#first time writing a female muse since...2016?

[diolanza]

starter call for reiju! again, one liners, but you're free to reply with as much as you want.

[freekzout]

anonymous said: 🍀 // recommend an oc blog

@starfoam is an unsung staple of the rpc!! i've been writing with esme since 2016-ish and her support has never wavered, she's always the first to interact with new concepts of mine and christen new blogs with their very first asks, which nine times outta ten are solid lore prompts. esme puts so much care into her interactions, always taking care to include the small details, and i particularly admire the attention she pays to other oc blogs! in general, i'm so impressed with her devotion to her ideas and how she's managed to sustain that enthusiasm for lorelei for ten years. it's super admirable and inspiring to see, especially as hers is a single female muse blog!! keep that fire burning!! love ya esme!!

[restrainedhungr-a]

get to know the mun.

basics.

pen(name) : Arson

pronouns : She/They

zodiac sign : Pisces

taken or single : Poly/Open??? But in a relationship with @neekoshub

three facts.

I play and DM campaigns in DnD, though I've never actually played any of the Forgotten realms. I also play MTG casually

My most hours in a game is Rimworld at 2,141.2 hours

I enjoy playing supports when starting in FPS because it allows me to get a better feel and idea of the battlefield, teammates mentality+positioning before playing DPS

experience.

platforms : I originally started RPing on Deviantart in art-groups. Specifically a Pokemon Gijinka group. I've been RPing since ~2010 I only moved to Tumblr back in ~2015/2016

plotting / winging it / memes : I can do both/all? Generally I like winging it and memes to begin with just so we can jump right in, but I don't mind plotting things out to start. I LOVE coming up with big plots and over arching ideas. I want my blog to have "arcs" and feel like the characters are alive which does require plotting and I'm never against it!

muse preference.

gender : I normally RP female or NB muses, but I do drabble in male muses as well. My favorite non-OC muse is male but I tend to cling to more feminine or female-oriented muses because it's easier as an AFAB demigirl to attach to for me.

multi or single : Ship wise or... muse? Ships im all for multi-ship because why limit myself? But I'm also poly so I tend to also make a lot of my muses poly lol

least favourite faceclaims : I don't...really use face claims? Much? I usually either draw my own icons if I have an OC or have a canon-character I can use icons for

fluff / angst / smut.

fluff : I love fluff. Fluff, soft, slice of life, things to make the characters feel alive. Not everything has to be big bombastic and torturous! I want to have the "normal" every da moments to make the characters feel alive, breathing, and not just "hit this story beat every little thing has to have meaning" . This isn't a TV show, this isn't a time-crunch series, we have all the time in the world to go into these things that shows and series cant!

angst : I'm on and off with angst. I love angst because it develops and challenges characters but I also know too much can feel. dragging. I've, in the past, fallen into the hole of writing too much angst which became a whole. Is this me doing this for the character? Or am I only writing this to hurt myself? It's a whole thing but I'm never against angst as long as there's reason or purpose and it isn't literally everything I'm doing. There needs to be a balance, the angst will be so much better if we can build the characters up first.

smut : I'm extremely insecure about smut. I am terrified to make a fool of myself as I'm sorta on the Ace spectrum? Sort of, I identify with what is called Aegrosexual which is in the ace spectrum but that means everything is fantasy. I don't know how things actually work so I get worried I'm fucking it up and then I look foolish so I tend to stay away from it except under *very* specific circumstances with people I'm comfortable with.

Tagged by: I stole it from the dash <3 Tagging: Steal it from me :Oc

[savingthrcw]

also guess who watched d.eadpool and w.olverine, loved it but no surprise there since they are my babes, and decided to start rewatching the entire x-m.en serie (I saw the first 20 years ago AT LEAST) and is now up to 2016 with D.eadpool again? I can feel I'm going to add at least verses for some of my muses (not that they need much tweaking, whatever works for the a.vengers works for them too, especially when it comes to @lcdybonbon and @smiletimeisrunningout since @re-regeneratedanomaly can just be there as a parallel universe alien) though I doubt I'll add muses themselves because I don't know the comics and because as always I'm drawn to female muses but they'd be taken as an attempt to forceship 9 times out of 10

(If you are wondering what's happening, yesterday the temperature went down and after ONE entire night of NOT dying from the heat and this day, I am now able to write. However my body has also remembered it needs food and is letting me feel hunger again, so that takes priority, together with resting now that it's REAL rest)

[fizzarollitm]

knowing your partner can potentially make writing together a lot easier !

– 𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒. ♡ NAME: Clarke

♡ PRONOUNS: he/him

♡ SEXUALITY: Lesbian

♡ TAKEN OR SINGLE: Taken by @madefate since Oct 2020 :)

– 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐒 ♡ I'm a retired coach & performer! I had to quit in my 20s when my Big Injury ended it. I still speak to my old teammates a couple times a week (We're all aged out lmao)

♡ On my first day of School the teacher sent me on the bus and instead of to pick-up and I triggered a lockdown. Its a long story but I basically made them enforce a new lockdown drill.

♡ I love the woods and a dream of mine is to visit every national park. I went to the Smokey Mtns every year as a kid and it just stuck with me.

– 𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄. ♡ HOW LONG (MONTHS / YEARS?): Oh jesus. Counting facebook like 10 but on tumblr like 5 but I took a hiatus from 2016-2021 because of sports & school.

♡ PLATFORMS YOU’VE USED: Facebook & Tumblr

♡ BEST EXPERIENCE: honestly this one. I have been having so much fun writing w everyone and have made some genuine friends in the scene! That said I have some friends from the PJO scene that I would take a bullet for.

– 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒 ♡ FEMALE OR MALE: Butches Guys but a mean gal will usually pop up.

♡ FLUFF, ANGST OR SMUT: Yes. One day I will write about a p*nis

♡ PLOTS OR MEMES: Memes into plots? I am very bad at starters orz

♡ LONG OR SHORT REPLIES: Any! Sometimes I love writing a novel and other times I need to pop out like 7 baby replies before my brain melts

♡ BEST TIME TO WRITE: Night!

♡ ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S): I think so! I don't like talking about it a lot (blugh emotions) but seeing a disabled performer really got to me. Its something I adore about Fizzarolli. He is still a sexy, nuanced character who is also disabled. We don't have a lot of that.

tagged by . @spiderslvts (thank you!!!!!!!) tagging . If you haven't been yet have at it!!!

[prodijedi-archive]

`➠⠀:⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ GETTING TO KNOW YOU

respond to the following prompts out of character. then, tag nine others that you would like to get to know a little bit better.

`➠⠀:⠀⠀ ROLEPLAYER NAME :⠀⠀ Callie

`➠⠀:⠀⠀ ROLEPLAYER PRONOUNS :⠀⠀ She / They

`➠⠀:⠀⠀ MUSE NAME :⠀⠀ Count Dooku

`➠⠀:⠀⠀ PREFERRED COMMUNICATIONS / discord or tumblr messages for out of character chat? :⠀⠀ I'm fine with both Discord and Tumblr Messages, but ultimately, I prefer Discord since there are frequent issues with Tumblr IM's. Tumblr IM's also feel kinda ... formal to me for some reason, while Discord feels more casual??? If y'all want my Discord, feel free to message me and I'll give you my handle.

`➠⠀:⠀⠀ EXPERIENCE / how long you’ve roleplayed:⠀⠀ I am pretty sure that I've been roleplaying since 2016, which was my freshman year of high school, but I lowkey forget how I specifically got into roleplay??? All I remember is that since the musical Hamilton was starting to become popular at that time, I was part of the Hamilton Amino and first came across the concept of roleplay there. Since then, l've written on Instagram, Discord, and Twitter. Tumblr is probably my favorite platform for roleplay.

`➠⠀:⠀⠀ PREFERRED ROLEPLAY TYPE / fluff, smut, or angst? :⠀⠀ Out of these three, I like writing a perfect blend of them all. However, my favorite type of roleplay is a secret fourth genre — hurt / comfort.

`➠⠀:⠀⠀ PET PEEVES AND DEALBREAKERS :

⠀⠀ ⠀⠀Roleplayers interacting with my canon muses while ignoring my female original characters. I understand that I am not entitled to interactions, but it makes me feel uneasy — especially since my current original character muse is from the exact same universe and the same time period as my canon characters.

⠀⠀ Interpreting the “no attachments” rule in the Jedi Code to mean “Jedi aren’t allowed to love at all” rather than “Jedi acknowledge that possessive relationships where one cannot let go of another are dangerous and toxic”, and then turning this same misinterpretation as a plot point or headcanon in a roleplay. This has been debunked multiple times by George Lucas.

⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ People who conflate the muse with the writer. I run into this problem ALL THE TIME with my historical fiction centric muses, and as I always say in my rules document, if someone can’t separate the writer and the muse, then they are not mature enough to write with me.

⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ Forgetting that plotting is collaborative, and expecting me to do all the work. If you want to interact with me, make an honest effort to match my energy and my contributions during the plotting process. Suggest ideas and concepts of your own. This post has some great suggestions for improving your experience throughout the roleplay plotting process!

`➠⠀:⠀⠀ PLOTS OR MEMES? :⠀⠀ Askbox memes all the way! They are a GREAT way to get interactions going, test the waters of a new dynamic, and start new threads! I also like using them as a springboard for the plotting process. When it comes to “plotting”, I perceive it as an umbrella term that encompasses exchanging headcanons about our muses or discussing character dynamics in detail, so to me it is an ongoing process that begins the moment I reach out to you OOC and continues throughout our roleplays. Plotting only ends when interactions between us end.

`➠⠀:⠀⠀ LONG REPLIES OR SHORT REPLIES? :⠀⠀ My replies tend to vary in length, and oftentimes these lengths will match your own. It is the substance that matters to me the most — you just have to give me something to work with by having some form of interaction with my character in your response, and I won’t bat an eye about how long it is.

`➠⠀:⠀⠀ BEST TIME TO WRITE? :⠀⠀I write at all times of day, but if I had to pick, I’d probably say the evening.

`➠⠀:⠀⠀ ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE? :⠀⠀Only to a very small extent. I will admit that I, like Dooku, am driven by a desire to change the world for the better and do occasionally find myself being cynical with regards to my country’s politics — but that’s about the greatest extent of any semblance that we may share. Out of all my muses, I probably self-project onto him the least 😭

TAGGING : ⠀@alootus, @jeditrash, @lostwcrlds, @sorehsu, @jedimessiah, @forcenexus, @vendettavalor, @jaigalorad, @hotchocolatejedi, @malka-lisitsa, AND YOU.

[ishvlnpckpockt]

knowing your partner can potentially make writing together a lot easier.

– BASICS.

♡ NAME: Jay

♡ PRONOUNS: she/her

♡  SEXUALITY: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

♡  TAKEN OR SINGLE: single

– THREE FACTS.

♡ I do cosplay! Some full out, some casual that I wear as everyday clothes because I am just that cringe

♡ My favorite color is pink!

♡ I have another account on here that I forgot the password for lmao, it's called jeffmads (yes like the hamilton ship) because I was fixated on hamilton at the time and was not creative with url names duhiufgiufg, but now it's lost to the wilderness,,,,,,

– EXPERIENCE.

♡   HOW LONG (MONTHS / YEARS?): I've been doing this since.... 2016-17 I think? But I only started using tumblr in I think 2019

♡   PLATFORMS YOU’VE USED: Instagram DMs, Amino, Discord, Tumblr

♡   BEST EXPERIENCE: I don't have the cognitive memory to pick out just one lol, I've had a bunch of good times here uwu

– MUSE PREFERENCES.

♡   FEMALE OR MALE: Every single one of my muses are female so take a guess lol

♡  FLUFF, ANGST OR SMUT: I am completely cool with all of those! Just make sure you come to me first about writing smut, I'm a bit more selective with those

♡   PLOTS OR MEMES: Memes please, please send me memes, I'm not smart enough to plot entire things lmao

♡   LONG OR SHORT REPLIES: Honestly depends on my mood and how much brain juice I have ngl

♡   BEST TIME TO WRITE: Any time of the day for me

♡ ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S): A bit! I put a little bit of myself into every one of my girls so I can relate to them uwu

[dis--parity]

———  BASICS  !  

(PEN)NAME: Aria!

PRONOUNS: she/her or they/them

ZODIAC  SIGN: Aquarius sun, Cancer moon, Saggitarius rising (I don’t know what moon and rising signs actually mean but hey ho)

TAKEN  OR  SINGLE:  taken but I’m poly (but I love my partner very very very much)

———  THREE  FACTS  !

I’ve started to get a little more in-touch with my spiritual side recently, and I’m looking into setting up an altar for Aphrodite! All this started after I received a table for free (it was sitting in the foyer with a note saying it was free so I thought hey, why not), so now I’m just looking for a nice table cloth for it and some decor to really amp up the feminine side of it! I’ve always wanted to do this, so I’m very excited for it!

Ever since I got into a D&D campaign recently, DM’d by a lovely, lovely person in Topaxi, I’ve honestly been hyperfixating on that wayyyyyyyyy more than I should have, to the point where I’ve even considered making a blog for one of my player characters! The only thing holding me back from it is the fact that the last time I tried that, it didn’t get any traction and eventually fell apart.

I have a new pitch for an in-character story arc before the real story of the blog is written out, but i just haven’t had the time or energy to focus on it as of yet! I promise I’ll get something out very soon after exams are done, though!

———  EXPERIENCE  !

PLATFORMS USED: In chronological order, I think... Skype, Shamchat, Chatzy, Tumblr (duh), and Discord.

I first established a blog on tumblr in... I think 2016? And I remade into this blog in early 2020, so that leaves me with 6 years of experience on this platform.

———  MUSE  PREFERENCE  !

GENDER: [looks at my roster] ... yeah I might have a thing for female / femme muses HOWEVER male muses are also very fun to write! I don’t really have any preference honestly, the only thing I really critique myself on is their designs as they are right now. Like, I kinda headcanon Alex as being a bit more chubby than her ref sheet suggests, and I don’t put enough emphasis on Yeong-Hui’s scars, either. But, that’s a whole other rabbit hole.

LEAST FAVOURITE FACE(S): I uh. I’m honestly not sure what this question is asking??? Faceclaims are faceclaims, sure I’ve had one or two ruined for me but it’s kinda whatever at this point. The only thing I’m slightly iffy on is IRL faceclaims but unless they’re used to aid an RP blog for an Actual Real Person (I saw an RP blog for the dude from Flubber once and I’m still not over it) then it’s fine as a stylistic choice.

MULTI OR SINGLE: I’ve flipped and flopped between multimuse and single muse quite a lot - I even considered having Theo and Souji on their own separate blog, or even just giving Theo his very own blog, just to keep things consistent. But, honestly, having all of these options here suits me, especially seeing as they’re all in the same story. The thing that burned me out on my last blog was one muse getting more attention than others, and then me burning out on all of them, so I dunno.

———  FLUFF  /  ANGST  /  SMUT  !  ♡    

FLUFF: I love it! Platonic, romantic, slice-of-life threads that don’t necessarily go anywhere, let’s do it! It’s the easiest way to measure and develop the chemistry between two muses, and get them talking about what matters to them in life, and all that - if it’s romantic, or in the pining stage, mixing it up with some affectionate gestures is just SO GOOD LIKE. OOOUGH

ANGST: Oh, you mean my favourite form of revealing backstory! Whether it be through relating an experience that two muses are having with each other to something in their past that it reminds them of, or facing something that had happened to them, opening up about something from my. [coughs] very expansive lore. it’s the best way to trick me into talking backstory and lore!

SMUT: Fuck yeah bro I love to smut it up! With the introduction of Theo to the blog, I’ve seen a lot more friends-with-benefits relationships come in through his bonds, but that’s honestly still so good! At the very least, it gives me an outlet to actually write smut every now and again, which is always awesome... I just wish my other muses would get the same treatment. I do most of my more risqué threads (if I know it’ll be ongoing) over on my other blog, here.

PLOT  /  MEMES: Memes are better to break the ice and just get interactions going, but once I see a bit of chemistry unfold between two muses, I’m more than happy to plot! My only fear is that when I do plot, it’s not met with quite the same enthusiasm from the other side because I am. aheh. VERY much prone to the brainrot sometimes. More involved plots REALLY do get me going though, and I’d love to have more of them!

TAGGED BY: @causalitylinked​ (thank u livi ily) TAGGING: I don’t tend to tag people in these but if you wanna do it then go ahead!

[ofpolitics]

𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐍

— 𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒

(𝐏𝐄𝐍)𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄: kitty, this is very much a penname 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐒: she/her but i won’t get mad if you use something else 𝐙𝐎𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐂: sagittarius 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐋𝐄 / 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐍: very single

— 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐒

𝐢. i’ve lived on three continents so far: north america, europe, and oceania.  my father worked in military/government so i spent most of my childhood outside my country in germany and the marshall islands.  that led to a lot of traveling, so i’ve been to most of the major cities in europe and a lot of the historical sites in the west and north.  i sadly never learned much marshallese but i’m semi fluent in german, though good luck with my written grammar.

𝐢𝐢. i’m a weather nerd.  as i write this, hurricane ian has made landfall in florida and i’m watching a live feed from storm chasers.  since childhood, especially after riding out some tropical storms and a few tornado warnings, i’ve had a small obsession with how weather works and the people who study it.  if i hadn’t had such an interest in history (and later international relations) long before this, i might’ve veered toward meteorology.  with my dad being from tornado alley, i’ve actually always wanted to be a storm chaser, and now that i live in the heart of it, maybe someday i’ll meet some experienced chasers and actually get to ride along.

𝐢𝐢𝐢. i’m partly persian. i feel like this is something most of the people i speak to on here know about and i’ve mentioned it here and there in tags, but if you haven’t seen that, hej, hi, dorood. my mom actually spent some of her childhood in iran before the revolution and my grandfather is one of the many who had to flee during.  since we’ve had a lot of estrangement from that part of the family, i unfortunately don’t know a lot of farsi, but i’m still very connected to that culture thanks to the efforts of my grandma and mom.  especially the food.  goodness, i love the food.

— 𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄

i’m a bit more of a recent rper. i discovered it was a thing entirely on accident in 2016 and threw myself into a fandom with an oc i still write.  she’s fandomless nowadays but for a good year or so i stuck with only her.  i branched out into canons: doctor who, star wars, musicals, marvel, historical fiction, etc.  jaina solo was my first star wars muse, the one that will forever be my favorite and dearest to my heart.  now, i’m mostly historical based ocs and star wars characters, but i’ve eyed returning to a few older blogs recently.

— 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄

listen, as much as some of my favorite characters are villains, when it comes to muses, i tend to skew heroic for canons and just normal people trying to do good/survive in the world for ocs.  and heavily female.  so so so heavily female.

— 𝐒𝐔𝐁-𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐑𝐄𝐒

𝐅𝐋𝐔𝐅𝐅: is sweet, is lovely, but i do like when it’s mixed in with other things.  rarely are moments in life purely fluff, so truly just those things tend to be rare from me.  however, especially as i have a penchant for kind/sweet even muses, there usually is some element of fluff somewhere in my interactions with people, if not a decent amount with people they care about.  and you know, interjecting that with muses who definitely not fluff prone at all, when appropriate, makes me grin manically.

𝐒𝐌𝐔𝐓: i rarely do it, mostly because i don’t see the point with how it often goes down.  most of the time when i get to write it, it very much ends up centers around the actions and just the actions, even if i try to start it in a broader lens.  it just feels gratuitous very quickly.  i’m not a huge fan of sex scenes in film and book already so after several times of it feeling like those, i just feel very meh about it.  i wouldn’t mind getting to write it again, but not if it feels just like a pwp fic.

𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐒𝐓: my bread and butter.  i usually end up writing in fandoms and verses where angst is a major part of the story, so it’s a huge portion of my writing.  plus, especially with my kinder, sweeter muses, i like to explore what makes them upset, angry, what makes them ready to throw hands, if anything.  what sends me into the stratosphere though is angst within familial and romantic relationships.  give me conflict between people who love or will grow to love each other.  it’s very satisfying.

— 𝐏𝐋𝐎𝐓𝐒 𝐯𝐬. 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐒

i 100% take both, and with the latter, i very much appreciate not having to work off of nothing like with non-plotted starter calls, but i’ll be honest, i really like plotting.  it doesn’t have to be much, but whether a starter or meme, even if i have a very solid idea in mind, i usually like to check in and see if that’s fine/build on the idea a little to make sure it’ll work.  even once i really know how someone ticks with their writing style and muse, i still prefer to do it since it alleviates my mostly unfounded anxiety about people not liking what they receive.  when it comes to beyond beginnings, it really makes me happy to plot, especially because the likelihood of me getting to every aspect and every possibility is slim.  plotting helps cover those holes in development even if it doesn’t get used.  but hey, if something just continues smoothly without input except maybe some yelling over how we love it, i’m 100% fine with that as well.

— 𝐓𝐀��𝐆𝐄𝐃: @honorhunt​ ( thanks so much, friend! ) —  𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐆: i seriously have no idea who has and hasn’t done this at this point so if you haven’t, consider yourself tagged

[thelightsabcr]

Get to Know the Mun!

REPOST DON’T REBLOG

———  BASICS! ♡ (PEN)NAME  :    Ani. PRONOUNS  :    She/her ZODIAC SIGN  :    Libra TAKEN OR SINGLE  :   Single, and ready to get super awkward around anyone I find attractive.

———  THREE  FACTS! ♡ • My pen name derives from my real name. It’s just the three first letters. • I buy too much Star Wars stuff with my adult money .-. •My favorite animal is cats. I have two, and I dare say one of them is my platonic soulmate.

———  EXPERIENCE! ♡ I’m old. I’ve roleplayed for way too many years and I can’t seem to let it go. I don’t remember which year I started roleplaying, but I remember it being on a norwegian website for Harry Potter roleplay. That is where my oc Lucifer was made, and I played him for many years on there before I eventually decided to quit due to too much bullying. (When I first started rp I had no sense of what was right or wrong regarding choice of character so I played someone people on there didn’t agree with, which had them bully me pretty heavily. The character wasn’t Lucifer, it was someone else, but ugghh. Never understood people’s need to bully and harass people for stuff like that. Anyway, rant over). I’ve also rp’d on MSN, Skype and Discord as well as a few games such as Rust, World of Warcraft, Valheim etc. Oh, and LARPing, I’ve done that too. I started on Tumblr in 2016 (I think?) roleplaying as Widowmaker from Overwatch for a couple years, before I switched between a few other muses. Then I had the bright idea of wanting to roleplay as Obi-Wan since I’ve always liked him quite a lot, and then I ended up here. That’s just my roleplay experience though, not my writing experience which is more vast tbh. I started writing when I was seven, wrote my first finished book at twelve, sent it to a publishing company at sixteen (didn’t get accepted, but got a lot of advice and encouragment), and finally got my first book published in 2017. Now I’m working on three separate projects, two in english and one in norwegian. Gonna stop myself here, cause otherwise this post will be wayyyy too long, haha. Feel free to ask should you be curious about anything though. I’m more than happy to chat about this or anything else!

———  MUSE  PREFERENCE! I tend to write more male muses than female ones, simply because it comes easier to me. Always have for some reason. Don’t know why. Guess I just feel I’m not able to communicate a realistic female muse so I rarely tend to have them. It’s probably all just in my mind, though. I also always use a bit of time to get to know the muse when I start rping as them, but as soon as that’s done, they’re stuck with me forever!

———  FLUFF / ANGST / SMUT! ♡     FLUFF  :   Also a huge yes please. I mostly end up writing fluff I feel with romantic ships, since I love letting my characters be content and happy as much as I love letting them suffer. ANGST  :  Yes please. I love angst very much even if it makes me cry. I am often so connected to my characters that I can feel their pain, whether that be physical or mental pain, which again have had me crying as I write at some points. Still love angst though - maybe there’s something wrong with me xD SMUT  :  I don’t mind smut at all, as I find it a vital part of a romantic ship, though that does not mean that you have to rp smut with me. Not at all! I love romance without smut too. Sometimes when writing smut my brain just stops - probably due to my own trauma - so when or if you write smut with me I may reply slowly cause I need to restart the brain from time to time. Other than that I don’t mind it, though I do not rp smut with everyone nor do I write smut for the sake of smutting - it has to have some plot to it.

PLOT / MEMES  :  I encourage plotting, and I love memes so either is fine by me. However, more often than not I tend to go with the flow, letting Obi-Wan do the work while I just write down what he believes is right.

tagging: Any and all who wishes to do it! tagged by: @skysnipsw

[kingstylesdaily]

Why Harry Styles Just Scored His First No. 1 Song

Like any boy band alumnus, he first had to overcome radio’s bias against teen heartthrobs.

Late summer is a great time for sleeper hits: songs that have been hanging around the charts for months and finally hit their stride. Four years ago, in August 2016, Sia’s “Cheap Thrills” reached No. 1 after knocking around the charts since the prior winter, getting its final boost from a Sean Paul remix. In September 2018, Maroon 5’s year-old “Girls Like You” slipped into the top slot after wafting around the Top 10 for more than four months, with a Cardi B verse putting it over the edge. Last year around Labor Day, Lizzo finally topped the Hot 100 with “Truth Hurts,” a song that was two years old and had been rising gradually on the chart since the spring.

This year’s sleeper hit is “Watermelon Sugar,” a wisp of a song by boy bander–turned–self-styled rock star Harry Styles. With a name inspired by Richard Brautigan’s hippie-era, post-apocalyptic novella In Watermelon Sugar, Styles’ lackadaisical tune is not only a sleeper but a grower, the sort of hit that sneaks up on you—I wasn’t sure it even had a fully written chorus the first time I heard it, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. Indeed, the whole nation took its time deciding that this quirky ditty would give the starriest, most eccentric member of One Direction his first-ever U.S. chart-topper.

“Watermelon Sugar” is the third single promoted from Styles’ second solo album Fine Line, which was released last December. That alone is remarkable, given the challenge in the digital age of generating chart interest in anything other than an album’s first couple of singles. Generally, in an era when all of an album’s songs are available to be consumed the day the album drops, you need a remix or a special guest of some kind to gin up chart action months after the song first hits streaming. “Sugar” has none of those. To be sure, there was some gimmickry fueling the song’s leap to the top, albeit of an old-fashioned kind: The song had its best week of sales ever thanks to an assortment of limited-edition vinyl and cassette singles that came bundled with a digital download. Those sales got “Sugar” the last mile on the charts, but Columbia Records wouldn’t have put the physical goods on sale if the song wasn’t already a radio smash—“Sugar” currently has the second-biggest U.S. airplay audience—and they knew they had an opening between current hits by Taylor Swift and a pair of lascivious female rappers I’ll almost certainly be writing about in this space next week. So, fair play to Team Harry: They took advantage of an open chart window, a tactic as old as the Hot 100 itself.

As “Sugar” leaps from No. 7 to No. 1 on the Hot 100 this week—essentially switching places with his ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift’s “Cardigan,” which falls to No. 8—Styles scores only the second-ever chart-topper by a member of One Direction. That includes all of the hits by 1D itself. In its five years of recording, from 2011 through 2015, the band never scored a Hot 100 No. 1. This despite topping the Billboard 200 album chart with its first four studio albums, the only group in history to launch a career with that haul. So … what was that other 1D-affiliated Hot 100–topper I mentioned? It was by ex-member Zayn Malik, the only member to break from the crew while it was still active. Zayn’s smoldering, Weeknd-esque boudoir jam “Pillowtalk” debuted at No. 1—and spent a solitary week there—in the winter of 2016, fueled by blockbuster streams and downloads ginned up by 1D superfans still mourning his departure the prior year and the group’s resulting, presumably permanent hiatus.

Explaining how the top-selling boy band of the 2010s could shift so many CDs and downloads but generate only two No. 1 singles means briefly recapping the fraught history of boy bands and the charts. Selling albums has never been hard for pinup pop groups, since the days of Meet the Beatles! and More of the Monkees. And in the ’70s and ’80s, such precision sing-and-dance troupes as the Jackson 5, the Osmonds, and New Edition managed to generate both gold albums and chart-conquering singles. In 1989, New Kids on the Block had the year’s second-biggest album and four of the year’s top singles, including a pair of No. 1s. But starting in the ’90s, as U.S. radio networks consolidated (fueled by the 1996 Telecommunications Act) and programmers more narrowly targeted specific demographics, radio stations shied away from maximalist teen-pop that appealed primarily to under-18 audiences. By the end of that decade, even as boy bands were enjoying a new wave of TRL-fueled popularity, radio became a chart handicap for them. The Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync had the top-selling albums of 1999 and 2000, respectively—the diamond-selling Millennium and No Strings Attached—but only scored a solitary Hot 100 topper between them, ’N Sync’s “It’s Gonna Be Me.” (Backstreet never hit No. 1: The deathless “I Want It That Way” peaked at No. 6.)

This radio bias against boy bands has persisted into the 21st century. And ever since the Hot 100 went digital about a decade and a half ago, teen-pop’s chart placements have been the result of a battle between rabid downloaders and radio gatekeepers—massive digital sales compensating for modest radio play. For example, radio was what kept the Jonas Brothers from scoring any chart-topping hits during their original wave of teen idoldom; their biggest hit of the ’00s, the No. 5 hit “Burnin’ Up,” sold 2 million downloads but only ranked 55th at U.S. radio. By the ’10s, the same fate befell one-man boy band Justin Bieber. In this long-running Slate series, I have chronicled the blow-by-blow between Justin Bieber and radio programmers that swung from Justin as hit-starved teen idol in the early ’10s to dominant young-adult chart-dominator in the late ’10s. In the early ’10s period, Bieber was a YouTube and iTunes demigod with not a single radio smash to his name. He could sell a half-million downloads of “Boyfriend” in a week and still fall short of the No. 1 spot, thanks (no thanks) to radio.

For One Direction, the chart patterns were the same. A Frankenstein’s monster that Simon Cowell famously threw together in 2010 on his televised competition The X Factor from five solo competitors—Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson—1D continually found its singles dragged down on the Hot 100 by radio, even as the band sold truckloads of albums. The pattern was set in fall 2012 when “Live While We’re Young” debuted with a staggering 341,000 downloads but could only get to No. 3 on the Hot 100, thanks to its 50th-ranked radio airplay. In the summer of 2013, the slyly Who-interpolating “Best Song Ever” became 1D’s highest-charting hit ever, debuting at No. 2 with record video views and near-record downloads, but at radio it never got past No. 53. “Story of My Life” (No. 6, 2014), “Drag Me Down” (No. 3, 2015)—no matter how many downloads sold or videos viewed, 1D could never top the Hot 100 so long as its radio spins remained limited.

The reason I’m running down all of this granular chart data is it reveals the hurdles both 1D and its post-breakup soloists had to overcome to top the Hot 100. Like Justin Bieber, they had to become credible radio fodder with adults as well as kids. With his early break from the group, Zayn was the first to pull this off. Though “Pillowtalk” debuted at No. 1 largely due to massive sales and streams, the carnal song did eventually become a No. 4–ranked airplay hit. Cleverly, Zayn had chosen a then-current EDM-inflected R&B mode and dropped his debut while the Weeknd was between albums. Other former 1D-ers have had their share of solid radio hits, including Liam Payne’s hip-hop–inflected “Strip That Down” featuring Quavo of Migos (No. 10 on the Hot 100, No. 4 on Radio Songs) and Niall Horan’s softly bopping pop jam “Slow Hands” (No. 11 Hot 100, No. 2 Radio Songs).

And Harry Styles? He decided to make things harder on himself. His 2017 debut album was chockablock with old-school classic rock. This would be like launching a career in 1964 with big-band jazz. While Styles’ fame ensured a big launch for his Bowie-esque single “Sign of the Times”—it opened, and peaked, at No. 4 on the Hot 100, fueled by strong downloads—radio showed only moderate interest. It eventually reached a modest No. 21 on the airplay chart. Later Harry singles like the twangy “Two Ghosts” and the thrashy “Kiwi” missed the Hot 100 and had little radio profile beyond a handful of pure-pop stations that were loyal to Styles from his 1D days. One admired Harry for following his artistic muse—more Joni Mitchell than Justin Bieber—but as a pop star, he arguably squandered his momentum coming out of One Direction.

What has made Fine Line, Styles’ sophomore album, such a clever left turn is he retained the rock flavor he naturally gravitates toward but converted it into mellow California-style surf-pop, and he let his production team—Tyler Johnson and Thomas “Kid Harpoon” Hull—fashion the songs into percolating radio jams. Each single has opened the door a bit wider: “Lights Up,” a No. 17 last October, is lightly strummed beach music with ethereal backing vocals. And “Adore You,” a No. 6 hit in April (for my money, still Styles’ best single), is thumping electropop. “Adore” in particular served as Styles’ entrée onto radio’s A-list—it reached No. 1 on mainstream Top 40 stations and No. 2 on Radio Songs by early summer.

With this beachhead established, Harry was finally free to let his freak flag fly with “Watermelon Sugar,” which is simultaneously his oddest single and his most infectious. The chorus consists of nothing more than the line “Watermelon sugar high” repeated a half-dozen or more times, with emphasis on the “HIGH.” (TikTok users have keyed into this idiosyncrasy, sharing videos in which the “high” gets its own video edit of the user playacting her best stoner face.) Last November, when Styles did double-duty hosting and singing on Saturday Night Live, “Sugar” was one of the songs he performed, and in that indoor setting, it came off as willfully quirky and seasonally incongruous; the song’s first verse line is “Tastes like strawberries on a summer evenin’.” Now, timed for 2020’s beach season—complete with a video filled with beautiful people on the shore, shot just before the pandemic and, according to a title card, “dedicated to touching”—it’s sitting atop the hit parade.

In short, Harry Styles finally has a profile on the radio and on the Hot 100 that matches his profile on magazine covers, and he achieved it on his own schedule and something like his own terms. Like John Lennon in the ’70s—the founder and nominal leader of the Beatles but the last former Fab to reach the toppermost of the poppermost as a solo artist—Styles just had to find his own way. As that onetime teen heartthrob sang, “Whatever gets you to the light, it’s all right.”

source: Slate

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Croatia brings no men in a hamster wheel to Rotterdam 2021

Now could this be the teddy bear uprising invasion Muse has warned us about 12 years ago?

And LITERALLY, these review series make me feel like Croatia is openly taunting me - I watch the days go, I’m losing track of time, and when another day comes, I’m screaming “oh no I forgot to publish a review sooner than wanted!!”. Guess I’m for one glad there’s a time related song this year, hum?

ARTIST & ENTRY INFO

Repping the Adriatic coast nation that got all the sea instead of Bosnia & Herzegovina is some 22 year old Albina Grčić, who first popped up on X Factor Adria back when that was a thing, and got lumped into a girlgroup in later stages, but to that she said “hvala ne” and moved on with her life, getting eliminated just like that. Queen <3 She did get her second chance to compete as a soloist and make a more prominent mark on her career when she ended up on The Voice in Croatia. She did well, placing third overall in the season, but somehow, during the duel stage, her coach initially favoured her fellow Dora 2021 contestant Filip Rudan:

Her Voice success landed her a record deal with the Croatian division of Universal Music, she released a debut single, sometime later ended up on Dora, and here she is now, on Eurovision.

“Tick-Tock” is the song, a standard upbeat pop song, and one of the ones that talks about a girl leaving a terrible relationship and being so well over it that she “found [her]self and [she’s] finally free”, and the “tick-tock” here is used to represent the time passing by, not the sound of her heart, unlike a fellow ESC entry of a similar title. The tune (or its lyrics only) is co-authored by some dude you might’ve heard of from France’s 2018 preselection Destination Eurovision, and that is Max Cinnamon - some half-English guy with a half English song about love (”Ailleurs”) that did moderately averagely in the final... I don’t even know if his influence shows, I just love how 2021 has sort of become revenge of the NF flops but they’re writing other entries instead (Suzi P, “Adrenalina”).

REVIEW

I often don’t really fully vibe with female bops in Eurovision as much as I want to, like, for the most part they’re overhyped, and I let the “yass queeeeen” audience gorge on the everything their favourite bops give them. But this year there are plenty of great ones to choose from, as I think that it’s safe to say that most, if not all, are tucked in somewhere inside my top 20, top 25 at the very minimum. Croatia managed to even do the impossible and land into my top 10.

Why?

Well, the answer is that the song is just so damn good.

I mean, what’s NOT to like about it? It’s a catchy and upbeat song that incorporates xylophones (or whatever is it that sounds like them), guitars and synths; has a good bassline in the chorus; and it’s just... a very good composition overall, like, all the instruments in it are just in their right place and uplift the song massively. I also like Albina’s performance on it, both live and studio, it clearly shows that she’s a very good singer (also shown on her cover of the scandalous Oscar award snubbery “Husavik”). Sounds like a song a common pop loving Eurofan could gear themselves towards. Besides, it also has possibly my favourite pre-chorus section of the 2021 year? Oh wait, there’s also Switzerland, scratch that. “Tick-Tock” has one of my favourite pre-chorus sections of 2021. It builds up so well instrumentally and the way Albina sings it is even better. I obviously like to believe Albina heard those voices from far away that helped her to escape, has found herself, and she’s finally free from her “partner’s” bad lovin’ and restraint. Yas queen go be free you didn’t deserve his tomfoolery anyway!  👏 (Also I admire a section that’s not quite the pre-chorus but is still before the 1st chorus, the one that goes “If you pull me down then I'll come around” - literally just a lot of the parts of the song are full of nice vocal performance and I don’t regret ranking this in my top 10 not a second.)

If it has any drawbacks, it’s just that it gets a tad too repetitive after the halfway mark... like, the pre-chorus before the second chorus is the one to be repeated once again, and no new verse, nothing - but it does launch itself into something extraordinary, and that is a chorus in Croatian, which I assume she would perform in Eurovision because there’s no Eurovision version on the song promo bundle, I suppose. Comparatively the Croatian chorus is not as complex in lyrics as the English language one, and flows slightly differently too. But the song still has a long chorus by the end, and song with too many choruses is never a good sign for those that look for a song that’s constructed well, but I guess it’s a good factor for those that value the song’s catchiness. I guess that’s what one of the two Eurovision 2005 hosts valued the most when writing the Ukrainian 2006 entry “Show Me Your Love”, which if you ask me, is straight up 75% chorus, lol.

So yeah my verdict is that almost everything about this song, I like. I’m just a little devastated that in a usually very easily gorged on category of female bops, this just tends to lag behind in love, like a fellow song I really like this year, Israel. Instead people tend to prioritize Cyprus (which I get because they’ve established themselves as a girlbanger nation since Fuego swept Eurovision) and... probably even Azerbaijan? (which I might also get because Eurovision rarely has this thing called an ethnobop anymore, and it has more ethno than “Cleopatra” did, but still unnecessarily underwhelming lol.) Well then, in a year of female bangers, I would just like Croatia to not be swept under the rug come semis I guess. Yeah “Tick-Tock” may not sound like it brings something totally never seen before in a Eurovision environment (foreign language lyrics, themes about a break up, hell even her dancers looked like they were wearing the same hats as Tamta’s dancers), but you got to have a lot in you to sell a worn out idea to the new heights, and Albina does exactly that in my eyes.

Approval factor: Yeah! There is a lot of it in here for me. Follow-up factor: A great follow-up, not so great in regards to panini but musically it’s just going up and up from what we had in the past few years. I’ve actually not minded “The Dream” for the most part but I knew it was a chanceless plodding ballad and Roko harboured heaps of wasted potential working with Jacques Houdek and having wings as part of his performance, uff. *_* And then there’s “Divlji vjetre” which I also like a lot - a much better male ballad winner choice! If the Dora re-up winners keep being decent imo just like this, I have a feeling I will follow it a lot more often than I did just this one time this year. I am just saying that panini-wise, it was a sucky move from HRT for not allowing their last year’s winner promote his new song with Tijana (from Serbia 2017) on the Dora night, so we sadly only heard a pre-recorded opening version of “Divlji vjetre” to start off with :( Otherwise I think it’s not Dora’s fault in itself that Damir himself chose not to even submit an entry this year because he hadn’t found a good one - much like with Diodato for Sanremo (he was NOT rejected, if you think he still was, shush). But aside that, musically, it just keeps going up for me. Well done Croatia, for you’ve used to be a Eurovision country I don’t necessarily care about, that you brought two pretty damn good entries in a row. Qualification factor: I can absolutely trust in Albina bringing in a little bit of her charisma and well-likedness, and on top of that, a great vocal performance, in Rotterdam. Don’t ask me why, I just do. She doesn’t really perform her song live on pre-parties as much as I’d like to hope she would, but you heard girlie on the national selection, she didn’t win for nothing. Yeah yeah there might as well be female uptempo songs hungrier for the last spot, but I’d like to think Albina is one of the ones ready to devour than to be devoured. Go girl! Take us all dancing!

NF CORNER

To be honest with you, “Tick-Tock” winning Dora caught me by surprise. Ever since its re-up, the last two editions were kind of won by male ballads, and maaaaybe the dancey females were doing moderately well enough for themselves, but not overall? But look, juries were very keen on Albina, probably because she can SANG and she creates one hell of a fancy presence on her performance. And somehow she ended up snatching a win out of the hands of 5G conspiracy theorist 2016 representative Nina Kraljić, who was at first too drunk to care, but too unexpectedly sober to yell all over the soc. media how she was robbed and how the contest was rigged against her with her being on first and all that. Which is a shame that she is one of THOSE people, because her NF entry “Rijeka” is kinda nice? We did have the Balkan-esque ballads coming from Croatia in recent memory, but we haven’t had a truly proudly folksy one at that from Croatia for a long while, if not ever. Nina could’ve very well brought that to Rotterdam (and another mismatched wardrobe choice oops). But instead she was the one screaming “oh no, oh no, oh no”.

Actually I regarded Nina as one of my faves pre-show, and Albina was on her way, though she didn’t really cement the personal fav status until after all performances, thus making Nina and Albina switch spots for me. But truly, the one song that was my top favourite, iiiiiiiiiiis

GIMME AN OCEAN! OF LOVE!

2021 made me realize that damn, maybe anything that’s funky is my favourite music genre afterall. Up until then I vibed with entries like “Tonight Again” and “What’s the Pressure?” that had this sort of energetic flair and very rhythmic kinda sound to it, but 2021 just simply cemented it to me that my music world has probably been about nice and smooth and funky all along. I owe so much gratitude to ToMa first and foremost along the lines of more to have come in this year’s lineups - I just can’t not want to dance to “Ocean of Love”, and ToMa is quite alright at selling it live as well. There are small gripes with some instrument usages but that doesn’t detract from the fact that I love love LOVE funky guitar tunes.

Aside from that, I can give shout outs to Beta Sudar, whose song not only was underrated, but also had an underrated meme format throughout its performance:

My other props go to Bernarda, who not only competed in a national selection singing a song about seeing “Colors” while blind (and ironically there was a song called “Blind” in that same NF sung by a well-seeing guy!!), but also for finally putting this every country’s reject to rest. Seriously. That particular song was passed on to everyone in need of a competitive Eurovision bop, from Poli Genova to Helena Paparizou as of recently. Oh well, at least the song died a honourable death - well performed slice of good typical Eurovision pop (maybe even overperformed a little towards the end), that got a good rank with the regional juries, but somewhat murdered in televote, fellow Boris Milanov composition “Chameleon” style.

This one Mia Negovetić chick was promising too! Her song was written by the Debs and you might be tired of them trying to continue infiltrating Eurovision at this point, but a lot of their Eurovision songs are usually something I enjoy, “She’s Like a Dream” is no exception. Nothing but 3 minutes of pastel-dressed Croatian Ariana Grande doing what she does best <3

Oh and also some dudes tried to play chess on stage too I guess. But their song is not worth looking into, because one of the acts on it is apparently also a conspiracist, and maybe because oft this their entry is aptly titled “Sing, for the freedom has arrived!” lol I wonder what exactly is the kind of freedom you’re thinking of my guy

Was this the “better mood game” Laura was warning everyone about? Beats me

NF CORNER (NON-COMPETITIVE)

• It’s still hilarious to me as to how one of the acts this year, Brigita Vuco, was planning to bring in backing dancers, only for them to show a fake COVID test or something and outright BARRED from coming with her on stage. <3 Whatever she intended to do with them dancers, I have absolutely no idea, but at least she committed to her song being about drunken nights visually by having all these blurry shots

• Nina Kraljić’s greenroom shenanigans, from the “1-2-3, 1-2-3, drink” to numb the sadness over some results (and the 8 she got from the region Rijeka for the song “Rijeka” lmao), to whatever she saw on the phone that made her smile or go neutral

• Greenroom reactions in general. I swear, this year had cameramen in every single corner everywhere just to make sure something covers up for a human audience instead of severals of Zoom screens permitted to act as an audience. Random people in greenrooms were doing some sort of emotions after random acts, and also randomly they ended up pointing a camera towards an act that lost, but the act didn’t treat losing as if it were such a big deal <3

• All the other memes the Croatian Twitter might’ve noticed me for:

seriously Bernarda was locked in a bluelight mathematical dice contraption. how fucking cool is that

ANY LAST WORDS?

I just fucking hope that Albina shatters any doubts that people have had about her song come rehearsals, and somehow Croatia AND Israel slip through, because never too many female bangers I appreciate in the final, if they all are the bangers I appreciate, lol.

[thekillerssluts]

Will Butler explains how his Harvard degree developed into his second solo album

“Yeah, it’s terrifying,” Will Butler says, pondering how it feels to be releasing music away from the umbrella of Arcade Fire.

“It’s the classic thing about all writers,” he continues. “The creative process makes them wanna puke the whole time they’re writing something, then they read something back and it makes them feel worse, then a year later they read it and think ‘yeah, it’s okay’. It’s a glorious experience, but it really makes your stomach hurt.”

On the one hand Will Butler is well accustomed to this writing process, being a multi-instrumentalist in the Canadian indie-rock band fronted by brother Win - Arcade Fire. But on his own terms, it’s an entirely new process. Butler’s second solo album Generations arrives five years after his debut Policy, a collection that rattled with a ramshackle charm and what he describes now as a ‘consciously very unproduced’ sound. Arcade Fire wound down from their Everything Now tour in September 2018, leaving Butler with the last two years of playtime. Most musicians, particularly those accustomed to big album cycles, set aside their downtime for family or other musical projects. Somehow Butler’s managed to do both while also completing a masters degree in Public Policy at Harvard.

“I went to school for a variety of reasons but there was an artistic side to it too,” he says. “I have always tried to let music and lyrics emerge from the world that I’m in; you fertilise the soil and see what grows. It was a way to better understand where we are, how we got here and what's going on. You know, ‘where am I from? What's going to happen?’” Both of these questions explored in his degree are used as fuel for Generations.

It’s easy to imagine an album by somebody who’s just pursued a Public Policy MSt to form in reams of political commentary, probably set to an acoustic guitar. However, Butler instead engages character portraits soundtracked by a broad range of thrilling sonics. Opener “Outta Here” is shrouded by a monstrous bass that lurks beneath the depths of the instrumentation before bursting out midway through. “Got enough things on my plate without you talking about my salvation,” he screams.

While the cage-rattling “Bethlehem” is mania underpinned by a thrashing guitar and bubbling synths that help lift the track to boiling point.While there’s no current world leaders namechecked or any on-the-nose political commentary across the LP, the angst of its contents is instantly tangible, backed by the intellect of somebody who’s spent the past few years studying the ins and outs of government processes. A perfect combination, you could say.

This fuel was partly discovered through Butler reconnecting with the music that defined his teenage years: namely Bjork, The Clash and Eurythmics. While these influences certainly slip into frame across Generations, they were paired with something of an unlikely muse: “I got into this habit of listening to every single song on the Spotify Top 50 every six weeks,” Butler explains. “So many of them are horrible, terrifying and just awful but there’s something inspiring about how god damn avant garde the shittiest pop music is now. Just completely divorced from any sense of reality - it’s just layers upon layers upon layers - it’s amazing. It’s like Marcel Duchamp making a pop hit every single song.”

We turn from current music to current events. Navigating Covid-19 with his wife and three kids in their home of Brooklyn, a majority of 2020 has been caught up in family time for Butler. “The summer’s been easier because everybody’s outside, whereas in spring it was like ‘it’s family time because we have to lock our doors as there's a plague outside.’” While being surrounded by the trappings of lockdown since his second solo album Generations was completed in March, the album itself wriggles with the spirit of live instrumentation, which at this point seems like some sort of relic from a bygone era."I think eventually rediscovering this album back in the live setting would be amazing - we’re a really great live band, it’s a shame to not be in front of people."

The source of this energy can be traced back to the way the songs came together; they were forged and finessed at a series of shows in the early stages of the project. “It just raises the stakes. You can tell how good or how dumb a lyric is when you sing it in front of a hundred people,” he reflects. “It’s like ‘are you embarrassed because what you’re saying is true?’ or ‘is it just embarrassing?’ It’s a good refiner for that stuff. I think eventually rediscovering this album back in the live setting would be amazing - we’re a really great live band, it’s a shame to not be in front of people.”

Like his day job in Arcade Fire, Butler’s solo live group is something of a family affair - both his wife and sister-in-law feature in the band, alongside Broadway's West Side Story star, and the student of the legendary Fela Kuti drummer, Tony Allen. Together this eclectic mix of musicians conjures an infectious spirit through the raw combination of thundering synths and pedal-to-the-metal instrumentation; an apt concoction indeed for lyrics that are attempting to unhatch the bamboozling questions that surround our current times.

The timing for Butler’s decision to study Public Policy couldn’t have been more perfect, with his course starting in the Fall of 2016. “I was at Harvard for the election which was a really bizarre time to be in a government school, but it was great to be in a space for unpacking questions like ‘my god, how did we get here?!’” he reflects, with a note of mockery in the bright voice.

“I had a course taught by a professor named Leah Wright Rigueur. The class was essentially on race in America but with an eye towards policy. The class explored what was going to happen in terms of race under the next president. The second to last week was about Hilary Clinton and the last week was about Donald Trump. We read riot reports - Ferguson in 2015, Baltimore in 2016, the Detroit uprisings in the ‘60s and Chicago in 1919 - it's certainly helping me understand the last 5 years, you know. Just to be in that context was very lucky.”

As we’ve seen with statues being toppled, privileges being checked and lyrics of national anthems being interrogated in recent months, history is a complex, labyrinthine subject to navigate requiring both ruthless self-scrutiny and a commitment to the long-haul in order to correct things. The concept of Generations shoots from the same hip employing character portraits to engage in the broader picture.

The writing, at times, is beamed from a place of disconnect (“had enough of bad news / had enough of your generation”), from a place of conscious disengagement (“I’m not talking because I don’t feel like lying / if you stay silent you can walk on in silence”) and from a place of honest self-assessment (“I was born rich / three quarters protestant / connections at Harvard and a wonderful work ethic”).

“I’m rooted in history to a fault,” he says. “My great grandfather was the last son of a Mormon pioneer who’d gone West after being kicked out of America by mob violence. He wanted to be a musician which was crazy - he got 6 months in a conservatory in Chicago before his first child was born. He always felt like he could have been a genius, he could of been writing operas but he was teaching music in like tiny western towns and he had all these kids and he made them be a family band and they were driving around the American west before there were roads in the deserts - literally just driving through the desert! He would go to these small towns and get arrested for trying to skip bills and just live this wild existence.”

Butler’s grandma, meanwhile, was just a child at this point. She went on to become a jazz singer with her sisters and married the guitar player Alvino Rey. “The fact that me and my brother are musicians is no coincidence,” he smiles. “It’s not like I decided to be a musician, it’s down to decisions that were made at the end of the 19th century that have very clearly impacted where I am today. The musical side of it is very beautiful, it is super uncomplicated and a total joy to have a tradition of music in our family...but also in the American context - which is the only context I know - it's also these very thorny inheritances from the 19th century and beyond that influence why my life is like it is.

“For me it’s like, ‘I made my money because my grandpa was a small business owner’ or ‘my grandpa was a boat builder and got a pretty good contract in WW2 and was able to send his kids to college’. Both of which are so unpoetic and unromantic but it is an important thing to talk about, that's a personal political thing to talk about; there's horrifying and beautiful aspects there.”

The lament of “I’m gonna die in a hospital surrounded by strangers who keep saying they’re my kids” on “Not Gonna Die” could well be croaked by somebody on the tail end of a life lived on the American Dream. At times, Butler plays the characters off against each other, like on “Surrender,” which chronicles two flawed characters going back and forth played by Butler’s lead vocals and his female backing singers that undermine his memory; “I remember we were walking” is cut up with the shrug of “I dunno” and “maybe so”. “I found having the backing voices there gave me something to play with,” he explains. “Either something threatening to the main character or something affirming to the main character, just providing another point of view.”

Elsewhere, “I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know” explores the feeling of being unsuitably equipped to unravel the complexities that surrounds us day-to-day. “The basic emotion of that song is very much ‘I don’t know what I can do’ which is an emotion we all have,” he ponders. “There’s also the notion that follows that, like ‘maybe don’t even tell me what to do because it’s going to be too overwhelming to even do anything’.”

Some of these portraits materialised in the aftershows Butler began hosting while on Arcade Fire’s Everything Now tour which found him instigating conversations and talks by local councilman, politicians and activists on local issues. “On some of the good nights of the aftershow town halls, you’d feel that switch away from despair and into action,” he says smiling. “The step between despair and action is possible, that sentiment isn’t spelled out lyrically on the record but it’s definitely there spiritually.”

“I learned anew what a treasure it is to have people in a room. Getting humans in a room can be absurd. And we were having from 5,000 to 15,000 people in a room every night, most of them local. I’m very comfortable with art for art’s sake; I think art is super important and it’s great people can like music that's not political. It was sort of like ‘well we’re here and I know a lot of you are thinking about the world and you’re thinking about what a shit show everything is. You want to know what we can do and I also want to know what we can do!’ So I put on these after shows.”"The dream lineup would be to have a local activist and a local politician talking about a local issue because that’s the easiest way to make concrete change."

Butler would find a suitable location near the Arcade Fire gig through venue owners who were often connected to the local music and comedy scenes to host these events. “The dream lineup would be to have a local activist and a local politician talking about a local issue because that’s the easiest way to make concrete change. Arguably, the most important way is through the city council and state government. The New York state government is in Albany, New York. The shit that happens in Albany is all super important so I wanted to highlight that and equip people with some concrete levers to pull.

“In Tampa we had people who were organizing against felon disenfranchisement, like if you’ve been convicted of a felon you couldn’t vote in Florida, and something absurd like 22% of black men in Florida couldn’t vote and there were people organising to change that - this was in 2018 - and you could just see people being like ‘holy shit, I didn't even know this was happening!’

“These were not topics I’m an expert in - it’s like these are things that are happening. The thought was trying to engage, I’m sad to not be doing something similar this Fall, I mean what a time it would have been to go around America.”

Understandably the looming 2020 election is on Butler’s radar. “It doesn't feel good,” he sighs. “I’ve never had any ability to predict, like 2 weeks from now the world could be completely different from what it is today. There was always a one-in-a-billion chance of the apocalypse and now it's like a one-in-a-million chance which is a thousand times more likely but also unlikely. It’s going to be a real slog in the next couple of years on a policy side, like getting to a place where people don’t die for stupid reasons, I’m not even talking about the coronavirus necessarily just like policy in general. Who knows, it could be great but it seems like it's going to be a slog.”

There’s a moment on the closing track “Fine”, a stream-of-consciousness, Randy Newman-style saloon waltz, where Butler hits the nail on the head. “George [Washington], he turned to camera 3, he looked right at me and said...I know that freedom falters when it’s built with human hands”. It’s one of the many lyrical gems that surface throughout the record but one that chimes with an undeniable truth. It’s the same eloquence that breaks through as he touches on the broad ranging subjects in our conversation, always with a bright cadence despite the gloom that hangs over some of the topics.

The live show is without a doubt Arcade Fire’s bread and butter. While Butler questions how realistic the notion of getting people in packed rooms in the near future is, he reveals the group are making movements on LP6. “Arcade Fire is constantly thinking about things and demoing, it's hard to work across the internet but at some point we’ll get together. It probably won’t be much longer than our usual album cycle,” he says.

You only have to pick out one random Arcade Fire performance on YouTube to see Butler’s innate passion bursting out, whether it’s early performances that found him and Richard Reed Parry adorning motorbike helmets annihilating each other with drumsticks to the 1-2-3 beat of “Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)” or the roaring “woah-ohs” that ascend in the anthem of “Wake Up” every night on tour. It’s an energy that burns bright throughout our conversation and across Generations.

https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/interviews/arcade-fires-will-butler-new-solo-record-generations

[ardenssolis]

Get To Know The Writer!

———  BASICS! ♡

(PEN)NAME: Shi!  PRONOUNS: she / her / they / them  ZODIAC SIGN: Capricorn rep--! TAKEN OR SINGLE: Single

———  THREE  FACTS! ♡

I saw the really really old Ho.bbit / LO.TR cartoon movies when I was a kid and that was basically my introduction into Tolkien's world of fantasy fjksdhfss. Did I know what was going on half the time? No, probably not. Did I like the singing and the narrator's voice? Yes. Did I also like Cat Dragon!Smaug? Also yes. IT'S REALLY REALLY OLD AND DATED AND YOU MIGHT LAUGH BUT GO WATCH IT. It is near and dear to my heart---

If you ever give me a video game that has choices in it like The W.itcher, M.ass Effect, or anything where you potentially might have a bad ending / hurt someone with your choice, I will literally pause the game and take like hours just to make a decision. Look on the wikis, read comments, go through the process of going over pros and cons fjshdkjfhs. It's pretty terrible. I am the most indecisive person when it comes to things like that. I stopped playing The W.itcher 3 for like almost a week because of a part in the game where you have to decide to sacrifice orphans to these three gross witches, or sacrifice an entire village that gave the children to the witches, but also honestly doesn't understand that said witches will eat the children and thinks they're actually taking care of them.

I stepped on a snail and felt immense guilt for the entire day once. So, if you ever think I’m scary, know that I am only a marshmallow and almost cried over a snail....

———  EXPERIENCE! ♡

I’ve been rping since I was 13! Which is to say since forever just about aaaAAAAA. My first experience was in some chat thing I found as a kid that was like people rping Yugioh stuff and that was my introduction into rping before branching off into Inu.yasha. For years after that I just rp’d ocs on Deviantart until I decided to give canon rping a go again on tumblr in 2016. 

———  MUSE  PREFERENCE! ♡

I tend to gravitate towards shifty muses, people who are very into duty like to their nation / king kinda deal, or those that pretty much just dance to the beat of their own drum for the most part (lmfao me gravitating towards Chaotic Neutral). I looove rping female muses, but my track record tends to be towards those of the male variety. 

———  FLUFF / ANGST / SMUT! ♡    

FLUFF: I LOVE IT. This is even more so if the muse is not used to it and experiences things like kindness and such for the first time without strings attached. Like I am just a sucker for that. Sometimes you just need that fluff so you can smile and go, “awww -clenches chest-”

ANGST: This is also my jam. However, I don’t like angst for the sake of angst like trying to out angst one another. That can go on and on and though it’s fun to harass friends or mutuals with this sometimes just so they can screech at you, too much of a good thing can become exhausting. If it all delves into development in regards to a muse’s characterization and whatnot, then I’ll rub my tiny hands all over it since emotional threads are what really get my muses going.

SMUT: I may not write it often, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like writing it when I do. There’s no short smut with me because I like writing out the feelings involved, thoughts -- things like this since I’m a writer who loves that. You’re getting a novel fkjsdhfskd. I learned a looong time ago to be mindful of who I write this with because back when I was really into making ocs, I noticed a trend where people would pretty much just show interest in my muse if they were sexual and willing to easily get into those kind of rps with others. It reached a point where that seemed like the only thing people wanted when they messaged me on skype (back when everyone was on skype and discord didn’t exist LMFAO), which in turn, made me wary and much more careful. 

PLOT / MEMES: Both are great! I’m terrible at plotting, though. If you approach me wanting really long, thought out plots then you’ll just be disappointed -WEEPS- I prefer back and forth brainstorming where we both contribute to the bucket and then when we’re comfortable about the direction we kinda want things to go, then just diving right in. Memes are always good! Some of the best threads I’ve had are from memes. ^ O ^ )/

tagged: @cirocchio​ (thank you!)

tagging: You know the drill. Take it---

[tenderstars]

GET TO KNOW THE MUN

REPOST DON’T REBLOG

———  BASICS! ♡

(PEN)NAME: lisa/val

PRONOUNS: she/her

ZODIAC SIGN: taurus

TAKEN OR SINGLE: single

———  THREE  FACTS! ♡

i just finished paying my speeding ticket because despite working in the legal field, i am still a dumb bitch. 

i’ve been on a tv show binge watch the last couple of weeks (daredevil, the punisher, the night stalker, outer banks, normal people, sabrina, agents of shield).

i’m slowly starting to believe gta v/overwatch/lara croft are my therapy session games

———  EXPERIENCE! ♡

i don’t even know how i found rp tbh. i just remember it was a glee rp back in like...2013 (ohgod). i’ve been rping on and off ever since. my longest break was 2016-early 2020... i came back to group rps first then indie. it hasn’t been too long since i’ve been back to rping on indie but i’m just really enjoying it. i think i lost my footing a little bit but i’m slowly starting to pick up the groove again. 

———  MUSE  PREFERENCE! ♡

i really don’t have a muse preference per say, i love all my children. i’m used to playing males for the sole reason that there always seems to be 4/1 ratio no matter what. so, that’s what i’m most used to. however, since coming back to indie i’ve slowly started using my females more and it really does warm my heart every time i do! 

———  FLUFF / ANGST / SMUT! ♡    

FLUFF: i found that i really like fluff recently? it can’t just be straight fluff though, you’ve got to add a little bit of spice. make the fluff count. 

ANGST: i love pain, take that as you will.

SMUT: dude, break those social norms but i’m not going to lie sometimes i’m just like...not feeling it that’s when i feel like my writing becomes shit. other times i’ll write without even blinking an eye. there’s really no inbetween. 

PLOT / MEMES: i’m not going to lie i’m a hhuuuggeee ‘make shit up on the spot and throw it at me kind of person’. i don’t know. it’s chaotic as shit but i love it especially if the other person has a good gauge and chemistry *chefs kiss* other than that i love wishlist because sometimes i go to plot and my head is literally BLANK. i’m not kidding when i say it’s me, not you. 

tagging: everyone who wants to do this!

[ofmallory]

( tati gabrielle , cis female , she/her, twenty-four ) omg ! i was walking yonge street downtown , and you’ll never guess who i saw . mallory roth ! i just saw a post about them on sixsecrets ! i think it said something like “ still no word on the status of mal roth's next album — but at least twitter stans are posting some hilarious memes about the three - year - long wait ” . isn’t that wild ? i guess it makes sense through , since they’re apparently fickle and self-absorbed . but i’ve heard they’re also ardent and ingenious ! i’ll just stick to giving them the benefit of the doubt . i mean , it’s not like i know them personally — they’re a famous singer / songwriter ! you know , i’ve actually heard rumors that ____ , but they’re just rumors … i think . i dunno . if you happen to run into them , tell them i’m their biggest fan ! ( sam , she/her , 23 , est )

* lorde career claim !

greetings and salutations! i’m sam and i’ve been thinking about this muse for aaaages, but this is my very first time writing her! character info is under the cut and of course, please message me if you would like to plot!

triggers : abandonment, theft, car accident.

STATS

FULL NAME: mallory corine roth ; born mallory im

NICKNAMES: mal, moll, mollie

GENDER + PRONOUNS: cis female + she / her

DOB + AGE: december 31st, 1995 +  twenty - four

ZODIAC: capricorn

HOMETOWN: oakland, california

ORIENTATION: panromantic / pansexual

OCCUPATION: singer / songwriter

HISTORY

mallory im was born and raised in oakland, california. her mother was a nineteen - year - old pre law student at uc berkeley and her father was in the midst of his fifteen minutes of fame as a musician with a number one song on the radio. he was in town for a gig which mal’s mother attended, and then just a few weeks later she discovered that she was pregnant. her parents ( mal’s maternal grandparents ) were absolutely furious. they disowned her on the spot, kicking her out of their house and stopping their payments of her college tuition. forced to drop out, she resorted to working several small jobs at once in order to cover doctor visits and the rent for her small, run - down apartment.

much of what mal knows about her early childhood is things that she was told rather than things that she actually remembers. after she was born, her mother resumed her college courses in between her revolving door or minimum wage jobs. her parents were civil with each other. by the time that she was born, her father’s career had completely fallen off and he put most of his earnings into starting a record label ( that wasn’t very successful at first ), but he would still send them some money every once in a while.

mal was three years old when her mother began dating a local businessman. the owner of a luxury car dealership, he was slightly older and a widower with two children of his own, and he and mal’s mom fell absolutely smitten with each other. it wasn’t long before they were picking out flower arrangements and setting a date for their wedding ( mal was the flower girl and her soon - to - be stepbrothers were groomsmen ). 

after the marriage took place, mal’s new stepfather was completely committed to taking care of the new members of his family. he moved them into his home, paid for mal’s mother to complete her degree, and even formally adopted his new stepdaughter, her surname officially changing to roth. 

the few years that ensued were uneventful outside of a few things : mal started taking music lessons, her stepbrothers went off to college and so she became the only child of the household, and her mother completed law school and opened up a practice in the city. 

mal tried countless hobbies, but nothing besides music could hold her interest for long. in high school, she joined the skater kids clique and started to rebel. it was just small things at first : sneaking out after curfew, trying cigarettes, drinking at the skate park with her friends on the weekends. her parents had noticed of course, so they scolded her a little and figured that was that. spoiler alert : it wasn’t.

at approximately two in the morning on her sixteenth birthday, mal and a few of her friends drunkenly stole a car from her stepfather’s dealership and wound up crashing into lake merritt. mal was behind the wheel at the time. fortunately, no one was seriously injured. her parents were simultaneously relieved and furious. however, they were far more interested in helping her rather than punishing her. deciding that a change of scenery and being away from her friends who they deemed to be a bad influence might be good for her, mal’s mother and stepfather sent her to live with a virtual stranger.

in the years since he had started his record label, mal’s father had upgraded his reputation, going from washed - up musician to successful businessman and mentor. he’s credited with launching the careers of several artists in the genres of rap and r & b. he was earning more money than ever, dating beautiful celebrities, and buying all sorts of expensive items for himself. he sent cards & money for birthdays & holidays and called on the phone every once in a while, but mal had never met him.

she never thought much of it. their first in - person meeting was actually rather anticlimactic. his chauffeur picked her up from the airport and brought her to his enormous bel air mansion, and he was just leaving for work when she arrived. he told her to make herself at home, and that was it.

mal spent her first few weeks in los angeles exploring her new home. she poked around the edges of the local party scene and found that it had lost its appeal for her after the accident, so she turned her attention to the one constant in her life : music.

she started accompanying her father to the studio and quickly caught onto the basics. at just sixteen years old she was writing songs that artists were literally fighting over, but as she noticed her words growing more and more personal, mal started keeping songs for herself and soon she had more than enough for an entire album.

the song royals was released in 2013 when mal was sixteen years old, written about her first impressions of los angeles as someone who had never left their less famous and glamorous hometown. it was kind of an experiment. no one really knew what was going to happen, but no one was expecting the song to become the PHENOMENON that it did.

royals was critically acclaimed, spent nine weeks at the number one spot on the billboard hot 100 chart, and went on to win two grammy awards : best pop solo performance and song of the year.

her debut album pure heroine was released in 2013 as well, and her second album melodrama was released in 2017. the long break in between albums became a literal meme that’s starting to pop up again now that it’s been around three years since mal has released something new.

she moved to toronto in 2016 while she was working on her second album. it was just supposed to be a little vacation that would hopefully help to clear her head because she was struggling to write at the time, but mal wound up falling in love with the city and decided to make it her permanent residence.

PERSONALITY

Perfectionist™️

I HATE EVERYBODY by halsey is honestly a perfect explanation for how she typically is in her personal relationships. she falls hard and fast, and when the relationship inevitably disintegrates she’s devastatingly heartbroken until she discovers a new infatuation. she does it with both romances and friends, moving through the lives of people around her in search of something she’s never found.

basically, she wants love but expects it to happen right away, and when it doesn’t she immediately writes off the relationship as a failure. 

the type of person to literally move to a new house if her refrigerator stopped working because she doesn’t feel like getting it fixed.

almost overly generous with friends. you like her perfume? here, take the bottle! car broke down? come on, she’ll buy you a new one! material things = love is something she isn’t even aware that she believes in, but she absolutely does.

she’s REALLY self - centered though. people do often approach her for advice, but she’s just not a good listener.

lowkey insecure and worries that she’s unloveable but she’d never outright say so except for in her music.

she’s approachable, but not really the chatty, small talk type. because of this, she’s gotten a bit of an unfair reputation for being frigid in the media.

WANTED CONNECTIONS

best friend ( basically the one person she’s never gotten even a little bit bored of. )

friends ( usually surface level, but also former friends, childhood friends, industry friends )

industry rivals

enemies

pr relationships ( romantic, platonic, negative, but all 100% fake )

exes / hookups / ewb / fwb 

her current infatuation - could be platonic or romantic

THERE IS A POTENTIAL CONNECTION THAT INVOLVES HER SECRET, SO PLEASE FEEL FREE TO MESSAGE ME IF YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED AND WE CAN DISCUSS!

these are just some base ideas for connections, so please don’t feel limited to what’s listed here!