#grand cookie games trio is awesome too so why not

[speadrunner]

This is all sooooo cute omg!!!! 😫

…..I can marry five cookies, right?

I somewhat NEED Y/N Cookie having a holly jolly Christmas with the Triple Cone Cup trio and the cookies in tha latest update for

No reason.

Other than it being the time of the year for Christmas

Trouble with Triples (Triple Cone Cup/Grand Cookie Games Cookies)

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“Did you set up the Christmas lights outside already, Pudding A La Mode Cookie?”

“Correct, I made sure not a single spot outside wasn’t covered by the lights!”

“Woah, and you did this without me prompting you to! Nice job.”

“That’s sweet of you, but know what else is sweet? The pudding that I want from you now!”

“Alright alright, you’ve earned it, here.”

“Has anyone seen Prune Juice Cookie? Did he come back from outside yet?”

“Uh, PALM. Did you happen to see him?”

“Hmm….”

[Scene cuts to a flailing Prune Juice Cookie as he’s tangled up in christmas lights]

“Nah, haven’t seen him.”

———————————————————————

You were working on setting up the wreath on the door when you felt someone tap your shoulder!

“Hey, Y/N Cookie, do you have a minute?”

Yeah, give me a second.”

You thought the wreath looked pretty steady on the door and you turned around to see Green Tea Mousse Cookie literally face to face to you.

“Oh! Uh, hey there, Green Tea. What are you..up to?”

Green Tea kept her closeness, looking up above her as she nodded her head at you. You look up yourself to see that she was holding up a mistletoe above the both of you!

“Ah, I s-see!”

“Come on, are you going to deny me a kiss? Under the mistletoe?”

“What? No! That’s the rule, y’know. You gotta…kiss under the mistletoe.”

Green Tea went first, readying her lips and closed her eyes.

You did the same and were about to meet her in the middle…

“Hey, Y/N Cookie! You’ve gotta check out this snowman I made! It’s a little melted, but still looking pretty SPICY!”

You jumped at Capsaicin Cookie’s sudden appearance that it caused you to back up towards the door, hitting the wreath and making it fly up in the air! It would trap you three inside of it when it landed back down.

Green Tea yelped and let go of the mistletoe, going up in the air and landing on your head. She was surprised at first, but just shrugged and kissed your cheek, making you squeak as your face turned red.

“Woah, is that a mistletoe? Well, I ain’t turning down something like this! Are you ready to withstand my spice?!”

Capsaicin eagerly kissed your other cheek, only making the blush worse. Just how long would these two keep this up…?!

———————————————————————

You were sampling a small cake slice to taste, figuring that the end product turned out pretty good.

“Y/N Cookie, Kouign-Amann Cookie needs your assistance for a moment! The Christmas tree needs the star placed at the top!”

“Coming!”

You leave the cake slice down and head off into the living room, allowing Prune Juice to slip right in and have a taste of the slice.

“Hmm, not bad, but it could use a little more to the texture. It’s a good enough I keep a particular potion for this occasion.”

Prune Juice Cookie pulled out a potion bottle, the contents of the liquid unknown but was that of a rosy pink color. A mischievous look to his face grew as he popped the cork off the tap.

“Just one drop is enough to make it even better…”

“What are you doing?”

Prune Juice jumped at the voice behind, turning around to see Choco Drizzle Cookie behind him, narrowing her eyes at the Cookie as she adjusts her glasses.

“I was just making sure the cake tasted just right for when the party starts.”

“And you chose to try it on that specific slice first? The same exact slice Y/N Cookie was eating?”

“I didn’t want it to ruin the cake if the potion ended up not working.”

“…You should leave.”

“And what about you? What are you doing? Are you just going to stand here in the kitchen all the time?”

“It’s so Cookies like you don’t try to take advantage. I’ll let this provocation slide for now, but know that I won’t be so lenient next time.”

“I think that you were just watching Y/N Cookie the whole time and I get it, they’re quite the sweet Cookie to look at~”

“I…don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ah, so that’s what this was about all along.”

“I told you to leave. Now.”

“I’m back, Kouign was able to poke at the star with her sword until it fit into place…uh, what’s going on?”

The two stopped their back and forth to pay attention to you at the kitchen doorway. Prune quickly tossed the potion to Choco Drizzle!

“It was her idea!”

“You will pay for your transgression!”

———————————————————————

[stylesnews]

A year ago, the guitar was in dire straits. With songs like Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode,” Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings,” Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts” and Panic! At the Disco’s “High Hopes” among the most consumed of 2019, programmed beats and horns were the sonic flavors of popular music. Sure, there were outliers — the Jonas Brothers’ “Sucker,” Maroon 5’s “Memories” and Post Malone’s “Circles” among them — but as the rock and alternative genres embraced artists like Billie Eilish, whose innovative music made the traditional band approach feel outdated, the days of chords and solos seemed numbered if not headed towards irrelevance.

Then came the coronavirus pandemic and things changed. Forced to perform from home or in rooms not intended for live music during lockdown, many artists went back to basics and out came the trusty six-string. For iHeartRadio’s “Living Room Concert for America” in March, Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl played an acoustic Guild on “My Hero”; Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day strummed to his band’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”; and even Eilish, with her collaborator brother Finneas, sang her hit “Bad Guy” accompanied by only a Fender acoustic. Other benefit livestreams like Global Citizen’s “One World Together At Home” event saw the Rolling Stones, Keith Urban and Shawn Mendes strip down their hit songs for unplugged versions. And in April, Miley Cyrus delivered an emotional cover of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” on “Saturday Night Live” with Andrew Watt, himself a COVID survivor, on guitar.

At the same time, there was an electric guitar solo being heard on one of the most-played songs in the United States. Harry Styles’ “Adore You,” which has logged 1.1 million radio spins in 2020, according to Mediabase, and has been streamed more than 400 million times, per Alpha Data, features the playing of Kid Harpoon (real name: Tom Hull), Styles’ friend and producer, who handled the guitar parts for much of the Brit’s excellent “Fine Line” album, released in Dec. 2019. As it turns out, the melody of the solo, which also serves as the bridge to “Adore You,” was first hummed by Styles for Hull to emulate. “I did it with my mouth into a microphone,” Styles told Variety in October. “And then Tom sent me this video trying to get it to sound the same. He spent a couple of hours getting it.”

Why include a guitar solo when most pop songs would never dare? “I feel it’s kind of like ‘La La Land’ saving jazz  — only for rock ‘n’ roll,” Styles cracked when posed with the question. But more seriously speaking, Variety‘s Hitmaker of the Year added: “I’m not a spearheader of the movement, like, ‘Let’s bring back guitars.’ There’s plenty of times when [a song] doesn’t sound better with a guitar, and you don’t use it. But a lot of the references I grew up with have guitars; and it’s the first instrument I played, so it makes sense that I would like the sound of them more. I don’t think the guitar is dying. Guitars are great and always have been.”

In fact, guitar sales in 2020 have been robust. Music retailer Sweetwater reports more than 50% year-over-year growth in guitar purchases, with even larger increases during the peak COVID months of April, May and June “when customers most likely hunkered down to practice and create music after watching all of the streaming video they could handle,” according to a rep for the Indiana-based company.

The spike extended to other string instruments as well, which saw growth of more than 70% year-over-year in the price range of $299 or lower. The metric indicates that “new players are joining the fold,” says Sweetwater, which has been in business for over four decades and operates online. (Competitor Guitar Center, with more than 250 physical locations in the U.S., did not fare as well, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month.)

Even in the virtual world, learning to play an instrument has taken off during lockdown. The platform Yousician, which provides interactive learning for guitar, bass, ukulele, piano and voice, currently reigns as the No. 1 app for music instruction while its sister product, GuitarTuna, is tops for guitar tuning.

Ask current writers and producers working in pop and hip-hop about their process and you soon learn that an acoustic guitar is often the beginning or the essence of a hit song. Among Variety‘s 2020 Hitmakers, the trio of Taz Taylor, Charlie Handsome and KC Supreme credited a guitar loop as the foundation for Trevor Daniel’s “Falling.” For Maren Morris’ “The Bones,” producer Greg Kurstin noted: “The first thing I noticed was Jimmy Robbins’ guitar hook; I wanted to keep the song rooted in that.”

“So many hit songs from 2020 started with a acoustic or electric guitar, whether it be a melody line or simple progression,” says songwriter and producer Jenna Andrews, whose recent credits include BTS’ “Dynamite” and Benee’s “Supalonely.”

And often, those guitar-based foundations remained through the finished product — for instance, 24KGoldn’s “Mood,” with its impossibly catchy sun-kissed guitar riff, and Powfu’s “death bed (coffee for your head).”

“I know it sounds kinda old school, but I love it when a well-recorded acoustic pops off on the radio,” says Sam Hollander, whose hits include the aforementioned “High Hopes” and Fitz and the Tantrums’ “HandClap.” “The bulk of my songs tend to be born on guitar. Without that foundation, the lyrics and melodies never really emote the heartbeat and emotion that I’m trying to dial in. There’s just a general warmth to it that’s hard to replicate. It’s like the warmest chocolate chip cookie.”

“I think the prevalence of guitar in 2020 has a lot to do with hip-hop producers using more emo and punk-rock influences,” offers Angie Pagano, whose AMP management company represents Tommy Brown (Ariana Grande, Blackpink) and Mr. Franks, among others. “Juice Wrld really helped bring this into the mainstream over the last few years. We’re seeing a great blend of emo and trap these days.”

Indeed, the year’s most-consumed hits leaned hip-hop — Roddy Ricch’s “The Box” landed at No. 1 on the Hitmakers list with Future and Drake, Jack Harlow and Megan Thee Stallion in the Top 10 — but even DaBaby’s “Rockstar,” the No. 3 song of the year, referenced a guitar in its chorus, albeit alongside mention of a Glock pistol. That visual may go against what Hollander calls “the Kumbaya vibe of the guitar,” but the song still features an acoustic strum at its core.

In the case of Styles’ 2020 successes, which also include the ubiquitous “Watermelon Sugar,” his producer further explained that, while aware of what was reacting on the charts at the time they were recording, Styles wasn’t about to chase the trends. Said Tom Hull: “We [thought], we can’t play the commercial game in terms of what’s happening right now. What we can do is make music that really resonates with us. There’s no blueprint. You just have faith. We love records from the ’70s and ’80s; weird prog rock music that might be a seven-minute instrumental; then you’re listening to Shania Twain, like, ‘This is awesome, too.’ The goal was to make something we will always love, and if it completely flops commercially, at least we know we love it. We have that.”