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fandomsilhouette · 4 years ago

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to be seen

There are so many hopes that exist in one heart, so many expectations that pull them apart, so many people they’re desperate to be, so many voices they’ll never flee. They’re shrouded in secrets they can’t quite explain, but if there’s a person where they can abstain, avoid the disdain, inane, insane, and find a way to be human again, then they’ll take it with both hands outstretched, and hold on before they find themselves wrecked.

Happy @felinettenovember, y’all! This was supposed to be an easy prompt, some dumb lighthearted joke at Felix’s expense, but I can never be that simple, and when I asked @musicfren to help me brainstorm, we had the terrible wonderful idea to write companion pieces. So! You can read what Felix is thinking here, and fall in love with his very wonderful writing as you do.

Showcase night is finally here. Marinette’s fingers dig into the fabric she was pinning around her mannequins before she remembers that there’s no time to iron out any wrinkles. Luckily, the final pieces were sewed and on the models already, no pinning required, but Marinette had opted to show off stages of the design progress by pinning half-completed scraps of fabric on mannequins: a choice she would be sorely regretting if she weren’t so excited.

She’s prepared, of course, she’s been scarcely able to think about anything else for the last month.

Marinette’s parents will see her project for the first time tonight, despite how relentlessly they’ve attempted to wheedle clues out of her for as long as they’ve known about it-- which is about as long as the concept has existed. But she’s been insistent not to spill a single secret about it, wanting it to be unapologetically, undeniably her own, all the way through, every missed stitch and tangled thread and crumpled up note tossed at the trash can late at night showing in the final outfits.

She finishes the final touches on her poster board, checks that her models are ready in place, shuffles her flashcards into order one more time. Everyone else around her seems relaxed, chattering excitedly, flitting from station to station in an eager buzz; Marinette is overwhelmed by the motion and the optimism of it. Her gaze flicks from person to person, moving away faster than it can catch on anything until--

Felix looks pale, nearly translucent halfway under the stage lights, still half in shadow as he steps up onto the platform to perform. He meets her gaze and it holds, but it’s vacant and glazed, almost as if he’s not seeing her at all, even looking right at her. And knowing that someone is just as anxious, maybe more, than she is makes Marinette feel… alright. There is so much of herself in this presentation, more than anyone will ever know. It matters. It’s going to be okay.

Marinette only hopes her presentation won’t sound like pouring ketchup from a bottle: timid at first, then gushing out faster than she can control it, too much to be palatable or interesting, spilling over her plate and dripping onto her shoes with her tears.

Then the parents flood into the room, and chaos ensues.

The presentations go better than she expected: a lot of people flock to her stall, lured by the motion and the flash of fabric in a room full of the fantastic; Marinette suspects it’s the traditional familiarity of the Parisian civilian wrapped up in the novel familiarity of the heroes of Paris that draws their attention. Her parents ooh and ahh, gush over all the right parts and ask her enough questions that she doesn’t worry that her point won’t be made.

“I wanted to remember that the heroes of our city are people too: that for all that they pretend to be larger than life, magical beyond belief-- miraculous, one might say,” she tosses out a wink to laughter that delights her, even if some of it comes with a deadpan look, “they are not pretentious. They are people, and they are people who deserve respect, compassion, empathy… privacy and support, where we can manage it.”

The small crowd around her table is silent for a moment that stretches too long, and anxiety drips and dribbles into the spaces their silence leaves behind. Their gazes settle heavy on her shoulders and her blush heats up her cheeks like a blood-red mask she’s too comfortable wearing. Has she finally managed to be seen, under all of the pretense? Will they manage to care?

Then Tom sweeps her up in a hug, tossing her into the air, and it takes her and Sabine’s combined strength to bring her back down, to remind him she still has the rest of the evening to keep presenting. Marinette talks, and glows, and shares and explains and laments all of the things Ladybug wishes she could say and doesn’t, and doesn’t stop for a second.

She doesn’t stop, except to listen to Felix. The auditorium has had music drifting in the background all night, between Nino DJing and Kitty Section, and a handful of other students on various instruments, but it’s Felix’s melody she cuts herself off mid-sentence for.

It’s the presentation she’s been waiting all night, and when his fingers lift from the strings, the last note still echoing around the room, she feels gutted.

The rest of her presentations go on without a hitch, but she’s a little quieter now, gestures a little less broadly. Something of the spark is missing, and she’s just glad her parents have moved on to celebrate the other students’ presentations instead of sticking around long enough to notice. Finally, finally the day is over, and Marinette knew she’d be looking forward to this moment, exhausted and exhilarated, but she didn’t think she would meet it like this.

She wraps up her presentation one last time, and the crowd thins, drifting off to help their children clear up their stations or pick off the last remaining crumbs from the snack bar. Marinette’s own parents are nowhere to be seen, so she turns and starts unpinning the mannequins herself.

“How quaint of you.”

Felix’s voice is chilled as he leans his hip against her already-wobbly table. Marinette worries for a moment about it spilling over and then decides she doesn’t care.

“Thank you,” she accepts, knowing full well it isn’t a compliment. “I liked yours a lot, Felix.”

“No, you didn’t.” She doesn’t have to turn to hear the sneer in his voice. “You have no appreciation for true art. You think this,” he gestures wildly at her half un-pinned mannequins, the models drifting away, “is art? This is derivative. This is… this is nothing more than a false pretense of an understanding you don’t have in a failed effort to curry favor with someone who is never going to notice you.”

“I liked the way your composition sounded in the rehearsal room,” Marinette cuts in quietly, tiredly, so hurt she can’t resist, too hurt to resist.

“What.”

“I’ve spent most of class time sitting outside the rehearsal room you always choose-- you’re very predictable, Felix-- and sketching there. That’s what my designs are based on: that mournful, hopeful, determined, resigned haunting tune that you practiced day by painstaking day. That’s how I imagine the heroes feel. I can understand how you’d know that. I do too.” Marinette thinks about the way his presentation today was so polished, the way it reverberated around the room, every note rich and mellow-- but it felt so hollow.

Hearing it today has torn out the very heart of what she had built her designs around.

“I wish you had played it like that today.”

Felix moves forward, drags a finger down fabric that seems a little softer, a little more somber. He looks at her, a sidelong glance that goes too long, and doesn’t respond until he looks away.

“I wish you would’ve worn these yourself.”

#Notte Writes #Notte Collabs #Fanfiction #Miraculous Ladybug Fanfiction #ML #Miraculous Ladybug #Miraculous: Adventures Of Ladybug And Chat Noir #Felix #PV Felix #Felix Agreste #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #Felix/Marinette #Felinette #Logistical Nightmare Showcase #Insults As A Front For Hurt #Kindness As A Front For Pain #Fluff #Felinette Month 2020 Day 16 #Felinette Month 2020

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sinceileftyoublog · 3 years ago

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Small Isles Interview: Filmless Music

Photo by Dustin Aksland

BY JORDAN MAINZER

It’s rare that you find a record with a genesis as specific as The Valley, The Mountains, The Sea, the debut album from Small Isles. The new project of guitarist Jim Fairchild (Grandaddy, former Modest Mouse) and songwriter/composer Jacob Snider has its basis in film scoring. The catch? The films don’t exist. The Valley, The Mountains, The Sea is presented as an imaginary score to an imagined sequel to Ang Lee’s 1997 familial drama The Ice Storm, itself based on Rick Moody’s 1994 novel. And the band’s upcoming, unfinished EP, with strings arranged by Snider and recorded by collaborator Sienna Peck, is, according to the band, a distillation of the concept of the band, one that consciously combines film scoring motifs with traditional songwriting. In a way, you could say that Small Isles is music about film scoring as much as scores itself.

Fairchild and Snider hold the belief that film scores should hold their own as a piece of music independent of visuals, and on The Valley, The Mountains, The Sea, they announce themselves convincingly. Opening track “The Concept”--essentially the prototype for the band--combines vaguely harmonic deep bass sounds with pristine, echoing string plucks, and wordless vocals, building up like an Explosions in the Sky tune. Other tracks, too, juxtapose the ambient with recognizable structures. “Fort Wayne” shimmers atop a drum machine, while the vocal samples of “Maybe We Will” cut in and out among the beats and arpeggios. Each track also has a pristine sense of place, as much of the album was written while Fairchild was on tour with Modest Mouse, tracks like “Fort Wayne” and the washy, atonal “Lake Superior” started in those locations.

I spoke with Fairchild (calling from his home in Ojai, California” and Snider (calling from near Philadelphia) last week, a few days prior to the release of the album via AKP Recordings. (The album comes out on vinyl next month). Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity, about the band’s artistic process, The Ice Storm, adapting the songs live, and what Small Isles has in common with Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour.

Since I Left You: You’ve called this record an imaginary score to an imaginary film. Did you think of the sequencing of the record in a narrative arc?

Jim Fairchild: Kind of, but honestly, there’s a sequence that originally existed, and I don’t remember what it was, and it would have been more aligned with what I pictured from the movie, but it didn’t work as well as a comprehensive piece of music. The last song on here, “The Plot to Take Clover”, that was earlier before. “Life at One”, the first single, really kicked off me and Jacob’s partnership. It was designed that way; it’s not the way the record plays out. I wrote all of the principle themes, the underpinnings of all the compositions, as an imagined score to some sort of a sequel to The Ice Storm. I don’t know exactly how it would play out with Rick Moody. The first one was really successful. I have this idea for a similar type of movie that takes place in contemporary California and all these cues I can use as a mood board. Like, let’s sit down and figure out what this palate is. Let’s write a movie around it. That’s what I was thinking.

SILY: You wrote a lot of this while on tour. Had you conceived of the idea before then and wrote while on tour because of your downtime, or was the downtime the launching point for the idea?

JF: I was totally inspired by the idea. I started some of the themes that popped up, but once the actual Ice Storm Ang Lee idea came to mind, it was really generative. It’s how a lot of this stuff works with me. It kind of floats around for a while, reaching out this way or that. Once the real kernel appears, it’s like, “That’s it!” It all happens pretty quickly. That was definitely the case with this. It was the real fine-tuning that’s the most time consuming. That’s what Jacob and I have experienced. The EP that we’re releasing later this year, basically how it’s worked so far is I send him a sequence of chords and basic rhythm, which happens pretty quickly. Then--and we’ve only done it on Zoom with the new EP, though it was the same with “Life at One”--there was this theme. Jacob came in, we were gonna write some other stuff. He came in with a mic and sang some stacked harmonies. Then it’s carving out all the other elements around that to make it.

These are unconventional compositions. They’re meant to accompany visual ideas. With that in mind, cues and scoring music doesn’t always work in recorded music, traditionally speaking. There’s all these lengths, sometimes time signatures shift, a melody might exist in an unconventional way to fit what’s happening visually. I really wanted to embrace that. With “Life at One”, Jacob did all this stuff, and there’s this really interesting sound I don’t know how to describe. He asked, “What are those over there?” [My partner Natasha Wheat] had made these ceramic bells for me, and that’s the most fun part about working with Jacob. A lot of the people who are trained as Jacob is--and I say this with great admiration for his abilities--are stuck in certain modalities. This is a perfect example. He looked at the bells and said, “Let’s do that.” He grabbed a drumstick and played the edge of these bells and processed them. That was a big feature in the composition of “Life at One”. This all happens very thematically and reflexively, but to then carve it up and get it to have purpose, meaning, ebb, and flow and make it work visually--that’s where the dirty shit happens. [laughs] I also look forward to when Jacob and I can be in person more. We’ve made a lot happen over the past 7 months, but it’s hard when you’re not in the same room. Plus, I’d like to show off. If he’s sitting right next to me, play some fast guitar...[laughs]

SILY: The title of the record refers to various aspects of topography, and there are song titles that refer to specific places, like “Fort Wayne” and “Lake Superior”. Do these aspects exist within the narrative of the film?

JF: “Lake Superior” and “Fort Wayne” were just started in those places, literally. I picture the Ang Lee movie--the new Ang Lee movie that is inevitably gonna take form because he’s gonna hear me and Jacob’s music and think, “You’re right, we gotta do this,”--in this zone a little bit east of Berkeley. It’s the West Coast equivalent of the Connecticut zone where The Ice Storm exists. It’s this affluent, green place. But the reason I chose to keep the others as titles is like, Fort Wayne, that’s pretty grand and has Batman implications. And Lake Superior, what a fucking great name for a lake, you know? I like the power of those, and if I were sitting down and writing a movie, those titles could be at least generative of a conversation.

SILY: What about the other song titles? What inspired them?

JF: “The Concept” is literally the concept for our band. The concept has expanded since then, but out of the ordinary--no sounds are out of the ordinary in modern production--but in the film scoring landscape, out of the ordinary, ambient, or textural sounds. But then big, beautiful melodies. Jacob’s voice. All that stuff. Synthesizing our two strengths. Jacob’s also a songwriter and makes amazing songs, but my background’s in bands, and so I treat our relationship as if it’s a band. Taking our two strengths. Jacob’s more conventionally trained, schooled, and knowledgeable than I am. He has a richer depth of knowledge in theory and orchestration. I can arrange that way, but he knows what’s going on. Mine is more reflexive--I don’t want to say auto-didactic because that’s kind of an arrogant term--but learning through mistakes. I think Jacob’s made fewer mistakes than I have.

SILY: What were all the instruments used on the record?

JF: There’s a lot of found stuff. 12-string guitar. I was writing it using this Rosewood Fender Stratocaster that Fender made for me. The 12-string is prominent on “Life At One”. There’s a piano Jacob played. There’s a lot of me coming up with drum beats. A lot of the initial stuff was in the box. I’d roll in my portable studio backstage, I’d have a guitar, Universal Audio space, whatever drums and synths I had.

SILY: What is your background in film scoring?

JF: I don’t have a specific background. From a very early age, I’ve been into film scores. I’d buy them starting when I was 15 or 16. CDs. Pretty obvious releases, but things like Danny Elfman’s Batman score, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Sort of getting into Jerry Goldsmith. Elfman, Morricone. I like some of the Bernard Hermann stuff. I started studying it from the way I study everything: figuring out chord sequences, the way the melodies work, to the degree I was able. In the early 2010s, I was making a lot of music that was getting licensed for TV. Once Modest Mouse really started touring [2015 album] Strangers to Ourselves, I let a lot of those pursuits wither a little bit. But I’d always longed for a collaboration. A lot of that stuff was done in a solitary way, so I felt very fortunate when Jacob and I met. He was into that idiom but has a range of skills I don’t have. We also really work well together. All the reflexive stuff that happens, the melodies, it’s easy for us to go back and forth and see what we’re into and where to keep going. Neither of us get upset when the other person isn’t feeling whatever the direction is.

As I get older, I realize the value of stimulating multiple senses. I look forward to Jacob and I doing more of this stuff in collaboration with people. The Riley Thompson video for “Life At One” was him responding to a finished track, but in an ideal world, filmmakers would come to us and, in the way Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross work with David Fincher, where he says, “This is the concept for the new film,” and Jacob and I come back and say, “This is the sonic and melodic landscape we’re thinking of, and here are some character cues. Let’s take it from there.” I love being in conversation with people collaboratively and am attracted to the idea of it across media.

SILY: Do you think the idea that the music might not be responding to a finished film would make the score stand on its own more as a piece of music?

JF: The scores that I like totally stand on their own as music. When Morricone passed away, I read that John Zorn had a quote when they were hanging out in the late 80′s or early 90′s, Zorn said, “Don’t do it unless you’re thinking about what the soundtrack record is gonna be like.” The music needs to be cool enough to just be music.

SILY: Tell me about the album art.

JF: Natasha and I sold our place in Los Angeles last year and moved to Ojai. We thought it was a temporary transition, and now it’s somewhat permanent, because we bought a place here. We’ve been in this guesthouse next door since November. I like taking pictures at night with whatever ambient light [there is], so I took that picture from our place. I wanted there to be contrast with this technicolor paint and silver border on the upper and lower parts of the image. Homes are very interesting to me, and there’s a lot of that in The Ice Storm. There’s that shelf people look at from the outside and think, “It could be dilapidated, it could be beautiful.” People think of it as a thing. But there’s this whole other world that only exists inside of there. It’s always fascinating to me when walking by the place. Stories in the shell. I like the idea of a structure having implications. I don’t have an agenda for what those implications might be, but I like the idea that there could be implications there.

SILY: Jacob, when Jim came to you with this idea, how aware were you of The Ice Storm?

Jacob Snider: I had seen it. I don’t know if in our first meeting, it came up that specifically and clearly that this is where the music was going. In fact, it started more as a casual meeting of creative types. When I came over to Jim’s studio, he just showed me the latest thing he was working on without any huge idea behind it expressed to me in that moment. Jim might have been thinking it in that moment, but that day was more, “Alright, I’m working on something, what do you hear and is there something you think you could contribute to it?” It was really organic. Like Jim mentioned before, the best thing you can do when making something is show it to somebody else, because they’re gonna hear it in a different way or they might suggest something if you’re open to it. People can make amazing solitary music, but it will always be just their thing. You bring in someone else, there’s a different energy, a different perspective.

As it stands, I do love that film. It’s really haunting. Jim and I talked before that it’s not a movie you can watch every week. It’s heavy, and the themes are deep: family, loss, grief, betrayal. It’s a great one. I think it’s a movie that’s cinematic but also has a lot of depth. I think that’s what we’re going for with Small Isles. It has shades of film music but also shades of rock and roll and romantic string writing from the orchestral traditions. I think we’re trying to combine a few things at once, and we’re really curious how it starts to strike people and how some filmmakers respond to it.

SILY: Are you both generally Ang Lee fans?

JF: I haven’t devoured all of his work. There’s plenty I like. But I’m so in love with [The Ice Storm]. I was in love with the book before the movie came out. He treated it so beautifully. As high in the sky as it is for two nascent film composers to say, “I want to work with Ang Lee,” it’s very important to know where you want to go. It may take a long time to get there, but [it’s important] to have a place where you’re headed. That was definitely the case in the early Grandaddy days, and having watched [Modest Mouse lead singer] Isaac [Brock] for as long as I did, I think it was the case there, too. It may not be as specific knowing that I’m traveling in this direction, but that direction can totally change. There can be diversions that knock you off your course positively or negatively, but thinking about how beautifully he treated that material, that’s where I want to go.

SILY: How are you adapting Small Isles to a live performance?

JF: We’re gonna play at least some of this, maybe all of this live. I’m really looking forward to it. Jacob’s only on half this record, and the 5-song EP we’re releasing later this year, he’s on all of. That’s a straight-up 50/50 collaboration. I’m looking forward to the stuff Jacob didn’t contribute to on the record, hearing what he does with strings. We’re still figuring out how we’re gonna approach it. Jacob will be on keys and vocals, and I might sing a little bit. I’ll be on guitar. Our friend Sienna who Jacob went to school with, who’s doing the strings, we’re talking about having her lead a double string quartet. I would like to have a drummer doing some electronic drums and maybe a kit as well. I definitely don’t imagine we’ll totally nail it on night 1. There’s a lot of stuff we have to work out. There aren’t many antecedents in this zone, but something like Explosions in the Sky mixed with Johann Johannsson. I saw [the latter] in 2010 in San Francisco; there was a little bit of strings, various electronics, and he was on piano. That was a very striking performance. So the explosiveness of a big arena rock show with lots of subtleties and nuance that can come from strings and orchestral.

SILY: What else is next for Small Isles?

JF: We wanna finish this EP. I also really love the way a lot of rap and hip-hop people have gotten it right over the years. Using current listening habits and technology to get out as much music as possible. I definitely have the seeds for at least another EP behind this. Once we get this EP done--there’s just a little bit of tinkering to be done over the next month before going into the mixing stage--I want to make as much music as possible and release it. With the spirits of the world willing, I want to get off the ground live and collaborate with filmmakers, dancers, artists, people in the visual medium. I just love making music with Jacob and this type of music. I’d like to have a few releases a year. EP length [or] album length. I have a number of concepts written down. The seeds that Jacob and I have been playing with to make the EP. I was thinking about The Last Black Man in San Francisco when making this EP, and I’d love to collaborate with those filmmakers. Even just being in person, to tell Jacob, “What do you think of this sequence?” and have him respond without dealing with latency issues and dodgy DSL.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

Jacob Snider: I’ve been listening to a lot of pop. I’ve been listening to the Olivia Rodrigo record [Sour]. I think there’s great writing on there, great production. Watching, I’ll just piggyback on The Last Black Man in San Francisco. It took me a while to finally see it, but I had a filmmaker friend tell me I had to, and I loved it. Also the other film Emile Mosseri did the score for, Kajillionaire, the Miranda July film. Reading-wise, I’m about to jump back into Louise Erdrich’s The Round House.

JF: I’ve been digging the Olivia record, too.

JS: There’s some cool strings on there too from the guy who does a lot of the strings for Portugal. The Man, [Paul Cartwright]. They created a string orchestra sound with just one guy layering violin and viola, which is really cool, and that’s what we’re doing with our collaborator Sienna Peck. There’s totally room for that now, the way the world has been so remote. We can’t put 16 players in a room right now due to public health restrictions, so let’s get one person. It’s really hard to do--you can be a great violinist and not be able to layer yourself in a way that makes it sound like a string orchestra. You have to change your position in the room, the way you’re playing slightly, pretend to be three different people sharing a stand. That’s what you’ll hear on the next record.

JF: I just got into How to Change Your Mind, the Michael Pollan book about psychedelics, which I really loved. I just started a book called The Magic Years, which is about child development. I have a three-and-a-half-year-old son, and I’m very fascinated by what’s going on in his brain and what makes him make the decisions he makes. Just how to be a better dad. I am always a religious reader of The New Yorker, every week it comes out. Natasha and I watched The Kids, a documentary [about the making of Larry Clark’s Kids]. When that movie came out, Grandaddy were skateboarders, so it was important to us. But even as a young kid, I felt that it was really exploitative, and the documentary verifies it. It’s heartbreaking. Larry Clark is a really derelict dude. Truly lecherous. But [The Kids] is a beautiful movie. We’ve been watching Los Espookys. I’m really excited about Vince Staples’ upcoming record. My friend Nik Freitas put out a new song. My musical diet’s gotten really regressive in a way because my son is very into the Super Furry Animals record Radiator. It’s all he wants to listen to in the car.

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2, Episode 2 Easter Egg and Reference

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Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Lower Decks, Season 2, Episode 2, “Kayshon, His Eyes Open”

In The Next Generation episode “The Most Toys,” Kivas Fajo tried to keep Data forever. The idea that someone thought it was okay to “collect” was an oddly self-referential concept for Star Trek even in the 1990s. Just like now, the idea of a Star Trek collectible was a thing hardcore Star Trek fans thought about all the time. But, other than the fact that everyone would actually want to “collect” Data, “The Most Toys” wasn’t actually about Star Trek collectibles.

But, the newest Star Trek: Lower Decks episode, kind of is? In “Kayshon, His Eyes Open,” the crew of the Cerritos encounters one of those famous collectors, while the crew of the Titan deal with some very familiar transporter clones. It’s almost like this is an episode that is filled with as many Easter eggs on purpose. Here’s everything we caught.

Beta Shift

When Jet joins the Lower Deckers at the start of the episode, it’s implied they are on “Beta Shift.” This seems to check-out with Season 1, in which it was clear that the Cerritos was on a four-shift duty rotation, which included the night shift known as “Delta Shift.” (This idea was first introduced in the TNG episode “Chain of Command,” an episode Lower Decks LOVES to reference.)

Sonic Showers

Although sonic showers are referenced a lot in Star Trek, we’ve only seen sonic showers a few times. The first time was in The Motion Picture, and since then we’ve only glimpsed the showers. The visual effect for the communal sonic showers here is very similar to TMP, but the idea of communal showering for the lower officers vaguely references the novelization of The Motion Picture, too. If you know, then you know.

Collectors

Again the idea of various “Collectors” in the galaxy references Kivas Fajo and “The Most Toys.” This is what Freeman means by “they all tried to collect Data.”

Dr. Migleemo

Notably, the Cerritos’s counselor, the avian Dr. Migleemo returns in this episode, once again, voiced by Paul. F. Tompkins. Echoing Counselor Troi’s non-standard uniform, Migleemo appears to wear whatever he wants while on duty, even sitting on the bridge.

Items Owned By the Collector, Take 1

When the landing party for the Cerritos first boards the ship, just in the first room alone there are a ton of Easter eggs. Getting all of these is gonna be tricky, but we’re gonna give it a go. Here’s what you can spot when you pause the first couple of shots in the first room of the Collector’s Ship.

Captain Picard paper mache head from “Captain Picard Day” (TNG, “The Pegasus”)

The Game (TNG, “The Game”)

Baseball Bat and ball (Possible DS9 Sisko reference?)

Giant Unicorn (Possible Blade Runner reference?)

Marty McFly’s Shoes (Back to the Future)

Terran Empire Flag (TOS, “Mirror, Mirror)

Khan’s Necklace (The Wrath of Khan)

Valiant flight recorder (TOS, “Where No Man Has Gone Before)

Gold TOS Uniform

Giant Pink Tribble (TAS, “More Tribbles, More Troubles)

M-113 lifeform (TOS, “The Man Trap.” Also, this is AT LEAST the third time the Salt Vampire has appeared on Lower Decks. And, having the M-113 lifeform as a collectible not only references “The Man Trap,” but also, “The Squire of Gothos,” in which your boy Trelane had an M-113 creature as a museum piece, too!)

Special Shout-Out: Betazoid Gift Box

First appearing in TNG’s “Haven,” this was a talking box that was meant to “bond” with the person who got the gift.

The existence of this artifact here is also possible a double reference to two other things: In “Haven,” the face of the Gift Box was played by Armin Shimmerman, more famous later as Quark on DS9. But, on top of that, back in 1994 the Star Trek: The Next Generation Collectible Card Game (published by Decipher Inc.) had a very powerful card based on the Betazoid Gift Box. If you played the game, you know this was a rare and useful card that was well…very collectible.

Special Shout-Out: Whose trombone is that?

We briefly see a trombone in one of the collector’s cases, which seems like an easy reference to Riker. But, which one? Because this episode also directly references “Second Chances,” and Will Riker’s duplicate Thomas Riker, it’s possible that this is the trombone that Will gave to Thomas at the end of that TNG episode. Briefly, here’s the case for that being Thomas Riker’s trombone: In the DS9 episode “Defiant” Thomas Riker tried to steal the Defiant, but was later arrested by Starfleet. Presumably, this would mean all of his stuff would have been confiscated, including his trombone!

Keyshon is a Tamarian

Tamarians or “the Children of Tama” originate in the TNG episode “Darmok.” In case you forgot, Picard cracked the case with this species by learning they spoke exclusively through metaphor and analogy. Mariner mocks this by pointing out all you have to do is listen for “context clues.”

Riker loves…Rogue Squadron?

Riker tells Boimler to use “attack pattern delta,” on the Pakled ship. This seems to be a reference to The Empire Strikes Back in which Luke tells the snowspeeders of Rogue Squadron, “Attack pattern delta, go now!”

Items Owned By the Collector, Take 2

Here’s another go at seeing how many Easter eggs were jammed into like less than 2-minutes of screentime.

Kataan Probe (TNG, “The Inner Light”)

Vulcan lirpa weapon (TOS, “Amok Time,”)

Klingon bat’leth (TNG, DS9, Voyager et al.)

Andorian dueling weapon (Enterprise, “United.”)

Shark in a Tank (A reference to the real-life artist Damien Hirst, probably?)

Mars Rover

Kadis-kot game set (Voyager)

Château Picard wine crate (Picard)

Isomagnetic disintegrator (Worf’s bazooka from Insurrection)

Tendi is later holding:

A trident scanner (Scotty loved this thing in TOS)

And…a Kurlan naiskos (TNG, “The Chase,” a very big episode for canon!)

Kahless’ fornication helmet

Tendi says that this specific Klingon artifact is clearly something Kahless (the Klingon Jesus) wore while…well, the name speaks for itself. But which Kahless? Hmmm? The fake clone Kahless from “Rightful Heir?” or the real-deal Kahless from the 9th century? The Kahless reference gets doubly meta, because, as you’ll see later, Lower Decks eventually references the very first reference in canon to Kahless, too.

Data’s Picasso-esque painting of Spot

Barely visible, just as Mariner and the gang are trying to escape, we see Data’s painting of his cat Spot, first seen in the TNG episode “Inheritance,” and later in the background in the movie Generations.

Boimler’s description of the Enterprise-D

Let’s combine two scenes here! In two pivotal moments in the episode, Boimler is defending the honor and relative coolness of the TNG adventures on the Enterprise-D, which he just calls “the D.” Here’s what it seems like he’s referencing.

“They went to other dimensions… (This seems to reference the idea that “The D” did go to another dimension in the episode “Where No One Has Gone Before.” It also could reference “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” but nobody would remember that.)

“They fought the Borg…” (This references “Q, Who,” “The Best of Both Worlds,” and “Descent.”

“They insurrected!” (This seems to reference Star Trek: Insurrection, which was not the Enterprise-D, but instead, the Enterprise-E! The Lower Decks writers surely know this. Why doesn’t Boimler know this? Maybe the game of telephone in the Federation is a little inaccurate? In LDS Season 1, the news of Data’s brother seemed to travel…very slowly?)

“They had a regular string quartet.” (This references several TNG episodes, notably “Sarek,” and again, “Inheritance,”)

“Riker was jamming on the trombone” (A ton of TNG, including “The Next Phase,” “Future Imperfect,” and of course, “Second Chances.”)

“Catching love disease” (Probably TNG’s “The Naked Now”)

“Acting in plays” (This mostly references Riker acting in one of Crusher’s plays in TNG’s “Frame of Mind.”)

The remains of Spock Two?

In the spooky skeleton room, we see what appears to be a giant humanoid skeleton wearing a blue TOS–era Starfleet uniform. Who is this? The best guess? This is the giant Spock clone from The Animated Series episode “The Infinite Vulcan.”

Excalbian Bones and Abe Lincoln

Toward the end of the episode, the gang is trapped in a diorama that seems to have an alien and a skeleton of Abraham Lincoln. This references the TOS episode “The Savage Curtain” in which the Excalbians produced copies of Lincoln, along with Kahless and Surak. This episode was the first reference in Trek canon to both Kahless and Surak, and so, basically created the backstories of both Vulcan and Klingon cultures through historically inaccurate versions of those people. Funny, right?

Transporter clone

When Boimler beams the away team out through the distortion field, Riker says “oh, I’ve heard this tune before.” This references the TNG banger “Second Chances,” in which Riker’s transporter duplicate was discovered on a planet years after the fact. In this sense, Boimler’s transporter clone got off easy. Also, the idea that one of the transporter duplicates makes different decisions that the other also references “Second Chances,” in which “Thomas” Riker ends up being a different person than Will. The idea that both can’t serve on the Titan anymore might reference the idea that the TNG writing staff considered killing off the “first” Will Riker, and replacing him with his duplicate. This would have meant Data would have become the first officer in Season 6, and Riker, the operations officer. It didn’t happen, but from the point of view of the Titan crew, something like this basically DID just happen.

The Riker lean

While talking to the Mr. Boimlers, Riker puts one foot up on a couch. Classic Riker lean. Classic.

“Computer play Night Bird”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Just before Boimler leaves the Ready Room, “William Boimler” and Riker are sharing some Romulan Ale. Riker says “computer, play ‘Night Bird.’” This also references “Second Chances,” in which Riker is unable to play the trombone solo for this song, which Troi teases him about endlessly. “Night Bird” also appears to be a made-up song. But who knows, maybe William Boimler will be able to master it? Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 airs on Paramount+ on Thursdays.

The post Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2, Episode 2 Easter Egg and Reference appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3y08hbg

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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quickspinner · 5 years ago

Text

Finding Harmony - Ch 1 The Key of M

This story is complete on AO3

Season 3 was still coming out when I wrote this one, but it’s still probably my favorite of my works so far, so I hope you enjoy it. This is part of my ongoing effort to get my AO3 works posted to tumblr; you can filter the tag ‘backlog’ if you’d rather not see them.

Summary: Before any note can harmonize with another, it has to be on pitch. When Luka agrees to work with Marinette on a design project, he's happy to see that she's started making some changes for her own happiness. “It’s like you’re tuning your strings right now. You started out a little flat, and then you tuned too sharp. So now you're working back towards your true pitch." As she gets closer to striking her true note, he can't help but think how beautiful they sound together. He wishes she could hear it too.

“Marinette wants your body.”

Luka nearly swallowed the guitar pick he had clamped between his lips. He made a muffled sound and dropped the sheet music he’d been trying to arrange so he could whip the pick out of his mouth to demand, “What did you say?” He moved his guitar off his lap and turned to hang his legs off the edge of the bed so he could face his sister as she crossed from the door towards her end of the cabin.

“Finally,” Juleka smirked. “I’ve called your name three times. Marinette’s been trying to call you for like an hour.”

“What?” Luka frowned and shuffled around on his bed, finally finding his phone half-buried under his pillow. Sure enough, he had a bunch of missed notifications. “Oops,” he muttered.

“I just got back from her place,” Juleka told him, sitting sideways in her vanity chair to face him. “She’s got an idea that she’s all fired up on and she’s wondering if you’d be willing to model with me for it.”

“You know I’d do anything for you, Jul,” he said almost automatically.

Juleka smirked. “I know you’d do anything for Marinette.”

Luka smiled ruefully. “Yeah, that too.”

“Sap.”

“Like you can talk. I’m gonna go call her back now.” He stood up and walked out to the deck.

Marinette picked up on the first ring with a delighted “Luka!” that made his heart skip a bit.

“Hey, Marinette, sorry I missed your messages, I was kinda in the zone and I wasn’t paying attention to my phone. Juleka just told me you were trying to reach me.”

“No problem, I understand, I’ve been there! I’m sorry I interrupted, though, I guess this could have waited, it’s just I was excited and you know I’m a planner and—”

“Breathe, Marinette, it’s fine.” He smiled, leaning on the rail of the boat. “What do you need?”

“Well, you know I felt really bad about that whole Reflekdoll thing a while back—”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“I know, but—“ Marinette sighed. “Well, never mind about that. I still feel bad for Juleka and now that I know she wants to model I started thinking about what would look good on her, because you know the suit before was cute all but it didn’t really scream Juleka, and so I started messing around with some designs, more of my edgy stuff, you know, the kind of thing I do for Jagged Stone and Kitty Section, and the more I thought about it the more excited I got and I think I have some really cool concepts—”

“Breathe, Marinette,” he repeated, grinning.

“Right. Sorry. Anyway um I guess designing for Juleka kind of got me thinking about you, and I have some things in mind that I think would look really good on you and I was wondering if you would mind taking some pictures with Juleka when the pieces are done? What do you think?”

“I think all you had to say was ‘Hey Luka, will you model my designs with Juleka,’ and I’d have been sold,” Luka chuckled. “I don’t know if I’ll be any good but you know I’d do anything to help my two favorite girls. Just tell me when and where and what you need me to do.”

The delighted squeal that answered him left him grinning for an hour.

***

“Mom Luka’s here we’ll be in my room see you later!”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Cheng,” Luka said with a chuckle, as he followed Marinette through the bakery at a slightly more civilized pace.

“Good to see you, Luka. There’s a plate of snacks in the fridge if you two get hungry.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

It was a good thing he’d been to Marinette’s place with the rest of the band, because she was so far ahead of him he might as well have been by himself. When he climbed up through the hatch into her bedroom (her room was really pretty cool for not being a boat), Marinette nearly barreled right into him. “Whoa!” he cried, catching her around the waist just in time to keep her from falling over. “Relax, Marinette, I’m not going to turn into a pumpkin. You can slow down a little.” He waited until she was sure she had her balance back, and then let her go.

“Sorry,” Marinette said, bouncing slightly on her toes and then grabbing his hand to drag him to her chaise. “I’m just so excited to show you. I hope you’ll like it.”

Luka took a seat on her chaise as she directed and smiled as he watched her rush around. “It’s great to see you so inspired. Maybe I’m off base, but it just feels like you’ve been missing a little bit of your spark lately.”

“Yeah,” Marinette sighed, and it was like all the frenetic energy drained out of her at once. She came and sat next to him on the chaise, looking almost...mournful. “A lot of things have been happening, and I’m starting to realize that I’ve been...prioritizing the wrong things. Sometimes the wrong people.” She glanced at him and then away, twisting her fingers. “I didn’t like the person I was becoming. Which is complicated, because I didn’t like the person I was before, either. Before I met Alya and A-Adrien and got to be better friends with Nino and Kitty Section.” She flashed him a crooked smile. “You wouldn’t have liked me then either. I was a pushover and a victim and a...a bystander.” Luka moved closer and put his hand on her shoulder in silent encouragement. “Some things happened at the beginning of the school year that really pushed me out of that comfort zone, and I started really trying to be a friend, someone my friends can rely on, and for a while it was great. I still messed up a lot but I started standing up for myself and other people, and I wasn’t such a spectator. But...” Marinette chewed her lip. “I don’t know, I feel like somewhere in the last few months I got confused.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She nodded slowly. “I need to find a way back to the person I wanted to be. Except I don’t even know who that is, because if I don’t like who I was before and I don’t like who I became, then where am I trying to go?” She moaned faintly and put her face in her hands. “And all you did was compliment me and now I’m just spewing this out all over you and you didn’t ask for any of this, I’m so sorry. I’m probably not even making sense.”

“Marinette, you’re making perfect sense,” Luka said, squeezing her shoulder, and reaching down for the guitar case. “It sounds like you’ve been bottling that up for a while.” She nodded, face still in her hands. “It’s like...you’re tuning your strings right now,” he continued. He set his guitar on his lap, set his fingers and plucked a string. “That’s G, right? You started out a little flat.” He moved his fingers and played a G flat. “So you started tuning towards your true pitch.” He played G again. “But you overshot and you went sharp.” He played the G sharp. “So now you’re working back towards G again.” He plucked the G one more time and grinned. “Or maybe it’s M in your case.”

”There isn’t any M, Luka,” Marinette giggled.

“I think there is,” Luka smiled, fingers fluttering in a familiar pattern as he played up and down a G major scale. “I think you’ll find it.” He looked up and met her eyes. “And when you do, it’ll be beautiful.”

Marinette held his gaze for a moment, then blushed and looked at her hands. “Thanks Luka. I know—well, you’re one of the people I haven’t treated so well, so...thanks for understanding.”

“I could tell it wasn’t the true note, the real you. We all make mistakes, Marinette. You’ve always been honest and sincere with me, and I value that more than anything.”

Marinette smiled weakly. “I feel like that should be part of the Couffaine family motto. Liberté, sincerité, originalité.”

Luka laughed out loud. “I like it.”

Marinette, smiled, and the light came back into her eyes as she jumped up. “Enough navel gazing. How do you feel about snakes?”

Luka’s eyes widened slightly and he felt a flicker of panic. “Uh—”

“Because I have the greatest plan for you,” Marinette said, rushing over to her desk. “Check this out.” She pulled up a board that had been laying flat on her desk and held it vertical so he could see it. Front and center was a large picture of a blue and black striped snake with a red head and tail. It was bold and striking and it looked nothing like Viperion. Luka relaxed a little. He should have known better.

“Snakes are cool,” he grinned. “I like the colors.”

Marinette squealed and bounced a little. “I know, they’re perfect for you! I mean blue was the easy choice but I was afraid that would be predictable and boring but then I found this picture and—Can you help me hold this? Thanks. So the snake—it’s called a Malasian coral snake by the way—is the inspiration for collection, see? I’m working out an embroidery design, and I’m also incorporating the colors, although not as much on Juleka’s, I want to use mostly black for her with maybe a bright pop of color, maybe the red, see? And if she’s posing with you, maybe she won’t be so nervous. It’ll be a good way to help her get a little more experience so she’ll be more comfortable next time, and if the photos turn out well she’ll have a start to her portfolio.”

“Sounds great. You’re so thoughtful, Marinette. I know Juleka will appreciate it,” he told her admiringly.

“I really haven’t been lately,” Marinette sighed, as he helped her lay the board back down flat. “But I’m trying to be better.”

Luka touched her shoulder. “If you really want to change yourself, I know you can, Marinette. If it’s worth anything, I think you’re pretty great the way you are.”

He jolted when Marinette turned to him and threw her arms around his waist and hugged him tight, but he put one arm around her and hugged her back. “Thanks Luka,” she whispered. “You’re the best.”

He patted her back gently, resisting the urge to really hold her. “So, what do I need to do?”

“Measurements!” Marinette snapped back on task. “I need to take some measurements. Especially for the shirts and jacket, I’ve got to make sure there’s room for all—” she gestured vaguely at his shoulders. “That.”

He raised an eyebrow. “All what?”

She rolled her eyes at him and turned to her desk to dig out a measuring tape. “Take off your jacket, Luka.”

He did as she asked, laying the guitar back in the open case and dropping his denim jacket and hoodie on the end of the chaise. Marinette pursed her lips as she turned back to him, then took his wrist and held up his arm so that his bicep was flexed. “Yep. That’s what I meant.” Luka felt a sudden flush as she ran her hand up his arm and onto his shoulders. “You’ve got a lot more muscle than the guys in my class—except Kim but he’s a special case—and your shoulders are broader.”

“Um...thanks?” Luka cleared his throat.

Marinette jumped back. “Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I was just thinking out loud.”

“It’s fine,” he said, though he knew he was blushing, and he couldn’t quite keep from smirking just a little bit. “Go ahead.”

Luka stood patiently while she measured what felt like every inch of him.

“Sorry,” she said, writing numbers down. “I just don’t want to have to make you come back, so I’m trying to get everything I think I possibly could need. Once I’ve gotten a little further in the designs, I can bring fabric samples over to the Liberty for you guys to look at.”

“I appreciate that, Marinette, but these are your designs, you don’t need our approval.”

“I know, but I want you guys to be comfortable with the clothes, especially Juleka now that I know she’s so nervous. And the best part of designing is seeing how excited people are to wear the finished product. I really want you guys to be thrilled.”

Luka smiled at her enthusiasm. “I have confidence in you, Marinette.”

She flashed him a soft smile that made his heart flutter. “You always have, Luka. I appreciate it.” She straightened up and put her pencil down. “I think that’s everything I need.” Marinette bit her lip, and looked a bit...shy? That was new. “Um...do you have to go right away? We could hang out for a bit if you’re free...do you play video games?”

“Not really,” he admitted, with a shrug, and then added quickly as her face fell, “I’m always up for trying something new though.”

The way she lit up at that was not good for his heart. “Well, I’ll go easy on you since you’re a beginner.”

Luka chuckled. “Teach me your ways, master.”

Even ‘going easy,’ she destroyed him. His quick fingers and excellent hand-eye coordination were his only chance for redemption. At the same time, he’d never enjoyed losing more. Competitive Marinette was a side she’d never shown him before and Luka was hard pressed to pay attention to the game, distracted as he was by her wide smile and sparkling eyes. After she’d pounded him a few times, she had mercy on him and switched modes so that they battled together against online opponents. He was still pretty useless but she didn’t seem to need him to win anyway, and playing cooperatively gave her more opportunity to coach him. By the time he had to leave, he could at least survive through the fight while Marinette took their opponents apart. That was good enough for him; the game was okay but he mostly just enjoyed watching her have fun. This was clearly one of her passions and he loved watching her be so gung-ho over it.

“You’re amazing,” he sighed finally, putting down the controller. “I think I’d have to practice a long time to get good enough to even come close to beating you.”

“Oh, I didn’t—you did really well for your first time!” She hastened to reassure him. He laughed at her round eyes and panicked expression.

“Relax, Marinette, I don’t mind. Even losing to you is fun. You’re cute when you win.” He winked at her and she blushed, but recovered quickly.

“You’re right, I am amazing,” Marinette said airily, and then giggled. “At least at video games. My classmate Max and I played in the interschool tournament and we tore the competition apart.” She looked down at the controller and sighed, putting it down on the coffee table. “I actually haven’t taken much time to play lately, I’ve been so busy. Another reason to make some changes.”

Luka put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. “I don’t know what happened and I wish you weren’t so sad about whatever it was, but it sounds like you’ve got a good handle on what you need to do, so I know you’ll be fine. Thanks for teaching me, Marinette. I had fun.”

“Me too,” she smiled at him. “Thanks, Luka, your support means a lot to me. And,” she blushed a little, “Thanks for hanging out with me.”

“I love spending time with you,” Luka said, letting go of her shoulder and getting to his feet. “I do need to get home now though. I’ll go grab my stuff.” He went up the stairs to her room, giving her time to recover from her spluttering. Luka sensed that she felt lonely and unappreciated lately, and he didn’t want to pass up a chance to let her know how much he appreciated her, or how happy he was to spend time with her.

Luka put his jackets back on, zipped up the open guitar case, and lifted the strap over his head. He stopped by the desk, looking down at the snake image, and smiled to himself before going back down the stairs.

Marinette walked him out through the bakery, where her mother pressed a small box of sweets into his hands. “Be safe getting home, Luka,” Marinette told him at the door.

“See you soon, Marinette.” He smiled at her, squeezing her shoulder once more before walking away.

As he walked he thought about what Marinette had said to him. Luka was glad she was taking some time and space to take care of herself, but he couldn’t help wondering what brought on the change. Marinette seemed so down about it...He hoped she felt better about it soon, because the changes she was making seemed good for her. So far, he certainly liked what he was seeing. It was great to see her investing in her art. Just spending time with Marinette was enough for him, but getting to be involved in something she loved so much made it that much better.

Luka sighed, adjusting the guitar case and smiling at himself. He’d long ago accepted that he was hopelessly deep in a hopeless love when it came to Marinette. He knew Juleka thought he was an idiot, but he really just didn’t mind it.

Loving her made him happy.

#quickspins #finding harmony #lukanette #i am lukanette trash i admit it #luka couffaine #marinette dupain-cheng #miraculousladybug #miraculous ladybug #ml fics #backlog

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tiny-smallest · 4 years ago

Text

day twenty-five - sunshine

Rating: T Characters: Henry Warnings: mention of dismemberment; no graphic detail used Description:

that we may fall in love every time we open up our eyes

Also on AO3!

---

The cement was warm, almost hot, against his bare feet as he sprang outside onto their tiny patio with a giggle. A leaf blew by his face and he grabbed it, running back the way he'd come and almost slamming right into his mother on the way back in.

"Mama, mama, look!"

He held up the leaf and pointed to it, and she smiled.

He wouldn't remember the rest of this little event later, and he didn't need to.

---

"I'm giving her the puppy," his papa explained as he gently lowered the whimpering, whining, squirming thing into the box. Henry tilted his head.

"Why?"

"Because she'll adopt it like it was her baby all along." Hands on his underarms; he was lifted into the air. The cat in the box was calico. He wouldn't remember much else. "See? She's sniffing him."

She was. A moment later, she began cleaning the whining infant.

"Instincts are a powerful thing," he murmured, shifting his son to rest against his hip. "Your mother says it's amazing how many of them are geared towards love."

Henry watched the puppy begin to nurse, something warm inside him growing. "It is."

---

"You're really pretty," he murmured as he fed the hungry baby batting at the bottle with his feet.

Harry flailed his fists around. Henry managed a smile, wishing he had a free hand to rub his heavy eyes.

"You are," he cooed. "You're a very beautiful baby. And you're good. Like- good all the way down to your core, and I hope you know that. I hope I teach you that. I hope-"

The words hung in the still darkness of early morning.

"I hope I do as good a job with you as Mama and Papa did with me," he finished in a mutter as he set the bottle aside, trying to ignore the way his voice cracked. The little feet batting at the bottle now kicked at his chest, and he swallowed.

"They were so- they were good too, down to their cores, and they were nice, and they loved me, and I love you, and I hope I make you understand that as well as they made me understand it." He lifted the baby to his shoulder and burped him, trying to blink back tears.

"... I miss them," he whispered as he lowered the baby back to his lap after he heard the burp.

Harry looked at him with his large, dark eyes- the ones Henry could almost believe came from his own mother, and liked to pretend did, sometimes. There was a teeny knot in the baby's forehead.

Then his face crinkled. His mouth lifted.

He laughed.

Henry stared in shock, a tear or two sliding uninhibited down his face as wide eyes stared at the giggling, flailing baby.

Then a laugh fell from his mouth. Another. Another.

Harry reached to press his tiny, chubby hands to his cheeks, and Henry laughed and laughed as the room grew light with morning around them.

---

Sammy's tongue was sticking out of his mouth as he worked again. He scratched notes onto his paper, frowned, redid them, tuned his guitar, sounded out the new ones.

His tongue kept poking in and out of his mouth, especially when tuning. Henry set his art down just to watch.

"What’re you smiling at?" Sammy snorted when the feeling of eyes on him must have finally penetrated the concentration of his work.

"Just you," Henry beamed.

---

The world was choked out by dust and debris.

Henry had long ago come to consider himself... maybe not an atheist, but something close. If there was a god that claimed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, they had a lot to answer for.

He tripped over a leg. Just a leg.

A lot. To answer for.

Explosion to his left. He was just far away enough to avoid anything worse than a chunk of rock hit his head, but the force of the ground rocking sent him tumbling over, unable to stop his momentum in time before he started rolling down the hill.

He returned to himself to hear screaming nearby and scrambled to his feet, pushing onwards by blanking out everything else.

He did not fire his weapon. This time, he didn’t have to.

The dust eventually cleared. Henry felt the sunlight on his skin again. As he twirled in a slow circle, surveying the battlefield, the dust and dirt dissipating and leaving broken bodies in full view, something inside him snapped, and he sobbed.

A hand touched his shoulder, and he looked up (when had he collapsed to the ground?) to a face that would later be obscured by scribbles and stains on his memory, but at the time was warm and bright and weary but alive.

He clasped the hand and squeezed it tightly and even in a field of death at least there was this, at least there was this string holding him up.

---

It had been a long day. Unremarkable. Nothing particularly special.

He crossed the street on his way home, hands in his pockets. He might say he was enjoying the emptiness of his head, but really it was so empty there wasn't much of anything.

That was how he liked it, whenever the fog lifted enough for thought.

He stopped short at seeing a man sitting on a stoop as he rounded the corner. The other man's eyes turned away instantly, shoulders drawing up.

Henry walked softly up to the cup sitting beside him and peered in, then got out his wallet and dropped a few dollars in before giving him a gentle "good evening," and going on his way.

---

He had vowed to save them. To pull them all from the depths of this cold, dark, hole and end this nightmare once and for all.

And Henry had meant it when he said it, even as something within him knew he had no idea how, exactly, to do this. Not knowing how to do it meant nothing at the time; he just knew he had to.

That he managed it felt like a miracle.

It didn't feel truly real until he pushed the door open to find himself standing in the cracked parking lot, Bendy in one arm, Boris clinging to his other sleeve, staring out at the last few sunbeams of daylight touching the world golden and orange.

The slimy ink clung to his clothes and his skin. His breath shuddered, and his body straightened from putting his shoulder into opening the door as he stared around the parking lot, almost not daring to move any further.

The flowers in the cracks in the asphalt waved in the breeze, reaching up for the sunlight; for a wild moment, he wanted to do the same.

He managed not to cry, but only just.

There was still work to be done.

---

Henry clasped his hands around his coffee mug, breathing in the steam from the hot drink as he sat in the quiet of the blue-gray pre-dawn. He watched the sun rise slowly from the treeline beyond their yard through the back door, watched it stroke the trees, the grass, the pool. It sparkled on the dewdrops, jeweled light reflecting off the water droplets.

The last stars were disappearing, tucked in by the blanket of light to sleep until nightfall. Henry watched them wink out one by one. There went the Big Dipper, and Polaris, and that one that looked like a cat...

The crickets were quieting. Cicadas began to sing in their stead, maybe woken by the warmth. It would be a hot one today, but for now the breeze was cool and the earth was warm and the result was a comfortable atmosphere to sit in.

He stirred his coffee. The liquid sloshed against the sides of the mug.

The early risers would be up soon. In less than a half hour.

Heavy lids looked back from his drink to his kitchen.

The sun streamed through the windows and began to creep over the room, touching the counter, and the cabinets, and the tile. It lit up their bulletin board (and the note telling Bendy to clean the bathroom, he noted with a little frown as he remembered Bendy had yet to do that), and the little chalkboard on which they left notes to each other.

It embraced the numerous plants in the room, their leaves turning from blue-green in the shade to bright emerald in the light.

He closed his eyes and breathed it in as it lit upon him in his chair, hoping somehow he could put it into his body and light him from within, linger inside him and radiate outwards like a kaleidoscope.

That would be nice.

---

“Henry is very easily taken by the little things. Cicadas of summer, the little idiosyncrasies people do without thinking, sunbeams at sunrise, how animals will seek human help because they know humans will likely lend a hand.

He's not a child. He knows very, very well the world is also cruel and evil and dangerous.

But sometimes it is soft and golden and a cup of coffee at sunrise as the last stars are hidden by the sun and sometimes it is the first laughter of a baby and sometimes it is a mother cat accepting a newborn puppy as one of her own.

And sometimes it is the kindness we leave strangers with long after we are gone.

That's worth something.”

Something I wrote about Henry to describe why Sleeping At Last's Sun was so fitting of him. I'd meant to write a drabble of some sort based on this explanation and gave a go at it here, but I'm not sure if I'm completely satisfied with it and might revisit this concept another time.

#bendy and the ink machine #the ink demonth #the ink demonth 2020 #henry stein #batim henry #henry batim #batim henry stein #my writing #strike up the band au

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rocinantescoffeestop · 4 years ago

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Whumptober2020: Day 3 – Held At Gunpoint

Fandom: Psych (2006) Characters: Juliet O’Hara, Sam (from Psych: The Movie) Ships: Shawn/Juliet (Shules) Universe: Prologue to Please Stay (so far away) (singleparent!AU)

TW: CHARACTER DEATH, Blood, Gunshots

[Read on AO3 here.]

Pier 39 during the day was a bustling scene of families hoping to score some candy. During the night, the feeling it possessed was that of a ghost town, boarded up shops and darkened strings of bulbs. Tonight, the ghostly surroundings served as the grounds of pursuit between two of SFPD’s finest and an alleged jewellery thief (alleged only in the sense that they had little evidence to go off of). Personally, Juliet’s instincts grew sharper with each passing second on the pier; innocent men simply didn’t run like that.

Two sets of sneakers thundered over the wooden planks, and Juliet had to muse again over the man’s stupidity. Running deeper along the pier? Despite its near-maze-like standard of pathways, it was still a dead end. Looking at the cop in her periphery, she could tell Sam echoed her sentiments by his body language alone. After years on the San Francisco force together, they – like any competent partnership – learned how to read each other. It served for better execution on the job. Trust was nothing to take lightly, something Sam understood just as much as she.

“This pier doesn’t lead to any docked boats, right?” she huffed coarsely to the side, without taking her eyes off the path ahead.

“Think so?” he replied. “Why?”

Juliet spared a subtle glance at him, about to follow through with her reasoning, when it dawned on him.

“You think?” he said.

“If this guy’s smart enough to pull off elaborate heists, why would he run into a known dead end?”

“Getaway plan,” summarised Sam. He hefted his gun a couple degrees higher.

A figure on one of the spanning bridges caught her eye. She noticed it raise a shadowy arm, and with gut-based recognition yelled,

“Split!”

Sam dove one way, Juliet the other, and between them speeding from a crack of gunfire whizzed a bullet.

Forcing herself back to her feet, Juliet scrambled around the left of a shacked up store front. She was vaguely aware of her partner running around the other side as her path lifted into a ramp. With the only sources of illumination being each cop’s torch and the waning gibbous in the sky, Juliet summoned all her previous years of sensory intuition as she advanced to the shooter’s position.

“Freeze!” a gruff voice commanded.

“I think you stole my line,” Juliet smirked, training her gun and torch in the direction of the voice. She caught a crisp, white button-up haphazardly tucked into khakis before trailing the beam of light to the man’s face. “Drop your weapon.”

“Or what?” the man taunted, but his efforts were undercut by the severe squint he was making. “You know I have a gun.”

“You’re outnumbered,” Juliet pointed out.

But the thief replied wordlessly by lifting his gun and training it her direction.

“Judging by where your holding your flashlight,” he mused, “your heart should be right…” The gun’s barrel bobbed some before settling in line with her sternum. “There?” It wasn’t entirely accurate of an estimate, but considering all angles, the damage could very much be fatal. Juliet’s heart leapt against her will. If this night had been planned for, she would be safe within a bulletproof vest. Except, she had been out shopping. There were paper bags, stuffed with carbs and fibre and vitamin C, in the backseat of her Volkswagen to prove it. She hadn’t thought she’d need a vest tonight, not when she’d promised her daughter a bedtime story.

In her periphery flashed the light from Sam’s torch. There was no way she could call out to him, but he was already following a flight of stairs to their position. All she had to do was stall for another minute at most.

“Okay, you got me,” she played. “I do have just one question, though: why’d you run up here? It’s pretty much a dead end.”

“Wrong turn?” he supplied. Juliet could hear the shrug in his voice.

“A guy who can plan three jewellery heists in a few months and escape with little evidence doesn’t really seem like the type of person who’d stick themselves in a corner this easily,” she mused. “Does he?”

“You’re right,” the thief said, “that kind of man wouldn’t.”

In the span of three seconds, from the height of success to the pit of dismay, her heart fell. A set up, she groaned internally.

“Where?” she barked.

“Like I’d tell you,” the decoy huffed.

“Put the gun down.”

“Ladies first.”

“Not a chance.”

“Hey!” called Sam, several paces from the scene but at least now on the same level. “Do what my partner says.”

Juliet’s grip on her gun eased somewhat with the presence of back up. Together, like they always did, they’d take down this disobedient facade and get to work tracking down the real criminals.

“Cooperate and we can cut a deal,” she offered but with an authoritative air.

Sam planted himself a couple paces behind the man, gun trained on his turned back. The thief spared only a tilt of his head in acknowledgement of the second detective’s presence. For someone caught in the crossfire, he emoted minimal stress. His hands barely trembled, not even the one threatening Juliet’s life.

“It’s not a bad deal, man,” Sam pressed.

The corona of Juliet’s torch beam caught his raised brow, and while she couldn’t signal anything back in fear of the middle man catching on, she trusted that their minds were working around the same concept.

“Sorry,” the decoy said, and Juliet just caught his finger squeeze the trigger.

Two gun shots coalesced into an earsplitting bang. The man’s knees thudded against the bridge planks, and his torso teetered before collapsing in Juliet’s direction. She tried to jump back in avoidance of his head, but her legs would not respond. Blood swelled over the once-pure white of his shirt.

A sharp burning dragged her gaze further down until her eyes rested on her grey sweater. A tuned gasp ripped from her throat.

Normally, seeing blood wasn’t an issue. In addition to her experience in the field, part of her time at the academy was in first aid. Yet seeing a stain of red spread across the fabric of her favourite shirt – so much so soon – made her sway where she stood.

Sam was immediately at her side, gun and torch dropped, gripping her shoulders. She sank to her knees anyway, guided safety by her partner’s strength.

A hand hovering over the wound, she muttered, “I think I need medical attention.”

“You think?” replied Sam with his signature dryness. “Hang in there, J, I’ll call. Hang on.”

There was scuffling against wood to be heard and soon the beginnings of a winded conversation, but Juliet barely paid attention to what was being said into the phone. She flattened a palm against her gut while feeling around the space with her other hand. Letting out a grunt, she heaved herself properly onto the floor and settled into a semi-comfortable sitting position, her back against one of the railing’s posts.

Each breath she attempted felt like a steamboat weighing on her lungs. Shallower breaths hurt less, so she opted for more of those to split the difference.

A warm presence crouched by her right again. A beam of light passed up and down her body before concentrating on the bloody mess beneath her fingers.

“Dammit, Juliet, why couldn’t you have gotten shot somewhere like your leg?” snarked Sam, voice shaking in either humour, dread, or both.

“I’ll try harder next time,” she chuckled back only to wince at her core’s movement.

“Help’s five minute’s away,” he informed. “We just gotta keep pressure on the wound until then.”

Juliet coughed before she could respond. She ended up just nodding instead of answering.

“Hang in there.”

“You said that already,” she pointed out, her voice growing raspy.

“I think it still applies here.”

Managing a hum and a little smile, Juliet shifted her fingers over the bullet hole. The pain was excruciating, but her pride wouldn’t allow her to make any sound above a grunt.

“How’s it feel?”

“Like a vacation,” she lied, although her sarcasm didn’t land as well as it usually did. Her brain was growing woozier with each second.

“That bad, huh,” he said, and within seconds she gave him the stickiest glare she could manage. “I know, dumb question, right?”

“S’okay.” She lifted her hand from the wound to grab at… something, anything. She was slipping away from the floor with every blink.

Her mind flew across town. She jerked forward, panic inciting another round of adrenaline. “Shawn… I need– I have to–!” She let out a shriek; the skin around her bullet hole tore with the strain.

“Whoa, Juliet! Stay– I call him, too! Just sit, okay?!” With the help of gravity and Sam’s guiding hands, she slipped backwards against the post. Her hand was pushed back down to her midriff and secured. The grip was comforting, but it felt wrong in too many ways for her to enjoy its little solace. She wanted Shawn’s hand.

“I’m... tired?”

She could barely hear her own voice.

“J, seriously needing you to hang on, right now! They should be here anytime.”

All Juliet could do was shake her head, yet events she did so, the sensation felt a million miles away. Someone else was shaking their head. Someone else was bleeding out on Pier 39. Meanwhile, she was fine, she was safe, she was wrapped up in a green snuggie and nestled in the arms of her lover. The torchlight was growing fainter, but her next breath came a little easier. Good night, she thought with a little smile, knowing that in the morning, she’d wake up to cuddles and sunshine.

Wouldn’t that be nice.

—

Written for @whumptober2020.

#whump #whumptober2020 #juliet o'hara #psych #tw: blood #tw: guns #juliet's partner sam #psych: the movie #lilly's whump #fanfiction #writing #whumptober day 3 #held at gunpoint #lilly's writing #shules #tw: character death #tw: death

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ginnyzero · 5 years ago

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Being a Fanfic Writer is Okay

AKA I love Fanfiction

Fan Fiction, a bit controversial and a bit time worn topic in writing and fandom circles. But let’s face it, fan fiction is older than dirt (Shakespeare anyone?) and isn’t about to go away any time soon. So, we might as well face the pink elephant in the room and address the issue. Besides, fan fiction is really personal to me. Of course, before I get all maudlin about my experiences with fan fiction, maybe we better discuss what fan fiction is, a bit of history and where to find it.

Fan fiction is at its core, a story written by someone who isn’t the original owner of a story. They are simply a fan writing in someone else’s world using someone else’s characters. After that, the possibilities are pretty much limitless and maybe we can discuss some of the more interesting aspects of fan fiction later. Some of our favorite classic stories might be considered fan fiction, Homer’s take on the Trojan War for example. Shakespeare wrote wild interpretations of the lives of British Kings. And modern day published fan fiction would be the books based on favorite television shows or popular games, video, role playing or even board games. A type of visual fan fiction would be the movie Clue! Based on the popular Clue board game. (Sadly not really an action movie, drat.) Star Wars Expanded Universe is a type of authorized published fan fiction. And who can forget the hundreds and hundreds of Star Trek novels based upon the episodes and later expounding upon the universe.

Speaking of Star Trek, the modern take on fan fiction really took off with the introduction of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. Before the internet (what a phrase,) ambitious Trekkies created magazines that writers could submit their own stories about the Starship Enterprise and her crew and receive subscriptions of them in the mail. Many of these stories revolved around Kirk and Spock in a romantic relationship, which is still a huge pairing today. Other fandom groups copied this magazine model and later as the internet took off, they created online email groups, forums, journaling sites, chat rooms and individual sites, until someone got ambitious enough to create the first fan fiction archive. And suddenly, there was a place where any writer of any talent could post their work to one place and read everyone else’s work no matter the quality or fandom. And with the introduction of Japanese anime to America, the concept of fan fiction exploded.

And Sturgeon’s Law reared its ugly head. 90% of it is crap.

But that’s okay.

A lot of archives came and went. There are only a few that stayed the course; fanfiction.net, mediaminer.org, adult-fanfiction.org and the baby of the family, archiveofourown.org (AO3). Each of these rather interesting archives have a tumultuous history and interesting backstories, which I really don’t want to get into right now. Just saying, if you have a bunch of free time, want to read some free stories and have some fandoms you really love, then these are the places to go. It might take some time to wade through the truly awful stories to find the gems, but the side effect of fan fiction archives, are fan fiction recommendation lists! These handy lists have the best fan fiction from certain fandoms in the compliers subjective viewpoint! Always a good starting place.

As I said, fan fiction is really personal to me. As it says in my bio, I have no formal education about writing outside some interesting English classes in college. I got a C in research papers and grammar; a B in creating a pitch and an A in narrative storytelling. This probably should have told me something. What I do have, is a very long history and experience in fan fiction. I’m not comfortable with putting my pen name out there, let’s just say I’ve been writing fan fiction for over fifteen years in a variety of fandoms under a couple of different names. And in the beginning, I was one of those probably writing crap. And I didn’t care. I was writing and I was having fun. Writing fan fiction helped me through my bad high school experience (a lot of people have them) and it helped others too. And that was important to me. Is still important to me. I grew. I improved. I got to focus on things in fan fiction that I would never have focused on if I had been trying to write original works. And it helped me churn out idea after idea and see how I could string these ideas together to create good concepts and make better stories.

The greatest thing about fan fiction in my opinion, is that it gets people of every age (I have met as many forty year olds as I have twelve year olds) writing. And when people write, they also tend to read. Okay, so maybe they are reading in this vacuum bubble of fan fiction where 90% of it is crap and they may or may not improve, yet, they are reading and you know, that is okay. Because, let’s face it, 90% of the published world of books is crap too. And let us not get started on this idea of self-publishing. Seriously, anything that introduces a little bit of literacy to the world I’m all for. I’m not going to discourage anyone from taking up a pen or sitting down at a computer or type writer and taking these ideas they have in their head and getting them out there. Because, there is a certain magic to it. Let’s not stifle any form of creativity of the arts here.

Now writing and posting fan fiction are two completely different things. And if someone wants to write a story based on 10 Things I Hate About You (which in itself was an authorized fan fiction of the Taming of the Shrew, which is based on classic literature tropes) and keep on their computer for only themselves to read. That is fine! However, if they want to take that fantastical leap of courage and post it the internet in one fashion or another for the public to see, then that, is inspirational. Posting, which in this case is essentially publishing, something you have created from your heart for others to see and consume is perhaps one of the scariest things you can do. And I applaud them for their courage because the public is not a safe place and you never know what will happen. Now, I will say that a lot of fandom communities can be nice and welcoming. And then there are the communities that are insular and full of drama. And sometimes, publishing in the fan fiction world is like shouting into a canyon and hearing the echo and you might have to shout several times (meaning publish more than one story or more than one chapter of a story) to get any sort of response. Hey, being popular in one fandom, doesn’t automatically guarantee being popular in another fandom!

And that is where the sense of community steps in. Sure, you will probably get a lot of ‘squee, I love it, write more!’ responses, which are good for the ego and the soul. But there will be rare times, where you will meet people who love the same things you do and want to squee and discuss writing. About characterization, and plot bunnies hopping out of control and multiplying and isn’t so and so just hot as this character. And suddenly, one isn’t so alone anymore. You don’t feel exactly strange or like a hermit who sits alone in their bedroom typing for hours at a time. Out there, in the world, there are people just like you, doing the same things. And it is okay. People, as a community who like a certain thing, are being creative and sharing ideas. And that is wonderful. So, the execution of said ideas might not be wonderful, but now, the idea is out there in the universal consciousness waiting to be picked up by someone else, tinkered with and fine-tuned and maybe a better version of it, or maybe one just as bad, will be published to be seen and shared by more people so more interesting and diverse stories can be born. (Or, as it is so easy to see in fan fiction if you pay attention, a new fad of fiction tropes and mish mash of nonsensical ideas put together to create something absolutely crazy but mind numbingly fun that you have to go ‘what the fuck, who came up with this bullshit and how did it become so popular and why wasn’t it me? [Superwholock, Omegaverse, Soulbonding])

Now we could discuss the legality of fan fiction, or some of the crazy views that published authors have about fan fiction (Anne McCaffery, George RR Martin), or some of the awesome things that have happened to people because of their fan fiction and the original creators being okay with it (Avatar: The Last Air Bender, Joss Whedon). Or the crazy things that some fan fiction writers do to take their fan fiction and make it into original fiction (Cassandra Claire, 50 Shades of Grey.) But those could take a couple thousand more words and some of it sincerely bewilders me.

Fan fiction is great. I enjoy writing it. And I also enjoy reading it when I have time. There is nothing wrong with people, in their spare time, writing fluffy and sometimes not so fluffy stories about their favorite characters in their favorite universes. There are a lot more horrible things they could be doing than writing stories about fictional people and posting it on the internet.

Now, when I get published (and I say when, not if because I must believe in the when), as a matter of course and a, for your information, I won’t be reading any fan fiction of my own works. (Though, I’d love to keep track of statistics for it, that would be amusing.) It comes down to the universal consciousness once again. If one of those stories someone writes about my work has an amazing idea and I read it, later forget about it, and then think I come up with it on my own and use that idea, then, well, I could be sued. (It has happened.) It is unlikely that the fan fiction writer will win (there is precedent about this), but I would still feel awful. So it is just better all around if I don’t read fan fiction of my own work. Which for me is kind of sadness, but hey, it is a fact of life.

That being said. I hope that I do inspire people to write their own crazy times using my characters or creating their own characters and putting them in my world, or crossing my world into their other favorite worlds. Because, if I wasn’t so busy writing the original world, I’d probably be doing the same thing. There is nothing wrong with people having a good time and enjoying themselves. In fact, if it helps get them through a bad place in their life, then good for them.

Not that the die hard fan fiction writers need permission from me. But those who aren’t so certain, and maybe worry a bit too much or have been told that writing original is superior to writing fan fiction and believed it. Writing fan fiction is okay. Don’t beat yourself up over it and go out there and have fun. Go on, get your fanfic on!

#fan fiction #fan fic #fan fic history #writing #writblr #writeblr

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doomedandstoned · 5 years ago

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SÂVER: Raging At Darkness, Stepping Into Light

~By Billy Goate~

When I heard that former Tombstones members were forming a new band called SÂVER, I knew it was going to be doomy, but I don't think I was prepared for an album of such immense breadth and ferocity. You think Slomatics or Conan can command a hall? Well, let's just say with S VER you're in the Hall of the Mountain King. As I listen, it's not hard to imagine an apocalyptic scenario where the SÂVER's powerful strains break out in the dead of night, echoing through nightmarish forests, over majestic mountains, and into the impenetrable dark of Norway's wild. I can't believe how perfectly this recording captures size, scope, and grandiosity of their sound.

They Came With Sunlight by SÂVER

A deep, quietly percussive bass note opens up "Distant Path" and is joined in short order by menacing reverb of the synth. Two minutes in, the guitar and drums join in the layers of crescendo. At last, Ole Christian Helstad joins the fruckus of this brewing storm, ever building, building, building towards its inevitably violent release. Five minutes into the song, a torrent of rain swells down, accompanied by a hail of steady notes on guitar. At the eight-minute mark, a terrifyingly grandiose symphony of raging vocals and the combined force of Helstad's explosive bass, Markus Støle's drums, and Ole Ulvik Rokseth's guitar brings us the apocalyptic moment we've all been waiting for. Simply put, it is jaw-droppingly huge. 'They Came With Sunlight' (2019) has officially begun.

The following track, "I, Vanish," would make a fine companion to Yob's "The Screen." It ticks and tocks and grinds its gears like the mechanical clock of some mad horologist, who watches each finely tuned movement closely to see if we are nearer to Doomsday. This and the succession of tracks that follow take us on an ethereal journey of sorts. The music gives a continual sense of flow -- whether with the echo of chords, the precise rhythms of repeated notes, or the fury of blinding tremolos, we are always moving, moving, moving. The complexity of movement may find some drawing comparisons with Black Cobra, Mastodon, perhaps even Tool and Meshuggah.

They Came With Sunlight by SÂVER

"Influx" breaks with this form just long enough to make us question what we thought was real. Are we awake in the real world or in some kind of a dream where the rules still aren't known? It feels like we are floating in a state of suspended animation. The lyrics throughout the album are obscure, making it hard to get a straight answer one way or another. Perhaps the point is to ponder the larger themes exposited by these opaque words, to free our minds to wander and explore the possibilities. I will say the interview that follows helps to clear up at least one or two mysteries for us, but overall the material remains high concept, abstract, and surreal.

They Came With Sunlight by SÂVER

"How They Envisioned Life" is the most heart-wrenching song of the lot. There is real pain here, as the singer lashes out with some of the purest rage on record at everything he believed to be true and faithful about his reality. There's also what appears to be a tug of war. The light wants him, the dark wants him. Is this a near-death experience? I'll let you be the judge.

"Step out of light!" - Dark Frozen by fright, left to survive Under the sky Leave!! Leave my soul to him!

They came - They saw How they envisioned life Embrace the warmth that I have left you with

Please let us stay Through depths and stone I see light

Leave – Leave my soul to him

They came - They saw How they envisioned light Your rage - minds covered This ancient hollowed out fight I have left you - Light

"Dissolve To Ashes" gets even stranger with references to "cosmic shuttles" and panicked attempts to find a path that will lead to light. Come to think of it, this is actually is starting to feel like the kind of things I dream about on the regular!

They Came With Sunlight by SÂVER

The ancient archetypal struggle between light and darkness comes to a head in the album's longest track, the twelve-and-a-half minute "Altered Light." There are hints that maybe the light isn't quite what it seems and that a little sleight of hand is involved when some people promise to show us the way.

I'd like to point out something I've not mentioned up to this point: melody. The riffs on this album are, for lack of a better expression, very "hummable." This means these little earworms will be working their magic on you long after you've walked away from the record. I've found myself humming or tapping the theme to this song at the grocery store, at work, while doing laundry, you name it. Look, I don't have the answers to the riddles presented by They Came WIth Sunlight. What I can offer you is SÂVER. Oh, and if you dig this kind of sound, be sure and check out Markus Støle and Ole Rokseth's other project HYMN.

Photograph by Adrian Kraakefingar Vindedal

Interview with SÂVER's Ole Rokseth

~Photographs by Pål Bellis~

“It sounds like war.”

Congratulations on a successful album launch via Pelagic Records and for debuting at the #10 spot on the Doom Charts with 'They Came With Sunlight' (2019).

Thanks, Billy! The response has been overwhelming. We are super stoked.

The last time we checked in, Tombstones had just disbanded and then I think I lost track of the story for a good two years after that. What was going on in the backdrop leading up to the formation of SÂVER?

We spent a year, more or less, in our rehearsal space after Tombstones, just writing new material without having a plan. I don't think it took that long before we knew we had to make something of it, so we talked alot about what type of band we wanted to start and what type of music we wanted to play. We all knew we wanted to do something different. So it's been a lot of experimenting with sounds and gear to get to where we are now.

What does the band’s name signify?

It means "sleep" or "sleeping" in an old Norwegian dialect, from out in the woods where Ole Helstad is from.

“We wanted to just leave.”

The opening line from “Dissolve To Ashes” starts with: “They came with sunlight” -- it’s also the title of the album. I’m used to song and album titles that refer to the menace of darkness and those that prey in the shadows, but here you’re anticipating the arrival of something with the dawn. Can you illuminate this?

I think that line, in particular, is spoken through someone or something else “on the other side.” The clean singing sort of amplifies that. At some point during the writing process, I painted this picture in my mind of three dudes just leaving the earth towards a better destination, in search of “The Light.” So most of the lyrics is based around that journey. I think people relate to that and that's why it's equally heavy as the typical “metal lyrics.” It's just about life, man.

“It's just about life, man.”

So much of metal is focused on pain, misery, death, subjugation, and very little is written about “the light” -- especially not in a style as heavy, so it really intrigues me.

Yes, well, I don't think there is any point in writing about stuff thats not from your own experiences and thought. We just sort of turned it all around and wrote about our journey away from death, shadows, and battleaxes. It was really about what all of us went through at the time. We wanted to just leave.

The tracks on They Came With Sunlight are huge. This and the recent Yob album are among the few that have been successful in writing cohesive long-form compositions that carry an effective dramatic arc. How does a piece like “I, Vanish” come together?

That song is based on a bass riff that Ole brought to the table one night. And I guess we just wrote it the way we know best. Weed, beer, and a sweaty rehearsal space with low lighting. We are all believers of repetition in music, and that song is all about that for sure. This whole album really came together naturally and I think it's because we all had a need to express ourselves in a different way than in other bands and we had a clear vision of what we wanted to do early on.

The production value is very high on the new album, capturing the depth, range, and power of your sound admirably. What have you learned about recording your sound now that’s different from when you first started recording albums with Tombstones a decades ago?

I always have all of these different ideas and thoughts on how to record the next album to make it better than what we have done before. But we always, at least in these types of bands, conclude that recording live is the only way. And having a studio tech that can provide good recordings of all the instruments is key. So we basically just do what we have been doing at rehearsals and know that the guys behind the desk just captures it at that moment. Joona Hassinen at Studio Underjord in Sweden was that guy, and he couldn't have done a better job. Everything sounded really good straight out of the mixing board, so we knew early on that this was gonna be a super heavy experience. That being said, we had a lot of weird accidents on this album, as well, that Joona decided to just leave in. Art by accident, dude. Always cool. We obviously added stuff after recording it live, but it's not really that far from it.

“Three dudes just leaving the earth towards a better destination in search of The Light.”

If nothing else, doom is surely infamous for its “low ‘n’ slow” approach. How in the name of Hades did you get such a damning sound on this record? What did you tune to, for example, on “Distant Path”?

It's that whole year of continuously hitting the rehearsal space, practicing and trying out different sounds. We knew we wanted to try and distance ourselves from all the other “doom” bands that are out there, but yet not losing ourselves and what we think sounds cool.

We tune in drop A, and the guitars have pretty thin string gauges to get that open, heavy sound. Not that much distortion either, to be honest. Most of the fuzz comes from Helstad's 215 bass cabinet. A Lot of the sound also came together after I bought a Fender Telecaster Deluxe and combined it with an older Peavey transistor head. Bringing a synthesizer to mix also opened a lot for us. I inherited a real passion for old and new synths from my brother. His collection of synths is out of this world -- thanks Pål.

As Joona said after re-amping the fuzz bass, “It sounds like war.” I will never stop trying out new gear and trying new weird shit, and that's a big part of me evolving as a musician.

Picking up from that last question, the level of tonal depth you were able to capture on this recording is truly remarkable. Without ever feeling muted or distorted, you’ve managed to capture the grandiosity and rumbling low-end of those bruising chords.

Joona basically just recorded -- with great technique and experience -- what we played then and there. If the song is heavy, and you believe in it, it's gonna come out heavy. No matter what amp you use or what pickup you have in you guitar. I'm pretty sure Jimi Hendrix would make a shitty B.C. Rich Warlock from 2009 sing and penetrate your soul in the same way he does with his Stratocaster.

What amps and gear did you use in the recording?

We recorded it live with the same set-up as we use at gigs and rehearsals. I won't get into all the pedal details. On guitar, I played through a stereo setup with 412 cabinets. Peavey Century Bass Series and and old Simms Watts 100. Well, bass was actually reamped, but Helstad uses his Rickenbacker 4003 through a Ampeg SVT Classic with an 810 cab and a Peavey Standard with a Peavey 215 cab. Markus, of course, can make any drum kit sound amazing, though I don't remember the particulars of what he used in this recording.

To record the synth parts, I borrowed his brother's Korg MS10 from the '70s. One of our all time favourite synthesizers, but it's old, rare, and not cheap, so recently I bought a Moog Sub Phatty that I bet you will hear more of on our next record. If people want to know more, we love talking gear. Come check us out live and have a chat.

How did you arrive at the decision to use synthesizers in these compositions, anyway?

I've been active in two other electronica-based bands: Gundelach and Hubbabubbaklubb. I got inspired by these two acts and my brother, who plays synth in those two bands, as well. As mentioned, he's got an enormous collection of vintage, kickass synthesizers. All of us love the sound of it and also electronic music, and we wanted to use that as a tool to divide our sound from the common doom band. You can expect more synth on the next album.

"Art by accident, dude. Always cool.”

How have your live performances gone so far? We’d love to have you back to the States sometime!

Really good! Again, the response has been overwhelming. As a band, it's really important to set goals, and we have met almost all of our goals to this date. It's crazy. We are really looking forward to next year! Playing the US has been a goal for all of us forever and is something we definitely want to make happen with S VER. Hopefully next year, Billy, we can meet up and have a beer.

The Great SÂVER Giveaway

The band has been kind enough to offer 15 free downloads of their new album to 15 lucky souls. Redeem one code below at pelagicrecords.bandcamp.com/yum.

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Follow The Band

Get The Music

#D&S Interviews #Saver #Oslo #Norway #Doom #Sludge #Metal #Post-Doom #D&S Reviews #HeavyBest19 #Doomed & Stoned

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voicesfromthelight · 6 years ago

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On Different Frequencies in The Spirit World (And Why They Matter)

Today, I’d like to explore some useful concepts regarding the nature and structure of the spirit world, how they reflect on the work of a medium, as well as why it’s so important to be aware of what you are tuning into.

If you have read my blog on a regular basis, you may have noticed that a lot of the lessons that my guides bring through are not focused so much on training the senses to perceive psychic information as they are on helping us hit a certain emotional pitch of love, gratitude, trust, joy and excitement. While working from a mindset of love, respect and serene receptivity is something many evidential mediums talk about, there is, I think, somewhat more of an emphasis on emotion in channeling work. I have come to the conclusion that the reason for this is not based on one method being “better” than the other, but rooted in the nature of the spirit world as a spectrum of frequencies, and how they resonate with human consciousness. The frequency a medium is able to resonate with, and therefore receive, is set by an amalgamation of their emotional and physical vibrations. Spirit guides such as Natalie and Salvador dwell most comfortably, I think, in a slightly different “frequency band” than our departed loved ones do when they approach our physical plane in order to communicate. Therefore, lifting the emotional vibration of the medium to a certain pitch is perhaps even more important when channeling the former. If the psychic mind were a radio, our departed loved ones and our spirit guides would be broadcasting on slightly different channels. In mediumistic work, by expanding our vibrational resonance through “stretching” ourselves emotionally and thus, energetically, our range of perception/reception expands. Our guides and loved ones also have this capacity. The channel of communication is forged where our respective vibrations meet.

A good analogy to the structure of the spirit world can be drawn from how we perceive light and sound. Different frequencies within their spectrums produce different colors and timbres. Some of them are perceptible to the human eye and ear, others are not. Our physical senses are limited in what they can perceive, hitting mostly a middle ground within the full range of the spectrums. For example: The sound of a guitar string is produced by vibrating it at a specific frequency. We hear the sound, because within our ears, we have hairs that will resonate with that particular pitch when the string is plucked within hearing distance of us. Play a note that is high enough - i.e. vibrating fast enough - however, and we will no longer have the compatible receptors within our ears to perceive the sound.

The spirit world, and how we perceive it, operates in a similar way to this. Different types of entities exist within different “frequency bands” in the spirit realm, and can be perceived by attuning our energies to those frequencies. We humans, in our physical bodies, inhabit the very dense frequency of the earthly plane, and therefore perceive things within it most easily. One level up from that, closest to it, is what is widely known as the Astral Plane, which is where a lot of phenomena such as our energy bodies, most dream realities, and ghostly manifestations, exist. This is the realm of the mind and thought forms - including not only benevolent beings, but some that are caught in patterns of fear, confusion, victimization, addiction, ego and anxiety. As you move further up in frequency from that, you reach other, increasingly finely vibrating levels, such as the Ethereal, Angelic and Celestial realms, where the corresponding, lighter entities and environments can be experienced. Different mystical traditions ascribe different names to these levels, and can describe them with varying detail, but what is most helpful to understand is that there is not one dimension of Spirit that we can reach for through psychic or mediumistic work, but many - perhaps countless ones. This is why no two psychics are exactly the same in their abilities or perceptions.

Because the world of Spirit is so diverse, people coming from all different kinds of traditions, religions and understandings can have very different experiences of its many manifestations, and they will be equally “real.” They are not mutually exclusive. They coexist. Especially within the realm of the Astral, which is very susceptible to thought and emotion, it is very easy for spiritual energy to take on forms and behaviors that are familiar to us from our pre-existing beliefs. So, not only are there several different levels of the spirit world, but different “niches” exist within them, populated by energies that have been molded and shaped by tradition, thought, history, and emotion. Accordingly, one should always remember that we are free to choose which spiritual realities we buy into. Don't let anyone else's beliefs throw off your inner compass!

The intention and attunement of an individual determines which frequency of the spirit world they will be most prone to communicate with. This is why it is important for the developing medium to clearly articulate for themselves what kind of spiritual energy they wish to bring through. If you leave this ill-defined, it is easier to get confused about the value of the communicated information, what exactly you are tuning into, and what technique will best serve you. You will also be more vulnerable to interference.

Part of the reason people get drawn into darker aspects of the occult, and the associated denser frequencies of the spirit world, is because as human beings operating in the physical realm, we are easily impressed with what we can see, hear and perceive with our physical senses. When we are caught in a negative energetic pattern of fear-based emotions, we will be more likely to resonate with the lower spectrum of the Astral Plane and the fear-based entities that inhabit it. The denser the frequency, the more easily it can tangibly manipulate the physical plane. This can result in some of the spookier experiences people have with the supernatural, including hauntings, energetic depletion, bad experiences with spirit boards, etc.. These can be compelling in all their unpleasantness, because they are much harder to miss than the more subtle communications that take place with the realms existing in higher frequencies. This is why some darkly inclined magicians seem to have better success rates in their spell work than lightworkers, and why some paranormal researchers prefer to rely on “blunter” instruments such as EMF readers and audio recorders over mediumistic evidence. The sad thing is, some people then end up mistaking this spectrum of experience for the only reality of Spirit, when in fact, it is generally much more beneficial, enlightening and rewarding for us to engage with finer spiritual realities existing beyond the dense ones fear-based entities inhabit.

Practice discernment here. You have no reason to choose anything but the very best for yourself, in accordance with your highest good - and that of all creation.

The best way to control which realm of the spirit world we communicate with is by learning to control our emotional frequency, especially during psychic and mediumistic work itself. We also need to learn to keep our psychic boundaries intact through protective visualization work, and our energy bodies clear and strong through self-care, keeping away from influences not in line with our chosen frequency, focusing on things that are in emotional alignment with it. Like attracts alike. Natalie and Salvador are very adamant about discipline in this respect, and will quickly shoo me away from any spiritual practices, practitioners or environments they deem detrimental. Any spiritual work I do as a channel needs to operate in an energetic vibration that is high enough to keep me above a frequency compatible with Astral interference. The best way I have learned to ensure this, so far, is to conduct such work from a loving, enthusiastic state, and to take time to prepare through meditation, intention, visualization and prayer.

It is also important to recognize that what our minds focus on becomes energized. The more attention you give to a thought or entity, the more lively it becomes. This is why Natalie's technique for crossing over earth-bound spirits minimizes engagement, and why any frightening visions encountered during psychic work should be quickly released with gratitude before simply being ignored. It’s also why anyone wishing to learn how to channel should train themselves to shift their emotional pitch and awareness to one of love and trust at will. It’s OK to still have human emotions, of course - we all have our day-to-day struggles - but our energy is our psychic currency, and the higher our vibration, the richer we are. When we have established a strong working relationship with our high-vibration spirit guides, they will help to protect us even when we are not operating at our very best.

How do you attune your frequency to your spirit guides? Do you find it easy to switch between “channels”? How do you keep yourself at a high vibration? Think about the ways in which you can grow and progress in your energetic discipline to reach your goals as a medium!

#psychicdevelopment #mediumship #psychic #psychicmedium #spirit world #spirit #channeling #psychicsafety #psychicprotection #spirit guides #ascension

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cubcanoe1-blog · 4 years ago

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What Is Cellulite & how To eliminate It.

What Is Cellulite & how To get Rid Of It.

Content

The science Behind Cellulite.

therapy area: stomach.

Cellulite Buster 8: Oily Fish.

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The Lego ® business was begun in 1932 by woodworker Ole Kirk Christiansen in the village of Billund, Denmark, at first to make wooden step-ladders, stools, ironing boards and playthings. Ole Kirk's boy Godtfred, aged 12, worked in the business from the start, which we can visualize most likely aided dramatically with toy product development. Lego ® background makes no referral to any type of connection between Godtfred's name and the company name however it's sensible to assume that the organization should have crossed Ole Kirk's mind. The firm's earliest adage was 'Only the very best suffices'. In the early 1940s the business started making plastic injection-moulded playthings, enabling it to create the 'Automatic Binding Blocks' concept in 1949.

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The African United States slave languages 'Ewe' as well as 'Wolof' both contained the word 'all right' to indicate 'excellent'. Slavery in the United States efficiently began in 1620 and lasted till 1865, so this was absolutely a very early American beginning of the term.

It's a parasitical plant, connecting itself and drawing nutrition from the branches of a host tree, ending up being particularly obvious in the wintertime when the berries show up. https://kennedydominguez771.shutterfly.com/21 remains to pity the Western developed world given that cures and also therapies exist yet millions still perish from the desease in Africa for want helpful. Is this the origin as well as motivation of phony liar trousers ablaze? If you can add to the feasible beginnings as well as background of using this expression in its various variations, please contact me. lego - the foundation building toy as well as company name - Lego ® is a Danish firm. The name comes from the Danish words 'leg' and 'godt', meaning 'play well'. Surprisingly it was later on become aware that lego can also be interpreted to indicate 'I study' or 'I put together' in Latin.

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Currently a large computer system would certainly have 32,000 words of memory. top dog - employer - initially an American expression from the 2nd Globe Battle, derived from the Japanese 'hancho' implying team leader. house pleasant house - sentimental expression of home - from American John Howard Payne's words for the 1823 opera, The Maid of Milan, the tune's word's are" Be it never ever so humble, there's no area like residence'. heck to pay - seriously bad repercussions - a maritime expression; 'pay' meant to waterproof a ship's appears with tar. Most likely originated from the expression 'the devil to pay and no pitch hot', in which words heck and pay indicate something apart from what we might think from this expression. See' evil one to pay ', which discusses the maritime technicalities of the expression in more information.

knuckle-duster - weapon worn over clenched fist - the term 'dust' suggested 'beat', from the technique of cleaning carpetings; an early expression for beating somebody was to 'dirt your coat'. kick the bucket - die - in very early English a pail was a beam of light or pulley, by which butchered pigs or oxen were hung by their feet. After being butchered the feet of the strung-up carcass would certainly hit or 'kick' the pail. A comparable example was likewise utilized in the old expression 'kick the beam of light', which suggested to be of really light weight, the beam being the cross-member of weighing ranges; a light frying pan on one side would fly up as well as 'kick' the beam. The 'bite the dust' expression influenced a 2007 funny film called Container Listing, referring to a list of points to do before passing away.

The practise of guaranteeing a regular consumption of vitamin C in this way additionally triggered the term 'limey', used by immigrants initally to imply a British seafarer, and also later encompassed British males typically. Grog is particularly popular as a jargon term for beer in Australia. greyhound - competing dog - Prior to 1200 this word was most likely 'greahunt' as well as originates from European languages 'grea' or comparable, implying 'bitch', plus hound certainly. The earlier description revealed here was a load of nonsense (initially 'grayhound' these pet dogs utilized to hunt badgers, which were called 'grays' ), and also should have related to the 'dachshund' word origin.

Is FemTouch covered by insurance?

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therapy location: belly.

This territorial significance of pale derives from its earlier definition for a sharp wood risk used for fence, or the limit itself, from the French 'chum' and Latin 'palus', risk. over the top - excessive behavior or response, beyond the bounds of preference - the expression and acronym variation seem to have actually become a popular expression during the 1980s, probably first originating in London. Additional popularised by a 1980s late-night London ITV show called OTT, generated from the earlier anarchic children's Saturday morning program 'T iswas'.

Is Femilift FDA approved?

FemiLift is extremely safe and received FDA approval because it meets the criteria of effectively treating vaginal laxity, with no risk to the patient.

Most individuals imagine that the container is a jug, yet as a matter of fact pail refers to the old pulley-beam as well as pig-slaughtering. khaki - brown or green colour, or clothing product of such colour, specifically of military uniforms - words khaki is from the Urdu language, implying messy, stemmed from the older Persian word khak definition dust.

Is the Mona Lisa procedure safe?

The FDA says that so far, it has received 14 reports of adverse reactions to laser vaginal rejuvenation procedures, including burns, burning sensations, scarring and significant post-treatment pain. Since it cannot determine exactly how risky the MonaLisa Touch procedure is, it has not been approved.

nutmeg - in football, to defeat an opposing player by pressing the sphere between his legs - nutmegs was English jargon from 17-19thC for testicles. It's also vernacular for a deceptiveness or rip off, originating from early 19thC UNITED STATES, referring to the wooden nutmegs supposedly made for export in Connecticut. I believe both definitions contributed to the contemporary football use. label - a different acquainted name for somebody or something - from 'an eke name' which became composed 'a neke name'; 'eke' is an exceptionally old word meaning 'likewise'. It was additionally an old English word for an expanding section included in the base of a beehive. moon/moony/moonie - program bare butts, especially from a relocating vehicle - moon has been slang for the butts considering that the mid 18thC, likewise including the anus, the anus, and from late 19thC moon additionally indicated anal sexual intercourse.

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ThermiVa can be used as a mild female incontinence treatment by tightening and firming the tissues under the bladder, reducing stress-related leaks and urge incontinence. Non-Invasive Sessions – ThermiVa is a completely non-surgical procedure that does not require anesthesia or any recovery period.

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The Lego firm, regardless of numerous barriers and also traumas in the process, has actually come to be a remarkable organisation. In 2000 the British Association of Plaything Retailers named Lego's block construction system the Toy of the Century. Lego ® is certainly a signed up hallmark belonging to the Lego ® corporation. kowtow - to show excellent deference to someone, or do their bidding - often mis-spelled 'Cow-Tow', the correct word is Kowtow, the origin is Chinese, where the word suggesting the same as in English.

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Today the 'hear listen to' expression could probably be utilized by any individual in a conference wanting to reveal support for an audio speaker or perspective shared, although it will be viewed by numerous nowadays as an odd or stuffy means of merely claiming 'I concur'. Let's encounter it, the House of Commons, residence of the expression, is not the best instance of modern-day positive debate and communications.

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in By the way this kind of halo is not the derivation of halogen - halogen is rather from Greek halos meaning salt. grog - beer or various other alcoholic drink - after Admiral Edward Vernon, that because he used a grogram cloak was called 'old grog' by his sailors;.

The string will certainly be totally taken in by the body within nine months, as well as the renewal effect will last for between one as well as a half to two years without any more stimulation.

Using a HIFU, or High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound, tool called the Ultraformer III, we are able to provide an even more comfy option to the Ultherapy therapy while being as reliable.

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For this treatment, there is no need to do anything in particular to prepare.

The treatment we offer lasts in between minutes and has no downtime, triggering only mild redness.

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As soon as we get rid of the gel and also you will certainly observe an instantaneous lift, which will remain to slowly enhance over the following nine months.

Both programs featured as well as urged various outrageous tasks among audience as well as guests. The order for soldiers to move up as well as out of the trenches to strike the enemy lines has long been revealed as going 'over the top'. Words omnishambles was introduced to be 'word of the year' by the OED, which suggests a high level of popular charm, given that the popular OED statements regarding brand-new words are created for publicity and to be commonly powerful. Omnishambles is a portmanteau of omni as well as mess (mayhem, stemmed from earlier definition of a slaughterhouse/meat-market). The word was ultimately promoted in the UK media when goverment opposition leader Ed Miliband referred in the legislative Prime Minister's Inquiries, April 2012, to the government's budget plan being an omnishambles. Probably even pre-dating this was a derivation of the phonetic audio 'fine' meaning good, from a word in the indigenous American Choctow language.

It is totally logical that words be used in noun and verb type to define the trainee trick, from 1950s according to Cassell. The derivation is certainly based on images, and practically could additionally have actually been strengthened by the similarity of two O remains in words to a couple of round buttocks.

In 1740 Admiral Vernon was the very first to offer rum watered down with water and also lime juice to seamen, instead of neat rum, and also his seafarers called the brand-new drink 'grog'. fat legs treatment was chiefly to enhance resistance to the disease, scurvy, which arised from vitamin C deficiency.

Persian, currently extra commonly called Farsi, is the major language of Iran and also Afghanistan, and also is additionally spoken in Iraq. Urdu is partly-derived from old Persian as well as is a central language in Pakistan as well as India.

Does insurance pay for ThermiVa?

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Tan ended up being toe when misinterpreted from the plural of ta, between the 12th as well as 15th centuries. Incidentally there are numerous selections of mistletoe around the world and several traditions and superstitious notions surrounding this weird types.

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Khaki, from Urdu, entered English initially via the British cavalry pressure serving in India from 1846, as well as was consequently adopted as the name for the colour of British army uniforms, as well as of the product itself. open up a keg of nails - have a drink, specifically with the objective of getting drunk - the expression 'open a keg of nails' has remained in use because the 1930s USA when it initially meant to get drunk on corn whiskey. https://beampea1.werite.net/post/2020/11/10/Femilift-Laser-For-vaginal-firm is based upon opening a keg of beverage whose components are enormous. Therefore the association between nails as well as the powerful impacts of strong and/or a great deal of alcohol is an all-natural one for people to use and connect to.

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adamharkus · 5 years ago

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How Line 6 and other tech helps me as a teacher. Spider V 120 + Relay G10. The Blogging Musician @ adamharkus.com

I’ve been a professional musician and full-time music teacher for about 24 years. I got a very early start working exclusively at music schools. The number one thing I learned as a teacher is that music is always changing, times are always changing, and kids today are not like kids yesterday. To keep a student’s interests you have to keep up with the times. Another important aspect to teaching is being able to introduce students to (quite literally) everything there is to know about the world they’ve just entered.

The traditional method of teaching for years was, “Learn to read music. Here’s a book.” The contemporary method after the birth of the internet was years of, “tabs are the way to go. You’ll learn faster!” Good teachers new and old will tell you that theory is important.

It’s all important!

Some students are learning classical guitar. Some are learning acoustic, some electric. You have to fine tune the curriculum to match each student. Some aren’t at all interested in electric guitar, or acoustic guitar, or certain genres. I had a student recently ask about some tech in my studio only to reply, “Okay, okay, I don’t care…” We had a chat about rudeness, but what I learned was, “Not everyone is techy.” The most important thing is to really lock into what interests each student. You have to balance their needs with their wants.

Technology has played a huge role.

We used to only involve technology in lessons via a tape/CD player, and some form of a metronome (wind-up, quartz, digital…) Today, those things have been elevated and replaced by technical advancements like YouTube, metronome apps, music players, and even apps designed to isolate sound, slow down the music, loop sections, change keys, and more. I found a valuable tool in the Capo app for iOS for many years. Unfortunately, that app dropped quickly in popularity and usefulness amongst the student population when they shifted over to the subscription sales model. They went from high sales to zero percent sales amongst 700+ students at the school I work for all week. Guitar Pro is a fantastic app for creating high quality sheet music in any form – rhythm, notation, and tablature. There’s a mobile version of the app that opens sheets to read and play along with. No editing in the mobile version, but with a one-time purchase the software allows students to hear any song I give them sheet music for if they wish to download a digital copy. Great!

Enter Line 6.

Another avenue for technology in the guitar world is in our amps and digital effects. Companies like Line 6 paved the way a long time ago for amplifiers to have built-in effects and other features such as tuners. Popular companies like Fender and Boss/Roland caught up and now it’s very easy to find many great amps with on-board effects. I have a Marshall with built-in chorus and delay. Still, with everything out there, Line 6 has made their market bloom with one very important concept: USER FRIENDLINESS.

While they do target both hobbyist and professionals alike, I think they might be overlooking the potential in the world of students. But THIS veteran music teacher has embraced that potential. Years ago when I started at the school where I work now, the owner asked what amps we should supply the studios with. We didn’t need big amps, just practice size ones. However, many of the smaller amps on the market didn’t have a big tone in a small body. They’d sound thin, the overdrive would sound weak or too tinny. Effects weren’t even an option. The decision to stock the school with great sounding practice amps that had a good amount of features at an affordable price lead us to purchasing the Line 6 Spider III 15 amps. They were plenty loud for a small studio, but with great tone at low and higher volume levels. The onboard effects made for a little fun for students to tinker with new sounds that they didn’t know were possible with guitar. The amps were about $100 each, which was within budget when stocking up and furnishing an entire school. The end result: An entire school full of Line 6 Spider III amps.

Now, years later, we see the Spider V on the market, and the new MKII which has some really great upgrades like Impulse Responses.

So how is Line 6 influencing my teaching now?

How Line 6 and other tech helps me as a teacher. Spider V 120 + Relay G10. The Blogging Musician @ adamharkus.com

How Line 6 and other tech helps me as a teacher. Line 6 Firehawk FX + Spider V 120. The Blogging Musician @ adamharkus.com

How Line 6 and other tech helps me as a teacher. Line 6 Variax. The Blogging Musician @ adamharkus.com

How Line 6 and other tech helps me as a teacher. Line 6 Firehawk FX. The Blogging Musician @ adamharkus.com

How Line 6 and other tech helps me as a teacher. Line 6 Variax. The Blogging Musician @ adamharkus.com

How Line 6 and other tech helps me as a teacher. Line 6 Spider III. The Blogging Musician @ adamharkus.com

While the school has Spider III amps around around 2 buildings, I have upgraded my studio. Mine features a Spider III for the students, a Spider V 120 for me, an old Variax (to be upgraded one day), the wireless Relay G10 which charges right off the Spider V amp, and the ol’ but still powerful Firehawk FX floorboard. I also have the FBV III foot controller for the Spider V just for show, but I don’t necessarily use it.

Here’s how those effects come into play when teaching…

The Variax allows me to demonstrate the sounds of different guitars. Students can hear the differences between different types of pickups, acoustic and electric, and even guitar cousins like our old favorite 12-string guitars and others like the resonators, banjo, sitar guitar, and more. I’ve setup my Variax to simulate ranges as well, such as capo shifts, baritone guitar, and even a setting to simulate bass guitar. Another teaching advantage with the Variax involves a term I’ve longed to change:

Tone-deafness!

We’ve always associated tone-deafness with that relative who howls off key and calls it singing. The sour notes of death that come out of the person who was never meant to sing. Ever. That’s not the case! Sure, “a tone” is a sound, or a note. But think about this in the music world. We call notes pitches, and tone is more of the quality of voice. “I love your guitar tone, man!” The term I’ve used is pitch-deafness. That’s the inability to hear different pitches and identify them well. To me, tone-deafness is the ear’s confusion between voices mistaking the same note for a different one simply because it doesn’t sound exactly the same. For instance, a good student can identify 3 identical high E notes on the guitar (open E, E on the B string 5 fret, and E on the G string 9th fret) and still tell that there’s a slight tonal difference due to string thickness.

I was a True Tone-deaf student. I learned on an acoustic, and my teacher taught on an electric. Even though we played the same notes, they didn’t sound the same. This confused my ear sometimes. The Variax has solved his challenge with beginners. I’ve noticed more and more over the years that students say less and less often, “Wait… are you sure that’s right? Yours sounds different than mine.” I use the Variax to match their guitar model. A student with a Fender Strat (popular amongst beginners on a budget) will hear very little difference with the custom Variax Strat tone I’ve setup. The only challenge I’m still working on are the classical acoustic guitars. Variax technology hasn’t really marketed heavily in that realm, but perhaps one day!

The Spider amps and Firehawk effects bring a world of sounds to the student great visual appeal. The students love the colorful lights, of course, but there’s more than just shiny bright things that really help them learn. The apps illustrate how effects chains work. The students can easily change sounds by just touching the screen, or turning a knob. The preset knob parameters on the Spider V make it easy for students to see how “less and more” can modify an effect on any channel. What I love is how the effects are displayed in the app’s library. When you select another amp or pedal there’s an image of the original model that it’s based on. The students don’t really know all of those models, but they have the opportunity to see how they look different. What would be even better is if the icons would get larger when selected. For now, if a student asks, I’ll Google up an image of the original and compare it with the app side-by-side while turning knobs and moving faders around. What’s more, having the old classic Spider III in the room lets them see just how broad the spectrum of digital amps are out there – simple to complex, and soft to REALLY LOUD!

By introducing students to the world of different apps, effects, guitars, etc. we as teachers can keep them inspired and interested. We can let them see what’s out there for them besides just “practice more!” They start to see what direction they want to head as beginner musicians. We, the teachers, look at their reactions to the sounds they hear and it helps us tweak their curriculum even further. This keeps the student excited and willing to play. The next step, of course, is to choose songs that really work great with whatever sounds the student likes best (while still teaching them things that are practical for learning.)

With more than 200 amps, cabinets, and effects there’s more than enough to show the students what our world of guitar is really all about. The Relay G10 shows them a neat way to go wireless without the complexity and mess of a receiver and connective cables. Our new generation are talking about Bluetooth, WiFi, and other technologies that are making for fantastic wireless advantages in other markets. When they see the G10 they really engage the simplicity and coolness of such a compact device. It takes nothing to hand it off and let the student try it, too!

Between the Variax, the Spider Amps/Firehawk FX, and the wireless G10 I’ve had a blast teaching. Students are excited about lessons. They wish to learn more not just musically but about their guitars. They are asking questions and inquiring where they wouldn’t have a clue to start years ago. With their own technologically experienced little minds, they’re even offering up imaginative thoughts that could shape tomorrow’s technology, too.

The only challenge for me has been… price.

How do you get a student to invest in a $1000 Variax, $120-$300 amp, $100 wireless device, etc.? Well, the truth is, there’s only so much we as teachers can do there. In the past we’ve made comparisons to $1000 “student level” woodwinds and brass instruments. We’ve also made suggestions like, “check Craigslist…” What would be ideal is if there was a market for starter kits, or student-level models. The inexpensive Variax 300 (made in Indonesia) was a great concept in “a Variax for everyone” by offering a low-price, lower quality guitar with all of the perks of the more expensive models. Keeping smaller Spider V amps out on the market is also a great idea. Perhaps Line 6 will one day see a market in music education and offer up a package like a cheaper Variax paired with a nice Spider V (or VI?) practice amp, and some other low-range but cool wireless technology. AmpliFi is a great series, too, for beginners, but I still recommend the Spider series to students.

There’s a “basic recording” package available out there which features an inexpensive screen, Mac Mini, speakers, mics, and recording software packages all for one price of $1000 (or less.) I’d love to see something like that from our guitar makers. Offer up the dream rig for beginners to open doors for students who really want to rock out and make music without breaking their parents’ bank account. For the record… I live in a rich community full of mansion-sized monster homes with parents showing up at the school driving Teslas. Even the wealthy aren’t willing to spoil their children unless it’s truly worth it. There’s potential – I’ll continue to use Line 6 to inspire and teach future guitar pros. Maybe they’ll find a great way to tap into that market, too!

Cheers. Thanks for reading.