#That's how you write a song

[columba1234]

Yeah, Rybak's expressions are often very memeable.

when ur takin a test and the answer to a question is right on the tip of ur tongue

[xcleanx]

were you sent by someone who wanted me dead? did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed? were you writing a book? were you a sleeper-cell spy? in fifty years will all this be declassified? and you'll confess why you did it… and i'll say good riddance ’cause it wasn't sexy once it wasn't forbidden…. I WOULD’VE DIED FOR YOUR SINS INSTEAD I JUST DIED INSIDE!!!!!!!!! AND YOU DESERVE PRISON BUT YOU WON’T GET TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU’LL SLIDE INTO INBOXES AND SLIP THROUGH THE BARS YOU CRASHED MY PARTY IN YOUR RENTAL CAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU SAID NORMAL GIRLS WERE BORING BUT YOU WERE GONE BY THE MORNING!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU KICKED OUT THE STAGE LIGHTS BUT YOU’RE STILL PERFORMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!…………. and in the plain sight you hid……. and you are what you did…… and i’ll forget you but i’ll never forgive…. the smallest man who ever lived.

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

Begging swifties to understand that Taylor didn’t write reputation and Lover with the knowledge of how the relationship was going to end and that trying to “excavate” those albums for evidence to prove a specific theory as to why it ended is not how they should be viewed. Taylor wrote those songs feeling a very specific way because that’s what she was experiencing and she is now reflecting on them with hindsight and relates to them differently than when she first created them. These conflicting emotions can exist; how she views it now doesn’t diminish how she felt about it when she first released it.

[jonnywaistcoat]

Do you ever come up with playlists or songs that help you build/explore the world of your writing (similar to how you used ‘Enjoy the Silence’ in Carter’s chapter of Thirteen Storeys)?

If so, what are some songs that you’ve come up with for certain characters or events throughout your writing?

Nope. While I do listen to music while I write, it's not character-based at all, and only really event-based in the sense of "action scene = slightly faster music". I generally cycle through a whole bunch of albums I find work as horror-writing background music, occasionally adding new ones to the mix.

Current favourites are the various volumes of John Carpenter's Lost Themes, Bohren & Der Club of Gore, or anything put out by Cryo Chamber. Weirdly, it's not particularly dark, but I've actually been finding Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan to be really good writing music.

[columba1234]

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!! SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS THAT'S HOW YOU WRITE A SONG!

[sophsun1]

Fleetwood Mac | Landslide

[demigods-posts]

just imagine percy at fifteen years old. feeling like his life is slipping through his fingers. feeling like he's running out of time to give his life purpose outside of being a child soldier. feeling like the only control he has over is life is by pushing people away. is by running away. so when annabeth calls him a coward. he can't help but agree with her.

[scribefindegil]

Have you ever found yourself thinking, "You know what I wish there was fanfiction of? 1948 political protest song (Charlie on the) M.T.A., popularized by the Kingston Trio, now unofficial Boston anthem and the somewhat sinister backstory behind their public transit cards' mascot!" No? Well, someone in the 2023 Yuletide exchange did!

And it wasn't even my assignment but I could not stop thinking about it, so check out 'Neath the Streets Of Boston on ao3 for 2k of trains, literary references, and a sad little New England cryptid.

now you too can read fic about. Him:

[columba1234]

In my headcannon, Mae Muller is Alexander's favourite student (He's the music teacher). Sasha's quite proud of her: "Finally someone knows how to write a song. 12 points for you, Mae."

Mae Muller: I wrote a song.

Alexander Rybak: That's my girl.

[nevertheless-moving]

unable to stop dwelling on the discworld trouser leg of time where, in the penultimate fight scene in Nightwatch, Carcer manages to kill teenage Sam Vimes.

Which means that the future that Duke Vimes came from can no longer exist, which means he can’t go home. Meanwhile you’ve got a bunch of history monks with stored up temporal energy, a prepared space outside of time, and the need to do some desperate damage control before the Auditors get involved. Death shows up, reality is unweaving, Sam is reading Carcer his discworld miranda rights because what else is he supposed to do.

and finally, with little other option, the monks de-age Sam so he fits the time period and send him back out into the fray.

(they didn't call it deageing of course. His memory is hazy, splintered during that terrible in between moment, They....took the time out of him? Sanded away the edges of his self for a terrible, workable fit? It...wasn't a good feeling.)

Just—damn. Sam Vimes having to live his whole crapsack life over again, but this time as his disillusioned-reillusioned, unwillingly-character-developed, noir-epic, Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes self. 

Younger (Older? He's never felt so Old, His steps so Childlike, reality twisting in his gut like one of Dibbler's pies) Sam Vimes walking around in a haze after the revolution. Desperate to go home, knowing he can’t. Wanting to drink. Knowing he can’t.

The whole precinct feels pity, he really took Keel’s death hard, hardly speaks except to do his job. Eventually he has to grit his teeth and start being present, because what else is there to do?

Resists the urge to drink until Colon takes the whole watch out to celebrate because -he’s going to be a father!

Come on Sammy, one drink won’t kill you— and after the first drink he’s cracking jokes and after the second hes smiling and after the third hes honestly the life of the party and sometime after that he’s crying about how he was going to be a father and my wife would be ashamed if she saw me drinking like this and— 

Oh shit, Did anyone else know he had a wife?? A PREGNANT wife??? What—aren’t you like 12—no you're 17 now aren't you but when did—

You guys n’ver met ���er—oh gods none if you ev’n know ‘er, is jus’ me...

What—when did you lose—

I lost her the same damn day I los’ ev’rythin else, whadya think...bleeding Carcer...the fuckin revolution...

So! That! Sam only vaguely remembers the night, but rumors travel faster than light on the disc, so by the next day the whole damn city knows about poor Sam brung low by the loss of his poor, tragic, pregnant wife, so young to be a widower, and the Seamstresses nod because they already knew, don’t ask them how, somethings you just have to know in that trade.

And his mother—I don’t know, sue me, I’m a time travel fiend but there’s something deeply intriguing about a man meeting his dead parent, who is somewhat younger than him, and stepping into the old relationship like a badly fitting thing that's supposed to fit well. She would know, right? How would she deal with her son’s impossible grief? Maybe she wouldn’t know—he spent most of the time out of the house, running with different street gangs, maybe he avoids her until she dies and lives with the guilt twice over. God, we don’t even know her name. There’s just so much narrative and emotional potential that I don’t even know where to start.

When he’s on duty, which is most time - it’s agonizing because at first he remembers cases, saves lives that would have been lost. But the more time passes, the hazier his memory because in the original timeline he was becoming an alcoholic. Fuck! A kid dies and he could have saved her if he hadn’t been such a drunk, if he had just remembered where the asshole lived, but it’s all a haze, and he wants to drown out his guilt, but that’s what caused this in the first place.

Good young Sammy, who spends his rare off-time in dusty libraries (and yes, the irony that he’s apparently Carrot now is not lost on him) reading gods-only-know.

It’s not like he can ask the wizards for help, cutthroat and vicious as they are now in the not-so-distant-past.

Good young Sam, who...talks to the Broken Drum’s pet Bouncer like he’s a real person and not a dumb rock? That’s a bit weird, but he’s a bit of a funny guy.

Good old Sam, who believed the testimony of the dwarf who said the humans were trying to rob him and let the dwarf go??

the PROBLEMS this man would cause, good grief. Can you imagine a moderately progressive middle aged man with some degree of begrudging diversity and equity training that he did, for all his sins, pay attention to, suddenly going back to like, 1990, going back just 30 years, and going...oh damn this is kind of fucked up, no man you can’t say that, holy shit.

Except Sam’s lived through even more rapidly shifting social moroes! There’s no seamstress guild, there’s no women allowed inside the university, there’s no black ribboner’s society. People hunted trolls for their teeth! But Sam can’t just unlearn everything, and he can’t shut up, and he has no real luck and anyway he would absolutely get himself (temporarily) fired.

FUCK. Sam has no idea what to do with that. None. Zero clue. Wanders around in a haze until that dwarf he saved from police brutality finds him and insists on repaying the debt. No, he insists, do you have any idea what debt means to a dwarf?

“Sort-of?” he replies hesitantly, and that honest admission of incomplete knowledge shows a hell of a lot more respect and understanding than any self proclaimed dwarf-expert ever did.

Gets a job as a surface man, hauling rocks into the city. It’s backbreaking work, but, in true Discworld fashion, it’s also one hell of a workout (again the irony of being Carrot is not lost him. he freezes for a minute while hauling a rock cart, when he remembers he's technically Lost Nobility too, in a strict sense, but someone curses at him in the street and he's comfortingly grounded)

And here is where this au slides into a SPECTACULAR romantic comedy, BEAR WITH ME. Because in his time on the Watch he’s already done noir, action adventure, war story, detective who dunnit, psychological horror, but guards guards only allowed him to be a romance protagonist in an extremely limited context.

Give me righteous, twenty-something-looking, can’t-say-he-doesn’t-have-style, young Sam Vimes, not an alcoholic,  being fed three square meals a day by his dwarven forced found family, hauling rocks. He is startled to find him bumping his head on a low hanging bar that he doesn’t think used to be there, eventually realizing that he’s an inch or two taller than he remembers. Huh. Guess all that bearhuggers really did stunt his growth.

Still doesn’t get what some of the looks from women he’s getting are about, sure, he’s dirty but so is everyone else. Fine, he took his shirt off, but it’s hot out, there’s far wrinklier than him hauling heavy loads, get a life. 

Happens to glance in the Ankh one day when it’s particularly slow and shiny and is startled to realize that he might be turning heads for a different reason. Oh. Right, not that he was ever a heartbreaker, but he did alright for himself... when he was a younger and his face hadn’t been broken so many times. Which...it isn't now.

Is mildly disturbed by the revelation.

Especially once things blow over at the precinct and what with high mortality rates, he ends up with getting hired again. The boys are delighted to have him back, nevermind that he’s an odd one, noone is ever quite in your corner like Vimsey, absence makes the heart fonder, no one else works that hard, and he’s not even competition for promotion. All around great guy, we should set him up with somebody and just, no.

It just keeps getting worse! He’s literate! He’s a feminist! He believes abuse victims! He’s got a tragic backstory! He’s unreasonably good in a fistfight! He’s kind to animals! Word gets around that there’s a good man on the watch and he’s just waiting for a good woman to come snap him up. The widower excuse doesn’t hold people off completely, and for some it’s its own sort-of appeal. 

Things REALLY become stressful after he rescues that carriage full of noblewoman.

What’s he supposed to do? Let them get robbed? Or worse? Chasing down and beating up 10 goons is as easy as beating up one, when they’re that stupid, getting separated like that, drunk and distracted, and he knows these streets better than anyone, really it’s nothing. And oh lord he’s Modest too.

I mean, they were genuinely greatful, as genuine as people like that are capable of being, the skill having grown rusty. And then there is something...magnetic about the man. An air of command.

So, soon enough you get Lady Marigold of Marigrave calling on Treckle Road for that gallant young officer who rescued them, she really needs to thank him. And Viscountess Elanor Thitzferal specifically requesting that he guard her at her next soiree. And Baroness Julieta van Shoeholten insisting that he come to her home while her husband’s away, for... manly protection.

Aaaah just zero sympathy from the guys. None. 'It’s become a competition, they’re just trying to see who can get me into bed first, it’s like I’m a piece of meat, you can’t send me sir, the Marquess greeted me in a nightee last time you made me go to—' and 'small gods Vimes are you even listening to yourself, shut the hell up'.

Simultaneous to this, (again this is several years into the timeline) swamp dragon accessories come into style. Which means abandoned swamp dragons scrounging on the street. Vimes takes one back to his apartment, blows his paycheck on dragon medicine, and eventually, heart in his chest, brings it to the Ramkin estate. The sunshine orphanage doesn’t even exist yet and he’s just standing outside the gates like an idiot, what is he thinking. Turns around, but her carriage is pulling up and—

well. they meet. it's cute. he's never felt so young. he's never felt so old, too old for her, too poor—

and certainly her thoughts linger too long on the awkward, kindly, handsome young commoner, but is it any wonder she doesn't quite connect it to the stern, dangerous, sexy young guard the ladies seem to be in some quiet, cuthroat competition over?

i have this gorgeous, absurd scene in my head in which Vimes is strong armed into standing guard at some high society soiree and one of the pushiest ladies insists he dance with here, or, if he prefers, if he's not confident about his skills, he can dance with her in-private at her home and he’s like [grinding teeth, looking for a way out, seeinf one] “I would be honored to dance with you.”

Steps right into some ultra-complex dance with multiple partner swaps (she never thought he'd pick this one, devilishly intimidating to one not strictly trained, and you barely spend anytime with your first partner).

But he does alright. Better than alright, for a common man, sometimes misstepping but his hands and feet always end up where they need to be. Raises several eyebrows part way into the song because he's throuwing in some slightly scandalous, no innovative, extra lifts and twirls that wouldn't become fashionable for another decade or two. Who even is that guy? Some out of towner? No, no he's in a guards uniform...how very strange.

Gets to Sybll and she's used to embarrassment during these dances, she tries to get out of them when she can... but can't always. Men awkwardly skipping the lifts, or worse, trying and failing. But him — oh it's him, the one who helped little Erold, and looked at her like—like—well like she was someone beautiful. And he's doing it again, and he's strong and there's a quiet moment where she's in the air, they lock eyes, and the rest of the room melts away.

And then the partners change again, the moment ended.

Just...living throught it all again. To the left, a dance he almost knows the steps to, throwing others off balance with erratic moves , honest mistakes, and delibrate stepping on toes. Improvising. Ruining. Improving. Getting far, far too much attention.

Hes almost excited when the first assassains start coming after him. It's like a hobby.

Everyone tells him he should get a hobby.

Interactions with young vetinari...I don't have the energy to write it all down, the slow circling in on each other, both burning with the need to fix the city, save it, their city.

needless to say he ends up fired again, life under real threat after offending some high lord.

Conveniently enough he has an employment opportunity- bodyguard to fucking Vetinari on his 'grand sneer.' The bastard knows vimes isn't what he seems, though sam is pretty sure that he doesnt know the exacts.

Vetinari hypothesis:(the ghost of keel? Keels son, with some hereditary curse? Or a larger spirit of justice possessing a string of unrelated souls? He knows things he shouldn't- mind reader? Fortune teller? Havelock once arranged for a wizard to bump into him on the street, the magical fool gave an odd double look and then muttered something about destiny looping in on itself giving him a headache. Destiny? Lost noble? And hes far too familiar with sybyl, one of the few bearable noblewomen in this city. And his thoughts on guilds, when havelock can trip him into speaking... Most of all, if hes reading him at all correctly (for all the mystery hes not that hard to read, unless thats a very clever cover) then it seems that behind those dark haunted eyes is Respect. Loyalty. For vetinari. What an interesting man. A puzzling asset. An intriguing threat. )

Did I mention the timeline is changing, healing slowly around the place where it was torn? Healing enough around scars to perhaps get some flexibility back, with some painful stretches and...massaging of said scar tissue?

And hes heading to unresting uberwald, a place where a werewolf pack still hunts humans and, truely unrelated but perhaps equally exhausting, an eldritch spirit of vengeance just might be looking to stretch its legs in a hapless vessel?

Opening drabble Vimes Vetinari Meta (Unwell) Scene from the Uberwald Grand Sneer

[beneathsilverstars]

been thinking about the differences between SASASAP and ISAT lately. because looking just at ISAT and the two hats ending, you'd think loop went through the exact same house as our siffrin, but looking at SASASAP, it's different. it's mixed up. it's obviously a condensed prototype.

but. that doesn't have to mean it's a different universe entirely.

maybe that's just what happens after a thousand loops.

the house warped in act 5. siffrin lost their shit and the house got changed and corrupted, far past its baseline king uncanniness. so it wouldn't be too out-of-the-question for it to be able to warp in more subtle ways as well, due to a more subtle breakdown.

like a jpeg uploaded and downloaded a thousand times, siffrin changed, and the loops changed. over a thousand loops of efficiency, the house got more efficient. rooms combining. items moving. data compressing. and of course, run in a changed house, the script changed as well. it did so slowly, one bit at a time, over a thousand loops of zoned-out half-listening – and by the time siffrin would have noticed each difference, they were already used to it. (and in the moments that they did look at a room that was less familiar than it should be and realize that they had no idea where to find the key, well. that's just classic siffrin, isn't it.)

through sheer repetition, siffrin was corrupted, and the loops and the house along with them. all purpose lost, all signals distorted, until finally they couldn't recognize the meaning in any of it. it was all noise and despair.

so they made a wish. and the loop restarted. not just a reboot, but something more complete.

the data was backed up onto a star – a guide, a warning, a reference – and the loops were factory reset. and for the first time in a thousand loops, siffrin woke up to a clear mind and the crisp sound of birdsong.

[morganbritton132]

Love the idea of Steve and Eddie being so sickening in love that Eddie calling him by his name makes Steve be like “why are you being mean”. Imagining how funny it would be if Steve was hanging out with a new friend or co worker or something at the house for the first time and Eddie comes in and is like “hey Steve” and kisses him on the cheek before introductions and obligatory “how was your day” and when Eddie leaves a couple minutes later the new friend is about to comment on how nice Steve’s husband seems when Steve turns to her and is like “I’m so so sorry you had to see that he is not usually like that he is just still pissy about (insert dumb funny thing here)”

This is cute and hilarious, and it’s so canon to this AU that it hurts. I love it so much.

I’m picturing Steve having a group of teachers over because they’re part of a committee and they’re planning an event at the school. Some of the teachers are people that Steve has known years, but the majority are people who don’t know Eddie outside of the guy that sometimes picks Steve up on bad brain days.

They’re in the thick of making posters and streamers when Eddie comes into the house, guitar case in hand from practicing at Jeff’s. He comes into the dining room where everybody is, plants a kiss on Steve’s cheek like, “Hey, Steve. Missed you.”

“Missed you more,” Steve hums back, sinking into Eddie’s side when he wraps his arm around his waist and pulls him closer.

Eddie rests his head on Steve’s shoulder and looks down at the poster he is making. It’s very glittery. He asks, “How’s it going?”

He listens attentively as Steve tells him of all they’ve accomplished and even reminds him of something that he said he wanted to do for the event and forgot about. He smiles and shakes hands when he’s introduced to other teachers and even recalls some of the things Steve told him about them.

At the ends of it, Eddie kisses Steve’s cheek again, tells him that they’re doing amazing work, and then says, “I’ve got a melody in my head, gonna go iron it out. Let me know if you need anything.”

He even says as he leaves, “Love you.”

“Love you, too,” Steve echoes back. Once the basement door closes, Steve just sighs and says so apologetically, “I’m so sorry you had to see that and if it made any of you uncomfortable. He’s not typically like that, you know. He’s just mad at me right now because I won’t walk a red carpet with him next week.”

At first everybody thinks that he’s joking but Steve looks so genuinely embarrassed that they have to believe him. Everybody is just like, “Excuse me, he’s mad at you?? He isn’t usually like that??? Meaning that he’s typically more loving and affectionate???”

Kathy, a seventh grade English teacher who shares way too much about her failing marriage, is just like, “Shoot, I can’t even get my husband to say he loves me half the time.”

“Kathy,” Steve says sincerely. “You need to divorce your husband.”

“I know.”

There’s a beat of silence before David, a newer teacher at the school, asks, “Red carpet? He is like, movie star or something?”

[excelsior9173]

god. vessel talking about jaws (kerrang interview)

and saying “you don’t know someone until you have seen them destroy something”

I AM CHEWING THE BARS OF MY ENCLOSURE I AM SO ABNORMAL ABOUT THIS

[copia]

"Hiding from the light, sacrificing nothing; still you call on me, for entrance to the shrine." ⛧ Ghost — Square Hammer [source]

"At the end of the day, one of the biggest misconceptions of Ghost is that it's just about the devil. It's always been about mankind and living." — Tobias Forge [source] "There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans, that the moment one definitely commits oneself that Providence moves, too. Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [source]

[walmart-miku]

ok people we gotta stop making mori the source of all evil with soukoku. Yes mori is evil about how he treated yosano and a lot of the pm members but that's a whole other can of worms.

Anyways with skk MORI WOULD NOT TRY TO GET IN THEIR WAY IN FACT HE WOULD ENCOURAGE THEIR ASSES TO GET TOGETHER THIS PANEL EXISTS FOR A REASON.

MORI SHIPS THEM SO BAD ITS ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS.

Fics need to stop making this dude try to prevent skk from dating. I want a crack fic where mori is just like "Hey how was ur day do u like to kiss guys?" To both dazai and chuuya. I want mori shenanigans where he's actively trying so hard to set them up and Elise is sitting in a corner with kouyou and they're hard core judging him.

[sysig]

You're still standing off to the side. Somehow, center stage has shifted from under your feet without you realizing, and you're standing in the wings, performing to no one.

Starring Role (Patreon)