#Mom said it's my turn to post the overused meme

[commodorecliche]

...these would be perfect for a children's hospital

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Denmark to Eurovision with a cute multilingual jingle

Dansk Melodi Grand Prix is... a NF I don’t really have anything to say about. Like, you expect me to rile up 3 big paragraphs about the pre-NF dramas and what-not, but honestly... what’s the point.

Well, aside from the fact people did not really get excited over the lineup this year. Me neither from the names alone, actually. Even last year was more interesting to look at despite with another lineup of songs you can’t give a fuck about and then move on - I noticed they had Sannie who used to be known as Whigfield (”Saturday Night” <3333 the duck quacks <333), Ditte Marie (anyone remembers “Overflow” from 2012?) and Albin Fredy (which seems to be the same Albin that brought me my one of the two DMGP 2013 favourite songs, “Beautiful to Me”???). This year was a big “WHO IS SHE?? WHERE DID YOU FIND HER???”, so I just left DMGP in the corner where it picked cobwebs until not too long ago when someone got chosen.

Well, this NF keeps being a NF where I don’t personally feel too emotionally fucked about any of them entries, so that’s a big plus in my book, which will mean that I won’t throw a “THIS WAS ROBBED!!!1″ post on Denmark NF-wise... at least this year and the last year because I really loved “Venter” in 2012 and the said “Beautiful to Me” and “Invincible” in 2013 (I also liked “Only Teardrops” but I was mad its victory was so obvious xD). As for why I like it when the NFs don’t toy with my feelings, A Dal 2019 is an obvious demonstration, but more on that on my Hungarian writeup, which is significantly longer than this one - that’s how much of a demonstration it is.

Anyway, let’s talk about the chosen song, shall we? Performed by a smol skater girlie Leonora (Jepsen), here comes “Love Is Forever”, which was co-penned by the ever-so-notorious Lise Cabble - the champ-mastress of writing Eurovision songs for the Danes (by that I mean she wrote their 1995 entry... and then none of her entries got chosen for ESC until 2011 lol). And this is a significally softer turn of hers compared to “Only Teardrops” - ever since Anna Ritsmar in 2018′s DMGP, she tends to write cute, acoustic tunes sung by young ladies with their lil cute and lil crispy voices. “Love Is Forever” is just that, tbh.

Well THAT and also it sounds like a lovely acoustic background song for those funny photos/student quotes/test answers/etc. compilation videos on Youtube (I actually am talking about the channel Scoop, because other kinds of compilation videos use Youtube Audio Library-like pop songs or something straight off NoCopyrightSounds). Or the theme song for a TV programme for animals. Or the theme song for a children's programme they show at hospitals. There's so many places you can insert it into, I guess. At the same time it feels like a cupcake with pink frosting that tastes nice. And a cup of warm cocoa with whipped cream and sprinkles. It's a delightful bite. Yum.

Realistically though, the song itself has an easy noddable-along-to rhythm, cute violin string plucks, the capability to melodically progress to sound even more joyful (I mean, the chorus just adds more and more layers of brass as it keeps repreating, just giving it a bit more of a typical Scoop channel background music material), the D flat major key of this song’s uplifts the spirits of this whole shebang and it also somehow includes lines in some more languages than expected in a Danish song ever, how odd it seems like??? And it’s especially given that we haven’t really heard Danish in a song since like what, 1997?? We only got “shout insh’allah” and “taka stökk til hærri jörð, taka” ever since then, and these aren’t remotely Danish lines. But this year we’re getting some Danish, and French, and even German. Feeling the love in multilingual. L’amour est pour toujours, y’all! Liebe IST für alle da!

There are also people that aren’t buying into the song all that much because Leonora looks way too creepy to sell a song about love love peace peace, like someone emerging out of a demented cabaret. I suppose that other people think that this song was forced onto Leonora when she didn’t really want it, and now has to pretend that we have to spread love to the world, make friendships with others, don’t get too political, and then act all supercool about it. The saddest bit that she does sound like that person that would sing a song like that... young, with a passion for skating, looks like a person that could probably hug you when you least expect it, the one that posts light purple sweater pictures with a glitter effect applied to them on Tumblr, the one who would wear white mittens with a giant red snowflake painted on/knitted into them... I don’t know if that’s all Leonora wanted to compete with in DMGP to make a breakthrough with her singing career after skating so darn much, and if she even believes in what is she singing (this is my rare reminder of the war situation in Israel that’s going on, and I’ll probably never have to speak of this again in any writeup, hopefully. Yeah sure, love is for ever...), but I somehow buy it, sue me. Those acoustics and that touch of brass instruments won me over.

So my final thoughts on this song is that it’s a joyball with that kind of song message so overused I cannot be angry on it because it’s not slapped on a dreary Russian peace ballad - it’s a singer-songwriter-esque small showtune, which makes it all seem a lot different because love is cute and this song is cute. So I guess I have no issues with it, whereas I can’t stand the aforementioned Russian peace ballads all that much because if you remove the good singers singing it, they’re cliché af; “Wars for Nothing” (Hungary 2015) sounded too innocent while having a full gun tree serving as a backdrop for them and if you looked too much into Boggie’s eyes, you could very well feel her penetrating your soul with war imagery; and Iceland last year was a knock-off Russian peace ballad that sounded too good to be unbearably dreary and the vocalist wasn’t even a belting girl. So yeah, I like it. More adorable songs about spreading love, less overdone ballads about world peace.

Thing is though, why did she really dress like a barista from a late-night-open cocktail club? I get that looking like a princess à la Maria Olafs won't cut it anymore as it would look way more saccharine, but Leonora is up like she's there to serve you your damn drink as soon as possible so she could go outside for a small smoke break, not to advertise love. Watch me make "when you have Eurovision at 9 and job at a cocktail bar at 11" memes on the night of the 16th. Seriously, her image barely even fucking suits the song!

Approval factor: Well, one of my faves won DMGP again, for the 2nd time in a row, so why wouldn’t I approve? ^_^ Love from me is forever!

Follow-up factor: For Denmark it kind of seems like a decent follow-up? For all those out here that remember Denmark as the nation that plagiarises every other entry, it would just seem logical for them to finally send a generic royalty free ukulele song for Youtube videos. Which is spectacular! No one knows which song did this one exactly plagiarize - the entire concept was ripped off! Jokes aside, it’s an interesting one after Rasmussen. After a song that urges you to lay your weapons down in a war and go find higher ground more peacefully, we’re now getting a morale on the fact that love is for ever and everyone. Isn’t it sweet. I’d rather these than a bland love song about laying down armours and guns. ^_^

Qualification factor: depends. For now I feel like writing it off because to the 1% of the people who’ve already heard this song beforehand and hate this song, the whole thing feels like “love :) is :) forever :) please love everyone you little shit :) :) :)”. To some others however, like Luke Malam from ESCXtra, it’s a song that definitely makes them feel the love being forever, just like “yaaaay we love each other and the world yaaaay!!! ^o^”, so it’s perhaps a bit of a mixed bag. I wanna see it through though, just as much as I want to see Lithuania, about which I will be talking next in these write-ups. But I see it very much so as a borderline because... idk, just a gut feeling. Sometimes songs that ooze loveliness just don’t quite get themselves across the other hand side of the viewer thus they don’t really qualify, for example, Finland 2012, another song sung by a lady better known as a sportswoman rather than a singer (but maybe that’s just because there was too much intimacy of hers with her and her celloist’s mom, and she looked too awkward to pass the intimacy to the viewers so they too could feel the loving bond and the life metaphors coming from a Finnish entrant singing in Swedish). For now from me it’s a positive borderline. Yes, I think that it probably will make it and we’ll see that large Ikea chair prop with many people swaying to the rhythm on it next to Leonora on Saturday as well.

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

Even with me not having much to say about DMGP, I will go ahead and cherrypick the favourite songs from the event:

• The big favourite of mine this year was brought by Julie & Nina, who served a bilingual schlager-like midtempo track, “League of Light”. Hats off to sounding properly Eurovision-y but without using a “rent-a-NF-songwriter” songwriter for to write this! It’s soaring, majestic, somewhat memorable and inclused Greenlandic. Yeah. Do you believe that this would have been a year where we could’ve gotten more exotic Language spins? Now we have lost both Aboriginal and Greenlandic out of Eurovision, hopefully just for this year so the languages can return again sometime. I’m proud of these women being so courageous and delighting some that really wanted schlager pop that still can click with some that are bored of Eurovision NF schlager cliches. Oh and this song is in A flat minor, probably one of my favourite keys in music. Not too bad, everything this was, although the aggression they transmitted through the song during their live DMGP performance kiiiiinda made them looked like pissed-off housewives imo?

• Them both and this guy below, Sigmund, were picked to the superfinal to compete against Leonora. What was Sigmund’s contribution and why did he deserve to be there so much? Well, I really love his colourful flamboyant electropop track that has piano influences, “Say My Name”, which lyrically reflects on the song’s protagonists big power that he will probably have if only the invisible force Sigmund’s singing to would just “say [his] name”. And I definitely think he deserved his spot over some really nice pop entries that the fandom definitely overrated. Oh and the song is in A flat minor too. Maybe I’m biased, maybe I’m not. You judge. >:)

• See, I don't feel like talking about the DMGP songs this year. It's a cool bunch of songs that some of them I like but nothing quite outstanding to talk about beyond those I already have paragraphs for. Well maybe you'd like to look up the entries by Humorekspressen (for to get a pub singalong song) and Jasmine Gabay (for to get yet another Latino-influenced Havana club track). But that's it. Here from me the last one you'll be getting is Simone Emilie with her teen-flavoured light radiofriendly dance-ish song "Anywhere". Why didn't it do better despite having the power to click with the Eurofans quite much? Well, maybe it's because her backdrop and the fairytale-esque dress went for another kind of atmosphere than it was required to have on the song.

• I don't know, I just find this particular winning reaction shot funny. Not sure if she's yawning or being like "yaaaazs bitchesss ;) 😄 ✨" in here. I gotta say - her lipstick was definitely on fleek that night.

That guy below her takes the cake at making this shot memorable too. Do you want the invisible meal Leonora is about to take a bite of too?

And besides that moment I don’t really have any on-show moments besides songs that were somewhat memorable. Why do Danes always have to be this vanilla in the Nordic country barrage, I will never get. That’s it. That’s their crime. Of being average. And being sued for plagiarism a lot in the past.

For now I’d just wish Leonora good luck in Tel Aviv and show ‘em that love can and will prevail before hatred does, if only people remember to love... ah wait, wrong kind of philosophy.

[jr4de]

Fic Writing Meme

@redcap3​ tagged me, and I always love things like this!

What is your total word count on AO3?

844536, coming up on a year of writing. I was kinda hoping to break a million words in a year, but things at work and in real life have meant a fairly slow month so that may well not happen. However! I suppose I have two or three chapters of several things written, so I guess I could always post those if I wanted to pad it out XD

How often do you write?

I try to write every day, but that doesn’t always happen. Usually I can get some out, though - and amount written varies from day to day of course. Some days I’ll go at it in all the free time I have and only end up with a thousand words, sometimes I’ll knock out a complete 7500 word fic in an hour and a half, just depends, heh.

Do you have a routine for writing?

MUSIC! That’s about it, really; sit somewhere - at home, coffee shop, what have you - and put on some headphones and start playing some music. I joke that playing it louder forces words out of my fingers faster (because of the increased pressure in my ears, right? XD).

All kinds of music, usually just shuffling my library or a large chunk of it - lots of people say they need instrumentals, but I’m happy with whatever. Vocal, instrumental, pop, rock, synth, classical, all kindsa stuff. Often I’ll tailor the musical selection somewhat to the subject matter - SoaOW was written to lots of Depeche Mode, Shiny Toy Guns, Fad Gadget; slightly strained and synthy stuff to go with the neo-dystopian setting, y’know?

What are your favorite kinks/tropes/pairing?

Hmmm. Well, I suppose I’d say “not necessarily”. I don’t think I’d say that I’ve written particularly much in the way of kink-driven stuff, although what I’ve considered has been rooted in character anyway in a way that- well, I don’t know if it’d exactly count, but I suppose someone can tell me when I write it, heh.

Tropes? I like some tropes, I like when they’re used fairly subtly; one that I think will usually be found in my works is that the good guy wins. People don’t die (and stay dead) for no reason!

(...and yes, the “and stay dead” is definitely important because I am known to occasionally kill or nearly-kill good characters for uh... well, just go read BSN or SoaOW if you want to see XD but they don’t stay dead!)

Pairings? Oy, just fuck me up. I love ‘em. I've got a soft spot for polyamorous groups given my own real-life Venn intersection there, heh. One that has a special place in my heart, certainly, is Winston/Orisa - for two reasons: one, I have written the only fic with that ship so far on Ao3, and two, every single person who has ever commented on it has said the same thing which essentially amounts to “Okay, when you said Winston/Orisa, I was dubious, but these two are so freaking cute!” And you know what? They really are.

Do you have a favorite fic of yours?

Oh dear, favourite? “Favourite ______” is a sure-fire way to make me waffle for a good long time, haha!

I think my favourite in general will probably be “Both Sides Now”, for now - almost a half-million words of action and interpersonal relationships, weaving in backstory for Overwatch’s earlier days and fall. I don’t think it’s the be-all and end-all, though, not nearly.

I think... my favourite underrated fic of mine is “Used to Be”. It’s a shorter thing, introspective and reflective, Fareeha sitting at Ana’s grave and wondering over what their life was like, and wondering why she hasn’t cried since the funeral. I just really like how the portrayal of Ana as a beleaguered and wearied mother and soldier came out, and the way it dealt with grief. I like the turnaround and how the ending mirrors the beginning, and several little turns of phrase in it, and I think it’s not got particularly much notice because there’s no romantic ship involved. Just a daughter and her mother who she misses, but doesn’t know quite how to deal with that feeling.

Your fic with the most kudos?

“Both Sides Now”, hands down. “Streets of an Orphaned World” is holding at around two-thirds of that, my nearest contender, but it’s been finished so long that it’s highly, highly unlikely to close the gap in my opinion XD

Anything you don’t like about your writing?

Honestly, it depends on the day. When I’m having good days, then it’s all pretty great - but when I’m having bad days? Uh, everything. The description’s somehow simultaneously pedantically excessive and still inadequately sparse, the dialogue’s choppy, the prose is stilted, words are overused, aaaaaand basically it sucks XD

...but that’s just the bad days. Most days? Most days I like it pretty well, but I’d say a commons ticking point with me is this: the length.

Don’t get me wrong, I like being able to write longer things, but I would also dearly love the ability to write short ones. I can write a 20k fic in two days, and I have done as much, but writing something short? Writing a chaptered work that doesn’t break sextuple digits? That’s really fucking hard for me. I would love to be able to write shorter stuff, but it just takes an absurd amount of effort for me to do so.

Now something you do like?

Hmm. I think I have some good lines. Some good points. Overall, I’d say... the flow. I think I have fluid writing, that can kinda sweep you away if you let it - to the point where you maybe don’t think about how long it’s been since somebody talked, or how long this paragraph of thoughts has been carrying on, where you don’t think about the chapters and the pages and the words until you realize that you’ve read a hundred thousand words already and yet, still, you’re only a quarter of the way through.

I like that.

I like my dialogue, even though I know a lot of what I write in it is stuff that, it is said, should not be written in dialogue. I have misspoken words, and epithets, and pauses and lots and lots of punctuation - em-dashes and semicolons, chunks of word broken up by actions, italics and emphatics because that is how people speak in my world. The people around me gesture. They squint. They get halfway through a word, stop, frown, shake their head and start again from the beginning. They shout. They make up words. They use pet names, or teasing ones, or whatever else.

I like that.

Most of all, though, I think what I like about my writing - what I hope for, and what I always love to hear confirmed when I get feedback - is that it makes people think. Somewhat, sometimes, about some things. Or at least about some thing, singular, because I want it to be fun and enjoyable but I’d also like it to do something.

If someone can read my Satya/Symmetra, and walk away with maybe just a slightly more in-depth view of what Autism might entail in an everyday space, what it’s like maybe when their classmate or friend or family member or lover is having a bit of an issue, a bit of A Problem, and if that person can then maybe bring that understanding and make things a little better, that’s what I want. I like that.

If someone can read my Amélie/Widowmaker, and gain maybe a bit of a deeper understanding for trauma or sociopathy, that lack of what we might sometimes call basic human empathy, and realize that lacking that doesn’t inherently make somebody a bad person - that’s what I want, I like that. If someone can read any of my old guard - Torb, Ana, Rein, Jack, Gabe - and see something new about PTSD, or see the same in Tracer; if they can get some calm from Zenyatta or some hope from Tracer or some anything, from any of them, from me, then that’s what I want.

What do I like about my writing? That people take it away with them. That they take it, and they cut out the bits that they love, and they carry those bits around right next to their heart.

I love that.

Tagging people! @madame-kiksters @oinkyblanketpig @thesoundofthunderstorms @app-jelly @twoheartedalien2-0 Sure, those seem like some good folks; do this if you want! If you don’t, don’t! I’m not your real mom. XD

[feliciasink]

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme originally from Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share News. A post to recap the past week, showcase books and things I have received and share news about what is coming up for the week on my blog.

These past two weeks have been crazy with work… I’m so really, really tired right now. And my body isn’t helping me =/ … This weekend I took some days off, because of big planning, but not all plans got green light… To give a recap of the past two weeks:

Monday May 8th was a day of celebration as Feyenoord won the national championship for the first time in 18 years!!!! Wanted to be in Rotterdam on the Coolsingel like over 150k people, but my bf had to work and didn’t know my family was going [read it afterwards, damnit!!] So we did go to the fanshop in the morning and got the special champions edition t-shirts, flag and scarf from Feyenoord and I got my football shorts from this season after all [my size was mostly sold out]… The new Feyenoord dress will come soon… It was a very happy and emotional day =]

Oh Trump can learn something from the Feyenoord fans: This is how we celebrate Feyenoord winning the championship… Over 160 thousand people in the centre of Rotterdam and a regionwide alert from the police not to come anymore [2 hours before the official celebration started] because the city was full!! Some people slept on the Coolsingel to be there… Some flew in from Australia ;] That’s how you celebrate… This is Feyenoord, a club well love by many, many people [L] Feyenoord ’till I die!!

On Tuesday I finally got to go to the hair salon and get my hair colour fixed [with a ombre colouring], so now the difference between my blond and natural colour aren’t that obvious when my hair grows again.. Was as nice as ever getting my hair done for like 3,5 hours hahaha.. Worked the late shift after that.

Wednesday is my school night. Normally I don’t work on Wednesdays, but my colleague asked me, so worked the early shift before racing to school.

Thursday I finally went to the cinema with my mom-in-law again.. We wanted to go see Beauty & the Beast, but for some reason they fucked up the agenda since the week before.. So we went to King Arthur instead!! It’s such a good movie =] Went to Taekwondo at night again. Had been a long time, because of the knee injury in February… The ligament was doing okay again, but the flu and work interfered some weeks too…

The weekend I worked in the kitchen again and burned myself again hahaha. I’m clumsy and knew it was going to happen like a lot… whoops haha

Monday and Tuesday were late shifts in the ice cream salon again…. But I got some bad news from my doctor =[ I noticed some pain again on the other side of my knee since the Friday before.. It seems my ligaments and meniscus are damaged… Didn’t have any direct trauma, so my guess is that my knee sucks for like the past 8 years [every fall or accident was on my right knee] and the fact I’ve been unemployed for almost 2 years and now am working my ass off.. It may be a combination of overusing my knee and the damage from at least the past 8 years…. But the advice was to get myself a knee brace… =/ Have to wear it 10 whole days, 2 weeks at work and at least 3 months while doing sports…

On Wednesday I got the brace, it was 32 degrees Celsius here =o… Nice timing from my body, like always…… I did have to work extra in the ice cream salon, because of the temperature and race to school after again…. And was pissed off at school, my model didn’t show up and ignored all my messages [even sent her one in the morning so not to forget]… So had to give  my exercise head a transformation =o It was kind off scary to do hahaha from a bob to a hair cut with a length of 5cm everywhere…

Last Thursday and Friday working again, on T in the ice cream salon and on F in the kitchen… Had a weird-ass accident on Thursday…. We have a net to cover the ice cream in the ice cream showcase which is held in place by two curved pieces of metal… They’re not sharp at all, but I managed to get on of them half a centimeter deep in my hand between my ring-finger and my pinkie… Did not hurt at all then.. Like wtf, how did I manage to do that?!?!?!

So on Friday I was working in the kitchen, prepping from noon and making pizzas in the evening… I was so tired after work… But on Saturday I made plans with my parent-in-law to sell our old junk at a flee market… I was NOT prepared to leave home at 6.20am… Had to collect stuff on Friday night, while being half asleep lol and woke at 5.40am…. I also happened to have two weird ass nights in a row [like turning my light on while sleeping and cancelling my sleep tracker in my sleep….] But I woke up and did sell a bit… Did sleep in a car for like 15 minutes in the afternoon hahaha…. Still so tired…

So today, Sunday May 21… Slept like a baby and according to my bf snored like a construction worker hahahahahahahaaha.. Woke up, had breakfast and slept for another 2 hours on the sofa…. So damn tired… Physically I’m still very tired… Mentally I don’t register a lot hahahaa, I only half listen to what is said, forget everything and can’t focus a lot… But hey, can’t blame me with working this much… longest in a row these past two weeks is 8 days… Starting tomorrow will be working 16 days in a row..

This was a very long recap haha, but had a lot to share… Hopefully I can share some more in the form of reviews and such in the coming days/weeks… Even my reading suffers under this amount of work =/

But you guys have a lovely and beautiful week XoXo

This weeks posts:

….. none ='[

Coming next week:

Really not sure if I can find the time and/or energy AND have access to the laptop.. Hope I will post anything, but not gonna make promises I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep..

Like I said my reading has suffered because of work… I did manage to finish Flame in the Mist by Renée Ahdieh and start Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard.. Currently at 2/3rd of the book… Hoping to get some progress done and finish some more on my TBR this month… But I doubt it… whoops..

Okay, this post won’t include the specific dates I’ve watched things… Because of the work chaos, I really can’t remember hahaha… So I’ll only state the episodes and movies I watched =]

OMG I just noticed I deleted the rest of S3 of Elementary because it appeared on Netflix… But I already watched like 11 episodes of S4… Now I get why I didn’t get it… omggggggg…. Now I need to watch the rest of S3 before continuing with S4… I feel so stupid xD

Because I love these series/movies:

Gotham S2E19: Azrael

Gotham S2E20: Unleashed

Gotham S2E21: A Legion of Horribles

Gotham S2E22: Transference

Elementary S4E1: The Past is Parent

Elementary S4E2: Evidence of Things Not Seen

Elementary S4E3: Tag, You’re Me

Elementary S4E4: All My Exes Live in Essex

Elementary S4E5: The Games Underfoot

Elementary S4E6: The Cost of Doing Business

Elementary S4E7: Miss Taken

Elementary S4E8: A Burden of Blood

Elementary S4E9: Murder Ex Machina

Elementary S4E10: Alma Matter

Elementary S4E11: Down Where the Dead Delight

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans [2009]

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword [2017]

With my boyfriend:

Last Man Standing S2E12: Quarterback Boyfriend

Last Man Standing S2E13: What’s in a Name?

Last Man Standing S2E14: Buffalo Bill Day

Documentary: Dirks Droom [Dirk’s Dream [Dirk Kuyt]]

In case you’ve missed these:

Sunday Post #40. May 7

The Masterpiecers. [Masterful #1]

The Masterpiecers. [Masterful #1]

Sunday Post #38 & #39. April 23 & 30

Most Anticipated Releases May 2017.

Sunday Post #41 & #42. May 14 & May 21 The Sunday Post is a weekly meme originally from Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share News.