#chorus worldbuilding
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living-dead-guyy · 6 months ago
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Minecraft end biome food WIP that I’ll hopefully have finished soon.
Desc: An uncoloured sketch of a plate containing food. From left to right, and up to down: Fried Ender Dragon Egg, Oyster-style Shulker, Chorus fruit slices and Chorus plant stems. Below this is a partially coloured sketched of a chorus fruit and chorus fruit slices. The words on the page say “Chorus Fruit, End Biome”.
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beneathsilverstars · 5 months ago
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do you think vaugardian songs don't have repeated choruses. i bet they change time signatures a lot too
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terra-tortoise · 4 months ago
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🥑
🥑Show off your most underrated lore dragon, and talk about them!
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meri, butch shark pirate! i think hes mostly overshadowed by how pretty his gf is (chorus, and i do think her colors look better together) since i usually post about them together, but of the two i have his personality nailed down better (: he has some sailing records so hes kind of a big deal with dragons that care about that sort of thing, and he feels kind of awkward being in the highland sanctum with all these nerds and landlubbers.
the accent he has is kind of a stand in for some detailed sleeve tattoos that id love to design eventually. he also knows a Bunch of shanties, and likes to teach them to chorus since most of her singing is much more formal.
(fun fact he has two likes and his cool femme has 15 lmao)
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bookwyrminspiration · 1 year ago
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ok all the identity things are very fun and clever and something that delights me normally with all the overlaps going on between different threads of plot and past, but SLOW DOWN A LITTLE. also genuinely doc is correct a diagram IS necessary. kihrin alone has had like six different potential biological mothers spread across three bodies, not counting the adopted mother(s), and the book isn't even over yet.
(no but it's really fun, every time someone is revealed to be someone else and therefore has a new connection to several other parties it's like AHA! clever :) even if i don't remember it 20 minutes later or get it confused with some other people or connections)
Jenn said it doesn't matter that we all just got here, we're going full speed ahead and if it doesn't make sense just take better notes, silly. Not really, it does actually become so much clearer with time--for example, to brag for a moment, but I actually know who like all the characters are <- that is one of the most basic parts of a reading a story
Kihrin's extra special as the main character, he gets to be part of the most fucked up family tree and circle of people imaginable. The rest of the world is relatively sane about family trees and identities (though god-kings do tend to be undercover a lot), Kihrin's just Different and suffering for it. Though specifically the "we've got a dozen different parent options and who knows which one is real!" thing is more unique to book one; we leave behind that question and confusion for much more complicated questions and confusion!
(it is very very fun. I don't mind being confused I just love being along for the ride. embracing the fact that I don't know shit about fuck is quite freeing when reading, I think)
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lethesbeastie · 10 months ago
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Nothing inspires me to create more than internet strangers asking me about my ocs
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smolcrow465 · 11 months ago
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WAIT I LIED. sirens are a subspecies of angels. people hear of them & their aggression & assume that they're demons. that something of holy nature cannot be so cruel. they are wrong.
just as vampires are a subspecies of demon with addictions to blood, sirens are angels that have an unnaturally strong chorus. their voices are powerful enough to override the thoughts of mortals and even other celestials.
ig they're just stereotyped to be aquatic just like vampires are stereotyped to be aerial.
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silentscrying · 5 days ago
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🎸 out of my mind ! 💿 track one : the hell happened in shibuya?
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guitarist!ino x drummer!reader
summary: it's the annual battle of the bands at the fix, your college campus's iconic live music bar, and this year you're taking the stage as the drummer for indie rock group cursed technique. you know the competition is strong, but no part of you is ready for lead singer and guitarist takuma ino. you lock eyes at the edge of the stage, and something starts—something that might make you feel alive even more than the beat of the drums.
warnings: language, alcohol, he was a skater boi, she did NOT say see you l8r boi, unhinged toge, absurd amount of worldbuilding for what this is, penguins of madagascar. || sfw. 10.1k words.
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IT’S A PULSE. That’s the only way you can describe it, the rush of living energy that comes with drumming a live set on the stage of a shitty campus bar, the bass shooting through your blood in time with the adrenaline. Soles of your shoes to the tips of your fingers, the ache in your arms from 120 bpm, amp-deaf ears and stage-blind eyes. You’re alive, and you’re addicted to this feeling. You think you’ll chase it forever.
“Guess it could be a blessing in disguise,” Nobara sings, dropping to one knee at the edge of the stage and gripping the mic in one hand and the wire in the other. She leans out over the crowd, grinning as they match her energy. You switch to a steady buildup on the floor tom, adding snare halfway through your crescendo, and build to a sudden, jarring stop as Nobara belts, “But like hell I’m gonna wait for hindsight!”
You’re back in with a dramatic cymbal stinger, and Nobara whoops and jumps back to her feet, dancing across the stage toward Maki and throwing out her arms to emphasize the bass solo. “One last round for Maki Zenin, everybody!” she shouts.
The crowd obliges, hooting and hollering as Nobara launches back into the final chorus. The lights on the low stage flash, making Toge’s white-blond hair look purple where he stands at the keyboard.
“Give it up for Yuta Okkotsu on guitar!” Yuta does his little riff without looking at the audience—the attention always gets him a little shy. “Toge Inumaki on keys!” Nobara spins around to look at you, winking as the last long, held chord starts rising. “And on kit, you know her, you love her, your drummer, Skip!”
You smirk at the nickname as you hit triplets down the toms and pound the bass, rolling every cymbal in sight to create a barrage of sound as the rest of the band looks to Nobara for the final cue.
“Thank you!” Nobara shouts, throwing a hand up in the air. “I’m Nobara Kugisaki, we’re Cursed Technique, and that’s our set for Friday at The Fix.” She lets the crowd holler for just a moment longer, then throws her hand down.
With a final bass hit, the music comes to a stop. You toss your sticks into the bag hanging from the floor tom and stand, pushing back sweaty hair and waving. The crowd is all indistinguishable shadow with the stage lights in your eyes, but you love it anyway.
This is your favorite place on campus, favorite place in the city—tonight, maybe it’s your favorite place in the world. As you file off the stage, the next band moves out to set up.
Tonight is preliminary performances for the annual Battle of the Bands at The Fix, and Cursed Technique is entering for the first time. You don’t know all the bands (or solo artists, because apparently they’re eligible this year too), but this next one you’re very familiar with. Because—
Maki pauses in front of Mai, taking that stance she only ever takes with her twin sister, cocky and ready to provoke. “Don’t fuck up,” she says.
“Like you did? I heard that bridge. G minor my ass.”
“Aw, you pay attention,” Maki grins. They roll their eyes in tandem and knock shoulders as they pass each other. You genuinely can never tell how serious they’re being. Is it a twin thing, a sister thing? Do they actually hate each other?
Aoi Todo goes after Mai, saying something along the lines of “are you ready to fucking boogie, Zenin?” and Maki snorts as the two of you fall in behind Toge and Yuta, Nobara on your right.
You were the first performance of the night, and there’ll be three more after you and four performances next Friday to wrap up round one. The two lowest-ranked bands or artists will be eliminated. You’re praying that’s not you.
The audience has taken the intermission in stride, the bathroom line curling around the far wall and the bar line even longer. The wait’s not worth it, you figure. Then you turn around and realize Nobara’s disappeared.
“Where did she—”
“Bow down to your savior,” her voice says from your other side, and you spin to see her and Toge holding three drinks.
“You are literally the only two of us who can’t drink,” you say, accepting the drink from Toge and nodding to the stamps on the back of their hands, marking them as underage.
Toge grins. “Yeah, but we’re super trustworthy and shit.”
You blink at them and look back over to the bar. Gojo’s working, his white hair the brightest thing in the dark corner behind the counter. Ah.
“You and your nepo baby privileges,” Maki says, grabbing a drink from Nobara’s hands with a huff of laughter.
“I’m not the nepo baby. I’m just friends with the nepo baby.”
“Oh, hey, c’mon.” Yuta nudges you, turned toward the stage. “They’re starting.”
Sure enough, Kasumi Miwa and her shock of blue hair are standing center stage, electric guitar in hand. Maki rolls her eyes when Mai starts tuning behind her.
“How’re we feelin’ tonight, guys?” Kasumi asks, and the gathered students let out a rampant cheer as half the bathroom line abandons their quest and makes their way back to the crowd. “That’s what we like to hear! Alright.”
She looks back at each of her band members in turn, making sure they’re ready. Todo nods and punctuates his agreement with a double kick hit. “We’re Black Flash, and this one should sound a little familiar.”
Momo kicks off with a jazzy intro on the keyboard, Toge already nodding along beside you, and then they’re off in an upbeat, syncopated number you genuinely can’t help but dance to. Sounds like they won last year for a reason.
“Should I learn sax?” Toge shouts over the music, and you glance up to see that Momo has abandoned the keys for a gleaming golden alto. You shake your head at him, taking a drink of whatever it was he and Nobara brought you—it’s sweet, fruity with a kick of vodka.
“Please don’t!” you shout back. “You’ll just play Careless Whisper all the time!” Toge sticks his tongue out at you, which means you’re right. You cheer as the opening song comes to a close with Kasumi hanging onto a long, high note as Todo goes crazy behind her, and then they segue smoothly into a new chart, the bassist walking a steady line up and down before the drums join back in.
You can’t quite remember his name, but you’re pretty sure he’s Kasumi’s boyfriend. His eyes stay trained on her for the majority of their set, watching as she dances around the stage, does an impromptu riff-off with Mai, throws her blue hair around like a natural born rockstar.
“She’s so fucking cool,” you tell Maki, who nods, pointedly looking at everyone on the stage except Mai.
“Thank you!” Kasumi shouts when the band is finally wrapping up. “We’re Black Flash!” You throw back the rest of your drink and cheer with the rest of the hyped-up students.
You don’t feel great about your chances of beating that, but hey, you’re having a good time.
Panda, the senior from the campus radio station, walks out on stage and does some crowd work while the stage techs move things around. You’re pretty sure you knew his name at some point—you wonder idly if he’d even answer to it. You’ve never heard anyone refer to him by anything other than Panda.
“Alright, your penultimate performance of the night, folks,” he says, drawing another cheer from the rowdy front of the crowd. “Let’s give it up for last year’s runner-ups, Shibuya Incident!”
“Shibuya Incident?” you murmur, and Maki snorts. “The hell happened in Shibuya?”
“They’re like, basement emo or something? I don’t know. Nobara said they’re actually good.”
Right. As the band files onstage, you remember that you know about these guys, at least the two sophomores on stage. The kid on drums with the pink hair is Yuji, and the broody bass player is Megumi. They live down the street. Nobara’s over there sometimes. You’ve been meaning to meet her sophomore friends, but the start of school was so busy you haven’t gotten the chance.
“Isn’t he your cousin?” You nod to the bassist and Maki smirks.
“Yeah, he doesn’t tell me anything. I think Nobara might know him better than I do.”
The band launches into a song with no introduction, and you’re captivated.
You don’t recognize the girl, gripping a sleek black and red electric, her dark hair in a combination of knots and braids, studded belt and piercings catching the stage lights.
And you definitely don’t know the frontman.
He’s got a black beanie tugged crookedly over a mess of brown hair, and something about him is strangely mesmerizing. You’re pretty sure you’ve seen him around campus before, maybe even around The Fix—but you’ve never heard him sing.
You’d remember.
He closes his eyes, lips almost touching the microphone, fingers moving up and down the frets of his electric as he croons, “And my hopes climbed up, tried to tear ‘em down, but they went so fast and it’s too late now.”
And then he opens his eyes, lets the dark-haired girl handle the guitar as he pulls the mic off the stand, still singing. The lights outline his figure in red as he crosses to the front of the stage, the audience surging to meet him. And he looks right at you.
“Dark eyes, the charcoal aftertaste, your mind, you make me wanna waste my life, so promise it’s a lie, a lie, I try, I lie.”And then he circles back to the mic and jams it into the stand, fingers finding the frets of the electric once again. “I guess it’s too late now.”
You chose journalism because you’re a realist—you want the gritty underside of the story, not the fluff piece. Half the time your class readings are about crime and war and all the bad things going on in the world. Love at first sight doesn’t make the front page.
Point being, you’re not a romantic. But when this guy looks at you, you kind of want to be.
What are you thinking right now? You don’t even know him. He’s attractive, yes. He’s talented. You have no way to gauge whether he’s a good person, whether you’re even remotely compatible, whether he’s single, based on listening to a few songs.
But the energy in the room is intoxicating, somehow. The vocals cling to the back end of the beat, relaxed but in a way that demands you hang on. The bass reverb is cranked, creating a kind of wave over the whole of the bar, low and static.
In a high school psych class, you did a project on hypnotism, all the science of it, whether it was effective or even real. You’d tried to do it to yourself, and you’d had a classmate try too, to no avail. Now you think maybe the process of hypnosis isn’t all that complicated after all. It’s just… this.
When the song ends, something in you hollows out, like you need the music to be whole again. But then the lead singer grabs the mic and starts talking. And you think maybe, actually, his voice is just alluring whether he’s singing or not.
“Hey,” he says simply, hanging onto the mic with both hands, letting the guitar hang from its strap. “We’re Shibuya Incident. Hope you’re having a good time tonight.” His eyes scan the crowd, attentive, and you might be delusional, but you think they linger on you for just a second.
“This next one’s new,” he says, glancing back at Megumi with a smile. “It’s called Strike First. Kirara, kick us off.”
The girl on guitar—Kirara—obliges, busting out a descending riff so fast you can’t fathom how her fingers are moving. On the drums, Yuji puts four on the floor and then starts with a laid back hi-hat, and you lose yourself in the music again.
At some point, Yuta waves a hand in front of your face and you realize abruptly that he’s been trying to talk to you. “You good?” he says in your ear, and you nod, grinning. He gives you a strange look but takes you at your word.
After Shibuya Incident walks off stage, you pretty much lose interest. The last performer of the night goes by Angel, and you can’t deny she’s got some lungs on her, but you’ve heard her before. She has a pretty big online following, so her songs are old news to you, recognizable from Reels or TikTok.
“Is her name actually Angel?” Toge asks, and Nobara shakes her head with a dramatic eye-roll.
“Hana,” she says. “It’s a stage name.”
Toge wiggles his brows in a way that means okay, but she’s hot, and Nobara elbows him in the ribs.
When the night is over and the crowd has started to disperse, you find yourself scanning the area beside the stage. It doesn’t take you long to spot Shibuya Incident clustered together near a wall, mostly because of Yuji’s bright pink hair.
Nobara seems to have spotted them as well. She drags you over to the three boys, the girl already disappearing with the blond stage tech—Hakari, you’re pretty sure his name is.
“Oi,” she calls. “Fushiguro, the new song fucked. I’m mad about it.”
“Why—”
“Because we’re supposed to win,” Nobara says with a hand on her hip, and they devolve into arguing, Yuji fruitlessly trying to mediate. You’re left standing awkwardly to the side, and your gaze drifts to the remaining member of their band—the singer, the lead guitarist.
On stage, he’d seemed untouchable, confident and flirty and at ease. Now, he can’t seem to decide whether to stuff his hands in his pockets or wring them in front of him or tug self-consciously at the crooked beanie on his head.
It’s endearing, honestly.
You stick a hand out, suddenly self-conscious. “Hey,” you say. “Uh, I’m not sure we’ve met officially. I’m—well, they usually call me Skip, but—”
“Where are my manners?!” Nobara screeches, turning away from Megumi and Yuji and finally realizing the situation she’s put you in. “Oh my god! Skipper, this is Ino—Ino, Skip. Drummer, singer. Singer, drummer. Blah, blah, blah. You’re both juniors, right? Ino, are you a senior? I dunno anymore. Anyway!” She claps her hands together once, grinning. “Now we’re all friends. And opponents. Go on, converse with the enemy.” She flaps her hands at the both of you and turns back to the boys, apparently not done arguing with Megumi, though it sounds like it’s shifted from any band-related business to something he said about her shopping addiction last weekend.
You know Nobara’s hung out with the entirety of this band before, since she pretty much forcibly adopted Megumi and Yuji in their shared gen. ed. classes, but Ino is apparently nowhere near as used to her chaos as you are. He stares at her back for a second, trying to process the rambling she just threw at you, and then nods slowly.
“She’s—sorry,” you say sheepishly. “Ah. Yeah. She means well.”
“Right. Uh, you’re really—you’re really good,” he says with a nervous smile your way. “Talented, I mean. I haven’t seen someone drum like that in…”
“Hey!” Yuji squawks, and Megumi grabs him by the elbow and pulls him away, Nobara on his other side.
“Thanks,” you say softly, trying to put Ino at ease with a warm smile. “You’re really good, too. I mean it.”
“Thanks,” he says, heat rising to his cheeks.
“D’you write? Those were some good bars.”
“Oh, yeah, uh. I do. Do—do you?”
“Homegirl’s our drummer and our lyricist,” Maki announces, draping herself across your shoulders. You don’t know where she even came from. “She is a woman of many talents.”
“I believe it,” Ino says with a shy smile. “You didn’t compete last year, right? I feel like I’d remember.”
The implications make you flush a little, and you’re grateful for the bar’s bad lighting. “No, yeah, this is our first year. I wasn’t even around for the competition last year. Or I’d probably remember you, too.”
Yuta spent some time abroad last fall, and you were just getting to know Nobara. It was probably a good thing you didn’t enter, because you were so caught up in work for the campus paper that you would’ve been stretched thin. Things this year have settled down with the strangely large wave of younger staffers. So this is your year—your time.
It’s Ino’s turn to be a little sheepish, and he reaches up and scratches the back of his neck, averting his gaze with a small smile. “You live with Fushiguro’s cousin, then?”
You nod. “You live with your bandmates? We’re right down the street.” Now that you think about it, you might’ve seen him skateboarding past your place a time or two.
He nods. “I thought I’d maybe seen you around. So—Skipper? Or Skip?”
“Either,” you laugh. “Uh, freshman year, we gave ourselves penguins of Madagascar names. That was before Nobara. Guess it just stuck.”
Ino laughs, bright. “That’s really good.” He seems to be easing into the conversation now, relaxing. “Which one was Rico? He’s my favorite.”
“Offensive,” you grin. “Toge, over there.” You point to him where he’s animatedly talking to Yuta, who looks about ready to go to sleep.
Ino nods. “Feels right.” He looks at you like he’s searching for something. “You can call me Takuma. If you want.”
“Takuma,” you echo. You like the way it sounds. “Cool.” You glance up at the stage, cleared out now. You’ll have to check on your drums in the back room at some point before you go home.
“Do you guys have music out?” Ino—Takuma—asks, and you turn, surprised.
“Uh, no. We’ve thought about it, but none of us are really the techy types. Do you?”
“Hell yeah!” Yuji blurts, apparently having escaped Megumi and Nobara. “First EP available now on all the usual streaming services.” He grins, then offers you a hand.
You shake it. He even shakes people’s hands like an overly excited dog. It’s infectious. “I think we’ve met in passing? Unofficially. But you sounded great up there. What’s your cymbal brand? Your hat is crisp.”
“Zildjian,” you say, laughing at his enthusiasm. The only right answer, you think, but don’t say. “You sounded great too. You have a brand?”
Yuji wrinkles his nose. “Uh, half of them are Meinl but the other half are Sabian? I kind of need to streamline them at some point. Zildjian seems like the move, honestly.”
Maki waves you over from the door to backstage, and you glance at Yuji and Takuma in turn, offering them a small wave. “I should run. It was good to meet you both. I’ll, uh—see you next Friday? Or around, I guess.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Yuji says with a mock salute, and Takuma chuckles, meeting your eyes.
“Sure thing,” he says. “Or around.”
When you’ve locked up the drums and hitched a ride back to the house with the girls, Maki turns herself around in the passenger seat to look at you.
“What?” You shift under her gaze, unrelenting and knowing.
“So, Shibuya Incident singer.” She raises a brow, and you know you’re blushing, but there’s not much you can do about it. At least it’s dark.
“What… about him?”
Maki just snorts and turns back around, evidently deciding teasing you once was enough. Nobara, though, has no such qualms.
“Oh my god!” she squeals, and Maki gently reminds her to pay attention to the road. “Do you want me to set you up? I can ask Itadori! Or Fushiguro! Or we can—”
You groan loudly, cutting her off as you dramatically flop back in the seat. “Nobara, please, please don’t.”
She sighs, long and drawn-out. “Puh-lease, Skipper, someone in this house has to get some.”
“Drop it and I won’t tell Toge you said that.”
This successfully diverts Nobara’s attention, and she spends the rest of the short drive wondering aloud if Toge actually thinks Hana Kurusu is hot or if he was just trying to annoy her. Nobara has some baseless grudge against Hana that you’re pretty sure is just because Nobara wants to be Hana.
At the house, she immediately starts bugging Toge about it, and eventually he runs into your room and slams the door for cover. Sometimes you’re very grateful your room has a lock. This is not one of those times.
“Toge,” you whine, pressing your forehead against the door. Nobara is crouched beside you, ready to catch him. “I wanna go to bed. Bro. Open the door.”
“Are you conspiring with the enemy?” he shouts from inside.
“No, but I’m about to be!”
He opens the door and Nobara launches herself at him, and amid the accusations of betrayal you manage to herd them out and close the door behind you, beelining for your bed and your headphones. There’s something you’re curious about.
Shibuya Incident, you type into Spotify, and there it is, their first EP. It’s called Over Duress, and on it is the first song they sang tonight plus a few you haven’t heard before.
You don’t intend to listen to the whole thing, really—you just can’t get that song out of your head, and usually listening to an earworm helps. But when you settle in, lights out and headphones on, you can’t stop.
All night his voice is in your ear, eyes boring into yours, singing too late now.
They’re—he’s—good. Really, really good.
You think it might be too late for you, too.
You’ve got your headphones on again, listening to Arctic Monkeys as you make your way down the sidewalk. Mondays will be the death of you. Your hour-and-a-half lecture ran late, and you have night class later. You need caffeine.
So caught up in 505, you almost don’t catch the guy in your periphery zooming down the path behind you on a skateboard. You move to the side to let him pass, but he slows down as he nears you, and you look up and realize it’s Takuma. Grinning, you tug your headphones down around your neck. He kicks the skateboard up and catches it in one hand, a messenger bag with a laptop sticking out underneath his other arm.
“Well, hey,” he says. “Look at us. Around.”
It’s odd to see him in this setting, broad daylight and an autumn chill in the air, so different from the dim bar, the artificially-lit stage.
“Hey.” He starts walking alongside you. “Coming from class?”
“Yeah, thank god that’s over. You?”
You hum in agreement. “Composition lecture.”
Takuma makes a tch sound with a click of his tongue. “Ah. Algorithms, for me.” He glances at you, then straight ahead, like you caught him doing something. “Uh, I was gonna grab coffee on the way back. You wanna come? If you’re not busy, I mean.”
You grin. “I was on my way there.”
Your favorite coffee shop is directly across the street from The Fix, and Takuma walks the rest of the way with you, his board in one hand.
“Algorithms,” you say. What a horrible-sounding class. “So are you—what, math? Computer science?”
“Comp sci,” he confirms, “and media production.”
“That’s sick. What do you wanna do?”
Takuma shrugs, but says, “I’m kinda gunning for something in music or audio production, but the comp sci’s more of a safeguard. Easier to get a software dev job than break into the music scene.”
The door to the coffee shop chimes as you push it open. “What about you? What’s your major?”
“Journalism.”
“Oh, that’s cool. You work for the paper or anything?”
“Yessir.”
“Write a story on me.”
If it meant learning more about Takuma, you’d honestly like to.
You pause to order your coffee, and while Takuma orders his you find yourself looking out at the bar across the street.
It looks so different during the day. People call it a shitty campus bar, you included, but honestly, it’s a nice establishment. The grunge is intentional, for the aesthetic appeal.
When you and Takuma both have drinks in your hand, you check the time on your phone and figure you can spare a few minutes. “Wanna sit for a sec?” You nod toward the high-top counter along the wall of windows facing the street.
“My honor,” he says, leading the way. You hop up on the green backed barstool, spinning it a little, and take a sip of your latte as Takuma settles in beside you. “How long you been drumming?”
You hum, tapping your fingers on your knee while you think. “The summer before I started middle school, I think?” That sounds right. You’d started taking lessons so you could join jazz band.
“Damn,” Takuma whistles. “That’s a while. No wonder you’re so good.” You laugh despite yourself, feeling the heat creep up to your cheeks the way it always does when someone compliments you.
“What about you? Been playing guitar for a while?”
He leans forward, wholly engaged in the conversation. “Yeah. My dad played, and I learned on his acoustic, and I spent all of middle school saving up for my own electric.”
“The one you have now?”
“Ah, no, I’ve got two, but I still have that one back at my place. I love that thing.”
Talking about music, it seems the hesitant, bashful side of Takuma slips away, replaced with this sunny boy who just wants to talk about what he loves. You find yourself wanting to feed into it.
“So, I listened to your EP.”
His entire posture seems to brighten, coffee forgotten on the countertop as he stares at you. “For real?”
“It’s really good. Seriously. I’m—when did that come out?”
“Uh, end of last semester. So like May?” He shrugs.
“Do you rent out a place in the city?”
“Actually, I can book out the campus studio spaces because I’m a production major,” he says, making a paper airplane out of his napkin. “We recorded our EP in there.”
“Techy.”
He smiles. “Yeah, comes with the major.” Turned to face you with the light from the window illuminating half of his face, you find yourself really looking at him—his mess of brown hair, deep but somehow bright eyes, the curve of his mouth, the line of his jaw. There’s an energy about him that just draws you in.
His phone lights up and he jumps a little. “Oh, crap! I forgot I was gonna take Itadori to the skate park. He wants me to teach him to kick flip before the snow comes.”
You doubt it’ll take him that long to figure it out—he’s a natural athlete. You’ve had to last-minute cover a track meet before, and his name took up half the damn page with all the records he set.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” you say, downing the rest of your coffee. As much as you don’t want to leave, you’ve got a lot to get done before your night class. You push back your stool and sling your backpack over one shoulder.
Takuma seems to consider something, eyes bouncing from you to his phone to the street outside. “Actually, we’re recording again on Wednesday, for the new single. You should drop by. I can show you the ropes.”
You’re not sure what excites you more: the prospect of watching a live recording or having an excuse to see Takuma again.
“That’d be cool,” you say. “The new song? From Friday?”
“Yeah, Strike First,” he says. “Fushiguro wrote a lot of it—shit, actually, I’m not s’posed to say that.”
You laugh. “What? Why?”
He grins, a little conspiratorial. “Sometimes he shows up in my room and just shoves lyrics at me, and they’re always really good and deep and shit, and he says if I tell anyone he’ll kill me in my sleep. So. Secret poet.”
“Secret’s safe with me,” you promise. “So, Wednesday night.”
“Six thirty,” he nods, standing up and grabbing his skateboard from where he leaned it against the wall. You walk out into the bright mid-afternoon air side by side, starting to drift opposite directions on the sidewalk. You’re going to get some work done in the newsroom before your night class. The skate park is down the block from your place. And his.
You nod at his board. “Don’t die.” You’ve longboarded on campus several times, and the intersections are unforgiving.
He grins, standing on the board and starting to skate backward. “Me? Nah.” You roll your eyes but can’t keep the smile off your face, even as you turn away, his laughter bouncing down the path behind you.
That night in class, you get a series of messages from a number you don’t recognize, but you know who it is. They’ve sent you a gif of Skipper from Penguins of Madagascar.
unknown number: hey it’s ino! unknown number: or takuma. or whatever hahah unknown number: fushiguro got your number from maki i hope that’s not weird? i just wanted to send you the recording location in case you want to swing by wednesday unknown number: [Shared 1 Location Pin] unknown number: literally no pressure though unknown number: obviously
You turn down the brightness on your laptop, tucking your messages into the corner while the pitch document for class takes up the rest of your screen. Adding the number to your contacts, you glance surreptitiously up at your professor, who’s still doing something on the computer in the front of the room.
takuma: wait okay fushiguro just said what if maki gave him the wrong number as a joke takuma: idk if she would do that but now i’m paranoid takuma: if this isn’t skipper i’m SO sorry
Toge leans over and reads your messages, wiggling his brows at you when you shove him out of the way. He’s only in this class because you are—he took it as one of his writing electives for his comm major, and he spends most of it bothering you while you’re trying to work.
“Put the guy out of his misery, Jesus,” he whispers.
“Put me out of my misery, Jesus,” you say back. “Get me a new seat partner.” Toge gapes at you, affronted, and you smirk and go to text Takuma back.
you: oh my god no don’t worry it’s me LMAO you: yes i’ll swing by! that sounds so fun
The typing bubble pops up, disappears, pops up again. You try to hold in the laughter as your professor kicks off the next part of class, which he essentially runs like a newsroom in collaboration with the campus paper, since your editor is his TA. You’re in the middle of a features pitch session.
takuma: oh thank god takuma: cool!! takuma: hey thanks for coffee today. it was nice talking to you
Once again, Toge’s got his chin on your shoulder, reading the screen. His eyes widen and he moves so that he’s blocking your line of sight. Coffee? he mouths. You shove him out of the way with a hand on his face.
you: i had a good time :) you: okay i’m in class rn so just know i’m not ignoring you, i’m suffering at the whims of postsecondary education takuma: I’M SO SORRY takuma: thoughts and prayers takuma: ew why do you have class at 7 pm that’s cruel
It is kind of inconvenient. But a lot of your journalism classes wind up being nights, and you actually don’t mind it—you love your prof and the other juniors in your major. And you love your editor. You want to be her.
“Alright,” Kusakabe says. He’s got a doctorate, but he hates going by Dr. Kusakabe. “Back to the board. I want your bestmonth-long project pitches. Fushiguro here will put the best ones in print, so don’t mess around here. You want a spot at the paper next year? Impress her.” He nods at Tsumiki, who’s sitting in the back corner with a pen tucked behind her ear and her laptop and notepad ready.
“There are no horrible ideas,” she says.
Kusakabe points at her. “Not strictly true. She’s nicer than me.”
You already work for the paper, as does half of this advanced journalism class, but you’re gunning for Tsumiki’s job next year. So you need to impress.
“The Fix,” you say. Kusakabe points a whiteboard marker at you, then turns and scribbles it on the board in his horrible handwriting. He doesn’t let you raise your hands in class. Newsrooms work fast, he says. Better get used to it.
“Why?” Kusakabe asks. You’ve got your pitch ready. This isn’t your first rodeo. You hold up a hand, counting off on your fingers as you talk.
“One, it’s the most popular place on campus. Two, it has the lowest crime rate of any bar in the city. It’s run entirely by Jujutsu alumni. It’s time-relevant, because Battle of the Bands is going on right now, which also means good photo ops. We’ve been needing to cover it for years.”
Toge starts typing on his own laptop, and you know he’s not doing anything class-related. Sure enough, you get his message a second later.
freak no. 1: OKAY SHE’S A JOURNALIST freak no. 1: let me be your partner plsplsplsls freak no. 1: PLEASE i don’t wanna do a whole project story by myself i’ll do anything
He stares at your screen and glares at you when you don’t respond.
freak no. 1: why is that still my name. this is bullying. harassment even freak no. 1: freak no. 1 implies the existence of freak no. 2 freak no. 1: who is it freak no. 1: is it yuta freak no. 1: tell me it’s yuta
“Yes,” Kusakabe says. He’s not smiling—he rarely ever does—but you can tell he’s pleased. “That’s what I’m talking about. I want to know why a bunch of qualified alumni decided to dedicate their postgrad careers to running a college bar. Give me the backstory, give me the details. This is the kind of thing I’d put Fushiguro on if it wasn’t a conflict of interest.”
You twist around in your seat, craning to catch Tsumiki’s eye. She’s smiling, typing rapidly without looking at her keyboard.
“Yep,” she affirms. “But I can get you phone numbers. Good stuff, Skip.”
“Conflict of interest if I’m in a band?” you ask. She thinks for a moment, then shakes her head.
“Just don’t make it the story’s central focus and you should be fine. I’ve got some underclassmen covering the battle for event coverage practice, anyway.”
You flash her a thumbs-up and Kusakabe turns back to the board, half-dead marker hovering beneath his scrawled THE FIX: BAR, SAFE, ALUMNI
“Throw it at me,” he calls to the rest of the class. “What else you got?”
You click back into your thread with Takuma and send him another message.
you: freshie reporters are covering battle of the bands you: watch out for the novice press, mr frontman takuma: oh man takuma: i would not be focusing on me if i was them tbh
Toge kicks you under the table.
freak no. 1: cant believe youre getting a boyfriend before me freak no. 1: im leaving the country freak no. 1: god save the queen
It’s dead silent down here.
You’ve only been to the comm and media department a few times, mostly for electives or to drag Toge to lunch with you after one of his classes. But you’ve never had reason to venture all the way down, deep into the bowels of the huge building, to the production areas. Most of the studio spaces down here are padded with soundboards, making your trek down the hall an odd, isolated thing.
But then, after you’ve walked a while, you hear laughter, the idle plucking of guitar strings. Ah. You follow the noise to Studio C, where the door is cracked open, and sure enough, the band is there in full force, tuning and talking and warming up. Kirara is sitting in the spinning chair behind the soundboard while the blond from the bar plays with some dials, and the others are behind the window in the recording room.
“Hey,” you say, and Kirara looks up at you, offers you a nod.
“Girl drummer! What’s up?”
“Spying,” you reply. “Thought I’d get behind enemy lines.”
Kirara snorts approvingly and nods toward the man working on the sound dials, and he turns to glance at you. “You guys met?”
He sticks a huge hand out and you shake it. “I know you,” he says. “Or of you. I do stage stuff at The Fix. Name’s Hakari.”
“He does ‘stage stuff’ at the bar ‘cause he wants to follow me around,” Kirara says.
Takuma glances up through the recording space window, and when he sees you he grins and tugs off the headset. “You came!” he says as he drops his guitar into its stand and comes to stand in the open doorway between the two rooms. “Oh, you can shut that, it was open for you.” He nods to the door you came in, and you lean back on it, closing it.
“I’ve never been down here,” you admit. “It’s cool. And empty.”
“Yeah, it’s never busy Wednesdays,” Kirara says, shrugging. “All the sound and screen people are out working megachurch youth groups or whatever.” She kicks her clunky boots up on the table. “Kinji, did the backups sound good last time or should we rerecord them?”
“Skipper!” Yuji shouts. He waves and nearly smacks himself in the face with a drumstick. “Look! Zildjian!” He points to a crash cymbal that must be a new addition and you give him two thumbs-up, beaming.
Beside him, Megumi looks up from his bass and gives you a nod. Sometimes you forget he and Tsumiki are related—they look alike, but they carry themselves so differently. Your editor is all witty questions and chasing the news and juggling a thousand things at once, knowing everyone, always throwing out compliments like candy. Megumi keeps to himself, that quiet, broody bass player in dark colors. Writing secret song lyrics, apparently.
“So we recorded backup vocals last week,” Takuma explains, leading you over to the soundboard. You slide into Kirara’s spot as she hops up and grabs her guitar, plugging in in the next room. “Hakari handles the board while we’re recording, and then I mix it in post.”
“Cool,” you say, lost in all the switches and dials and colored lights.
“It’s less complicated than it looks,” Hakari offers, gesturing to the expanse of controls. “You really only use a third of ‘em.”
Yuji abruptly does a buzz roll, and you look up in time to see Megumi roll his eyes.
“That’s the hey Ino, we’re waiting on you, you fucking slacker drum roll,” Kirara drawls without looking up.
“I feel loved.” Takuma smiles at you and darts into the other room, closing the door behind him, and you lean back in the spinning chair. Hakari hands you an extra headset and you slip it over your ears with a grateful nod.
“Alright,” he says, leaning to speak into a mic that must carry through to the band. “Give me a chorus or somethin’ so I can test these levels out.”
They play part of the first song on the EP, and then Hakari goes through one by one and makes some minor adjustments until he deems them ready to go.
“Okay,” he says, glancing at Kirara. “Strike First, take one, in three, two…” He trails off and presses a button, and Kirara starts riffing like it’s nothing.
“Catch feels real quick,” Ino half-sings, half-says, picking up his own guitar. “And they go real deep. Try to burn ‘em out.” He looks up at you through the window. “But I’m half asleep.” Megumi is laying down a steady, bouncing bassline. “With her face in my head, and her voice in my ear, and her warmth in my bed, but she’s not really here, oh!”
Megumi and Kirara have indeed already recorded the backup vocals, and Hakari scales them up as they play. Intoxicating, in-intoxicating, oh she’s…
Yuji’s crash does sound better, and you find yourself nodding your head along to the beat, watching Hakari run the soundboard, watching the band in their element in the recording space.
The first time they stop just before the bridge, and they talk among themselves and mess around with some adjustments before starting again.
“We’re all cursed, so I, I strike first.” The track finishes with a single, hard kick. You wait until Hakari switches off the recording and clap. Takuma smiles brightly behind the window.
“What’d you think?” he asks, his voice crackling in your ear. “Any tips?”
You hum, leaning into the mic Hakari offers. “You sound great!” you say. “Yuji, save that sick fill for the prechorus leading up to the bridge. The syncopated one. The buildup will pay off.”
Half the art of drumming is knowing when to lay back and when to bring the energy. It’s one thing to go crazy drumming covers for a YouTube channel, which you’re pretty sure Yuji does, but it’s another to play in a band setting, trying to bring out the best in everyone else’s parts. You’ve seen so many drummers get so excited about playing fast and loud that they give too much too soon, and it makes the peak of the song less gratifying. It took you a long time to learn that.
“Oooh,” Yuji says, clicking his sticks together. “You’re right.”
Kirara jumps off her stool, spinning to face him. “What did I say? That exact thing. Three times before.” She points at you, then turns to face you, smiling good-naturedly. “He’s like one of those kids whose parents have been telling them the same thing for years, and then their favorite teacher says it and they act like they’re hearing it for the first time.”
“What? When did you say that? Kirara—”
But everyone’s laughing, and Yuji eventually gives into it too, grinning and tapping out a swing beat on the rims just to do something with his hands.
“Okay, run it again,” Kirara says, settling herself on her stool again. “Kinji?”
Hakari nods, and they launch back into the song. They do three more full runs before they agree they’ve got it. “Cool,” Hakari says. “Ino, you want the drive?”
“Please,” he says, and then takes off the headset and starts putting away the guitar.
“Hey,” Yuji says brightly, after he’s packed up the kit. “You should come over, invite Kugisaki and your bandmates. I need to fight someone who isn’t Ino in Super Smash Bros.”
It sounds fun, and it’s right down the street—Nobara would kill you for saying no. You got most of your class work done while Kusakabe was on another one of his journalism ethics rants that you can quote in your sleep, and your only major project now is The Fix. Not much you can do about that on a Wednesday night.
“Sure,” you say, and Takuma appears beside you, guitar case on his back.
“Sure what?”
Yuji bounces on the balls of his feet. “She’s coming over! And inviting her friends!”
“Like, the whole band?” you clarify. “Is that—”
“YES!” Yuji exclaims. “Pleeease, Skipper? I love new friends. We’re basically neighbors anyway.” You glance at Takuma, trying to gauge his reaction. He looks excited about the idea, so you figure it’ll be fine.
“Okay,” you relent, and Yuji basically tackles you in a hug. “Woah, okay! I’m gonna swing by the house first. I’ll see who’s around and drag them down the street.”
“Tell Kugisaki I have to decimate her in Smash. I want to see her face when she loses.”
“You park in the side lot?” Takuma asks, adjusting the strap of his guitar case. You shake your head, pointing to your longboard in the far corner of the room. You don’t have a car on campus, but it’s usually not an issue since three of your housemates do. “No way. You skate?”
“Just longboard. Never really mastered the skateboarding thing.”
“Oh, I can teach you!” His grin is infectious. You could’ve had one of the girls drop you off tonight, or Yuta, but honestly, you were kind of hoping for a reaction like this. Was it practical to board halfway across campus alone in the dark? Maybe not. Not like you haven’t done it before. But looks like it’s paying off.
“I’ve got the truck out back,” Hakari says. “Anyone want a lift?”
Yuji shakes his head. “Brought my car for the drums. And Fushiguro.” You politely decline, and Takuma holds up his board in answer.
Hakari nods as he shuts down the soundboard. “Sounds good.”
You open the door and Takuma follows you out, the hallway feeling largely different with someone else filling the space.
“So, what’d you think?”
“That was awesome,” you say honestly. “I don’t know how you guys do the technical side of things, but it’s cool.”
Outside, the two of you drop your boards to the ground and push off, careening down the long campus sidewalks.
“I can’t believe I didn’t know you had a longboard,” Takuma says as you round a corner, you shifting your weight to your heels as he charges ahead of you with hands in his pockets like he’s not balancing on a board with a guitar strapped to his back. “How come you’re never at the skate park?”
You shrug, putting a foot to the pavement again to give yourself some more momentum. Truthfully, the skate park has always just felt daunting to you—not because you know about the drugs getting exchanged under the ramps, but because all you can do is board. No tricks, no half-pipes, nothing crazy, and everyone there is always so off the walls you’d feel like an idiot trying to teach yourself.
“You should come with sometime,” he says. “I took Itadori today. He already learned how to kick flip. He’s stupid athletic.”
You grin, theory proven correct, and turn onto the side street your house is on. Takuma slows down when you kick your board up, and you start up the small sidewalk leading to the green front door. “See you in a minute?”
He grins, skating backward again down the street toward his place. “Yes, ma’am.”
The house is small, but you chose it for the basement space with rehearsals in mind. It’s small, but you’ve made it your own. Yuta’s rapidly growing collection of plants sits in a line along the kitchen windowsill. Nobara’s put Polaroids up all over the place, which Toge regularly replaces with printed memes and then times how long it takes her to notice. Your record player sits in the corner of the living room, the stand beneath it overflowing with vinyls the five of you have amassed.
This is all there when you open the door. But unexpectedly, so is Maki, standing in the kitchen with her arms crossed, looking at you expectantly. Nobara shouts, “Is she home? Skipper!”
It takes you a second to clock that Yuta and Toge are also waiting for you, Toge hanging upside down on the couch through the doorway and Yuta leaning against the wall.
“Uh, hi?”
“Howwasyourdate?” Nobara gushes, and you feel your face go flaming.
“Date? Nobara, his whole band—”
“Nooo!” she groans, raking a hand through her hair. She plants a hand on each of your shoulders, staring at you pleadingly. “I am so bored. This is the most exciting thing to happen since Muta asked Miwa out. Have mercy.”
Muta—that’s the Black Flash bassists’s name. You vaguely remember Nobara being over the moon when he got together with Miwa last year.
“How did you even know where I was?”
All four of them answer in unison, “Google calendar.”
You laugh and pry Nobara’s hands off your shoulders, feeling warm all over. God. You forgot having a crush was this fucking embarrassing. Over Nobara’s shoulder, you look helplessly at Maki, who has decided to be of no help.
“Okay, take a breath.” You make your way into the living space, Maki’s gaze following you from the counter and Nobara quite literally following you. “Don’t any of you have homework?”
Toge pulls himself up dizzily, evidently done with the blood rush of hanging upside down. He points at Yuta and says, “That man has never procrastinated anything in his life. You know she has it done.” Here, he points to Maki. “And Nobara and I have priorities. Like your love life.”
You groan, rolling your eyes. Toge already filled them all in on the texts he read in your night class, and they’ve all been teasing you ever since. Well, mostly him and Nobara. But you see the little smirks and glances Maki and Yuta exchange whenever Takuma’s name is brought up.
Nobara, to put it lightly, loves love. She texts your group chat any time she makes eye contact with a potential suitor, and whenever she catches wind of a possible relationship, she wants every detail. You don’t really care to inform the whole house of every interaction you’ve had with Takuma. Not because it doesn’t excite you—part of you just, weirdly, wants this to yourself.
And part of you is trying not to get your hopes up.
“Yeah, I’m gonna need you all to calm down. You’ll scare him off, if you keep up like this.”
“And you definitely don’t want us to scare him off?” Maki confirms, sounding almost bummed. “I am really good at that.” Yuta nods solemnly.
You glance at Nobara, who’s staring at you knowingly. “No,” you admit, sheepish. “I would rather you not.”
Lovers, Nobara mouths, and you push her away.
“Well, if you’re not busy, I’m going to his place,” you say, and put your hand over Nobara’s mouth before she can scream, “and you’re coming with.” You glance around at the rest of your friends. “All of you.” Nobara glares until you pull your hand away from your mouth.
“Yuji wants to beat your ass in Smash,” you tell her, and she smirks.
“Uh-huh. He’d like that, wouldn’t he?” She practically yanks your backpack off your shoulders and pushes you toward the front door.
“Okay, everybody out, let’s go! Operation Get Skipper—”
“I will drag you back into that house.”
“I said nothing,” Nobara smiles sweetly. And the five of you make your way down the street.
Yuji’s car is in the driveway, a bright red Hyundai. You can tell it’s his partially because it’s bright red and partially because you can see a few cymbal stands sticking up in the rear windshield. A truck is parked on the curb, and you figure it’s probably Hakari’s.
Nobara leads the way up to the front door, the only one of you who’s been here before. Unless Maki was visiting her cousin for something, but you don’t think so.
“Itadori!” Nobara shouts, and the door swings open to reveal Yuji, tousled hair and eager grin and all. “I’m here to beat your ass. Get on the Wii.”
“Yes!” Yuji shouts triumphantly, two fists pumping the air.
The house the band is renting out is functionally the same as yours, but it couldn’t look more different. There are mismatched string lights everywhere, dark tapestries on the walls that scream Kirara. Old band posters are plastered to half the available wall space, and a JBL speaker is blasting a song you’ve never heard.
“Hey,” Kirara calls from her place on the couch, leaning into Hakari. Yuji and Nobara are already planted on the floor, preparing for Smash Bros, Toge settled in between in an already futile effort to prevent violence.
“Hey, Okkotsu.” Megumi nods. “Maki. You haven’t been here before, right?”
“It’s not a college boy dump,” she responds. “So proud of you.”
“Mostly his doing, honestly,” Kirara says. “He’s a neat freak.”
You wave at her and Hakari. “You both live here?”
“Nah,” Hakari says. “I’m with Panda on the other side of campus.” Kirara’s the sole girl in the house, then. Brave woman.
“Skip!”
You turn to find Takuma leaning in the entryway to the living space. “Hey,” you grin. His gaze moves to where Yuji and Nobara have selected their characters.
“Oh, this’ll be good.” He moves to the open space on the couch and glances at you, and you follow. There’s plenty of room, since Kirara is basically on Hakari’s lap.
There’s a papasan chair in the corner that Yuta tries to insist Maki take, but in the end he winds up sitting in it with his legs tucked up under him and Maki sprawls out on the floor in front of him. You nearly jump out of your skin when Yuji screeches, and you blink and realize Nobara has already decimated him.
“Jesus,” you say.
“How did you—what was that? How did you do that?” Yuji demands. Toge, evidently having decided his mediation effort is fruitless, scoots back. You grin. Nobody can ever beat Nobara in Smash Bros. You would know.
“That’s what you get for picking Sonic, you freak.” Nobara turns up her nose. She picks Link every time.
“Do not slander the good name of Sonic in this house.”
“Okay, give it to me,” Toge says, grabbing the remote from Yuji. He levels Nobara with a serious look, chooses Daisy, and says, “Prepare to die.”
Takuma laughs beside you, and you’re suddenly aware that your thighs are almost touching, his warmth emanating off him. You try to focus on the game as Link proceeds to destroy Daisy within an inch of her life, but it’s hard now that you’re hyper-aware of your proximity.
“I like your place,” you tell him, and he smiles.
“Yeah? I do too. All the tapestries are Kirara’s.”
You fist bump her. “Good taste.”
“I know,” she says.
“What?” Toge shrieks. He groans, dramatically falling forward and burying his face in the carpet. “No. You cheated. Again.”
“You’re an idiot,” Nobara says, and they play again. “You’re not gonna win.”
Toge scoffs. “I would if you’d play Just Dance with me, coward.”
“Hey.” Takuma nudges you with a knee. “You wanna see how I mix the tracks?”
You glance at Nobara, entirely engaged in her game, and figure if you’re going to safely escape the room with Takuma, the time is now. “Sure.” He stands and you follow, ignoring Maki’s knowing gaze boring into your back as you go. The laughter and shouts and music follow you up the narrow stairs, and you hope this can be a new kind of normal, this mishmash of people who seem to get along so well.
Takuma’s room is at the end of the hall, and there’s no doubting how insanely Takuma it is. A skateboard—covered in faded stickers, different from the one he used today—hangs on the wall, there’s an acoustic in the corner, and the lights are all LED and green and red and purple. He leads you over to his monitor setup along the wall, where something is just finishing uploading—the drive Hakari gave him from the recording session.
He pulls over a stool and pats the desk chair for you, and you’d argue but he’s already opening up Logic, throwing in the tracks.
And then you lose time.
It’s already dark out, and you have no measure of the hours passing as Takuma locks in, nodding his head along to the beat, walking you through every setting and adjustment he makes as he mixes the new single, his own voice echoing back at you on the vocal track. You ask questions that are probably stupid and he answers like you’ve asked the smartest thing in the world.
His face is aglow in the colored lights of his room, and he’s animated as he walks you through the process. You point to the backup vocals track and ask a question, and he wraps his hand around yours and guides it to point at the corresponding change he makes, and before you know it the track is done and he’s sliding a pair of headphones over your ears, looking at you hopefully as the song comes through.
It sounds amazing. Something about listening with headphones on is all-consuming, and there’s something intimate about the way you’re sat facing one another, one of your knees between both of his, not breaking eye contact as you listen.
Kirara and Yuji’s backups flow so seamlessly into the rest of the recording, loud enough to hear but quiet enough not to pull away from Takuma’s voice as he sings, “Preemptively intoxicating, I can hear the heartbreak saying, ooh, I’m on my way.”
He smiles at you, soft, excited, his knee bouncing to the beat of the song even though you’re the one with the headphones on. “So you strike first, strike first ‘cause she’s not gonna stay.”
You tug the headphones down around your neck, the melody still bouncing around in your ears. The curtains flutter above the rickety AC unit in the corner, casting flickering shadows over the monitor, over the wall, over Takuma. There’s no more music, but it is far from silent. The sounds of your friends drift up the stairs and through the cracked door, the computer’s kicking up a fuss with its fan, your breathing seems louder than normal.
“Damn,” you say softly, like speaking any louder will break this—whatever this is.
“Yeah?”
Your faces are very close.
“Yeah.”
A scream from downstairs makes you jump, knocking your knees with Takuma’s, and you feel the heat rush to your cheeks.
“Yuta, control your child!” Nobara screeches, and you presume that by that she means Toge. “Maki? Skipper, where did you go? AGH!”
You laugh, pushing to your feet. “We should probably…”
“Yeah,” Takuma says quickly, too quickly, standing and setting the headphones back on the desk. “Yeah, totally.”
The rest of the night passes in a wash of laughter and Smash Bros and half-eaten bags of chips and yes, eventually, Just Dance, which Toge does win by a significant margin. Yuta, Maki, and Megumi spend a lot of time catching up in the corner, and Kirara and Nobara get along great. You realize far too late that putting Toge and Yuji in the same room was a horrible decision. They feed off each other’s chaos, a pair of little speed demons. You fear they’ve just become best friends.
At some point Kirara and Hakari disappear, and when you’re all finally making your way out, dreading your morning classes, you turn to Takuma, hovering in his doorway.
“Thanks,” you say. “For showing me the mixing. And recording. And—yeah.” You flush. God, you’re usually so good at talking to people. When did you become this socially inept?
“Anytime,” he says, and you know he means it. “Hey, if you guys are ever interested in putting some music out… Hakari and I could help.” He scratches the back of his neck a little self-consciously.
“Wait, for real?”
“Yeah! I mean, Hakari goes wherever Kirara goes. And she likes you. You’re really good, I think you’d really take off on streaming services.”
Kirara likes you? That weirdly means more to you than any of the other bandmates’ approval. Something warm blooms in your chest.
“Skip, c’mon,” Maki calls over her shoulder, and you jump and realize the rest of your housemates are already down the drive.
“Ah, yeah! I’ll talk to them about it. Thanks, Takuma.” You beam and turn to catch up to your friends, feeling like a stupid high schooler with a crush.
You’ve been rehearsing at your place every day this week, even though you don’t know where you’ve landed in the battle bracket yet—not until this Friday. You’re trying to nail down the perfect set, and Maki and Yuta have come up with this great instrumental, but you keep coming up short—you’ve been a useless lyricist lately, all up in your own head about pointless, trivial things.
Now, though—you feel like you have some words to get out. Feelings to get out, if you can just figure out how to articulate them.
In your tiny room, you find yourself thinking about him—getting coffee with him, skateboarding, the lighting in his bedroom, the bar—The Fix, you think.
And you pull out your notebook and start to write.
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directory | meet shibuya incident | meet cursed technique | meet black flash | meet the rest of the contestants | welcome to the fix
jjk taglist open: just send me a message!
@shutuppeter @mikikkoo @reactwithjan @theclassbookworm @lilactaro @bisforbuse @risararelywrites
a/n: no, these are not real songs. yes, they are from the notes app archives. oops. ANYWAY SORRY IT’S 10K WORDS I’M HYPERFIXATING LMK WHAT YOU THINK
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mothhue · 14 days ago
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Gimme ur Snatcher headcanons >:3
-definitely not Witch
Oh boy, such a mysterious asker I wonder who this could be...
:D alrighty!! Headcanons go
After his death, it became incredibly difficult for him to feel warmth. As in, he's constantly cold, all the time. He can't feel warmth from sunlight because it easily burns him (how unfortunate that he's a shadow), and he doesn't feel heat from his own fire. So I like to think he relaxes a lot when actually near a fireplace or when in hat kid's warm ship, or if he gets a hug. Get that guy a heated blanket
Maybe this is more a worldbuilding/Vanessa headcanon than snatcher, but I like to think the only thing that can melt Vanessa's ice (other than literally blowing it up) is Snatcher's fire. Regular heat or anything other than that won't work.
He puffs up into flames when he's startled
I like to think his little mane? Hair? thing works like a hammerspace that leads into that little pocket universe you see when you sign a contract with him. Bad subconites go to the time-out purple dimension
The brown hair we see on the prince is actually after the "matching color and curl" thing Vanessa did to him, it's bleached (a very hastily done bleaching job by Vanessa) and his actual hair color was black.
Another more worldbuildy one, it hasn't really rained in Subcon since the freeze. When there are clouds it more or less just snows instead. Snatcher hasn't felt rain in a long while.
I like to think the dwellers of the forest can "move on" eventually. His biggest fear is if he's unable to do so, and comes the day everyone moves on except him. And he's either completely alone in the woods for eternity, or left only with Vanessa.
Okay this one comes from nowhere but it's incredibly funny to me He has an entire villain musical montage rehearsed with all the subconites as the chorus/backup dancers. You never know when you might need to break out into an evil song he's dramatic like that
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hamelastralis · 3 months ago
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Kimaris, the Warlord. Deity of war.
They are also known as the deity of many voices as they collects souls of fallen warriors to add to their chorus of voices. They absorb the knowledge and memories of these warriors as well as their strength.
Kimaris was once two gods before they merged as one of them became fatality wounded in a war between gods, and as the world split in two, they became one.
Just some stuff for my worldbuilding. Kimaris was the first ever deity I made for it, I have more on the way!
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teecupangel · 2 months ago
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Hi teacup, so I was looking at some of your posts the other day when I heard my sibling playing Minecraft with their friends. These two things happening at the same time sparked an idea.
Enderman Desmond
I just came out of the gym so let's use the blood and creative juices that are flowing in my brain right now.
You know the typical, Des dies, goes back in time as a creature of our choice. Here Desmond is a 3 meters (10 feet) tall pitch black humanoid with really big arms and legs. And he can teleport too!
I really like Endermen, they're my favorite mob. I even have a plushie of one. They're chill and oddly cute until you look at them in the eyes then they turn into a horror movie monster.
I'm picturing Desmond looking like a mix of the many Endermen redesigns or realistic interpretations you can find. Tall and thin, inhuman proportions on the limbs, digitigrade legs clawed hands and feet, his hands don't look or have human proportions, big ol' eyes, and a face and skull are a mix of human and cat, in the sense that it looks kinda flat and you assume it's small until they yawn and you see all of their big teeth and big jaw angle.
Also like cats (and Altaïr) they don't like water, which I find hilarious. And makes sense since The End looks like a desert. So they probably don't know how to swim (like Altaïr) either. (He doesn't take damage from water cause that would be really inconvenient).
Now that I think about it cats also don't like seeing other creatures straight in the eyes. And Endermen do chirp chatter hiss and growl like cats do apart from their crooning. Mischievous and curious like cats since they go around stealing blocks...
Oh stars, Endermen are freaking cats
Des would be a really scary temple guardian to the templars and assassins. Plus he would inspire so many tales and myths about ghosts and tall creatures that disappear when you look directly at them. Maybe a new saying like "don't look the dark in the eyes".
Assassins are already deadly but being able to teleport would make Desmond so broken. And maybe his Endermen purple eyes and particles become golden when touching The Apple and other Isu tech.
Desmond certainly likes being able to teleport and blend in the night but his new instinct makes him unable to look at or be looked at in the eyes.
Altaïr becomes very paranoid cause he keeps seeing from the corner of his eyes the creature in the temple that gave him the apple but when he turns his head to look at it it disappears to only leave purple dust and particles.
Maybe Desmond is transported along with some Chorus fruit and since he is unsure at the beginning what his new body can and cannot eat he cultivates it in secret. And when Al Mualim is defeated a new assassin myth comes forth of a creature of the dark and shadows gifting the brotherhood with a fruit that gives them the gift of traveling in the blink of an eye when consumed. (Which is ironic considering that the temple had the apple of Eden)
I have so many ideas for Enderman!Desmond and Changeling!Desmond. I love to worldbuild.
I kinda like the idea of him being something that cannot is part of the world but, at the same time, not.
Let’s lean into the nightmare feel of an Enderman that doesn’t exist in their world.
Desmond cannot be ‘fully’ seen most of the time. At best, he appears on the corner of one’s eye. Only when he attacks a specific person that people can turn to look at him and, even then, he’s usually shrouded in darkness. Mostly because he always appears during the dark since that’s the perfect cover.
But there is also a ‘requirement’ for Desmond to attack. His target needs to look at him for at least a quarter of a second or attack in his general direction.
Of course, he can decide not to attack and all that happens is that he disappears after a second or so after someone has different maintained eye contact with him.
He can’t technically control his teleportation skills as well. Most of the time, he teleport inside of moving and his will to attack someone makes him come near the target. Instinctively, he knows when he’s going to be attacked and he can teleport instantaneously like an auto-dodge of some sort. It can only work twice in succession before getting a short cooldown though.
He can be harmed like usual and when he’s harmed enough times (which is a rarity), he disappears from their world.
To Desmond, it’s like he goes to sleep. When he returns, all his wounds are gone and he’s usually sent back 24 hours from his disappearance, near the one who hit him last.
When he disappears after finishing his target or a second has passed without him attacking the one who stared him down, he would return like he just took a nap.
As for his teleportation mechanics, no one knows when and why he appears. Desmond himself ‘dreams’ of his ancestors and the people he knew (or his ancestors knew) while he’s napping/sleeping and he appears when he wants to, the location always being the current ‘dream’.
The reason why he exists in a perpetual state of ‘nonbeing’ is because his status as an Enderman is because he failed to anchor himself to a specific time after being the Reader for so long. This failed anchoring changed his Reader appearance to one of an Enderman and he’s forever drifting in the endless timeline seen through the Gray, only able to ‘visit’ them for a short time.
The worst part?
Because of his failed attempt to anchor himself, he forgot everything he did as the Reader.
Including why he tried to be part of the timeline again.
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arynneva · 6 months ago
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Okay I said I'd make a more expansive post about this so here it is.
If you like high fantasy, check out A Chorus of Dragons by Jenn Lyons.
It's got
magic
dragons
demons
gods that aren't gods
a main character throuple
platonic marriage
distinct characters of various ages
just general diversity
the most incomprehensible family trees
sassy footnotes
and more!
There are five books and the worldbuilding is so neatly woven into the story so as not to overwhelm the reader. I was learning neat facts about the world even in the last book.
The overarching plot is a bit complicated to explain, but it's basically "Ancient mage with an ego has secret plans centuries in the making and must be stopped, but in the meantime there are demons wrecking havoc, terrible shitheads vying for political power, shapeshifters with dubious morals, revenge schemes, slavery, a god of annihilation that has slowly been consuming the sun, and so much family drama."
The five books are:
The Ruin of Kings (aka will someone please tell Kihrin what's going on)
The Name of All Things (aka the adventures of Janel and Qown, a horsegirl and her emotional support atheist priest)
The Memory of Souls (aka Oh My God)
The House of Always (aka Group Therapy tries to stop the apocolapyse)
The Discord of Gods (aka wtf is even going on--OH)
So in conclusion:
great characters, great pacing, great worldbuilding, great antagonists
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poisonouspastels · 9 months ago
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I haven't really gotten to talk about the Ender Dragon yet in the Minecraft AU, and you guys really liked the worldbuilding of oreposting for whatever reason, so we're talking about her now.
To clarify first and foremost: Jean (the dragon) is an intelligent and fully sentient creature. She knows and can speak every spoken language of this world, knows your name, knows every little thing about you, being seemingly omniscient despite having never met prior. That being said, she is not an unfair fighter and is not malicious in nature.
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Dragons existed in much greater numbers long ago, though now the only ones you can find are in Ender. The Endermen are direct evolutionary descendants of these other dragons spread through the infinite realm - but not of Jean specifically. Despite this, historical writings would often (inaccurately) refer to her as "The mother of a thousand children." She is not capable of reproduction and is a fully sexless being.
Her relations to the Endermen are begrudging, serving only to have a brutal mutualistic relationship. The Ender dragons (not just Jean) allow them to eat from the chorus fruit trees within their territory so they may not starve, as well as spawn their own young, and the Ender dragons gets their fair share of food in return... by eating some of the Endermen. The Endermen are rather intelligent creatures in their own way, and they often escape to other dimensions to attempt to live a different life that isn't under the "rule" of the dragons, but quite a few are set in their ways because it's what they know. It's the circle of life they've become familiar with as they subject themselves to it for the sake of survival. Jean is unique in that she is "manufactured" in a way. Not to say that she is artificial, far from it, but that she's not a naturally made dragon. She's to the Universe what Cerberus is to the gates of hell, only existing and serving to guard and provide a challenge if necessary. She knows the rules and is respectful of them, and will never be afraid to die again. Much like a phoenix, with each death she is reborn. Upon being slain, she retreats back to the egg from whence she came many times before, only to re-emerge 10,000 years later.
When Jean finds her way back into the world, the knowledge of the return manages to find its way into the minds of everyone as a call to action. Though slaying the beast right away is not necessary per say, its better not to delay, as the longer one waits, often the more the idea will eat away at them.
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Much like how the Wither represents the concept of inevitability, Jean represents the repeating cycle of the world - whether it be the persistence in humanity to come back time and time again, the cycle of her own return and inevitable death, or the tendency this world has to repeat itself over and over.
The Universe works in mysterious ways, and she is no exception to its design.
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can i just say i love fics that mix minecraft and the real world together. i love when authors invent new death messages. i love it when authors flesh out how hybrids work. i love the ways people decide how one switches between servers. i love it when people invent new foods made of chorus fruit or glow berries. or ask "if i added a new flower what would its suspicious stew do?" i love it when people decide the effects of withering on the body. i love the explanations for how cleo differs from other zombies, same with all the hybrids really. i love how people interpret creepers' textures. i love how people incorporate minecraft updates.
shout-out specifically to this one fic by @holymolyguacomole for the joining servers thing and the death message thing and fitting angst into the life series while making the games themselves fun
and this fic by @mayflowers07 for including a datapack that keeps the hybrids sane. using a datapack to do worldbuilding is amazing actually
tl;dr minecraft worldbuilding in mcyt fics is fun
@holymolyquacamole + @mayflowers07 and every other writer who is doing their best to make the world of Minecraft feel more fleshed-out and lived-in!!!
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a-couple-of-notes · 1 year ago
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I sympathize with the people who thought the mystery in Stray Gods was weak (I guess the murder mystery was a fair part of the marketing, and I also picked the culprit out the moment the demo dropped), but it always seemed fairly clear to me that the mystery was just pretext for character arcs and worldbuilding rather than the other way around.
Spoilers under the cut. You've been warned.
Calliope's murder and Grace's trial offer Grace an excuse to talk to people, to explore the world of the Idols, and to do so under a ticking clock that keeps the story tight and the tension high. (And from a Doylist perspective, lets the developers keep the scope of the game to a cool seven days.) At its core, the game is not a murder mystery. It's Grace's coming-of-age story. It's about a cast of characters learning to change, move on, and grow up; it's about memory and identity; it's about facing the truth.
So it makes total sense to me that Athena's reveal would prize narrative and thematic cohesion over an unexpected twist. Grace and the Idols are growing up, and Athena is the "scary mom." The characters are moving on, and Athena is the embodiment of the past. The characters have had to face painful truths, and Athena, as leader of the Chorus, the one in power, has not. Of course it's Athena. To bring a revolution, you must topple the head.
Would it have been great to have narrative and thematic resonance AND a twist culprit? Sure. But if I had to choose, I'd rather have a satisfying coming-of-age story with nuanced characters and an intriguing world than a thriller mystery with a twist ending that undoes the core of the story. I'm guessing that's what the developers would choose as well.
(I also think it's interesting to look at the ways other characters were complicit in villainous things--like sure, Athena was the main murderer, but Pan was also unwittingly involved. Apollo hurt Persephone badly out of inaction. Aphrodite's ceremony directly engages in the tricky question of whether passing on her eidolon will consume Venus, maybe killing her in another way by transforming her completely. Those are the trickier mysteries.)
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bookwyrminspiration · 1 year ago
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I'm genuinely a pretty smart person. however, upon reading the series a chorus of dragons, upon encountering the first dragon, my reaction was "huh, interesting. well, he's probably not very important"
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pyreo · 1 year ago
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was sweeping up some map completion for a gift of exploration and just got reminded of so many cool things I like about original gw2/worldbuilding
I love Orr and how weird and alien it is. The ambience of sitting there with everything damp, dripping, made of coral, literally a lost world that doesn't fit above water any more. I love how oily the sky is and that occasionally a huge shadow sweeps over you as something like Blightghast/other risen dragons go by overhead. I love that it looks like this
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It's so otherworldly. I especially like the eerie birdcalls (I know it's just a real bird I'm not used to, but it's so unique and strange)
I like that the end of the Pact storyline doesn't feel... hopeful. At all. Orr is blighted and diseased, mottled with decay, with lost journals from people who were never going to survive. I like that the story culminates here, grandiose but mournful. You're trying again but this place you're in was already lost, with thousands of lives, and it doesn't feel like triumphant reclaiming. I like that none of the game through these >10 years has really framed oncoming war, and fighting to survive, with glory. I like that the fight through Orr doesn't really feel righteous. It's no clash against a tyrant or something with belief in good over 'evil'. It's just sad. Trying to get through and survive it.
I like the clearly LOTR-emulating Orr music, particularly how this one goes into a male chorus at the end-
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I like how an entire map is called Malchor's Leap and that clues you in to it being named after something and then you can go find out and it's just even more depressing. But at the same time, it reiterates the history of Orr - that human gods lived there and it must have been full of incredible splendour and that's gone and you will never see it, you can only try to imagine based on the wrecks of cathedrals.
And speaking of the human gods, I just like how each race has their own take on religion and they all get something tailored to their outlook. Nobody disputes one religion over the other like in our world - each one is generally assumed to be true on some level, and in some cases, provably real, but each race gets something different from their history and belief system anyway. Humans used to live alongside their gods but have been abandoned and none of them know why (and we eventually do find out what happened). Norn can invoke a governing spirit from any creature alive and choose the one that they'll serve best, but these spirits can be killed and you can see what happens when they mourn them. Sylvari have a stone of commandments from their long-dead benefactor that has completely fucked up their society because they aren't sure if following the tenets is wise or brainwashing. Asura actually believe there is an equation that can solve the entire universe and everything is part of a grand scheme beyond knowing, which is something more like a philosophy than religion but deserves mentioning because it means the Intellectual Goblin Race weren't made into cut and dry atheists as a cliche. They believe in something and have personal interpretations about it. One of them even made a machine to make the Eternal Alchemy viewable that drove someone insane when they used it and I just like how things asura do tend to backfire.
And the Charr. I mean. They're the atheists and it's all because they were duped into technically following a human god for a while and they're never going to get over-- no, wait. They started getting over it and the Flame Legion integrated with regular society again after their leader was deposed, because things moved forward and changed, and I like that too.
I feel like I can talk and talk on and on about this fictional history because it... just.... works? It's all part of a tapestry of cause and effect and meaningful characterisations. And they deliberately set up the basis for their playable races and then made the story NPCs generally turn those expectations around - Caithe being a grief-ridden assassin, Rox being a superstitious oddball, Zojja being irrational, Canach starting out as a pompous asshole.
I like the Ceera is still around in HoT and if you took the personal story route where her husband died, she still hasn't forgiven you and never does.
I loved Zafirah (bring her back!) showing that badly rooted spirituality can be redirected into something healthy and healing without being negated.
I like how many NPCs show up as part of a story step and you can ask if you know them and they'll say oh, yeah I was in the Pact with that whole thing? Or 'I saw you from a medical tent in maguuma and didn't think I'd make it', constant callbacks and the sense that minor characters have a continuous existence independent of you.
I like how solemnly the game takes its wins. The initial campaign against Zhaitan makes sure to kill characters off and made bringing Destiny's Edge along to it feel like its own entire obstacle. Heart of Thorns smashes any confidence the Pact has after the base game and takes an intentional sacrifice to be won, and I still think about him. Going after a literal god in Path of Fire costs you your life. Going after Kralkatorrik, with Destiny's Edge's guilt weighing on you, costs you your own child. Saving the fate of the world by fulfilling the exact conditions for Aurene to ascend costs you your child again, being taken from you so that the whole world stops rocking on its axis, losing your baby as she turns into a deity. Icebrood Saga puts you in the shoes of a relatable, easygoing crew on the opposing side, then sits back and waits for you to kill them all to continue. When you fight the final dragon as the final boss in Dragon's End you don't want to kill her at all, and she begs you to leave and get away so she won't harm you while you try, in bitterness and desperation, to end her unfathomably long life.
And the entire short but brilliant arc with Joko made sure we don't really feel empowered or just about the choices we've made.
It's just. Been really fucking good.
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