#hey i promised i'd post it before the end of the year . new year's eve counts

[caramel-catss]

trilogy (chapter 1: rabbit)

on ao3

word count: 26.5k

the first chapter of my links meet au

Three strangers, connected only by the triangle on their hands, join forces to save a dying world. Through hardship and healing, they will become family.

chapter art by @clowns0up-felix :)

(below is a snippet, the full is too long for tumblr lol)

Soft hands glide through Link’s hair. They untangle knots, picking out dirt and various pieces of grime. A warm, uncalloused palm brushes against Link’s cheek.

Even with closed eyes, Link knows who it is. She comes every night.

Link reaches out and grabs the retreating wrist. “Don’t go,” she murmurs.

A gentle hum pauses—one Link hadn’t even registered.

“I can’t stay,” Marin replies. She trails her finger around Link’s freckles, drawing constellations.

“I want you to.”

“I can’t.”

Link huffs; she’s always been the stubborn one, and Marin can’t win her out now. She doesn’t let go. Marin laughs, all chimes and Sea Lily bells. The free hand returns to Link’s hair.

Marin begins her song again. Link leans against the other’s lap, resting on her side. Her fingers drum a tempo for Marin’s melody.

In the distance, a voice calls. Link ignores it.

It calls again.

Marin says, “Your uncle wants you, Link.”

“Mm,” she replies.

The hands cease. “Link.”

“Don’t wanna.”

Marin gently flicks her. “You lazy girl… Come on.”

Link blinks her eyes open—only to catch Marin’s face before she goes—and meets a wooden wall. Shuffling footsteps sound behind her. She blinks.

“Link,” her uncle is saying. “It’s time to wake up.”

With her sword on her back and apples in her pouch, Link leaves Uncle’s house. She has a small list of chores: buy a red potion for Uncle, sell yesterday’s harvest, and get the Book of Mudora back from the Sage. 

Link fishes through her bag for an old plain blue ocarina. Zelda says that she’s insanely unorganized, but Link doesn’t care enough. She eventually finds it and calls for her bird, directing it to the Magic Shop. She haggles Maple down to 100 rupees—far better than she’s usually able to get—and sets off again for Kakariko.

Most of Uncle’s apples are reserved for cooking, making preserves, or just as snacks. The rest, Link is sent out to sell. They go for 15 rupees each, which isn’t much. The price is really a formality; Link’s more than rich from all her dungeon crawling, plus they’re on a royal pension.

The point is, they sell out quickly. Link’s there for less than twenty minutes before she’s brought down to her last three apples. She doesn’t mind all that much—anything that lets her leave Kakariko sooner. There’s been a lot of apologies over the past few years, but nothing can stop her nerves when she enters this place.

A figure comes into Link’s view. She straightens from where she was leaning against the weathercock (her makeshift stand). When she realizes who it is, though, she relaxes.

“Hey, Zel,” Link says.

Zelda huffs, not unkindly. She’s wearing a plain, tan dress. “Don’t announce me to the whole village.”

Link shrugs. “Want some apples?”

Her half-sister’s eyes flick to the three apples sitting on the weathercock. “Are those your last ones?”

“Yup.” Link nods. “Then I’m heading to the Sanctuary.”

“I’ll buy out your stock.” Zelda takes out three rupees, two red and one blue.

“Hey, thanks.”

Link starts to trade the items. Zelda says, too casually, “Can I walk with you? Over to the Sanctuary?”

“Mm.” Eyebrow raise. Zelda shakes her head, nothing urgent. “Sure.”

They take the eastern exit. Zelda sets a slow pace. Link fiddles with her medallions, curling the chain around her finger.

Zelda’s always been upfront—she speaks up soon as they’re out of earshot. “I had a dream last night.”

“Shocker.” Link is flicked on the ear.

“You know that’s not what I mean, idiot.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. What happened?”

Zelda’s eyebrows furrow. “That’s the thing… I can’t make it out. The world around me wasn’t Hyrule, but… it felt so familiar.”

“Could be a different time,” Link suggests. “Or a neighboring country. Heard anything from Labrynna or Holodrum?”

“No, and I don’t think it’s either of them.” Zelda pauses for a second. “It’s… There was blood all around, but I couldn’t see it… like it had seeped into the ground itself.”

“An old battlefield.”

“Something like that.” They’re nearing the Sanctuary. “There was new growth on top of it… and the plants were reaching for me. That’s when I woke up.”

Link hums. “Weird, but doesn’t seem like a prophecy.”

“Except all my dreams are prophecies,” Zelda argues. She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Maybe I’m overthinking it, but I just… I don’t know. I worry.”

“It’ll be okay, Zel. I can and will fight, so if anything does happen—”

“That’s exactly it, though.” Zelda’s tone makes Link pause. “You’ve… It hasn’t been that long since you… you know. You’re my little sister. I don’t want you to be thrown back into that so soon.”

Link bites at her cheek. Oh, that’s what this is about. Ever she returned to Hyrule last year, Zelda’s fretted over her more and more.

“I’ll be fine,” Link mumbles. “I’m doing better now, anyway.”

“If you…” Zelda trails off. They stop at the Sanctuary door. “…Keep taking care of yourself, okay?”

Link nods. “Okay.”

Zelda bids her goodbye and peels off back towards the castle. Sneaking in, no doubt. Link showed her the way last year.

Before she enters, Link sighs. She knows Zelda only means well. And, sure, the past months have been… rough. But Link can still hold her own—if nothing else, during combat. She’s only a year younger than Zelda, too! She just… Whatever.

Link grumbles as she elbows the Sanctuary door open. She greets the Sage, who tells her to wait a moment while he gets the book. Fine by her. Link retreats to one of the pews, opting to lean against it instead of sitting in it.

She whistles a short tune while she waits. Or, tries to—Mamu’s song comes to her mind first, but it’s way too fast for her to whistle. Link gives up after a few moments and instead opts to pull some hair out of her face. She pauses.

The Triforce on her left hand is glowing. Glowing more than usual, that is. Streams of magic trail down her skin. It’s warm, dripping holy and golden.

“Shit,” Link mutters. Her mark flashes, and the world goes white.

(read the rest on ao3!)

[aziraphales-library]

Hi! I was wondering if you could recommend some fics where Crowley and/or Aziraphale are detectives. I would prefer if they were rated M or E. Thank you :)

Hey. Here are some M/E detective fics...

All's Fair In Love And Serial Killing by WyvernQuill (M)

Detective Inspector Crowley is 99.999 percent sure that Aziraphale Fell is a serial killer. The trouble is only that the remaining 0.001 percent are deeply in love with the man… --- In which there is A Murder - rather a lot of them, actually - A Marriage Proposal - just the one - and True Love - whose course runs less not-smooth than it takes a sharp left turn, loops a couple times, and doubles back on itself, before crashing straight into a wall. (Don't mind the metaphor. It still ends well. Promise.)

yours in black lace by okapi (E)

Hardboiled, hell-fried private investigator Anthony J. Crowley is just trying to survive a hot, boring August, but a new case and a series of anonymous naughty letters signed only 'yours in black lace' are about to make things interesting. Chapters 1-3 are case fic. Chapter 4 is smut. For the 2020 DW Unconventional Courtship challenge based on a summary of the Mills & Boon novel Yours in Black Lace by Mia Zachary.

Snow Angel by Lurlur (E)

Detective Constable Crowley has been working the "Snow Angel" case for almost a year. It's Christmas Eve and finally, his luck seems to have come in. Arresting Aziraphale Fell, big-time drug dealer, is the easy part. Questioning him is the hard part. It's a police procedural that goes sideways. I'd say it still manages to have a more coherent plot than any episode of Prodigal Son, but that's not saying much.

Tadfield's Finest by angelsnuffbox (E)

The sleepy town of Tadfield is thoroughly shaken by the arrival of DI Crowley. Where barely anything ever happened before, there is now a bustle of low grade criminal activity, and everyone knows where to point the blame. Gabriel thinks he's a bad omen for the town, many others are quick to agree. Meanwhile, Aziraphale from SOCO just thinks he's hot. Ridiculously so.

It's A Hard Life by Krisdaughter_of_Athena (M)

“Crawly” was the best delivery man in the whole city of London, and everyone knew it. Whether it be books and flowers, or narcotics and guns, Crawly was the one for the job. Easy enough for Crawly to slip in and out of tight spaces, and easy enough to keep his real name off the police radar. Detective Constable Aziraphale Pritchard is used to being told he is not very good at his job. He is as surprised as everyone else when he is the officer to catch Crawly, the Devil’s infamous delivery driver, in the act. He is the only officer to figure out Crawly’s real name. But no one else knows that, otherwise they’d also know that the DC tends to get drunk with this particular member of the notorious Demons every other Thursday, and would also know of the fragile Arrangement between the two. Aziraphale knew it couldn’t last. However, what are the two to do when Crowley is given an extra special delivery, one which places the two unlikely allies alongside each other for the long haul? How will they keep the delicate balance of their arrangement from their respective sides? And how will they keep one boy from bringing destruction to the entirety of London?

The Currents by indigo (M)

Post-End-of-the-World-that-Wasn't, a bored demon sets up a Detective Agency and obviously drags his angel counterpart in to help out. They are tasked with preventing a murder before it happens and set off to the Highlands of Scotland - where, of course, nothing works out quite the way they imagine...

- Mod D

[littleragondin]

5 Songs Tag - QL Shows Edition

I'm having a blast checking everyone's selection to this new tag game from @troubled-mind so i'll throw my list out there too!

When you get this, list 5 songs from the Asian QL shows that you actually listen to.

🎶They do not have to be custom-made for the series. 🎶Non-western tracks only. Let's support Asian music and languages! 🎶Feel free to tag anyone who may be interested in participating. 🎶Add #5qls tag to your post for others to find the new favourites!

ถ้าสักวันเธอจะกล้าพอ - In Budokan

Yes or No (2010)

I think I saw this movie before I even saw my first thai BL, making it maybe the very first piece of Thai media I ever consumed. And this song has stayed with me ever since. I really like the guitar, and In Budokan's voice is absolutely beautiful. If you are curious, the lyrics are also very touching.

ping-pong - Harada Tomoyo

Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna (2022)

This is the song Nomoto and Kasuga listen during the car ride in episode 10. While the episode happens during new year, the song (which reminds me of some of capsule's older music) has such a fun, sunny pop vibe it is in my summer playlist of the year. Here's a translation of the lyrics (I want to make you laugh/With you/The night after the sunset/I want to live together - (´꒳`)♡)

LIFE - Tokuyama Hidenori

Ai no Kotodama (2007)

I plugged 'Eve' from the same singer/movie in one of my last music tag, but I will use this opportunity to push the second song of the OST too. I find Tokuyama Hidenori's voice very soft and pretty, and the chorus has a melody that sticks to my brain. It's also a very sweet love song imo.

รอเธอรู้ใจ - Tee Thanapon

The Miracle of Teddy Bear (2022)

I am an easily pleased rodent, I do like a good piano heavy love song as much as the next romantic person ok? I really enjoy Tee's voice (had never realized before this one that he also sang), and I always find myself humming along the chorus.

Sabi Mo Dati - Niko Badayos

Rainbow Prince (2022)

Look I can't NOT put something from Rainbow Prince given how heavily the OST weighs in my playlists since I watched it. I could have picked most of the songs from that (incredible, campy, fun, touching) musical, but I think Sabi Mo Dati is the most beautiful of the track list. Ignoring who is supposed to sing it in the story, it's a lovely song about heartbreak and broken promises and Niko Badayos' voice is stunning (*¯ ³¯*)♡

If you feel so inclined, I'd be curious to see what would @benkaaoi @petrichoraline @sparklyeyedhimbo @fandomfairyuniverse and @machikeita pick for thise one! (and if you see it and think 'hey i do listen to some QL show music I don't see here' please do it and tag me =D)

Ok and now I am going to cheat under read more, and put some of the BL openings/endings that are in my main playlist (AKA the one I play by default) that I have not yet seen on the tag.

Rakdiao  - Rakdiao by lazylox

Ameiro Paradox – Go Sign by Billy Laurent

Eien no kinou - 遠い夏の日 by Aoi Kubo

Senpai danjite koi dewa - あと数センチ by Hilcrhyme

Old Fashion Cupcake – blue blur by Ryu Matsuyama and mabanua

Fukou-kun wa kiss suru shikanai!! Perfect By OCTPATH

Ocean Like Me – Ocean like me by HOLLAND

My Oxygen – My Oxygen by Nut Supanut

I will Knock you – พรหมลิขิต by Gun Napat

[theghostpinesmusic]

Seeing as how I haven't done a music-related write-up for a bit and how it's currently 4:30pm and therefore too late in the day to start on another work-related project of actual substance...I'm going to tell you about this version of "Bathtub Gin" that I like!

As I said (threatened?) in my last Goose post, I'm consciously branching out a little between now and whenever the hell the next Goose show will be. In my own personal listening, "branching out" means I've been listening to a lot of stuff I've never heard before, both stuff that's totally new to me and stuff that's been sitting ignored on my "Try this!" list for a long time. In my blog writing, "branching out" apparently means "writing about the band I've listened to the most by an entire order of magnitude for the last twenty-five years."

Hey, if I can't be perfect I'm sure as hell going to stop trying.

I am not going to start this post with a primer on Phish because a) if you're reading this you either already know them or you don't know them and don't care, and b) there are literal books about this out there because these guys have been playing for forty years and every little thing they do is steeped in weird mythology and inside jokes and as much as I love all of it, I don't love it enough to write a hundred thousand words about it.

If you're somehow entirely new to the band and also feel an obsessive need to learn/dive in, my super idiosyncratic recommendation is to listen to their album A Live One a few times, and then buy and read through this very short book by Walter Holland, who in my humble opinion is sort of like the Hunter S. Thompson of writing about Phish jams.

I will henceforth only be writing in the micro- and macro-cosms about this particular version of Phish's "Bathtub Gin" and my reactions to it, despite not being the Hunter S. Thompson of writing about Phish jams.

Biologically speaking, I almost certainly, technically have THC in my bloodstream right now if that somehow makes you feel better.

So, Phish was one of the first places I turned at the beginning of this little Goose hiatus. For a lot of reasons, despite being the band that most immediately jumps to my mind when the phrase "favorite ever" is used in a variety of contexts, I haven't listened to Phish much over the last few years. I wrote a little bit about why in this previous post, and to keep my promise of staying focused and save myself some time typing, I won't say any more for the moment: suffice to say that I overdid it a little bit with The Phish and The Phish's Internet Fandom, which soured me on the band's music and left me sitting on the sidelines for years, wondering if it was the band that had come, over time, to suck ass, or whether it was just me.

Well, I'm relieved to report that it was, in fact, me who was doing the ass-sucking.

I learned this, in large part, by diving into the band's recent New Year's Eve (NYE) run at Madison Square Garden (MSG). I actually started my Goose Interregnum concert-viewing here only because the run had just ended and I'd seen online that the band had played all the way through its storied, elusive, and utterly dorky "Gamehendge" saga on 12/31, for the first time since 1994 (or maybe 1995, kill me in the comments Phish fans, I'm ready to die).

I wanted to see this, even if after the fact and from my couch, because back in my early Phish fan-Hood (see what I did there?) Gamehendge had been a big part of what drew me to the band, and I was excited by the prospect of being a grown-ass, middle-aged man bawling his eyes out on his basement couch because in a video another old man was on a stage singing a song about a bulldog and a cat fighting to the death while a comet crashed into Earth, bringing about the end times.

When you're a straight, white kid growing up in suburbia, you either become an absolute monster or your brain finds really fucking weird things to care a lot about. I like to think I fit into the second category.

Anyway, with a more-than-usual amount of spare time on my hands, I decided to try watching the entire MSG NYE run, starting with 12/28 instead of jumping straight to 12/31. I thought, maybe, I'd have a decently fun time and get a good sense of where Phish was at musically (an important thing to know when all the band members are sixty-ish years in age and you haven't heard or seen them play since 2021). Then I watched 12/28 and it destroyed me. Like, this band of aging dork-rockers literally lit the entire arena on fire with their instruments and it burned down around them while they just kept jamming. I'm not sure how anyone escaped MSG alive, let alone how there were concerts there for the next three nights.

12/29 was just as good, if not better, and 12/30 was an incredible show that only paled in comparison to the previous two. My reaction surprised me, and so that's why I cranked up the ol' typing machine, shoveled some fresh coal into the boiler, and sat down to write about...wait, what was I actually writing about, again?

Oh, yeah. "Bathtub Gin."

I'm not gonna give you a lengthy history of this song, for all the same reasons I cited above for not giving you a long history of Phish as a band. I will tell you it's a "classic" Phish song in that it was played live for the first time in 1989 and has been played three hundred and four more times in the one thousand, seven-hundred and fifty-one shows the band has played since. There also a studio recording of it on Lawn Boy, which I always forget because who the fuck listens to Lawn Boy?! The song is used frequently, but not always, as a jam vehicle, and I tend to enjoy hearing it live due to its quintessentially Phish-y sound: Phish writes and plays songs that sound a lot like many of their influences, but they also have songs that sound only like Phish, and this is one of them. Well, it sounds like Phish and Gerswhin, I suppose. "Bathtub Gin" is also my wife's favorite Phish song, but I'm not entirely sure if that's because she likes it or because she knows that liking "Waste" or "Shade" or "Farmhouse" more would put her firmly in the "Stereotypical Phish Wife" realm.

This 12/28 version of the tune is a great one for jamming, but as usual I'll (mostly) refrain from commenting until the point in the video where the composed portion of the song leaves off and the improvisation begins.

I do want to start by saying I love the retro feel of this year's "Live Phish" intro/logo sequence. Also, yes, Page's opening keyboard banging is supposed to sound like that. It's how he lets you know he's having fun! Gershwin tease at 2:26 if you're keeping track. Otherwise, this is a pretty straightforward reading of the composed part of the song. I absolutely love the sound mix here, as you can hear all four members' contributions to the song more or less equally. It blows the old days of tapes essentially mixed to make Trey's guitar 80% of the band's sound out of the water. It also leads to me basically just listening to Mike Gordon play bass for the entire show because if you can, why wouldn't you?!

It often sounds like the band might be singing actual, English lyrics during the outro portion of the song, but I don't think they ever are.

The jam starts at 4:50, and basically immediately Fishman is playing stuff on the drums that my simple brain can barely comprehend. This is perhaps one significant difference between Phish and the Goose jams I've been covering previously: the rhythm section of Phish is much more directly involved in the direction of the band's improvisation, whereas it often feels like the drums and bass of Goose are just laying a foundation for the melody players to improvise over. One is not inherently better than the other, but I do often feel like there's a lot more to listen to with Phish, despite them having fewer members.

Anyway, this first chunk of the jam feels a lot to me like being lost in a fuzzy, pleasant labyrinth: the tempo is slow and the playing is soft, but there's an undercurrent of tension there. By 5:30, things have started to straighten out a little, though the lights have gotten absolutely weird. Fishman starts playing a more straightforward beat, and the rest of the band falls into a rock-sounding jam that makes me think of what Goose might sound like if their fingers were thirty years older.

Trey starts to sit back a little bit at 6:45, and the jam mellows out in response. It feels a little bit like he can't figure out where he wants to go next here, but Mike and Page take some turns adding ideas to the mix in the meantime. Eventually, Trey joins back in the fun, but still in a restrained way. For awhile here, everyone's just sort of playing together, with no particular standout or soloist, which is great.

Whatever keyboard tone Page switches to at 8:58 is fantastic. He follows it up pretty quickly with some weirder synthesizer stuff, and at 9:40 this pushes the jam in a more sinister direction. At 10:20, Trey switches over to a very Portal To Robot Hell guitar effect, and now we're in full-on latter-day Evil Phish jamming territory. Fishman is, of course, keeping a beat here, but it's odd and off-kilter (not a drummer, sorry to be imprecise) and makes the whole thing feel like it's just barely hanging together in the best way.

This kind of "almost-falling-apart" sound is, paradoxically, when Phish often hits their stride in jamming. I think it's what makes them sort of a love/hate proposition even among people who listen to a lot of improvisatory rock music. It's not particularly fun or comfortable, but I've never come across another group of musicians that can improvise with each other consistently in this way.

Trey's playing finally comes a bit to the fore starting at 13:00, but even here this doesn't feel like a rote jam "peak": instead, the backbeat that Fishman is playing keeps things feeling a little out of sorts and not entirely resolved. Trey and Page playing off of each other at 14:15 is nice. I'm not sure what's going on with the lights at 14:30, but I do know these guys consistently have my favorite light show in show business. There's some almost Allman Bros-sounding playing from Trey at 15:15 as we reaching peak craziness...

...then some initial teasing of the "Bathtub Gin" theme at 16:30 or so, teasing a return to the song proper to wrap things up!

The video fades out on a segue into what would turn out to be an excellent version of "Ghost," for those keeping score at home.

Anyway, thanks for reading my first (at least lately) Phish write-up. I'm going to try to do a few more of these from the run, including (I think) two new songs: "Oblivion" from 12/29 and "Life Saving Gun" from 12/30. Should have those up soon!