rachel were best at coming up with answers. You both knew a lot about pop culture, and luckily there weren’t too many other categories.

“How the fuck did yeh know that?” Was something Harry said quite a bit, and you both just shrugged your shoulders.

“Which Kardashian married an NBA player after dating for thirty days?” The emcee asks.

“Oh that was Khloe.” You tell Rachel to write down. Harry’s jaw drops. “What?”

“You’re obsessed with reality television!”

“Not true! I used to watch Keeping Up when I was in college. It was night to have on in the background when I’d do homework. It’s not a show you have to pay attention to.”

“What was the name of season twenty Bachelor?”

“Ben Higgins.” You, Rachel, and Mariah all say at the same time.

“Jesus Christ.”

“You watch the Bachelor?” Rachel asks her.

“Never miss an episode. You watch?”

“Yeah, we should get together to watch some time.”

“I’d like that.” They smile at each other. You put your hand on Harry’s leg and give it a little squeeze.

“What did Leonardo DiCaprio text back to Jennifer Lopez after James Corden texted him from her phone back in 2016?”

“Who the fuck would know-“

“You mean tonight boo boo? Club wise?” You say as Rachel nods and writes it down. You look at Harry whose mouth was hanging wide open. “Do you not watch carpool karaoke ever?”

“Can’t say I do, love.”

“You’re missing out.” You giggle.

“Do you still have that picture of Leo with that quote over his like serious face and it’s in black and white?”

“I do! It’s in a drawer in my office. Makes me laugh when I look at it.”

You were quirky, and Harry rarely got to see these little things come out. He liked it, a lot. You were sort of nerdy in your own right and he thought it was insanely cute.

Your group came in third place, earning you each a coupon for a free app the next time you came to the bar. You all say goodnight, and confirm what time with Rachel you should be over tomorrow to get ready.

//

Your hair was up in messy bun and you had sweats on before you left for Sarah and Rachel’s. You bring your large overnight bag out to the front hall, and go up to the loft to say goodbye to Harry.

“Any plans tonight, baby?”

“Yeah, Niall’s comin’ over. Think we’re goin’ to play Madden.”

“Oh great!”

“That’s what you’re wearin’ for your big night out?”

“God no, I’m getting ready with them. Like old times. We pregame a little while doing each other’s hair and make up. We decide on outfits, all that girly stuff.”

“So I don’t even get to see what you’re wearin’ out before you go?” He pouts and puts his hands on your hips as you stand between his legs.

“’Fraid not.” You lean in and kiss his forehead. “I’ll send you a pic though.” You kiss him on the lips. “Have fun with Niall.”

“Have fun with the girls.”

He watches you descend down the stairs. He was very curious to know what you might be wearing. He hoped it wasn’t too sexy since he wouldn’t be there. The thought of a bunch people looking at you didn’t sit right with him, but it was out of his control. He also hated that you wouldn’t be coming back to him tonight. He wanted your drunk cuddles, they were the best.

You drive to Rachel and Sarah’s and hug Sarah and wish her a happy birthday. You all start drinking and get ready. You each take turns posting to your Instagram stories. Giggles and music in the background.

Niall comes over to see Harry, and they both get set up on the sofa.

“How was your date last night?” Harry asks.

“Made her cry tears of joy, finally gave her a key to my place.”

“Good for you mate!” Harry smiles at him. Niall checks his phone and looks at all three of your stories. “What in the fuck was that?”

“Our girls havin’ a grand ol’ time. Look.” Niall shows him Sarah’s story and sees you with your hair half done, curling iron in hand, making a kiss face as Rachel dances behind you. “Like they never stopped livin’ together.” He chuckles.

“Any idea where they’re goin’?”

“Pinz I think.”

//

“Okay, what am I wearing?” Sarah asks.

“We got you this sash that says ‘birthday bitch’ so you have to wear it.” Rachel giggles.

“Guess that means I should wear my red dress to match, huh?” She snatches it. “What did you bring, Y/N?”

“Oh, just my fav party outfit.” You grin. You take out a skin tight quarter sleeve, olive green, midi dress.

“Ohhh shiiiittt.” Rachel says. “She back in town.”

“For one night only.” You wink.

Sarah puts on a short sleeve red dress that flowed around her thighs. Rachel put on a black pencil skirt and white crop top. You all looked great. None of you wore a bra, purposefully, to just make out all of your piercings. You set up your phone to take a few pictures of the three of you. The three of you were feeling sexy, and you were ready to show Sarah a good time.

“Wait, I told Harry I’d send him a picture.”

“Better send one to Niall too.”

“Okay, line up you heteros.” Rachel says sarcastically. You both stick your tongue out at her.

“Y/N, push your boobs up, really put a show on for him.” She giggles.

“Okay, like this?” You push your boobs up and pout your lips.

“Model! Model vibes!” Sarah screams as she takes a shot of tequila.

“Okay, now turn around and look over your shoulder. Gotta show that booty.” You do as she says.

“He’s gonna kill me.” You laugh.

“Why?”

“Because not only am I not wearing a bra, but I don’t have any panties on either.”

“Well, duh, you can’t with that dress.” Sarah defends you. “Okay, my turn.”

You and Rachel snap pictures of the birthday girl. You both send the pictures to your boyfriends. You take some more silly pictures altogether.

“You know what’s crazy? This is my first birthday without Kate in years…”

“Are you upset we didn’t invite her?” Rachel asks.

“Not really.” She shrugs. “I haven’t really missed her to tell you the truth.”

“Me neither.” You admit. “I miss the old times, but I’ve been less stressed without her in my life.”

“Agreed.” Rachel says. “Uber’s here! Let’s hit it.”

//

Niall and Harry’s phones go off at the same time. They look at each other and pause their game.

“Jesus.” Harry’s eyes pop out of his head.

“Holy hell.” Niall says looking at the pictures Sarah sent him.

Harry zooms in on the pictures best he can. You looked incredible. He wanted to tear the dress right off you.

“Mate?” Harry says with his mouth hanging open.

“Yeah?”

“She’s not wearin’ any knickers…”

“Doesn’t look like Sarah’s got a bra on either.”

“Same with Y/N…why would they do that?” Harry looks at him panicked. “I mean, look, not even any knickers!” He shoves the phone his face, but Niall pushes it back.

“Do ya really want me lookin’ at her arse?”

“Right, no, I don’t. And I don’t want anyone else to either. Why would she do this t’me?” He whines.

“To remind ya how fuckin’ lucky ya are.” Niall gets up. “Come on, we better break into the liquor instead of just beer tonight.”

“Good idea.”

//

The three of you get to Pinz, and Sarah is given a free shot and drink of her choice as the bartender sees her sash and ID. You all head to the dance floor once you have your drinks. The music was good tonight, really good. You were all laughing and singing, adding more to your Instagram stories. Niall and Harry couldn’t help but keep refreshing their feeds to see what the three of you were up to.

“They’re havin’ a lot of fun…” Harry says.

“Fuck girl’s nights. We should be allowed to show up.” Niall slurs.

“Even to just roll up and have a shag in the bathroom quick, then I’d be good.”

“Exactly! S’not askin’ too much.” He sighs. “But we can’t. I was told specifically not to show up.”

“Bullshit is what it is.” Harry slurs. How much did they drink?

You go up to the bar to grab the next round of drinks. You bump into someone by accident and apologize.

“Oh, no worries…Y/N?”

“Matt?!” You cross your arms over your chest immediately.

“Hey!”

“Hi, um, how are you?”

“Good! It’s great to see you.”

“Yeah, you too. How are things with school?”

“Good, new semester. Miss working with you all.”

“We miss you too.” You walk up closer to the bar. You lower your hands and flip your hair slightly to get the bartender’s attention.

“Whatya have gorgeous?”

“Three vodka cranberries please.” You push your boobs closer together.

“Got a tab?”

“Nah.”

“Alright, that’ll be ten bucks.”

“But that’s only-“

“Know it’s your friend’s birthday over there.” He winks at you, and you put a ten dollar bill and a couple of singles down on the bar while he makes the drinks. Matt was in awe of you.

“Come here a lot?” You ask him.

“A little yeah. We came here for my birthday like you suggested, so we come out when we can. Guys! This is Y/N!” A few of his friends look at you and their faces flush, they wave hello and you wave back.

“Alright, here ya go.” You hear the bartender say.

“Thanks so much!” You say taking the drinks.

“Get off at two by the way.” You blush and smile at him. “Just a girl’s night, but thanks.” He nods in understanding.

“Well, it was good seeing you. Have fun!” Matt and the bartender watch you walk away.

Rachel and Sarah each take a drink from you. You notice a napkin stuck to yours.

“Oh god!”

“What?” They both ask.

“The bartender gave me his phone number! What should I do? Just throw it out right??”

“Toss it on the floor!” Rachel says. And you do just that. You didn’t want to risk Harry finding anything like that.

The three of you continue to dance and pop your asses to the songs the club was playing. It was a really great time. You each have another round of vodka cranberries, courtesy of Rachel. Harry hadn’t texted you more than a kissy face since you sent him the pictures. You take out your phone and send him a drunk text.

You: having fun w ni?

Harry smirks when he sees it.

Harry: mhm, having fun with the girlies?

You: so much fun!! Miss u

Harry: miss you too baby

You: ur a cutie

Harry had a dopey smile on his face and Niall starts laughing.

“Oi, what’s so fuckin’ funny?”

“You’re so gaga over her.” He shakes his head.

“S’not a bad thing.” He pouts.

“Not at all.”

The three of you laugh and sing and are actually quite annoying in the back of the uber on the way back to Rachel and Sarah’s. The three of you set up camp in the living room with air-mattresses, blankets and pillows. Sarah uses the bathroom first to wash her face and change. You sit down and your head feels heavy. You decide to FaceTime Harry, Rachel sits next to you to get in on it.

“Oh check it out, she’s FaceTimin’ me.” He says to Niall. The two had just started a movie. “Hello?”

“Hey!”

“Hi Harry!”

“Hi girls.”

“Where’s my girl?” Niall pouts.

“Birthday girl got first dibs on the bathroom.” You explain. “Whatcha up to?”

“We just started a movie, love.”

“Ohhhh, fun. We’re gonna do that too, just waiting to wash our faces.”

“How was the bar?”

“So much fun! We danced the whole time.”

“I’ll bet. Any guys try to give yeh their number?” He jokes. Your face and Rachel’s lose all color. You both look at each other and laugh nervously. “Wait, did a guy actually try to give you their number?”

“Um…just the bartender.” Harry’s eyebrows raise. “But I didn’t even realize it! He had put a napkin with our drinks and I noticed it. I threw it right on the ground!”

“Why did he give it to you though?”

“Y/N only paid ten buck for the drinks.” Sarah giggles, sitting down with them, only in a large t-shirt. “Oh, hi Niall!”

“Hey baby!”

“You only had to pay ten dollars for three drinks?”

“Mhm.” Your face grows red. Rachel starts giggling. “Stop, you’re not helping.”

“What did you do? Why’d he discount it?”

“He said he knew it was Sarah’s birthday.” You shrug. You burst out laughing. “And I may have pushed my boobs up.” The other two start laughing.

“Y/N, that’s not fu-“

“You know what, I really need to pee. You know how I am when I really need to pee, Harry. I love you, have a fun rest of your night!” You end the call and get up to use the bathroom.

Harry pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

“You cannot get mad at her, mate.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s drunk, clearly. She doesn’t know what she’s sayin’.”

“She purposefully showed off to get a discounted drinks!”

“Like you’ve never done the same thing.”

“Not while I was datin’ someone…”

“Oh Harry.” Niall shakes his head. “Please don’t make this a big deal. If I was a woman that looked like her, like any of ‘em, I’d do the same thing. Relationship or not. Don’t spoil her fun.”

“M’not.” He sighs. “You wouldn’t be mad if Sarah told you somethin’ like that.”

“It’s her birthday, she can do whatever she wants.” He shrugs.

Niall and Harry pass out on the couch, and they both wake up around three in the morning. Niall leaves and goes back home across the street while Harry sleeps in his bed alone. He imagines how lonely it must’ve been for you while he was away. He sleeps in the middle of the bed so it doesn’t feel so large without you.

//

You and the girls stay up until nearly five in the morning. You watch old movies and reminisce on your days in school together. You all pass out snuggled up together like old times. Harry woke up around eleven and you still weren’t home. No texts or anything from you. He sighs, and gets up to make some coffee. Just as he’s walking out to the kitchen, only in his boxers, he here’s your footsteps. He stands leaning against the wall of the outside of the kitchen, arms crossed waiting for you to enter.

Your hair was up in a messy bun, your sweat pants were hanging low on your hips, your dress from last night was rolled up to look like a shirt, and you had your sunglasses on. You drop your bag once you get into the living area, and you jump when you see Harry.

“Christ.” You say, pulling your sunglasses up on the top of your head.

“Fun night?”

“Mhm.” He starts chuckling. “What?”

“What are you wearin’?”

“I woke up sweaty and didn’t wanna wear my shirt home, so I put this back on, and these are your sweatpants, so they’re baggy, and I know I look ridiculous okay?” You walk towards him and go into the kitchen. He follows you. “Need coffee.” You go over to the Keurig.

“Do you remember FaceTimin’ me last night?” He asks with his arms still crossed. Yes.

“Vaguely.” You press the button on the machine after putting your favorite mug underneath.

“Do yeh remember sending me those pictures at the beginning of the night?”

“Course I do.” You turn to look at him. “I looked like a fucking stunner.” He looks down and sees your pebbling nipples through the top of your dress. You cross your arms over yourself.

“So happy everyone got to see your nips last night.”

“No one saw anything. It was dark in the club.”

“You didn’t have any knickers on.”

“And how would you know that? Easily could’ve been wearing a thong.”

“Were you?”

“No.” He lets out an exasperated sigh. “You can’t wear underwear with this dress, it shows everything.”

“Why would you wear it then?”

“Because I felt like it.” The coffee finishes pouring. You go over to the fridge and grab your creamer, and pour a little in. You bring the mug to your lips and take a small sip. You sigh happily. Harry begins making his own coffee. “Did you and Niall have fun?”

“Yes.” He narrows his eyes at you.

“What?”

“Nothin’.” He takes a sip of his black coffee. “Yeh hungover?”

“No, stomach just feels gross. We drank vodka cranberries all night. Way too much sugar.”

“Need breakie?”

“No.” You giggle. “Thanks, we ate. We had some hash-browns and cheesy eggs, that’s why I’m just getting back now.” You finish up your coffee and put your mug in the sink. You yawn and stretch. “I feel like I need to sleep for like ten years.”

You leave the kitchen and start taking your clothes off as you make your way to the bedroom. You were desperate a shower. But Harry was more desperate for you. You feel him wrap his arms around you from behind. You had only taken your top off.

“You’re still not wearin’ knickers.” He says into your ear.

“Nope.” You press back against him, and you feel him growing hard.

“I missed you last night.” He whispers while nipping at your earlobe. You turn around and wrap your arms around his neck, pressing your bare chest to his.

“And I bet you missed more seeing me dressed like that?” Your nose brushes against his as he nods. “My poor baby.” You rest your chin on his shoulder as you hug him closer to you. “Let me take a shower, and then I promise I’ll love on you all day.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” You kiss him on the cheek and let go of him.

“I can’t shower with you?” He pouts.

“I need to, like, shave and stuff. Just ten minutes, get cozy and wait for me on the bed, okay?”

“Alright.” He sighs like you’ve denied him of the world, and gets on the bed.

You do your thing in the bathroom. You don’t need to wash your hair, so that saves a good chunk of time. Your stomach still feels like shit, but you know it’ll pass. You dry off completely and moisturize your freshly shaven legs. Usually you’re wrapped in a towel, have your robe on, or even have pj’s on after you shower. You and the girls were introduced to tik tok last night, and you kind of want to try the new challenge going around. You just hoped Harry kept his boxers on.

You grab your phone and start the video, showing the audience that you’ve dropped your towel. You open the bathroom door slowly. Harry had an arm behind his head, and the other hand was scrolling through his phone. You giggle as you open the door the rest of the way.

“Hey baby?” He looks over at you, furrowing his brows while he smiles.

“What are you doin’?” He reaches his hands out to you.

“Air drying.”

He gets up off the bed and walks towards you, picking you up, you stop your video and laugh hysterically. He puts you down on the bed, and wonders what’s so funny.

“Were you recordin’ me?”

“I won’t post it if you don’t want me to since you’re like naked.”

“Post it where?”

“Tik tok…”

“Jesus, how old are you?” He chuckles. “Dana and Julia are on that app all the time.”

“It’s actually a lot of fun. The girls and I all downloaded it last night. There’s this challenge going around for couples, so I thought I’d give it a try. Look, watch your face.” You play the video back for him and you both start laughing. “But I won’t post it if you don’t want me to.”

“S’fine, I don’t really care.” He shrugs.

You post the video and add all the hashtags, then put your phone on the night table. You turn over and rest your head on his chest. You drape your leg over his, and he pulls your thigh up closer. He rubs his hand back and forth.

“Ohh, nice and smooth.” He coos. “Not that I really care if you’re hairy.”

“So if I just stopped shaving my legs, you wouldn’t care?” You raise an eyebrow.

“You said it’s for your own comfort right? Do what yeh want. It doesn’t bother me, hair is natural.”

“How progressive of you.” You say facetiously. He looks down at you as he continues to stroke your leg.

Your hand goes up into his hair and he leans in to lightly kiss you. You kiss him back, and you both sink into it. Your mouth opens for him and his tongue slides in tasting you until your tongue meets his. You both let out soft moans. One of his hands is cupping the back of your head, the other leaves your thigh and moves up to your breast, kneading it.

You pull him on top of you, and you feel his hard cock press against your hip, as your kiss deepens even more. It wasn’t often the two of you just made out. You always really liked kissing, to have someone’s lips on yours. Harry had soft lips, always. He was good at pressing them hard against yours, always making yours puffy and swollen after. You loved the shade of his lips too, especially after kissing. They would become this raspberry color. It made you want to bite onto them even more.

Subconsciously that’s what you do. You bite his bottom lip and suck it into your mouth. He groans and grinds himself against your hip. You let go of his lip slowly, really making a show of it as you open your eyes to look up at him.

“Want you.” He says in a whisper.

“Take me.” You whisper back.

He groans again kissing you quick before tugging his boxers down his legs, and tossing them to the floor. He hovers back over you, and you put your hands on his shoulders. One of his hands reaches between your legs to make sure you’re wet. Of course you are. It doesn’t take much with him. He smirks as you spread apart for him. He lines himself up and he slowly pushes inside. You both moan at the initial contact.

Once he’s all the way in, he stays there for a moment, just savoring how your velvety walls feel around him. You tighten out of instinct, and loosen up letting him know he can move. He slowly starts to rock his hips against yours. Your head falls back against the pillow.

“Y’like that?”

“Yes.” You say with your eyes rolling back into your head.

He keeps up the same motion, just rocking in and out of you, his tip hitting your g-spot already. He picks up the pace only a little to give himself some of the friction he’s been craving, but he slows it back down for you because he knows that’s how you like it. One of his hands drops back down to rub slow, but purposeful circles on your clit.

“Ngh, Harry.” You moan softly.

One of your hands moves from his shoulder to the grasp at the hair on the nape of neck. He drops his head to the crook of your neck, kissing you softly. Your breathing was getting heavier. He could feel you starting to tighten against him in preparation for your orgasm.

“Gonna come f’me, angel?” You moan at his words, your eyes fluttering closed. “Go on, I know you can do it. Come all around my cock.” He nips at your neck, and your heels dig into the backs of his thighs.

You let out a large moan of his name, tears pricking at your eyes, and he feels you pulsate around him. He fucks you through it, not letting up on your g-spot or clit. You come really hard, and the sound in the room fills with squelching and skin slapping against skin.

“Gimme another one, come on, let’s see how many we can go for.” Your eyes pop open. You realize he still hadn’t let up on you. You start panting again.

“Harry.” You groan. It was too much. You were so sensitive.

“Don’t hold back baby, just relax. Don’t fight it.”

“Shit, shit, shit.” The way he was talking to you was sending you to another dimension. You release around him again and he groans against you, loving the way it feels.

He leans up a bit and looks down at you with a wicked grin.

“What?” You say trying to catch your breath.

“Can I hit it from the side, love?” Your eyes grow dark with lust and you nod.

He helps you turn your body with him still inside you. One of your legs going up over his shoulders, and the other staying between his own legs. He rocks into you and your back arches immediately.

“Feel good?” He smirks.

“So good.” You clutch at the blankets as he continues to rock in and out of you. “Fuck, Harry.” You grit your teeth. You reach down to rub your swollen clit.

“Jesus.” He moans watching you touch yourself.

“Harry, I…I want you back on top of me, wanna feel your weight on me, please.”

“Anything you want, angel.”

He pulls out of you only for a moment to let you adjust. Both of his eyebrows raise as he watches you flip onto your stomach. You look back at him over your shoulder.

“Go on, I’m okay. Want it this way. Just get fully on top of me. You’ve done it before.”

“Okay…but…if-“

“I promise I’ll tell if you if I’m scared.” You wiggle your butt back at him to let you know you’re getting impatient.

He uses his thumbs to spread you apart, and he lines himself up to enter you again. You feel his chest flush to your back, and he rocks into you slowly. You raise your hips slightly to slip your hand underneath yourself to rub your clit. Harry grabs your other hand with his, and you intertwine. That’s that good shit, you think to yourself. Your hands rest together by your head.

He’s getting in so deep this way, and the way he’s squeezing one of your hips just feels so good. You rub yourself a little faster, and you feel another orgasm coming on. He can feel it coming too.

“That’s it baby, come f’me again.” That was all he needed to say to make your release come. “You feel so fuckin’ good.” You pulse and vibrate around his cock. You wonder how much longer he’ll last.

You both have a pretty decent rhythm going. You push yourself back against him, and his hand moves from your hip to your ass. You squeeze tighter on the hand that’s intertwined with yours. He kisses on the back of your neck and shoulders. You arch up into him.

“I love you, Harry.” You groan.

“I love you too, so fuckin’ much. Wanna be able to look at yeh, can we do that?”

“Yes.”

He pulls out so you can flip back over. You grab back at his hand so you can continue to hold onto it. He knows you really like this. His other hand slides up your torso, feeling every inch of your smooth skin. His hand rest gently on your throat, he doesn’t even tighten around you, he just wants it there. You wrap your legs around his waist and pull him closer to you. He thrusts in deep and stay there so you can grind against him.

“Harry.” You moan. You were overly sensitive at this point, but he was so rock hard inside you, it felt amazing.

“C’mon baby, show me how you do it.”

You nails from your free hand dig into his bicep as your fourth release comes out in waves.

“Shit! Fuck!” You scream. You were completely drenched in sweat now. You felt like you were going to need another shower. “Harry, please.”

“Not done with yeh yet, my love.” You look up at him. What the hell was he trying to do to you? He kisses you hard as he moves his hips in circles.

“Mother of fuck!” You gasp.

“Yeah, you like it when I do that, huh?” You nod your head yes as he continues you stretching you out like this.

You’re down for the count when you feel your legs start to shake again and your back arches fully off the bed. He smirks watching your body writhe underneath him.

“Harry.” You breathe. “It’s too much.”

“Want me to come now?”

“Yes, please. Fill me up.”

He grins at you and squeezes tightly on your hand as he thrusts in and out of you. It doesn’t take much for him to come. The warmth from it all feels incredible. He pulls out once he’s done, and collapses next to you. Your mouth hangs open as you look at him. Your legs felt like jello. It was some intense love making to say the least.

“What was that all about?” You say, reaching for him. He lays his head on your chest.

“Just something maybe you’ll keep in the back of your head next time you flirt with some bartender to get free drinks.” He looks up at you with a smirk, and your jaw drops farther.

Oh he was good, really good. He was telling the truth when he said he missed you. But he didn’t want to make you come over and over just because you both were in a lovey mood. No, he wanted to teach you a lesson. To remind you he was always there, no matter what. That he was the only one worth giving the time of day to. That he was the only one that was ever going to make you feel this way. Well played Mr. Styles, well played.

[dacreshoney]

chapter 1 the new kid on the block

the days outfit | above |

chapter 1 of my new stranger things/billy Hargrove x reader series 

summary: The new kid on the block billy Hargrove, the two baddest kids in Hawkins catch each other eyes

warnings: flirting, swearing and actions some people may not agree with 

(I do not condone any behaviours)

read to find out more 

Recap: August 20th 1983 - senior Year, not like it mattered to me, I'd already missed the first week of what is said to be the most important year of my life. This was to hide the bruises and cuts my father decided to place me with this week, but If you asked Steve Harrington I missed school to avoid him after our summer hook up. Definitely not the case, but I'll let him fill his giant hair with a little more ego.you know, having the bad girl/popular persona at school always helped hiding the cuts and bruises, suppose that's why I like to play on the stereotype a little. Saves me explaining a whole lot of no good to the principle or the police; in which would do me a fat lot of no good as my dad is the chief of police. But today I needed to get myself out of bed and stop feeling sorry for myself if i ever want to get out of this shit hole, I needed an education.

7:00 am The sun started beaming through your window, the sunrise catching your eyes, you were always an early riser, but this morning you did not want to get out of bed and face the music of school. You dragged yourself out of bed and slogged your way to the bathroom to fix yourself up, you freshened your face and applied the days makeup. Nothing too dramatic but something which compliments your features, you made your way to your wardrobe where you grabbed your favourite black cropped sweater and khaki midi skirt to match with your dr marten boots and black backpack. Your hair wavy and tucked behind your eyes complimenting your chiselled face. 

You made your way downstairs in which your father was in the kitchen reading the Hawkins daily newspaper, he glared at you as you walked passed him in the Kitchen, expecting you To forget everything he had done the days previous. 

"stopped feeling sorry for yourself and actually going to make use of your life today are you" he mocked, edging for a sarcastic response 

in return you tried not to ease into his schemes and replied, turning on your heel To glare right back at him 

"don't you worry, you will still have a job by the time you get home today" you uttered with a slight smile coming from the left corner of your lip and made your way to fetch your car keys and headed out the door. You had a black alfa Romeo spider convertible, you turned the keys in the holder and headed towards heathers house, she was just as shocked to see you pick her up for school as well as Nancy and Barbara. 

“just tell me again why you decided to miss the first week of the most important year of school miss head cheerleader?” heather probed you with one arm lent onto the edge of the window, followed by Barbara who also questioned, 

“yeah, Steve has kinda been telling everyone you were trying to avoid him after he dumped you in the summer” barb giggled with the girls. 

you eyed them up in the mirror and responded with some annoyance, 

“ for a a matter of fact girls, I dumped his ass and two heather, had stuff to deal with” 

“you won't be saying that if you don't get into college Y/N”  Nancy vocalised in the back of the car

The girls then started to giggle as heather spoke, “just you wait till you see the new boy y/n,now that is someone I wouldn't mind taking my virginity and just walking away” and she followed, “ maybe someone to finally put you in your place and play you at your own game” she mocked.  You smirked and rolled your eyes at them in which you stated, 

“I would like to see the poor boy try” and laughed, the girls followed on to coo over the new kid, you really was not interested in boys after your recent fling with Steve Harrington, well you were interested in boys, but not for a relationship. You didn't mind playing them here and there, but you had decided that there would be no strings attached, your life was too crazy for anyone to handle. As you pulled up to school and found your parking spot, crowds of people entered the hallways as the bell rang. 

5 minutes late you were to class and Mr Hodge just had to call you out, you could just never catch a break with that man.

“late miss Y/N Johnson, and he followed with “nice to have you finally grace our presence” he spoke as the class looked up to find you at the doorway. You edged towards the desk and lent over in a flirtatious manner and stated

“ well hodge, just missed your face too much so of course I had to make an appearance for you” you smiled and walked to find your seat as he dismissed you, the class laughing. You saw a new face, one you hadn't seen before staring right at you smirking and licking his lips, this must be the new boy everyone has been gawking over. Billy Hargrove. 

“this seat taken?” you winked and questioned the boy, slumped on his chair legs spread in his tight denim jeans, he looked right up to you and cheekily responded with a wink right back, 

“well princess, you could sit of my lap or the chair, take your pick?” you knew he was a little heartbreaker just by his comment. You further added while taking the seat on the chair, 

“ sweetie, we've just met, don't get to big for your boots” 

“ill take my chances with you darling” he teased. 

Billy’s POV: this was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, she seemed cheeky as well, not afraid to say what's on her mind like the rest of the cat litter at this s*** hole of a school. He knew then he'd have to get to know her, maybe someone who would make his time in Hawkins a little more bearable. 

Y/N POV:

The class had begun, you started writing your notes and could feel like someone was watching your every move, every inch of your movements were being hawked on. You turned to face billy who you could feel eyeing you up and asked abruptly “so, you must be billy, explains why you feel the need to eye up anyone with a pulse, heard a little about you” 

Billy paused and smirked right at you and commented, “well all good things I hope, but judging by that I guess not sweetheart, so tell me, why has no one mentioned you?” 

“well” I turned to face him and implied, “because i’ll break your heart sweetie, should be happy you got no one telling you about who I am” . 

“already broken, besides I might break yours” he quickly responded licking his lips.

“already broken too, shame, I might of enjoyed breaking your heart Hargrove” I claimed, turning to face the front of class as mr hodge turned to face my direction and projected. “I hope you aren't distracting my class miss Y/N Johnson”

(BTW this is a sexual education class) 

“not at all sir, billy over here was a little confused about what circumsized meant, so I was giving him a little explanation” everyone in the class giggled and turned to face billy who turned bright red. never had someone pulled him up before, never mind a girl. 

“well aren't you a class A dick sweetheart”  he spoke

“ I am yes, get used to it billy boy” I smirked 

................................................

End of class came around fast, the bell had rung for break, you spent all the first few periods teasing billy, after the end of each lesson you would make sure he got an eyeful of your long legs and curves budging past his desks. 

“still not going to tell me your name princess?” he shouted as he packed up his things to leave, your turned to face him with a smile and lent over his desk whispering in his ear, 

“ it’s Y/N” and you walked off. 

................................................

Later that day was cheer practice, you were cheer captain and you had a lot of s*** to prepare for the schools champion league for the soccer and basketball team games. So you had a lot to prepare to get the team ready and geared up to support them teams and you couldn't deny it either, you looked good in a cheer uniform. 

The soccer team had finish practice and the basketball players were getting ready to enter the pitch, to your surprise you noticed the gorgeous permed blonde `come out from under the bleachers, ripped to the heavens he was in his tight khaki booty shorts. You carried on coaching your team, shooting and throwing commands for them to get their toe touches right when you heard a voice come right up to your behind and say 

“ I wouldn't mind you ordering me about princess” billy spoke as he was licking his lips bouncing the ball on the ground. 

“I'm sure you would like to be someones little bitch hargrove” you winked, the whole practice you made sure he had full view of you in your short cheer uniform, you're good at teasing. Also not to my liking Steve was on the basketball team, having a right good stare, he was not happy one bit with Elena flirting with the new kid. 

After practice billy approached you at your car, hands leaning on the roof of your car and asked, “hey sweetheart, how's about we go for a ride? you take your car home, I follow you and we go from there” 

“why do you thing I would one let you follow me home and two get into a car with you hargrove?” you joked with him, leaning on your car door. in which he answered, 

“well I know when a girl is into me so, thought id make the offer first” he smiled. 

I laughed, “confident and cocky, must think me to be like one of the other girls here then, to fall straight at your feet, think again pal” 

to your annoyance Steve interrupted with a bitter tone to his voice, “wouldn't go there mate, she will sleep with you and leave you hanging like her dirty washing” 

you both turned to face Steve, you shouted with a hint of anger in your voice, “really Steve, you are still hung up on that, come on” 

“stay clear if I was you” Steve followed

“just proving my point harrington” you laughed as you opened your car door and turned to face him. 

“and what's that huh?” Steve laughed, expecting you to come back with a s****y comment. 

“ that you are just a little boy and I don't need a little bit steve, I need a man” you claimed facing billy who was smirking the whole time, Steve waked off with his friends in a tantrum. 

“so that ride?” billy questioned 

“you still wanna be seen with me huh?” you smiled getting into your car, turning on the engine, and billy lent down to the window where you would then be face to face and said

“ you sure as hell I do”

“then lets go billy boy” 

[retphienix]

Ah. What a game this has been so far.

Now I had a million thoughts I wanted to share as this played out, lord knows I’ll forget a good portion of them but that’s the nature of my own ineptitude- plenty of things I’ll remember MILES after this post or only if prompted in a specific way and that’s just how it is.

To start- this isn’t the end of DQ11 for the blog just yet. I usually don’t dive into post game unless it feels right or people ask and I’m convinced- and more or less both happened this time. It does feel right- I have definite goals I want to tackle before saying I’m happy with what I did here- and more than one person has mentioned that the post game is worth touching so I’ll be doing that.

Also, for those unfamiliar with my long winded utter mess of a finale post style I go for- this is a lot of rambling as I try my best to touch on my thoughts on the game overall because I like to share. Feel free to just press “J” on your keyboard and skip right passed this- I know **I** struggle to focus my eyes to read long winded posts so I won’t blame you.

Also also, in order to try and spark some of those thoughts I had during this recording the first bit is gonna be me re-watching it as I wait on the video to finish processing and saying what comes up.

To start- really wish there was a save point there lol. I get that it’s a painfully easy backtrack to the save point at the start of the castle- but still, I like convenience.

The Dark Lord’s first form is a huge step up from his form before absorbing Yggdrasil and this first form fight was fun and had me itching to say some good things about it but honestly? I want to save praise for the fight that deserves it- phase 2.

PHASE TWO THOUGH!? GOD TIER RPG FIGHT.

I’ve seen better, sure, but come on, we’ve ALL seen better at all times on all things especially considering preferences coming into it- this was a 10/10 boss fight, top to bottom.

Design? Beautiful. Even continued the DQ obsession with puns with his tail being Mordragon, that is so PERFECT so ‘chef kiss’ flawless and it’s just a name. I LOVE how he looks. I LOVE how he moves around the arena changing which head you’re facing.

I love how each had different strengths to contend with (which I abruptly fucked up, don’t call me out, I’ll prove I know what was going on right here and right now-). The dragon had strong melee and breath attacks while the dark lord himself had magic aplenty.

I even utilized swapping out for the first time ever not because I hadn’t seen the value beforehand (I’ve spoken on how interesting a strategic option it was seeing as every unit has unique moves to bring to the table and it costs nothing but ATB for that unit to do).

Now, I fucked that up, but I did it purely because this is the first fight up to this point that felt right to do so. It’s the first time the tactical value of switching out to buff defenses with Hendrik outvalued ignoring that option and maintaining my ATB on whomever I would switch out. THAT FELT SO GOOD! And then I let my braindead fingers buff defense on a magic phase and you see the point. It was brilliant but I was not!

I did end up ignoring the option after a few turns not because the value wasn’t there, but because he ALSO spams stat neutralizing moves which made me reconsider focusing so heavily on buffs and instead focusing on maintaining steady heals (mostly with Hustle dance).

This fight? Beautiful. I loved every second of it. I loved adjusting my playstyle on the fly, I loved finding my footing. I just loved it.

Beyond that- the ending. I got a chuckle out of how abrupt the credits come in. It seems to wind up for an end sequence only for Erik to say “Well, let’s go home” and it cuts to the credits- but THEN the credits ARE the end sequence so it wasn’t ACTUALLY as abrupt as it seemed, but it got a laugh out of me.

Now those credit scenes? I’m a sucker for games that make you fall in love with the characters and this was an ending catering to those characters. Not too much to say outside of “I was smiling the entire time” which is true.

There were a couple moments in that sequence that I said aloud “JUST HUG HIM YOU COWARD” to various characters, like Hero and Rab, or the two dorks (hero and Gemma), etc.

And they played on the mystique of the post game’s content well enough to pull people in I’d say- certainly more than what I recall DQ8 doing with the dragon trials.

I am probably wrong, but I recall the game drawing next to no attention to that post game content aside from a few moments in the game dragging you to the location only to not let you access it (hinting at more being there).

Anyway.

Honestly, after rambling about the video itself I feel a lot of what I wanted to say about DQ11 was said during the playthrough just fine. I rarely feel that way.

DQ11 was fun.

As a DQ fan, you can best believe I had fun.

As a stick in the mud who is disillusioned toward the game industry and doesn’t like a lot of the filth that accumulates within it- I obviously have a few negative thoughts on the game, but there really aren’t perfect games so much as perfect experiences based on how it affected you.

And I’ve voiced those annoyances plenty I think. For completion sake there are cut corners on animations that seem off when other places have a ton of attention to detail, that’s like bottom rung “I don’t actually give a shit” stuff though.

The bigger problems were Sugiyama is a horrible piece of human garbage and the game is lesser because of his influence on it. There are plenty of reasons behind that both big and small. Big- it feels gross having a human shitsack touching this game after having been so vocal for years- there are replacements at the ready and we still have his LGBT hating, war crime denying fingers handling the music? Shameful.

Small (but man did it fucking suck) being that every five minutes I was annoyed at the music in this game. It sounds Bad. And I mean both orchestral and midi, it’s not great compared to anything he made before for DQ, but the fact that it’s midi in this is EAR BLISTERING.

I’m not one to listen close to most music while playing for whatever reason- and I admit that knowing who’s responsible is half of why my ears tuned it in instead of tuning it out, but man I couldn’t help it and it sucks.

The same 3 second ear rattling loops are ALL OVER THE PLACE. Grandiose moments are cut short by bland midi tunes. MAIN STORY MOMENTS ARE LACKING MUSIC ALTOGETHER FOR SOME REASON? When the hero gets the flute and plays it for the first time it just DIDN’T MAKE A NOISE? Subsequent uses of the flute made a noise, but not the main first cutscene?

It’s a whole thing.

And don’t make me get that dirty capitalist pain in my chest over the fact the S version was released 2 months after this and includes so much content that SCREAMS “This already existed and we diced and quartered it specifically to create the illusion of ‘value’ for this release”. Disgusting, man. :/

Gameplay wise, the biggest complaint I have is so loaded and half hearted but I have to say it anyway.

DQ is good because it’s simple.

DQ can also be a little lacking because it’s simple.

This was the second most fun I’ve had playing a main series DQ game (DQIII just hits right), and it definitely has better gameplay (so my opinion is subjective) than the one I prefer to this. But it was also a bit too simple... But you can’t change that and be DQ, it’s complicated.

To just say it- other than the final boss every encounter was a bit too easy. And I know I overlevel, I know that’s the point, I know there’s a hard mode modifier- I KNOW, but the final boss was REALLY GOOD AND still not too hard, so the fact that most every other encounter did the minimum or the minimum +1 is a little tiny (just a bit) disappointing because the gameplay could have been that much better.

But. That could just be my head spinning tales and being a biased asshole especially since I’m not offering any solution here and I’m admitting it’s both “better than my favorite gameplay in the main series” and “probably can’t be made more involved without losing DQ simplicity”.

But I’d kill for some different or new systems on top of this- dual and triple techs from Chrono instead of RNG pep, bosses with more varied strategies instead of “stun 2-3 and do raid wide attack”.

A reason to care about elemental damage (both incoming and outgoing), plenty of little things that would just make the already solid as hell combat more interesting to participate in.

Story was honestly fantastic. I didn’t know how I was going to end that until I just let it come. It was. This is the best DQ story thus far, and not to limit it to that scope- this was a GOOD DAMNED STORY overall and I’ve played a fuckload of games with good stories.

Before this I was a sucker for the original trilogy’s overarching story, which is unfair because that’s 3 games and that’s an old story and it’s only “good” because it’s unprecedented. But this is just plain great.

It writes such beautiful characters- it tackles a variety of conflicts both big and small- you have Sylv and his dad, you have a possessed king declaring his daughter Jade dead and Jade knowingly betraying him without knowing he’s possessed, you have Erik giving up on life and only putting himself so deeply into this adventure as a means of escape, you have Hendrik’s loyalty being- I can’t pretend Hendrik fits in he’s fucking stupid and needs to ask questions because loyalty for the sake of loyalty isn’t interesting at all lol.

You have Rab believing the world is doomed and doing all he can with Jade up until they find you are alive. You have the INCREDIBLE story of Veronica and Serena- you have all these intensely lovable and understandable characters (and Hendrik) and the story is so much more about them than just about the dark lord and the hero.

It’s so much more about each of their conflicts and growth because all of that is HOW the hero will defeat the dark lord.

It’s just so much more... investing than any of the stories I’ve had in DQ before and strong as hell amongst stories beyond just DQ.

I loved this. It was emotional at times, it was downright depressing at times which I wouldn’t expect DQ to successfully hit, it was downright rewarding getting to know these characters and I feel fantastic having beaten this.

This game is fucking good. I finally understand why some people have told me this is their favorite DQ now. It... yeah I think it might be mine too.

I’d be much more likely to revisit DQ3 than this because it’s shorter and has a specific kind of RPG (class based with freely recruited partners instead of named party members) I find more fun to revisit, but yeah, I think I agree.

I think for main-series DQs this is it, this is my favorite. It has to be, right? It’s got so many INCREDIBLE story moments and it’s pretty and it plays great- yeah. Hell, Sylvando as a character and Serena and Veronica’s arc BY THEMSELVES convince me of that.

Still got nothing on DWM and DWM 2 on the GBC, WOOOOT! Didn’t expect this post to divert from a serious closing thoughts (despite there being a few more posts to come) topic to posting this did you?

Behold the true faces of DQ perfection.

[songwritingtipsandtricks]

To be, or not to be a songwriter transcript

Hello and welcome everyone again, to a new episode of Songwriting Tips and Tricks. My name is Kieper, and I am really excited to talk to you again today. Thank you so much for the reviews and messages you send to me in the last weeks. If you like the show so far, please consider sharing it with friends that could benefit from it and leave a review on whatever platform you are using.

In the last episode, we've been talking about songwriting while at home during the corona pandemic and a possible lockdown. This time, however, I want to focus more on what a songwriter, in fact, is. Are we modern-day poets? Are we, full-fledged musicians or are we authors? Playwrights to some degree perhaps? What do the lines that we write really mean in context?

Maybe some of you ask themselves what art they are producing. And to be honest, I ask this question most of the time. I mean from a literature point of view, we are developing plots, we are searching for rhymes and words and maybe even look for the meter. On the other hand, as musicians, we try to make the lyrics fit the melody and meter of the music that was composed by us or others, or we are trying to find a suitable melody to words we have written. So what really is a songwriter?

One could argue that songwriters are modern-day poets. But this definition is somewhat limited. Because as songwriters, we do what feels right to us, and fits the music. We do not count the meter rigidly or know about iambs, dactyls or anything else. Another thing is that most of us write about day-to-day life. This sure is something to write about, yet it means that a lot of other issues are not being touched by songs. Many songwriters, think about marketing too early and write what might attract an audience. But that is not art, is it? I mean, you could be paid to write a song about something, but the most powerful songs are those that are inspired by things that happen to you or you observe. These songs also cover things that were not in the spotlight or only had little media coverage.

So if you are an aspiring songwriter, what would you chose to do? Would you like to write songs that are empowering people and have topics and viewpoints that no one else uses, or would you like to be someone creating standard pop songs that will be lost over the centuries, decades, or years? Because it is not those that do things like the rest that stand out, but those that dare to do something different. Perhaps when you are writing your next song, try to write about something else except love. Maybe you are familiar with Emily Dickinson, who was a famous American poet from the 19th century. Her poems got published only after her death, so she never got any credit for it in her life. She wrote about her experiences, and often time her thoughts on death and the life that follows. As a woman, she was not allowed to neither vote nor did she had access to a proper education. She was not religious or spiritual in any way. And despite all this, she kept writing and kept around 2000 poems hidden in a chest in her room. She wrote about everything that inspired her, not thinking about how to market it or how to put it on Spotify. Now you might argue, alright, there was no Spotify or anything like it at that time. You're right, and to make it worse, as a woman, it was appreciated to publish anything or have a perspective on things. But poetry was her life, so she kept writing but to save the reputation of the family, she never published anything herself.

I would call this dedication to art. If you want to have an insight into some poetry of this great poet, head over to Tumblr and search the blog to this podcast, as this month is the month of Dickinson on Songwriting Tips & Tricks.  

So songwriters are poets in a way, as we write poems in a way. But as I mentioned before, we need to find original topics to write about or incorporate to stand out and not just be one more songwriter. The most natural approach is to read poetry. Really do it every day. Ranging from ancient greek or roman poetry to modern-days there is tons of poetry or writings from philosophers that might ignite a spark of some sort and get you off that beaten track. Be the one songwriter in a room at open mic nights, that has read the most poetry and consequently has songs that carry something more. You will know how poetry works and how to build tension. Don't let the music do that, it hardly ever will do the trick on its own.

Are we authors? Well, in a way yes, as songwriters try to write a coherent story with different protagonists, and various narrative approaches. If you need more insight on this, listen to the episode "Wait, who's talking' to hear more about narrative situations. But most beginner songwriters do not think about structuring their songs beforehand. They just start writing.  Which is good of course, as we need to start somewhere. But have a look at famous songs, there is a clear structure in the plot. I am not talking about the verse, chorus or bridge, but about the introduction, central part, and the closure. It bears a close resemblance to novels sometimes. But we do not have 500 pages to get to the end, instead just 3 1/2 minutes until the end, or a minute to get to the chorus. So it is essential to know what to say when. People will need to understand immediately what the story is about and what to expect, even if the theme is new to them. Still, it is essential to surprise them at any part of the song. Structure your plot before and while you are writing. Try using a mindmap or a storyboard to help you structure. Try to know that character in detail, how she moves, how she looks, what sound her snore has and so forth. Try to find inspiration in people around you. Maybe let her say a phrase that your co-worker in your sideline in a fast-food restaurant says or have hair like a person on the train. Basing story upon facts from reality is a potent mechanism to make a story relatable. You could as well chose traits of characters from your favourite film or tv-series to adapt in your songs.

Are we playwrights? Well, that is a tough question, in combination with the previous question, I would say to some degree we are, but only while writing the song. We direct when a character is to appear and what it does. Adding the music, this is a lot more relevant. We need to know, at what point what part of the story is suited best, if the music does fit at all. You might as well want to put your favourite book or film into a song. Then it is crucial to strip it down to the key-concepts to make it fit the time frame. And when I say time-frame, this is a part that authors are less concerned with. We know that we have limited time to tell our story and we know when a change in the music happens and how it sounds. So perhaps think of yourself not as a playwright but as a songwright, as you are focussed on auditive input rather than visual input. The song is our stage, and we need to know what has to happen when, why and how.

So turning over to music. Are we musicians? Well, yes, of course. This is what got us started on songwriting in the first place, wasn't it? But think about your music education, have you been taught traditionally, or did you learn most of the stuff yourself? If you know how to play your instrument, do you play other instruments as well? Do you know music theory by heart or do you need to google all the times? Did you play in a band or know about arrangement through YouTube or other sources? How solid is your music background really? This is a question that bugs me most of the time. I taught myself how to play the guitar, and I have been singing my whole life, but I always doubt my musicianship. I'm binge-watching music theory fundamentals and teach myself other instruments to close these blank spaces that a traditional education would not have left perhaps. I even bought a midi drum set to work on micro timing with apps like melodics and co. Yes, we are musicians, but at what stage of our musical journey we are is in our own hands. It is essential to learn new things every day. If you don't, you will get frustrated. So consider taking half an hour each day to learn music theory, listen to intervals, learn fancy chords and songs that use it. Listen to new music even. Dare to make your own set of rules and break it again. This is how you grow, both in music and in writing.

So next time, when you are writing a song, use a random song and try to use the chord progression or time signature, combine songs and styles, take as much input from other as you can. Because this way, your music will always be different, but still yours. Your music will be instantly more exciting and attract audiences as it incorporates a lot of genres and styles.

So now let us talk about something, I am raving about. Painting pictures with words really is in the domain of poets, but try to imagine for a second that you were an artist and you have a blank canvas in front of you. Where would you start? What colour would you use? And in the end, what picture do you see in front of your inner eye? What should this picture invoke in the mind of an audience? Pictures might tell more than a thousand words, but the right or wrong words in context could meet or destroy expectations. Try to describe as vividly as possible, shed light on detail that was previously hidden. Dare to be the Picasso that paints melting clock. Try to be irrational in the creation and later judge what you've done. Dare to take bold turns. The song is yours, and if you do not want to share it with anybody, put it in a box like Dickinson did.

So much on what we as songwriters are. Do you have another comparison or idea, that could touch the work of songwriters? Don't bother sending any feedback or opinion you have via Facebook, Instagram, Wordpress or Tumblr. I'll gladly reply and perhaps talk about this in the next episode.

If you like the program, I'd really appreciate, if you rate and review the show or episode on the platform you are listening to right now.

Thank you again for tuning in once more and staying tuned on Songwriting Tips & Tricks.

[blazehedgehog]

Why do MIDI's sound unpleasant to listen to?

I mean, they don’t have to. There are instances where MIDIs can sound kind of nice.

The original PC version of Final Fantasy VII came with a software MIDI synthesizer called the Yamaha XG50. Yamaha, of course, was a top name in the music synthesizer business and this was a very nice wavetable MIDI synthesizer. They also sold the Yamaha XG100 separately for even greater fidelity. The XG software would essentially take standard MIDIs, but allow you to define additional effects that MIDI traditionally could not support.

Final Fantasy VII’s PC MIDI soundtrack came with two versions – one for GM (General MIDI) and one for the XG. Above is the XG50, which adds effects like reverb that MIDIs normally could not have.

And it wasn’t just for Final Fantasy VII, once you installed their Yamaha XG MIDI software, all MIDIs in Windows would be routed through it, making them all sound nicer. How music sounded playing through the XG50 is what started getting me in to playing around with MIDIs and “remastering” them in FL Studio.

Really, it just sort of highlights what is wrong with MIDIs – it’s an old format. As music synthesis evolved over time, it evolved ways to insert more complex effects. Not just reverb, but flange and distortion, things like that. PC MIDis never really got that without installing something like the Yamaha XG software. But other MIDI formats on other platforms did.

Like, let’s take Final Fantasy X on the Playstation 2. A lot of that game’s soundtrack is MIDI!

But I don’t mean it’s compatible with a Windows MIDI player system. I mean it’s MIDI in the sense that it is NOT a digital recording, it is a sequence of programmed notes being played through software. Since Square-Enix can write their own player software, they added features like controllable reverb and all those other effects I just talked about. Similar things were done all the way up until the Nintendo Wii – though a game like Super Mario Galaxy uses some digital recordings of live orchestras, a number of its songs are just MIDIs.

But traditional MIDI files in Windows just don’t have access to any additional effects, or in most cases, even more robust instrument packs. They’re extremely limited as a format.

Windows MIDIs nowadays are usually played back with the default Windows soundfont. A soundfont is a collection of instrument sounds (”patches” they’re called) all collected together to fit the MIDI standard. So for example, patch 01 is always going to be piano. Patch 30 is always an overdrive guitar. Patch 80 is always an ocarina, so on and so forth. Different soundfonts will use different samples for their instruments to get different types of sound, so an ocarina in one soundfont won’t sound like an ocarina in another soundfont.

MIDIs and soundfonts and all of this is actually way more complex than this, and there’s way more history to this stuff, but consider this is a crash course.

The soundfont used in Windows is I believe based on a Roland SC55. That’s from 1991, one year after the Super NES launched. The MIDI format in general was invented in 1981. So all of this stuff is positively ancient and was never updated to support more complexity. By 1998, when the PC version of Final Fantasy VII released with its Yamaha XG50 software to spruce up MIDI playback, formats like MP3 were starting to gain traction. The advent of the CD-ROM meant that digital audio recordings were becoming more and more possible.

Quake and Half-Life had CD audio tracks burned on to the disc, but games like Jurassic Park: Trespasser embedded their digital soundtracks in to the install files. It was way less important to update the MIDI format when you could bypass it entirely with significantly higher quality music (at significantly larger file sizes, mind you, but as is always the case, game developers will fill every storage medium you give them and still ask for more).

So the MIDI format struggled to grow or evolve or anything. They pretty much are limited to only being used in music production and composition now. And while software like FL Studio can still technically save a Windows .mid file I don’t think that specific file type gets tons of use anymore. Like if I’m saving a project file in FL Studio, it’s as a .flp, not a .mid.

(That being said, very glad that resources like vgmusic.com are still up and running and that people are still posting new MIDIs to this very day – it’s a bit like how there are people still shooting videos on old camcorders for the aesthetic purposes)

Now the real interesting thing here is that very recently MIDI 2.0 was officially announced. From what I understand, it will be a significant enhancement to the MIDI protocol. Instead of relying on a user’s soundfont for instrument samples, the samples themselves can instead be embedded in to the MIDI file itself, sort of like an Impulse Tracker file back in the day. But there will be way more control and way higher fidelity everything wrapped around that, like being able to set positional audio within the notation itself – like surround sound, basically.

I think I read somewhere that one of the intended goals with MIDI 2.0 is they wanted it to sound indistinguishable from a digital recording? Which sounds wild, but it’s nice to see the format evolving, and it sounds like a lot of new features are being added for people who use MIDI for things besides music (I believe some animatronic robots use MIDI to help program and synchronize their movement).

But yeah, no, standard MIDIs are just old, that’s all. It’s a 30+ year old format that stayed exactly the way it was for almost that entire time.

[manjehaal]

Hi! Cisco for the ask

Thanks @veroocasanova!

Favorite thing about them: There are so so so many amazing things about Cisco that I could say, but what I love so much is his selfless dedication to his friends. Despite how many times he has been betrayed and let down by the people closest to him, he still turns around and offers them his help and friendship. The way he treats each Harrison Wells is very telling, but my ultimate favorite display of his pure selflessness is in season 3 concerning Caitlin and Killer Frost. 

Least favorite thing about them: First of all, I love everything about Cisco Ramon. This critique is aimed at the people who write him more recently, not at Cisco as a character. Really, because my issue is that they aren’t making him CISCO enough. They have really toned down the part of him that I love so much which I explained above. They don’t give him enough screen time but expect us to believe in his relationship that developed offscreen and his decision to get rid of his powers which I still think was completely out of nowhere. But anyway, I don’t want to start a rant though...soo...

I love Cisco Ramon. They need to give us Cisco Ramon. 

favorite line: So this line here is the moment I became Cisco Ramon trash, okay. The reason? My first ever favorite fictional character was Anakin Skywalker, and Cisco is on-screen comparing himself to that person. I relate to so many fictional characters and Anakin was a big part of my life. So knowing that Cisco relates to the same character instantly made me adore him. 

“It's like right now I'm Anakin Skywalker. I got the midi-chlorians. I've got the goods. The force is strong with me. That is something I can feel, but if I start opening breaches into other worlds, doing all this other crazy stuff Reverb was doing, then... what if this is how I become Vader?” ... “ You don't know that. That is what happened to Reverb. He learned how to use his abilities, and when he felt that, when he felt that power, he succumbed... to the dark side. “

brOTP: Cisco and Barry

OTP: Killervibe (Cisco and Caitlin)

nOTP: I’m not a huge fan of Cisco and Kamilla. I just don’t see chemistry there. 

Random Headcanon: Cisco adores cats. I mean, we have evidence with all the cat shirts and his pillowcase (I think it was a pillowcase???!). But if his apartment would allow it he would have it FULL with cats. He’s the kind of person who wouldn’t be able to resist and would have no self-control whenever he makes contact with a stray. 

Though Cisco and puppies would be amazing too. 

Unpopular opinion: I didn’t really like him as Reverb, but I LOVED him as Echo. 

Song I associate with them: A LOT. 

I have a whole playlist actually. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/48tLHB2jteS8w01901yAjH?si=rTjzDFpFRZ6YfmF2ofO3zQ

Favorite picture of them: Not this picture specifically cause I can’t find the one I want, but basically any image from this episode is perfect. He’s so smiley. 

Original post: https://mushroom-cookie-bears.tumblr.com/post/166924652731/send-me-a-character-and-ill-list-favorite-thing

[eekispyykes]

Mr Sparklepuff Feline Obituary 5.1.2020/Abridged

Mr Puffs 4-2002-  5-1-2020

by Michael Bench

Mr Puffs was an excellent friend and adventurous hiker. He loved to be outdoors. A ferocious mouser ; he did an arc'ing jump on mice and chipmunks from 2 clumps of brush away. The porch frankly stank from all his gifts. An amazing climber and very fast sprinter crossing a square acre in about 3.5sec. Some would ask why he was named as such and close friends know the whole story. A primary point was so people had a good vibe about him and would let him be. In the past two years  he had cancer of the face that spread. He had been treated with surgery to remove the tumor. At a shade over 18yo, he set to rest as every night he was shivvering in normal home temp and couldn't keep weight on; refusing to leave the couch; hating being put in pet clothes/infant flannel.

2017-2020 were tough years for him adjusting to a new stray friend we “adopted” from the wild. They were startingn to get along. It played into the stress.I feel bad about this. it split us up somewhat.  My younger cat was more forceful about claiming me. It weighs on me; Frankly it seemed like a few rape attempts also that difficulted the social cue of ‘normal cat spooning”.. Mr Puffs was able to get out on a van ride of Fogelsville,PA about three months ago. He also gave some love to his plush hedgehog toy. He gave it a consensual drilling every once a while or daily.

What you should know about Mr Puffs:

:My grilling deputy  and trout inspector

:Loved to play the mysterious thing under blanket or newspaper game

:Love to play the mysterious tapping fingers under the many basement stairs game

:Fine taste in music and loved being my karaoke fan. Love you buddy. Not very keen on Tv after Keenan Michael Keys left Animal  Planet's morning show.

:Enjoyed less usual faire like potatoes and adored bbq chicken pizza; he could handle medium wings. He WAS WARNED each time and kept him away from it till it was obvious he wanted it. Honey ham, turkey, .. and salami**. Mind you, he has never been overweight and was complimented by his first vet for muscle tone. It's his compliment to own.

:Enjoyed jumping apartment building gaps while in town: we had to rough it for a month in a storage facility after an unexpected eviction.. which we then would go for walks 1a-3a to get his exercise and water the landscape mulch at 11th street Fred Meyers. There's a little marsh back behind the store that became our little daytime haven.

:His Hiking career started in Eugene, OR. We would go night walking ,w/o a leash and whenever someone was coming he would detour off the sidewalk and into the nearest house’s bushes.. This was optimal because he would get back on the lit sidewalk and learn to keep course. This advanced to 5-7 mile hikes from U Oregon campus to Hendrix park and back. One trip such trip he was panting so he didn’t really want to run away anywhere or into traffic fortunately.. The sun had come out of the cloud cover and heated things up above the usual. We stopped at an icecream place on the way back on the edge of campus: Agate and 19th. Even though he was tired, he was a smart and collected guy. so he slinked to the back of the shop till I came back out..It was like escorting the supermodel of manly cats.  It was at this time I knew leashes or more distant locations were necessary.  

:While we were driving back to Pennsylvania, he decided to have a playfrenzy on the dashboard while I was in heavy traffic nearabouts of Nebraska/Rushmore on the interstate.

:Short story : Since he now had room in the yard to runaround Puffs tested his speed and momentum to get up tree trunks. Our front yard had a medium sized maple oak something. Mr Puffs ran up the tree and alarmed a family of nesting doves. The doves and Mr Puffs seemed to flee the tree foilage each in horizontal directions at about 8ft off the ground.  

:Other than a shoulder injury from a fight of somesort, he was very durable. His parent's owners had coined him 'Jaco” after the famous bass player.. A green -eyed Russian Blue tuxedo, angular white paws.  with little white hairs across his coat. At times I also referred to him as “Cactus Jack”. Massive front incisors like a miniature sabertooth. I pitied the rabbits who he caught which were still squealing.

:Another Short Story. I coaxed my mom to live a little and put that front addition on the house she always wanted. She got an enclosed porch. Theres an open porch on the back of the house also. When the framing was done.. I went out to the backyard to enjoy the night sky, I heard nothing. When I turned around I had two bright eyes scaring me  to the ground. From 9ft, the top of the roof porch he looked at me Apparently Puffs had climbed the 8ft of framing from the work table, crossed the rafters, crossed the whole house roof and decided to voyeur me on the other side of the house. I was very glad he didn't tempt the electric lines whose pole he had tried to climb other days.Stressing moments on me as well.

:Puffs became a pro at taking baths since 2017, and getting nails trimmed at the same time. The trim helped him jump (getting pad purchase)  and helped the furniture too.

:Another quick story. Cats can swim. I took him to go swimming in the creek and that went pretty good the first time. (Must always be on leash. And probably use partially inflated swimmy muscle). He was really comfortable in the water if it was shallow(2.5ft). The problem with the creek is its near a road so don't be near roads even with the leash on.  He was swimming a good crawl in about 4ft.  A fish mustve brushed his foot because he panicked and started jumping out of the water like a bass on a hook. I literally had to swing him in the air (with leash) and onto the shore into some leaves and grass. There's some fault in not being close enough to him to pick him up out of the water directly. He swam pretty good and at range.  To ease that trauma.. (nearly heart attack probably; that went sour) , I let him calm down. At a much shallower area no taller than his knees(5-6”) I set him into the stream without much resentment and just petted him to get him calm.  (He wasn't a lap cat before that either.) At that point the swimming  got shuttered for downhill walks and other casual stuff.

: On similar climbing points.. even till about 2015, he liked to jump the gap from the upright piano top (4ft) to the top of the entertainment center (7.5 ft) plus the hallway gap of  3.5 ft and he was really solid at it. Would stay up there for a while and then jump down onto the sofa table (3 ft tall).. He was always calculating a new feat. When that one item stopped being in his wheelhouse it was clear he was getting bothered/ annoyed and the stress of a cat territory issue wore him down.

If you were to be near him, you'd end up watching him. This statue of a male cat with really long tail. Not lemur-long but really long.. a gray panther. And, maybe you'd try to pet him since he looked inviting. Yet, you wouldn't get much petting done. He'd probably tolerate two brushes and then give your hand a carving with his claws, hiss at you and find a new place to observe the room,  That said, he would cruise the neighborhood looking which apartment I might've visited, slink in and check out how other people decorated. A very dignified personality, sometimes to the point of indignant.  He was  a cat you'd want to clone over and over because he was just that cool on himself. Cloning him was on the slate too until those type of businesses were closed with political force.. He actually inspired a jazz song  (currently in midi form) that I’ve yet to record. I was tore up about his first cancer surgery so I started writing. Hope that will be out soon enuff. I hope this can help you appreciate Mr Puffs. He was buried at a spot he chose. It was nearby a set of brush he would choose to hide in hours near the middle of  hikes.

.. he loved to hide.  Back in Oregon I'd take him  in the van with my mentally handicapped clients. He'd be set loose to get his relaxation in. By the time it was time to leave. he wanted to stay. He hid in bushes and culverts. I learned very quickly that such outings had to be local or I'd be driving back hours to go get him at night or worse. Once I knew that, we'd take rides on the bus to the edges of the bus line and just chill on hills overlooking boating lakes. Fern Ridge Reservoir had a nice pine overlook off Territorial hwy.  He really enjoyed outings and variety. Maybe thats what kept him interested as a matter of longevity. I want to end on that.  He showed me lessons in best intentions and good in the bad.. and murdering all my Egyptian spiny mice within hours of acquiring them and their replacements. Its not like I wouldn't have gotten him a feeder mouse but there were plenty stinking up the walkway as it was. I'm blessed to have spent that month sheltered in a renta-shed with him. It seems the alternative .. without having enough for a pet deposit elsewhere (that moment) was to lower my standards for the landlords daughter and by whatever 'influence' she had. 'evicted us for periodic renovations”. So, eventually we chose instead to leave and he got a brims of fieldmice, chipmunks and forest romping. I hope that was an appreciated choice. He liked city life too. Should you choose to tribute to Mr Puffs, I welcome it. He’d be the type of cat Dos Equis beer would be looking for if he actually drank it.

Hope you’re feeling better, Puffs; BFF 

[littlemonstersau-blog]

The Feels Awaken, Interlude 2: One Rogue Thought

Written by @jkl-fff

PART I - PART II [Interlude] - PART III - PART IV [Interlude] (you are here) - PART V [FINAL]

——————————————————————————————–

Bill, putting DVD back in case: Well, now you’ve seen ‘em all (until they finish the new ones, of which only Renegade 6 will be stupendous, and that largely thanks to everyone dying—much pathos by meatbag standards, much comedy by mine). So … Whaddya think, Fordsy?

Ford, taking in a deep breath: I think … I think I’m personally going to make a working lasercutlass (with SCIENCE!), drive to wherever the hell George Dufas lives—

Bill, helpfully: That would be Skyjogger Ranch, not too far north of San Francisco. I know, because I know lots of things.

Ford: Alright then, I’m going to drive to Skyjogger Ranch, and then I’M GONNA SHOVE MY HOMEMADE LASERCUTLASS RIGHT UP HIS SCRIPT-SPEWING ASS AND ACTIVATE IT!

Stan, startling awake in easy chair: Wha?! Huh?!

Ford: THAT WAS THE BIGGEST WRECK OF TRAINS THAT WERE LOADED WITH ASS-SHIT THAT I’VE EVER SEEN! [rises to his feet, stamps around, gestures emphatically] AND I’VE BEEN TO SEVERAL DIMENSIONS WITH EXTREMELY SHODDY RAILWAY INFRASTRUCTURES AND BOOMING, FERTILIZER-BASED ECONOMIES! MEANING SEVERAL DIMENSIONS WITH FREQUENT AND NOTABLE WRECKS OF ASS-SHIT-LOADED TRAINS!

Stan, rubbing eyes: Yeah, we picked up on your meanin’ there. [yawns, scratches self] What time’s it, anyway?

Bill, grinning at this development: What’d you think of the acting?

Ford: WOODEN! FLAT! LIFELESS! LIKE THIS FLOOR!

Bill: All George Dufas’s fault. Those were all highly acclaimed, highly trained actors, and highly gifted actors. He insisted as Director they act like they didn’t know how to. Like I said before.

Ford: WHAT?! WHY?! RRRAAARRRGHGHGH!

Stan, yawning: Moses, it’s past midnight already …

Bill, egging it on: Heh. And the depiction of non-human meatbags?

Ford: MOSTLY INFURIATINGLY RACIST CARICATURES OF HUMAN MEATBAG CULTURES—er, “human cultures”, I meant just “human cultures”—AND BLANDLY UNIMAGINATIVE OR INSUFFERABLY ANNOYING (LIKE JERKJERK)!

Stan, heaving himself upright: Hey, Sixer?

Bill: Hehehe! George Dufas’s influence again. And the use of the Force? The lasercutlass duels?

Ford: THE FIRST WAS SO UNDERUTILIZED AS TO BE FUCKING POINTLESS, THE OTHER SO OVERDONE AS TO BE SHITTING BORING! THEY MADE SWORDFIGHTING WITH LASERS BECOME BORING! HOW?! WHY?!

Stan: Sixer?

Bill: Hahaha! Still George Dufas! And the script?

Ford: THE SCRIPT?! WHAT SCRIPT?! THAT WAS USED, BARGAIN-PRICED TOILET PAPER! RRRAAARRRGHGHGH!

Stan: Sixer!

Ford: WHAT?! … Er, sorry. What?

Stan: It’s past midnight. Meanin’ it’s bedtime. You comin’ or what?

Ford: Gah! I couldn’t possibly sleep now! I’m too enraged!

Stan, shrugging: Well, I am. So … keep the nerd-ragin’ at, y’know, an “indoor voice” level of volume. ‘kay? [kisses him goodnight, shuffles out]

Ford, momentarily taken aback: Um … Where was I?

Bill, helpfully: The script. Which was also George Dufas’s fault. Basically, the whole prequel trilogy is a case study of what happens if you give a man who had one or two good ideas in the past— when there was an entire team of more talented people to shoot down his one or two thousand bad ideas and sculpt the few good ones— complete creative control of a project.

Ford, remembering how disgusted he is: No, it’s a case study of what happens if a tornado picks up a barn full of diarrhetic animals— A LITERAL SHITSTORM—hits a warehouse of blank paper, then some fuckwattle decides to gather up the pages and use it as a script! It made exactly 0.0 sense as a story! According to SCIENCE! itself there wasn’t even a measurable amount of sense made in this story! And, believe me, I understand that writing isn’t easy, but they had … How long exactly to work on the scripts?

Bill, promptly: Almost exactly16 years to work on the first one, then almost exactly 3 years for the second one, and another 3 for the third.

Ford, trembling with self-control: S-sssixteen years for one script? And that mmmakes … t-t-twenty-two years total to come up with … with that p-pile of hot, fffffuck-juggling shhhhhhhhhhhit … [loses it, explodes] OH MY VARIOUS ENTITIES OF COSMIC POWER FOR WHOM THE TERM “GODS” COULD REASONABLY BE USED AS A SHORTHAND, EVEN IF IT IS SOMEWHAT MISLEADING!

Stan, from the other room: Indoor voice!

Ford, stomping around: WE COULD COME UP WITH A BETTER PLOTLINE FOR A PREQUEL TRILOGY IN ONE NIGHT THAN THAT MOVING BAG OF NEGATIVE FUCKGUZZLE DID IN TWENTY-FUCKING-TWO FUCKING YEARS! AND Y’KNOW WHAT?! [takes Bill by the shoulders] WE WILL, GODSDAMNIT!

Bill, disbelieving: Really? You wanna do something with me?

Ford: AND IT’LL HAVE COMPELLING CHARACTER ARCS, AND SUBTLY DEEP WORLDBUILDING FOR THE GALAXY, AND THE FORCE’LL BE SHOWN—

Stan, from other room: IF YOU DON’T KEEP IT DOWN, STANFORD PINES, I’LL COME OUT THERE AND SHOW YOU MY FORCE RIGHT UPSIDE YOUR FOOL HEAD!

Bill, excited: Mabel left a bunch of … of arts and crafts stuff upstairs. We can use those for this! I’ll just … just run and get them! Hang on! [scampers up the stairs]

Ford, suddenly alone: … wait a minute … [stops short, looks around deserted room) What the freeze-dried hell am I doing?

Stan, grouching back in: What you’re doin’ is bein’ a pain in my ass—a loud pain in my ass!

Ford, almost panicking: No, I’m … about to write better plots for the prequels? With Cipher? I think?

Stan: And? What’s the problem?

Ford: And I don’t … I can’t trust him! That is the problem!

Stan: You can’t trust him to help write what is essentially gonna be a Cosmos Conflicts fanfic? [rolls eyes] C’mon, Sixer, it’s not like he could write anything worse than what we just watched. You were just goin’ on about that.

Ford, faltering: No, I mean, he’s still planning to takeover! No one can trust him, so what am I—

Stan: Just be the scribe yourself; that way, you maintain creative control of the fanfic and he can’t take it over.

Ford: I mean the planet! Er, the galaxy! Gah, no, the dimen—

Stan, deadpan: Oh, yeah, that’s a real dilemma right there. Can’t have Farth Bill takin’ over that nerdlinger galaxy, or we’ll hafta write a whole ‘nother generation of whiney Skyjoggers masterin’ the Force to confront him.

Ford, irritated: Damn it, Stanly, you know what I’m talking about!

Stan, rubbing eyes: Look, I’m gonna share some Old Wisdom™ I learned as a professional conman with you. And which, in fact, you yourself told me rather recently. [lays hands on brother’s shoulders, looks him in the eyes] You don’t hafta trust someone to work with ‘em, ya dumbass. And don’t hafta trust ‘em to be nice to ‘em, neither, ya dumbass. Or even to like ‘em, ya dumbass. You can do all that, while still not trustin’ ‘em … ya dumbass.

Ford, blinking owlishly: … What? I told you that? But—

Stan, slowly: Listen, I didn’t trust Bill at the start of the summer, but I still talked to him. Still interacted with him and was nice … ish and such. And only a week after? I had him workin’ for me. [gestures dismissively] Yeah, he caused some trouble at the start, but I didn’t lock him up ‘cause of it. I was patient with him, I showed him I’d work with him, and I showed the l’il bastard he can’t beat me at my own game— I always got an eye on him, so he can’t get anything major past me. And now? He’s just like any other employee I’ve ever had (except for Soos) … Slacks off and shoplifts about the same amount, too.

Ford: … And you’re bragging about that?

Stan, smugly: Heh. Yep. Think about it, Sixer. For him, that’s huge progress.

Ford, reluctantly: I guess, but—

Stan: Listen, you don’t hafta trust Bill. Okay? You know already he’s up to something (or so you’re convinced, anyway), so he can’t trick you. You’ll be suspicious of absolutely everything, so he won’t be able to get something past you in the middle of, say, writin’ your stupid, nerd fanfic. Or talkin’ ‘bout an anomaly. Or just havin’ a civil conversation every now and then. Okay? This gettin’ through that metal plate in your skull? I mean, it should be able to since—not to put too fine a point on it—you suggested it to me not too long ago.

Ford: I don’t … need … to trust Cipher … to be nice to him …

Stan: Exactly. And—Moses on a moped!—his name is Bill. [turns, goes to leave, pauses in doorway] And for fffffuck’s sake, keep it down while you two do whatever. Some of us are tryin’ to actually sleep.

Ford, standing lost in thought: … can’t believe it … so simple … really have been a silly, old fool not to see it all along …

Bill, returning: Sorry that took so long. I got buried in an avalanche of Mabel’s spare sweaters while digging this stuff out. [unloads an armload onto the table, pulls up paper and pencil] Where do we start, Fordsy?

Ford, a little overwhelmed: Um … honestly, I’m not sure …

Bill: Hmm … Well, what’re the big problems that gotta be fixed? Let’s start with that. What made you mad in the movie?

Ford, after only a split second of thought: Midi-chlorians firstly. Those go, because the Force is a mystical power-energy thing— damn it all!—and not some sorta bacterial infection!

Bill, making a note: Good. Good. How about that Rule of Two? Speaking as a megalomaniac, I can say it’s stupid to only have one agent working for you. You’d get nothing done!

Ford: Um …

Bill: What? Oh, Yog-Sothoth’s sixth soleus, that was a joke.

Ford, deciding to believe that: R-right. Um … None of that immaculate conception or prophecy crap, either. That’s gone. Came out of nowhere, served no purpose, we don’t need it.

Bill, making a note: What, you don’t like the idea of Space Jesus? How about rewriting the romance so that it doesn’t just … happen, y’know? So that there actually is a romance, and not just two straight characters who bone ‘cause they’re the opposite genders?

Ford, getting excited: Moses, yes! And rewriting Otherkin so he isn’t some whiney kid who just … just does stuff because the plot needs some action! We could do that for all of them! We could make it all as great as it deserves to be!

[hours and hours of excited fanboy collaboration transpire …]

[ferallymine]

A picture my mom sent me as part of her Daily Positive Love text prompted me to write a drabble about Mardea Lin

Author’s Note: I fucking love my mom and my dad like they’re the best people in the world I’m so lucky to have them in my life 

also ((read the tags for more stuffs))

Anyway here’s Wonderwall The Writing Stuffs

 ------

The sound of graphite scratching against thin journal paper absorbed his thoughts. Well, that and at least his senses of touch, sight, and hearing.

Midoriya scribbled in his notebook before afternoon class started. Each page of his previous journals had been about the rising heroes seen on TV. Line after line of small details and notes of how their quirks worked, their strengths, and their weaknesses. 

This one, though, was for his classmates. Midoriya wasn’t trying to undermine or take advantage of his classmates- he just wanted to study their quirks and help them out. Give them a new perspective on their fighting styles and quirks. There was one classmate left to write about before he could present his findings, though.

Lin.

Mardea Lin, the blue haired enigma. Midoriya could never get a true reading on her emotions. One minute she’d be stoic like Todoroki and the next a total memelord like Ashido. And her quirk.....energy manipulation.... Midoriya had seen it in battle and in training but couldn’t quite figure out how it worked. Maybe he wasn’t as good at analyzing as he thought.

“Hey Midi,” Mirodiya jumped, snapping him from his thoughts and back to reality. Lin was sitting at her desk beside him, “What’s on your mind? Your eyes are out in space.”

He sighed and leaned back in his seat, “Ah... Sorry. I was just, ah, writing.”

“You analyzing everyone?”

A light blush dusted Midoriya’s freckled cheeks, “Y-yeah.”

Lin beamed, “Whatcha got on me?” 

“...If I’m being honest, nothing. I don’t quite understand how your quirk works.”

“Well why didn’t you ask me?” She cocked her head to the side, “I’m more than happy to explain it.”

His eyes glowed, “Really? Please!!!”

“Yo, what’s up?” Uraraka waltzed on over, “All I heard was ‘I’m more than happy to explain’.”

“Midi doesn’t quite know how my quirk works. I’m giving him the crash course.” Lin hopped the desks and stopped at the window, pointing to a potted flower plant that had bloomed, “See this flower?” 

Midoriya and Uraraka mimicked each other’s eyebrow raise and head tilt.

“Yeah, that’s Tsu’s lily flower,” Uraraka commented.

“YOU BEST NOT BE DESTROYING OR TOYING WITH CLASSMATE’S PROPERTY THAT IS A VIOLATION OF-”

“Iida she’s not desecrating it!” Midoriya stood up to stop the rambling class rep. who also decided to join in. 

“Whoa, we’re smashing flowers? Totally not cool,” Kaminari stopped beside Uraraka.

“Whoa, Lin’s a bully now?” Kirishima leaned back in his chair, “I didn’t know you were taking after Bakugo, Lin.”

“YOU FUCKIN’ COPYING ME ENERGY DRINK?!” Bakugo only heard his name and began screaming. The other classmates heard his racket and all gathered around her.

She facepalmed, “No, I’m not a bully. I’m trying to help Midi understand my quirk. You all can listen if you would like.” 

Todoroki crossed his arms and propped himself on the wall, “Even I don’t understand your power. This could be helpful.”

“Yeah!” Mina swayed back and forth, “You’re so mysterious sometimes, Dea. Spill your trick of the trade!” 

“I don’t really care if you use my flower, it should die in a few days anyway, Ribbit,” Tsu gave a sincere smile and sat at Lin’s desk. 

“Thank you, Tsu,” Lin took a breath and started again, “My quirk is energy manipulation. Energy can be altered, redirected, reformed, etc., and I can control that.” 

Midoriya began scribbling in his notebook again, “Okay....okay...”

“You nerd,” Bakugo huffed and stood at the back of the group

Lin continued, “This lily, like all things, is made up of atoms. At a subatomic level, there’s Protons, Neutrons, and electrons. Beyond that is quarks and neutrinos, according to our modern sciences-”

“Uhhhh.....what?” Kaminari scratched his head, “You’re speaking a different language, pal.”

Jiro rolled her eyes and elbowed him, “We learned this yesterday in physics class.”

Sero raised a hand, “What’s this have to do with the lily?” 

“I’m getting to that, please bear with me,” Lin blushed, realizing she might have been rambling, “Beyond the sub-subatomic particle level, is energy.” Lin smirked, “All things are made of energy, blipping in and out of appearance at roughly 20,000 times a second.” She raised her hand over the lily and-

It disappeared in a flash of sparks and light.

“HOLY SHIT!”

“YOOOO THAT’S SICK, DUDE!”

“You...killed it...”

“YOU DESECRATED A CLASSMATE’S PROPERTY-”

Lin held out her hand, which now had a green ball of energy, silencing everyone’s screams of shock, “Energy cannot die. Only altered, reformed, redirected.” 

She laid her palm flat, then the ball stretched into a bolt, which she grasped. Then it made a smiley face, still green and radiating sparks of energy. After that it was Todoroki’s portrait. Then Jirou’s portrait. Finally, it was Aizawa’s scarf.

A few seconds later it was back into ball form. Another wave of her hand returned the flower exactly as it had been, “I tapped into the energy of the flower and, well, manipulated it to my will. Hope you didn’t mind me using your faces as references.” She turned and placed the lily back on the window sill.

Midoriya’s scribbles turned frantic with excitement as he jotted down what Lin was saying, “That makes sense it’s true how physicshelpplayaroleinourunderstandingofquirksexpeciallythe’emitter’typesofquirksbutIneverreallythoughtabouttheexactrealmofquantumphysicshavingahandinitbecausequantumphysicsissoabstractcomparedtoourcurrentknowledgeofscienceand-”

“Midoriya take a breath, man,” Kirishima flicked his ear.

“Hey, don’t pick on him it’s how he thinks,” Uraraka swat Kirishima’s hand.

“Though he could learn to be more silent about it,” Tokoyami quipped.

Yaoyorozu lit up, “SO YOU AND I HAVE SIMILAR QUIRKS!!!”

Shoji finally spoke, “Oh...you both alter atoms in a way. Rozu can make new items, meanwhile Lin can reach deeper and just toy with the item’s source.” 

“Essentially,” Yaoyorozu and Lin jinxed.

“Unlike Ro, though, this applies to living things, too.” Lin grabbed Mineta’s arm, as he was the closest to her. It suddenly glowed a deep purple.

“aaaaaAAAAAAA IT HURTS STOP!” Mineta freed himself and rubbed his arm tenderly.

Lin sucked a breath, “I didn’t think I loaded it that much, I’m sorry.” A yellow energy surrounded his arm, making Mineta feel better.

Bakugo pushed himself up front, “What the fuck was that?!”

“I mentioned how everything is energy, and that includes humans and other living things. I can overload the energy in them, causing harm, or transfer energy from myself to give others a....boost.” 

“Harm, huh?” Bakugo’s grin was devilish, “What about THIS-”

Blue shields surrounded his hands as they exploded, sending ripples through Lin’s body. The shield expanded to surround Bakugo completely as Lin unleashed the explosion back at him. He flew across the room.

“Explosions are kinetic energy. You literally gave me fuel for my quirk.” 

“AH KACCHAN ARE YOU OKAY?!” Midoriya hopped the desks to his side, followed by Kirishima and Kaminari.

Lin sighed, “I surrounded him in an energy shield. He’s fine.”

“FUCK YOU, LIN!” Bakugo rose up, wiping dust and dirt from his face. “AND GET OFF ME YOU DAMN NERD!”

Hagakure raised a gloved hand, “So.....what’s your limit?”

“Huh?”

She sighed, “Well, I didn’t understand much of that physics jargen, but it sounds like your quirk is really strong and helpful. So what’s your limit? Where’s your cap off?”

All eyes on her again, “Well....” Lin thought a moment, then “I don’t know.”

Yaoyorozu crossed her arms, “You don’t....know?”

“One of my main reasons for coming to UA was to determine my limit. I don’t know the extent of my quirk, and I knew that this school could help me find it.” Lin looked down at her shoes, embarrassed. “I know I can’t possibly be unlimited. But I can do a fair amount. I’m on a journey.” 

Midoriya sat back in his chair, smiling, “Thank you, Lin. I think I understand now.” 

“Yeah, that’s really cool,” Jirou commented.

The classroom door thundered open, making everyone yell in surprise.

“What.” Aizawa stepped through, “It’s class time. Get in your seats or you’re expelled.” 

Everyone shuffled back. Midoriya finished his scribbles, completing his journal analysis on his friends. 

[jimmynames]

5

took me long enough.. 

I don’t know why I put this off, I was meant to write something along these lines on the 4th of July as I have done religiously for the last 4 years before.. but something felt different this year.. I feel different tbh.. where to start..

I guess from right now to as far close as the 4th as I can remember.. It’s been an incredible year.. I’ve learnt a lot, both in code and my self but now also music.. I’m growing and have grown as a person, man, individual.. it cost me some friends and even some shame along the way but tbh can’t change anything and it made me who i am today so /shrug emoji lol It’s odd this ‘growing up’ thing.. so many constraints implied by society as to what a 29 (now) (was 28 when i shoulda wrote this) man should be doing with his life.. thankfully I feel writing this now more so than say the 4th aligned with ideals within myself as to what maturity is and what I want rather than should be doing.. I guess I have a lot to say =} 

I love you Dad, I miss you so much, it’s so cruel that I carry on growing and you can’t see it - althuogh I do believe you are watching, with your signs and whatever else idk could be a cope but still.. I am your son.. I feel it.. I see it.. I know it and it’s a wonderful feeling - to grow into the shadow and shine to cast my own in the image of yourself but inherently through my own agency and digression - myself. Quite the model to follow so thankyou with all my heart. Still looking forward to dying.. even completed the fucking motorbike mission but as it so happens I wasn’t as reckless as I intended and didn’t die - but instead I was safe and found a real desire to live.. sentiments remain about the alure of death but it’ll come in good time no doubt :D

This will, and happiness it’s the result of the past years work. I moved home around September and embarked on so many changes it’s unreal actually lol.. I lost mates, I started therapy.. I made some mistakes and I took accountability.. I discovered what real friendship is and who my real friends are.. still pains me to think of some friends who might not be friends but everyone’s human and as jeff said, a bitch ass ni***a so gotta account for people’s weaknesses as much as you consider their strengths.. jsut wish those that wronged me would consider the same for myself but we stay moving.. 

Therapy was amazing.. first I saw Kirsten and whilst she was good Laura really was the one.. shoutout the NHS.. processing some stuff and even just having a healthcare professional acknowledge my pain was theraputic.. 

I bought a motorbike and fixed it up.. proper took it apart, repaired , painted, put back together and then had the pleasure of speeding around and doing missions, cruises and what not all this year.. it was a sick project and an unforgettable journey.. there’s no cmd+z on a motorbike that’s all im saying.. it was sick to go from 0 to hero lol but like have an idea and execute it.. I do believe this is my power - execution and tennacity.. 

I told myself from the 1st of janurary 2020 i would label myself as an artist in whatever form or shape that takes.. I could of done nothing and I would still hold this true.. and I’m glad I did because I guess I started making art.. What’s cool is in doing so.. I starting producing more work, both in music and graphics.. I found myself friends and in circles I’d only ever consumed via soundcloud.. I even got invited to join a art crew and travelled to berlin to hang out with some artists.. shoutout n0_ZoN3 for real for real based group of people who aint into PC culture.. low key refreshing btu still decent human beings.. 

Erm so music =}}} I got into Hong Kong Radio!! Had dj collectives from around the world hit me up for mixes and made some super cool friends and connections.. started studying music theroy and even had a respectable musican say he’s seeing growth and musicality from myself in each and every release so that’s exciting.. I didn’t even know the word ‘musicality’ until then.. in the past year I kinda grounded myself.. I’m not a DJ I’m not a producer.. so don’t act like one :D but also I’m jsut a guy who has decks and knows some basics about ableton :)) and that’s al there is to it.. I share what I make when I feel proud of it and I stay learning.. we’ll see how far I get but tbh it’s not like ‘i uave to do this’ lol it’s just something im pationate about :) I’m sooo hapy and glad I got into it FINALLLY fuck sake james.. silly boy.. either way I’m a man now and all I can say is I’m discovering my sound through making beats and songs and I’m excited for the next year.. plan on getting piano lessons and just dedicating more time to it.. especailly when im living on my own omg.. just finishing work and spinning the decks no one else.. jsut you and the vibe.. yeah dreamy stuff.. and all of this ALL of this.. 

is soley possible because of CODE. my god. how grateful I am for it and myself for makign this deicison and begingin this path of learning and ‘development’’... it’s amazing how much it’s all entertwined.. everything.. from inception and conceptuation and delivering dreams into reality which seeps into that of other realsm like music and the motorbike. 

okay so i spent the last two nights refactoring my code on my personal site as a means of exercising some redux knowledge - and I was successful :D feels so good to have had enough eureka moments at least to get some basics down.. just need a few more xp’s and should have it on lock.. fuck july 2019 was so long ago.. I built a VR world for a mix to celebrate one year in music.. should really record 2nd year soon :thinking-face: maybe new vr world :thinking-face: built some sites for businesses both indivudally and also as part of Verlay which is myself, Jacob and Jeff and Ari as consultant either way im running out of time becfore the year ends.. 

I’m happy

life is good

life is life

life is pain

I wrote some poems

I made some songs

I mixed some mixes

I fixed a bike

I moved home

I healed

I reconnected

I natured

I quit smoking

I became clean from drugs

I went to therapy

I swam every day for a while

I started the gym

I ate a lot

I grew up?

I got into skincare

I got into sleep

Im still me

I started telling people my name was james 

i fell out with some friends

I made a lot of new friends

Im moving to glasgow

I’m excited for the future

like really excited..

like I can’t believe how lucky and happy I am

I miss you Dad so much more than words can evoke

I got closer with alex

I helped my siblings and i grew closer with my mum

2021

redux on lock

nick mills’ website

verlay ramp up efforts x deliverables

travel scotland

get full bike licence

get my own place

gym x gains

three.js

more react

more organisation

more chords

more midi

more music

more freedom

more self

more love

more life

shoutout the real ones

love to the closest and dearest 

fuck the haters <3

[myfriendpokey]

futures market

(ed. note: stephen died while writing this, may his sinful heart now rest in peace)

I think that every work implies an audience, i think that projected audience will be perpetually dreamlike and strange since it's drawn not from human consciousness but from a form of same which has been distorted through embodiment in alien material. Refracted by some "medium" and then existing as a transferable, reproducible object and living an object life separable from the human circumstances by which it was produced. And I think that when we evaluate a work part of what we evaluate is this audience and the prospect of belonging to it, the possibility of a community with those assumptions and those values. The saying "give people what they want" always confuses me in this context because surely part of what they want is the possibility of wanting something else, of being a person who wants something else. Advertisements famously sell not just a product but also the prospect of being the kind of person who likes that product. Even the most conservative works pull a bait and switch in this regards in that part of what they suggest is the prospect of being a person who already knows what they want, of having character and qualities that persist in time rather than being a shapeless blob of experiences.

Avant-garde work could be said to be that which prioritises the formation of new audiences, or the possibility of forming new audiences, above any actual qualities which those audiences would have. It draws on the utopian aspect of creating new social structures, new communities, where whatever form they ultimately end up taking the fact that they can be made at all is in some way a celebration of agency and the possibility of new futures. But the other side of things is that even as the appeal of these imaginary communities comes partly from their distance from our real ones, they're also evaluated on the basis of their feasibility - their power comes not just from a list of bloodless alternities but from possessing a transformative quality, the real possibility of enactment which is used to make demands on the contemporary. Not just a future but one already germinating in the present. And though I like and respect a lot of these works it's also hard, for this reason, not to feel a little uneasy about them - because the imagery of an imminent, transfigurative break from the present has been so co-opted as a way to conceal the fundamental limitations and eerie inertia of capitalism that I think it's hard for anything drawing on that tradition to escape lending credibility to it, even when its interests are directly opposed. 20+ years of an increasingly threadbare neoliberal consensus  in the face of problems which grow more and more obvious mean the notion of an unexpected, miraculous shift in the causal order grows more and more central, from the vague sense that someone will invent, like, a moss or something which will stop global warming in the nick of time to the idea that the same clumsy, stupid videogames we've been bonking against invisible walls in for decades now will any minute now transmogrify into the effortless freefloating virtual lucid dreams of legend. And in fact videogames provide a constant running example of just how profitably this perception can be managed - - from a medium which from inception built upon a certain futuristic quality coming both from the historically new level of consumer access to computer technology and from decades of science-fiction representations of same, and which leveraged that into a perennial suggestion that the bright new day was always just around the corner - that by playing videogames now you were securing a kind of early-investor bragging rights to the media singularity to come. If there's anything historically new about videogames it's the extent to which the very suggestion of potential developments to be had later on was finally recognised as more profitable than any intrinsic qualities of the form itself.

And I think all this raises some problems when we think about avant-garde and experimental videogames, not just because in replicating some of the assumptions of the industry they risk being assimilated by it - you can't game-design your way out of late capitalism, there are no final aesthetic solutions to economic problems etc - but because by repeating those assumptions they risk being judged by the standard of contribution to this same monolithic vidcon future, and then discarded accordingly when "the future" changes according to stockholder diktats. I mean that when you see these works as yet more expressions of "the medium" it's harder for them to survive when that status is taken away again, and that at this point it's difficult to conceive of a future of videogames that doesn't in some way just flow back into the orthodox one still being sold.

Why does this matter. I think the videogame market will crash again because that's what markets do, and when it does I believe it'll be blamed on small engines, on unity and rpgmaker, on asset-flipping and joke simulators and walking games and political games rather than e.g. the incessant boom-bust cycles of capitalism or the fact that the particular interactive media singularity that videogames have invested so much image, money and energy into identifying themselves with looks more and more dated and less likely to happen. I think there'll be more gamergate bullshit from people who invested in the stupid, stupid videogame dream and got told by youtube millionaires that it was being undermined from within by sjw fifth columnists making pug dating games. I think that just as places like YouTube have shown a willingness to quietly cut down on who's able to make money through their service places like Steam will do the same thing, particularly after already raising the prospect of exponentially increasing the cost of using the store for small developers already. I think middlebrow columnists at the Atlantic will cash checks saying well, a lot of those games weren't pushing the medium forward anyway, and that the whole thing will end up being recast as a morality tale about an overcrowded, overdiverse market, and that a lot of valuable work people are doing now will be just wiped from the record in the same way as a lot of pre-2007 indie games were, or flash games, or interactive CD-ROMs, or whatever the fuck.

I think that when this happens experimental games or avant garde games or alternative games will be seen less as possible alternatives to the mainstream tradition than as offshoots of it which got pruned, and I'm not sure how much help they will really be to anyone trying to figure out ways to make these things without getting pulled into the endless churning blood rotor of existing videogame culture.

I've written before that the game scenes which interest and excite me most are things like FNAF fangames, Undertale fangames, Unity horror games, RPG Maker games, hyperspecific utility pieces like the Prosperity Path orbs, less for any particular aesthetic or design qualities than for them being videogames which manage to escape some of the awful binary of Producer/Consumer and the ideas of "importance" which evolve later to help justify that perverse dynamic. Like what does it mean to experience a game if it's just part of a big stack of almost interchangeable things and anyway you're only absently going through it when searching for more stuff to steal for your own interchangeable thing. Which is healthier and more interesting than "art". But I think part of it too is the sense of having a specific audience to bounce against, even if it's just of people looking to take your Secret Of Mana midis, and the way that the concreteness of that audience helps defuse the kind of creeping tendency towards cultural speculation that comes with the belief in a big medium-wide payout somewhere down the line that'd justify the time and energies of everyone involved. I don't think it's enough to say people should make an effort to criticise games for what they are as opposed to what they might be, or whatever, insofar as that's even possible. I think being able to appreciate what they are is dependent on recognizing that they have an audience which is similarly settled, similarly "just there". And I think working towards constructing that kind of space would mean, yes, a sort of concession of "the future" to the stockholders of industry, renouncing the right to eventually reap that dread crop. But in the process being able to better engage with the present and all the disparite forces and strands within it who have similarly been lopped off that grand narrative, or were never part of it to begin with, and navigate all the ambiguities and potentials of that space. I think the future of videogames is the same kind of desperate, self-willed dream as those years worth of Twitter shares, for a company which has never actually been profitable, or the horrible locked-down image of infinity that sees new Rocket Racoon movies coming out every year til 2099, I think those dreams are ones that emerge and grow stronger as the actual basis for them either materially or affectively grows ever more decrepit, I think however overwhelming they get they can only really be strangled in the present.

As they say... no futur-what! what are you doing in my house! no-aieee!! (manuscript abruptly cuts off)

[tinymixtapes]

Interview: Seth Graham

The music published by Orange Milk, an underground behemoth of experimental music and cassette culture co-founded by Seth Graham and Keith Rankin (a.k.a. Giant Claw), feels like multiple authors contributing their stories to one sprawling space opera. The label has been lauded by a wide spectrum of listeners and critics, and is instantly recognized through a delightful, kaleidoscopic approach to color, sound, and aesthetic identity. Themes and approaches in the collective Orange Milk output seem impossible to define coherently. There are oozing, primordial cultures of bacterial sound, moments of pure, demented bliss; Seth Graham’s own music, especially on his latest album Gasp, refines these abstract elements while rocketing them farther into space. It is intrepid music that deliberately hovers on the edge of order, a space that the composer challenges himself to explore. We caught up with Seth Graham over the phone to talk about Herbie Hancock, the various MIDI instruments he chose to explore on Gasp, and the experiences in his life that brought the album to bear. The album is available to pre-order here (LP) and here (CD), but you can also listen to the full release below before its March 23 release. --- Gasp contains a wide variety of sounds, but it’s very focused too. Some of them appear multiple times, like the woodwind, the voices. Did you have a clear idea of what instruments you wanted to appear, and when? I definitely had a very specific idea… like that composer Gerard Grisey, he has pieces where he records the cello super close to the mic. You can almost hear the rustling, and it’s high-res. It almost sounds like, I don’t wanna say explosion, but it’s a bigger, weirder experience. With classical, when they record it, you hear that typical Tchaikovsky crap; it almost sounds generic. Grisey changed it and put it in your face, and I love that so much. So what I did with the record is any of the instruments that had a really close mic sample [in the VST], I kind of only used those because I liked how they sounded, and I liked how much you could manipulate it. Like for example in the track “Kimochi,” which just means emotion in Japanese, that track starts off with this voice that says one syllable, and that goes into almost sheer metal grinding, and that’s actually just a shit-ton of manipulation of different acoustic instruments with a certain synth. I love to do that and contrast it with that close-mic’d sound. With the flute, you can hear the wind of the person playing. I was obsessed with that. It ended up being a lot of flute, clarinet, cello, and that was kind of it. I think I used some trombone — there’s certain things you can do with the VST where you can hear the whole sample play out, and you can hear the clicking, and I would use that too, people clicking the wind instruments. I was thinking I should just hire people and record it my fucking self. That was something I wanted to ask you about — whether you had plans — or already did — record live instruments and manipulate that? I actually sort of did that already. A record is supposed to come out; it’s pieces from Gasp and a couple of unreleased pieces that this ensemble in Russia asked me to write for a tribute to Philip Glass that they were doing. They asked me and Sean McCann and Sarah Davachi, and I was really honest, like, I’ve never written a classical piece before, I just write MIDI data and mess with it. I just kind of read up on how to write for an ensemble, looked up the instruments they use, re-wrote it all in MIDI. I basically converted that to notation and sent four pieces to them that are pieces from Gasp, but real people. And they did it! They played it at the Museum of Multimedia and Arts in Moscow, and then they played it in a studio, and they were supposed to send us the stems for us to mix and Sean to put out on his label, Recital… and I don’t know, I’m waiting for it. It should be here. But to answer your question, I’ve been trying to think of ways for a new record where I hire people and I write out pieces, and they play it-slash-sing it, because I want really weird things to happen that I can’t make software do. I go to school with someone who’s a trained opera singer, and I want to pay her to sing what I have all notated, her to sing in this key, but then go “Bleahghghg.” I would love to hear that happen, a magnificent operatic voice just shit the bed. That would be awesome. I’ve been trying to think of ways for a new record where I hire people and I write out pieces, and they play it-slash-sing it, because I want really weird things to happen that I can’t make software do. I go to school with someone who’s a trained opera singer, and I want to pay her to sing what I have all notated, her to sing in this key, but then go “Bleahghghg.” Your use of “real instruments” stands apart from other kind of abstract electronic music, like PC Music, where they’re deliberately trying to sound as synthetic as they can. I’m really influenced by a lot of the modern computer music, like Halcyon Veil, or Jesse Osborne-Lanthier, or Rabit, or Chino Amobi… I like all that stuff, but I have a weird aversion to reverb. I feel like reverb makes things cloudy, and in the listening experience, it kind of masks nothing. It could be an art in itself, but I really tried to stay away from it but still be influenced by their aesthetic. That’s interesting you mention that, because Gasp contains lots of open, bare spaces, which really struck me when I heard it. Yeah, and I interpret that as straight-up vulnerability. Just let myself be vulnerable. Vulnerability is such a strength that I admire in people, people who can just admit things and let it be. There’s not even close to enough of that in our world. Even myself I don’t let myself be vulnerable enough, but I think it’s such a beautiful thing, and if the music is kind of awkward and there’s that space, I think it conveys vulnerability. It conveys a sense of drama, too. It does, doesn’t it? I am dramatic, I guess. Ha! Going back to that idea of fate you mentioned earlier, I’m curious as to what the events were that would construct that fate. Like what events took place in your life to form your influences? Well, I had a really crazy life. I grew up in Japan; my parents were missionaries. I went there when I was six, my mom got really sick — I don’t know why to this day, my parents are, uh, really weird. I was kind of shoved into a public school at six; my dad was studying Japanese at a language school. The language school was across the street from a tennis court. The city is Kadiza, in Nagano-ken — it’s kind of considered the Aspen of Japan — is very ritzy and beautiful. And one day I’m at the language school waiting for my dad, and I was just starting to learn Japanese. I was immersed in it because nobody spoke English, and I couldn’t understand anything. And literally, one day I understood everything everyone was saying. It was about seven months in and it was so surreal. I remember thinking “What is my life? This is not normal…” And I knew it, but I didn’t even know how to think of it as a six-, seven-year-old. I’m sitting there, and I’m watching all these people playing tennis, and there are cameras there, but I’m just watching with my face against the fence. Someone comes up to me and says, “That’s the emperor of Japan.” I always remembered that. There was a lot of shit that happened there. I started to be a teenager in Japan, and we moved back when I was 15… So you spent your formative years there? Yeah, my formative years were spent in Japan. I started skateboarding in Japan, became a really avid skateboarder, and we even were responsible for finding a really famous skate spot. We came back to the US when I was 15. I was really into Japanese punk-rock; I remember the day Kurt Cobain died — I was really into Nirvana. The real formative thing was when I came back to the US. My parents were really conservative… like I can’t overstate it enough. So I came back from Japan, skateboarding, and punk rock, to rural Ohio, where everyone played football. My parents didn’t want me to go to school because they thought I would become a corrupt atheist, so I didn’t. I was homeschooled and worked at a movie theater from 15 to 18, and I would pretend to do my homework and finish by 11, and then go work the matinee shift with this old woman named Phyllis. The reason I tell you all this is that the shock of cultural difference put my brain into a spin. Everything became very existential to me at a very young age. I was like, “Nothing means anything.” I realized in 6th grade that the Japanese didn’t like America — I went to Hiroshima on a field trip and they were all like, fuck America — but all my life I had heard about how great America was, so you start to see the dissonance at a young age. Which is true? So when I was really young I started to throw it all out the window, like all of it was a joke to me, but not as a rebellious teenager, it was a true existential crisis to me. I started to notice the deep contrast in everything, and I started to notice all the little things instead of the big things. That changed how I perceived everything, I think. And I think that’s what helps me be creative, if I am even creative. That was the most colossal thing, that upbringing and those events. Goop by Seth Graham You and [ex-TMT contributor] Keith Rankin knew each other in Ohio when you both started Orange Milk around 2010. Could you explain the environment you were in and your ideas of what the label was going to be like? People want like a glorious answer when they ask that, but there isn’t one. It was honestly Keith and I were making music ourselves, and we both kept getting rejected by labels… Probably for good reasons. We were like, “Aw, fuck that, let’s start our own label to release our own stuff.” It was kind of a hybrid between there being certain artists who were only on tape who we thought should come out on LP. One of them was an album called Crowded Out Memory by this band called Caboladies. This band Talkies. That was kind of the Robert Beatty crew, like Eric Lampan and Christopher Bush; they had this band that were kind of spastic, fun electronica. We loved it, and that album in particular came on a really limited CD-R, and we were like, “That should be on LP!” It was like when all that rage with Emeralds was happening in our little pocket scene. And not that it was a competition, but we thought Caboladies was far more interesting, and we wanted to bolster it for that reason. We were just like… I don’t want to hear synth drone. We would send each other clips by a really wide variety of artists. We were imaging things we wanted to hear together, in some weird way. Like the Herbie Hancock Raindance record. All kinds of little clips, like, “This album, but only these parts.” We did have a very conscious conversation to decide where we wanted to go, and then we just started digging it up. We just started searching for things that we liked on SoundCloud. Would you consider that your contribution to music or to your pocket of the music world? Is establishing that family your driving force? I think Keith and I really wanted to be in the music world, and we kind of constantly got rejected a lot. We wanted to find our own. And we were, I wouldn’t say critical, but we were really into this idea of experimental music being really joyous and really accessible. Like folk music or something. And we really consciously saw it that way. We would sit down and listen to Herbie Hancock — I think I’ve mentioned him a few times, but we’re obsessed — and we would listen to his records and say, “This part is pure joy, but it sounds insane.” We want to make that, and we want to hear that, and have a label go full-tilt on making that. It’s one of my favorite things about Hancock. His music is chill and inviting and so weird at times. I just love that. It feels like you can let go — it can be contemplative, it can be deep, it can be all that Tiny Mix Tapes stuff, or it can just be pure fun! I think we both find it really refreshing. And we like releasing our own stuff because it just gives us control and makes it less bureaucratic or political. It’s less about hustling. I don’t have to worry about being judged. That freedom is nice as an artist. You’ve mentioned joy a few times as an important theme in your music… I feel joy a lot, so I was just trying to convey that as much as I could. Vulnerability is such a strength that I admire in people, people who can just admit things and let it be. There’s not even close to enough of that in our world. Even myself I don’t let myself be vulnerable enough, but I think it’s such a beautiful thing, and if the music is kind of awkward and there’s that space, I think it conveys vulnerability. What about the process of making music? Does that bring joy? Your music sounds very playful, so I’m wondering to what degree your process involves discovery or “play,” in the kind of childlike way of working things out? Ha! Making the music is torture. I feel like Keith and I have high standards with each other. If I make a track and send it to him, he’s going to kind of rip it apart. It’s kind of like a professor reviewing your work. We both treat it as a helpful device, we’re not trying to shit on each other, we both really love each other so there’s that trust. It’s a rare thing. But in that sense, my record felt like a master’s thesis. It was so much work, and so much time, and agony. But I still love doing it. To answer your question, I was trying to be super-direct — this is how I feel, a lot of the time. It’s kind of funny, joyous, kind of awkward at times. I wanted those elements to be in there, and I have this kind of aversion to authority. I associate it with pretension. I’m not saying it’s objective, but pretension and authority to me are the same thing. It’s about controlling you, or controlling how you will experience something. And if you let that go, you can make with it what you will, know what I mean? That might sound like pretentious nonsense, I don’t know. Was the record heavily composed our conceptually wrought before you began to work on it? It was a mixture of everything. After talking to people who are actually trained classically, I get the vibe that everybody has a similar method. Some things are conceptually thought out, like I want this sound or that sound, and then you build a structure to execute that sound. I would write MIDI parts that were like, a cello pizzicato, and I would write it until I really liked it, and then let it sit. And I would play with Serum [VST], and be like, I like this sound that sounds like metal is coming out of my eyeball, how can I fixate on this thing? It’s almost like assembling a painting — I like this shape, this color, and then you just edit it and fit it in. OK, now I’m going to add clarinet, like right here. You mess with that sequence forever. That’s what I did, but with Gasp, I tried to take it as far as I could. In that once I had a structure I really liked, I would hate the song. Even though I liked all the parts, I would then edit it down — like how fucked up could I make this? — until it feels barely cohesive. So did this process yield tons of material? How did you decide what would make the final cut? At one point when I was making it, I got so tired that I just wanted to put it up on Bandcamp and never think about it again. I basically revised like 70% of it, and that was like a year in. But I just knew it wasn’t done. So you just keep going with the record. There were moments when I was just completely improvising. I would take Push 2 [the Ableton Live controller/sequencer], just randomly play it, hit things, turn things. I don’t come up with much that way, but every once in a while when I get really frustrated, I’ll just improvise and see what happens. It usually yields like three hours of dicking around. But I always end up in what seems like a final crescendo, where I think back through so many times, you have to do, over and over, tedious. Sometimes you have to delete everything, and you go over it again and half of it is good. And once you’re 80% done, you can’t stand the other 20%, but you’re so sick and tired of it, it’s torture. That’s what it felt like. But I love it, and now I’m all ready to do another one. It’s kind of all I can think about. http://j.mp/2u69i63

[90dayableton]

90 Days of Ableton: Day 0 & 1

I downloaded Ableton in the late evening on May 10th, so I’m going to call May 11th, my first full day with the software, Day 1.

May 10th was Day 0.

I did spend a couple hours on Day 0 trying to get comfortable with the program. I’ve never used a full DAW before - I’ve only noodled around with free web apps like Soundation.

So I had a basic sense of how to add instruments or channels, how to create and edit clips, and how to create notes with the draw mode/pen tool.

I decided to start by making something slow & chill.

I had a basic structure already in mind:

Start with one nice chord pattern with a little texture, a few passing notes, to make it interesting: 2, 4, or 8 measures long, as an introduction. Play it by itself.

Then, after 2-4 measures, layer it with beats.

Then layer it with more filled-out chords.

Then layer it with melodic lines. Make the melody another repeating loop, 2-4 measures long.

After the melody plays a couple times, start to tweak things. Change some of the moving notes, make sequences go up instead of down, or down instead of up.

Then add a few more percussive elements, transitions, and little instrumental call-outs to give it some life.

Every 2-4 measures, add a new instrument or effect without breaking the underlying pattern. Familiar foundation + novelty = brain takes interest.

Once the pattern repeats enough that you get tired of it, it’s time for a B section!

Now start removing instruments. Allow the more recent elements to play, or play with variations, and switch up the basic loops you started with. (i.e. change the bassline, change the chords, change the beats - you want complementary, but different.)

Preserve some elements, change others. Keep it on a 2, 4, or 8 measure cycle. You want new things to happen every 2 measures.

Re-introduce elements you haven’t heard in a while on top of new ones for a satisfying climax.

As for an outro? I basically just let the B section play out, and then I went back to the chords from the intro but I gave them to a different instrument, and I silenced everything else...dropped out the bass, the percussion, everything except a little ambiance. It worked, even though it was abrupt.

By the end of Day 1, I felt I had something cohesive and more-or-less “finished,” though it was very unrefined.

I lowered some of the track volumes (bass, shamisen, soft horn, bottle blower) but not all of them (I’m writing this from the perspective of Day 3 so now I know that the mixer in the red is something to correct), I didn’t do any panning, I didn’t double any instruments. I didn’t do anything with gates or envelopes or pitch shifting.

It’s basically a compilation of sounds and a nice tune but it’s not edited, mastered, or mixed in any significant way.

What I Started With:

Ableton Live 10 Trial (free)

a pretty chord riff: mine was inspired by an old j-rock song ain’t afraid to die by dir en grey

(I figured out the exact notes of the chords (I have a good ear but I do not have perfect pitch, people) with this synthesia video breakdown of the song.)

a few general ideas for how to structure it (listed above)

a few general ideas for organizing my workstation

basic background in music performance/theory (I know that not all aspiring music producers may have this, and I am lucky to; but it’s also likely that many musicians are drawn to this work)

What I Learned:

ONE. I’m not sure why the basic template, when you open a new live set, is two Midi tracks and two Audio tracks. The first habit I started was deleting one Midi and one Audio track, silencing the two remaining, and using them as temporary storage tracks to hold midi & audio samples/clips that I wanted to use but hadn’t assigned to an instrument. Nobody told me to do that. It just made sense to me and maybe in the future I’ll find out that it’s actually a bad idea, but it works right now.

TWO. The basic trial version of Ableton supposedly doesn’t have as much extra content (sounds, samples, instruments) as the full one, but it’s still pretty loaded. [Disclaimer: Nobody is paying me to say this.] A really huge amount of time was just taken up with me sorting through all the stuff that came pre-installed, listening to samples, and selecting what might sound good in the context of my own song. (HOWEVER - I did want more orchestral instrument options. Not enough brass and winds, and the strings could definitely be improved...)

THREE. It’s really easy to get distracted by other cool sounds. I ended up saving a bunch of specific samples to my user library (or creating a new live set to play around with it a little bit) because hearing certain unrelated sounds inevitably triggered new musical ideas that weren’t appropriate for the current composition.

FOUR. If I didn’t have a specific idea for a song in my head (which I did), it would have been so much harder and taken so much longer to create something cohesive. Going in with 1. a basic chord progression and 2. a couple basic melodic “cues” that I lifted from the lead vocals in the original song made it MUCH easier to fill in everything else around it. I deliberately took inspiration from another song because I wanted to focus on creating something pretty that would teach me how to use the software without getting too bogged down in composition.

FIVE. It was easy to get distracted and to flounder until I “landed” on exactly the sound I needed, or the sound I didn’t know I needed until I heard it. Example: I didn’t plan out a shamisen track, but once I saw the shamisen instrument in my library, I knew I was gonna have a good time with it. Or the chimes. As soon as I heard the chimes, I knew exactly where to put them and I didn’t swerve.

SIX. One of the most time-consuming things was just locking in the actual notes. I was used to the draw tool in another program that streamlined drawing notes, but I felt like it was clunkier and slower-going in Ableton because there were so many more refined options.

As a result, I learned/realized that I could use my computer keyboard in lieu of a Midi keyboard (which I don’t own), so I ended up composing that way. When there were tempo or rhythmic issues, I fixed them by ear, manually re-positioning notes...(I can only assume there’s a shortcut I don’t know about yet because if it’s not clear I’m a total noob) and zooming in closer for more refined adjustments.

SEVEN. Zooming! I learned a few basic keyboard shortcuts which helped SO much. On a PC:

ctrl+alt gives you a grabby hand and if you hold those down while you click with the mouse you can move all around the track without accidentally clicking or highlighting or deleting anything

ctrl + mouse scroll wheel (or + / - buttons) lets you zoom in and out, in the track itself and in the midi note editor.

EIGHT. One of those “learning by doing” things - day 0 & 1 were just immersing myself in the system and figuring out how to actually do the thing I needed. Some of my early questions:

why is my master track mixer red when everything else is green? (answer: you need to lower individual track volumes well below 0, like at least -8 to -12.)

how do I make the display go left-right with a timeline instead of up-down? (answer: tab button to switch between views)

how do I make this note sound less harsh? (answer: probably has something to do with the velocity? and/or the attack?)

how do I make this sound linger instead of clip off suddenly? (answer: hold the note until the end of the phrase, or lengthen the clip to draw it out - yeah I’m not touching reverb yet)

how do I lengthen or shorten clips? (answer: there’s a function with ctrl + E to slice something if you want to chop it up, but otherwise just grabbing it by the edge and dragging left or right will work. note this is for the clip...not the music/notes.)

how do I make the instrument panel come up and how do I hear it and how do I use my keyboard as a midi controller?

answer:

Select your instrument from the library sidebar and drag it to the place under the other tracks where it says “drop files and devices here”

Then, double click on that track

This should create a new “clip” which you can expand or move around to a different place in the timeline.

There’s a little keyboard along the left side of the “midi clip editor” which pops up at the bottom of the screen when you create a new clip. Click the headphone icon above the keyboard (which lets you hear yourself play it) AND press the M button on your keyboard to turn the Computer Midi Keyboard on and off. (You should see it light up in the top right corner, near the CPU load meter.)

Then, you should be able to use your keyboard to play notes - a s d f g h j k as the basic notes of the c major scale (i.e. white keys from C - C; easy to remember since f and g correspond to actual F and G) and W E T Y U as black keys.

To actually record what you’re playing, hit the record button. Personally I recommend setting the metronome (upper left corner) to count off one bar before the recording starts.

I will share my finished “song” from the end of Day One, but before I do, in the next post I’m going to break down what happened on Day Two to show you how I improved even further upon my work.

Then you can hear the two side by side, really proving how much progress one person can make in a single day!