#i especially love songs that sound like they were created by robots and androids or sound like what it would be like to be one

[steakout-05]

i've been thinking of making a playlist dedicated to Data Soong, here're some songs i have on the list right now :D

Spiral Staircase - Patricia Taxxon

Systemic Lover - De Staat

Yours Truly, 2095 - Electric Light Orchestra

If I Were Human - BNNY RBBT

Like Humans Do - David Byrne

Are 'Friends' Electric? - Gary Numan

Geocities - Lemon Demon

Within - Daft Punk

Hello World - Louie Zong

Human After All - Daft Punk

Kokoro - Toraboruta

One More Robot / Sympathy 3000-21 - The Flaming Lips

Remember - Air

Touch - Daft Punk

[ladyloveandjustice]

Spring 2021 anime overview: Quick Takes

Now for my Spring 2021 anime thoughts! I’ve decided from now on if a season’s like, 20- to-24 episodes I’m just going to wait ‘til it’s done to review it unless I feels super passionately, so though I watched To Your Eternity (it’s good!) and MHA (eh), I’ll comment on them next time. Also, for the record, I watched the first eight eps of Joran: Princess and Snow of Blood but I dropped it because it had clearly crossed the line from entertainingly dumb to boring dumb. 

I will probably give Supercub and some other stuff a shot later, this was a stacked season! May give updates on all that later, but this is what I have for now.

ODDTAXI

Quick Summary: A mild mannered middle-aged walrus taxi driver is drawn into a case involving a missing girl, yakuza, Youtube clout-chasers, manzai comedians and idols with big secrets.

It’s rare to walk away from media and be like “that is a singular experience I will definitely never see repeated again” but ODDTAXI is definitely one of those. A tense noir thriller murder mystery starring cartoon animals that spends an entire episode detailing the one (cat)man’s very fall into darkness triggered by addiction to gacha games and an online auction for a novelty eraser? Also there’s a porcupine Yakuza who speaks entirely in rap? Also there’s tons of meandering conversations about stuff like manzai comedy and the struggle to go viral on Twitter?

Admittedly, I had a hard time getting into the first episode, the dry meandering humor not being enough to hold my attention while I was sitting still, but once I watched this while I was working out at the end of the season, I found it an easy binge. A ton of characters with dark secrets or dangerous ambitions, each with their own part to play in a tableau of intersecting events- and it all actually comes together really well.(As for the female characters, it’s a pretty dude driven story, but they do get nuanced characterization and even some good heroic moments from one of them.)

 It’s a great example of a carefully planned narrative paying off, with all the twists appropriately seeded and foreshadowed to reward viewers who paid attention. Even when it ended on a perfect “OH SHIT” moment and denied me closure, I couldn’t help but respect it. If you that all sounds interesting to you, definitely check out the first couple episodes and see if you like it- you’re likely to have a memorable, satisfying experience!

Shadows House

Quick Summary: Emilyko is a ‘living doll’ who’s told she was created to act as the ‘face’ of her shadow master, Kate. The shadows and their ‘dolls’ all reside on the mansion and are required to pass a ‘debut’ to prove they’re a good pairing. If they don’t pass, they might be disposed of. And so the mystery of the Shadow mansion grows...

This slice of gothic intrigue was my favorite of the season, tied with ODDTAXI. With an interesting premise, slightly tense undertones and a strong focus on character building and relationships, it kept me hooked the whole way through. And for any squeamish fans put off by the hype about it, don’t worry, while there are some suspenseful elements, I wouldn’t qualify it as horror. I thought the relationship between Kate and Emilyko might end up being a completely sinister one, but it’s thankfully a lot more complex than that and it’s really interesting to follow how both their characters and relationship grow. The focus of the show is, unsurprisingly, on the “dolls” slowly discovering their autonomy and personhood as they struggle under the rigid system imposed on them by the mysterious elders of this weird Victorian mansion. Can they develop a more equitable relationship with their shadow “masters” (who are also shown to suffer under this system)? There’s a lot to dig into there, and the show has the characters develop through learning to understand and appreciate each other, which is pretty heartwarming. Our hero, Emilyko, is the typical plucky ball of sunshine (they even nickname her sunshine), but she’s also shown to be clever in her own off-the-wall way and she bounces off the far more subdued and cynical Kate well, not to mention the other ‘dolls’ she ends up befriending. 

What’s more, the show spends plenty of time to developing several other character pairings and combinations, and they all have their own interesting dynamic that makes you want to see more of them. Same-gender bonds are at the forefront of this show, and many of them are ripe for queer readings (I definitely appreciated the healthy helping of ladies carrying ladies), but even outside that it’s nice to see a show where a strong, complex bond between girls is at the forefront. My only real complaints about the show are the anime original ending is noticeably a bit rushed (though it’s not too bad, and leaves room for a season 2) and I wish the animation used the whole “shadow” theme more strikingly (like the opening and endings do)- instead the colors are a bit washed out which makes the shadows blend into the background sometimes. The “debut” arc also drags a bit in places, but it makes up for it by having a lot of good character integration.

I hope to check out the (full color)! manga soon and see more of this quirky, shadowy story. There’s some physical abuse depicted, sad things happening to characters and naturally the whole “oppressive familial system” thing, but otherwise not much I can think of to warn about. I give this one a big rec, especially If you’re a fan of gothic fairytales and stories of self discovery.  

Zombie Land Saga Revenge

Quickest summary: In this sequel season, everyone’s favorite zombie idol group must claw their way back into prominence after a disastrous show- the fate of the Saga prefecture LITERALLY depends on it!

This was a fun follow-up to the first season- if you liked the first zombie-girl romp, you’ll probably enjoy this one. In fact, there were a couple areas it improved on- namely, Kotaro failed, ate crow and embarrassed himself a lot more this season, which made him more likeable (as did the fact the girls gained a lot of independence from him). This season also shed more light on what the ‘goal’ of this zombie raising project is and what kind of shit Kotaro got involved with to make this happen, and it’s appropriately off-the-wall and ridiculous. We finally got some backstory for Yugiri too! I wish it had focused on more of her interiority, but she got to be a badass in it, and it was a treat to see this zombie idol show turn into a period piece for a couple episodes (also her song ruled).

 Tae also got a cute focus episode and there was a particular SMASHING performance early on! Also That revelation last season that had the potential to turn creepy hasn’t yet, and hopefully never will. The finale was heartwarming with big hints of more drama to come- I’m definitely down for more zombie hijinks!

Vivy: Flourite Eye’s Song

Quickest Summary: A songstress AI named DIVA (nicknamed Vivy) is approached by another AI named Matsumoto, who says he’s from the future and they must work together to prevent AI exterminating all of humankind 100 years from now.

This show is absolutely gorgeous visually with some really nice action scenes, but when it comes to the story my feelings basically amount to a shrug. It’s fine! I guess! Vivy starts out as an interesting layered character- and I guess still is by the end- with her stoic but stubborn determination bouncing off her fast-talking bossy partner Matsumoto well. She never listens to him, which is delightful. The way the show took place over the course of 100 years was an interesting conceit as well. However, it bought up a lot of themes and then sort of... dropped them. For instance, Vivy interprets her mission (PRIME DIRECTIVE if you will) as protecting humans at all costs, no matter how destructive said humans are or what their fate is supposed to be, and is perfectly willing to murder her fellow androids to do this, showing she inherently thinks of androids (herself and her own people!) as less worthy. Which is a little alarming! There’s a very dramatic point in the show where they bring this up as a potential conflict for her character but then it’s sort of...dropped. Pretty much.

Actually, despite the premise, the show doesn’t dip into the “AI rights” as much as you think it would with the main theme being more about Vivy’s search to find her own creativity and discover what it means to ‘pour your heart into something’. Vivy herself doesn’t actually care if she has rights or anything. Which is in some ways fine, because ‘AI as an oppressed class’ has been done to death, but IT’S ALSO KIND OF IN THE PREMISE, so that means that the show just shrugs really hard at a lot of the questions it brings up  basically just going “humans and AI should work together probably” and that’s it. There’s a lot that feels underexplored. The antagonists in the show also either have motivations that don’t really make sense or have boring hackneyed motivations. In the finale in particular, it feels like a lot of things happen “just because” and it falls a little flat.

I also have to warn that one of the arcs focus on a robot ‘pairing’ where the dude-coded robots actions toward his partner are straight up awful and rob her of her autonomy, but it’s played like a tragic love story. I suppose you could read it differently too, but it definitely made me go ‘ew’ the story seemed to want me to sympathize with this robo dude,

Overall, I wouldn’t anti-recommend this show, it’s an all right little sci-fic romp (and definitely SUPER pretty). My favorite element was definitely the episodes where Vivy develops an entirely new (an loveable) personality, because it played with the idea of of an AI getting “rebooted” really well and interplay between her two “selves” was done really well. But there are a lot of other parts of the show that just feel...a little underexplored and empty, making me have an ‘eh’ feeling on the show overall. It’s definitely an ambitious project, and while it didn’t quite stick the landing, there’s something to be said for a show that shoots for the stars and falls short over a show that just languishes in mediocrity.

Fruits Basket The Final

Quick summary: The final season of that dramatic drama about that weird family with a zodiac curse and the girl who loves them.

It’s very weird that after not cutting a lot out, they kinda sped through some material for, you know, the finale. I guess they thought they couldn’t stretch this final arc to 26 episodes? Or weren’t cleared for another double cour? However, though there were a couple places that felt awkward, despite being a bit condensed it mostly held together pretty well for a D R A M A T I C and ultimately heartwarming conclusion. I was really disappointed they kept the part where Ritsu cut their hair for the ‘happy ending’, I thought  their intro episode not showing them in men’s clothes meant the anime had decided their presentation didn’t need to be “fixed” but WELL I GUESS NOT. That was the only big upset for me though, otherwise the adaptation went about how I expected, sticking to the source material. Furuba has a lot of bumps, from weird age gap stuff to ...gender, but it also has a lot of important feels and great character arcs. It was a gateway shoujo for many and has its important place in animanga history, so I’m glad it finally got a shiny, full adaptation.

[valentinesweetheartspecial]

Like decos older songs were created FOR that robotic voice. mozaik role , coward montblanc, mukashi mukashi no kyou no Boku, etc are built around the robotic sound and don’t really need human inflection to make them better(especially since some of the melodies are pretty simple). But then as you transtion into conti new you listen and you’re like Damn this would be so much better if a person was singing. And then he shaped up and wrote ghost rule which Fucking Rocked and set a new standard for his new songs (liar dance, reversible campaign, Mkdr) in not just tuning and voice but he started using some more electronic sounds instead of his usual band setup. Android girl has sounds that are almost entirely electronic now and his tuning is on the level we all know now, just enough robotic to sound like a Vocaloid but realistic enough to be like OH that’s Deco! And of course his newer songs are a bit boring and repetetive but i like them a lot tbh. On undead Alice I think that his stuff is pretty good like I don’t have any new thoughts that i didn’t already say here. Neoneon is catchy, undead Alice is really nice, pesudo hope syndrome is also catchy and has a nice beat etc etc. But deco REALLY shocked me with the vampire….because Everyone is so used to the formulaic songs this one was NEW and DIFFERENT and blew me away when I first heard it !!!!! the bouncy feel, the flow of the lyrics, all of it is so good ….But something about deco is how when he finally does something good that people love he just does it a million more times 😭😭 Cinderella is Good and i really like it but. at the same time …it’s a little too similar to the vampire. is this a new deco era where he writes like this now ? well see

[passionate-reply]

Great Albums is back! This week, we’ll take a look at one of the greatest electronic albums of all time, Kraftwerk’s The Man-Machine, and try to avoid getting sued by Ralf Huetter! Full transcript for the video can be found below the break. Enjoy!

Growing up, my main genre of choice was 80s synth-pop, and while the deep influence of Kraftwerk is as significant there as it is everywhere else in electronic music, I was one of those people who initially saw them as somewhat "intimidating." Today, moreso than ever, Kraftwerk are held up as one of those more high-brow or cerebral groups with a philosophy that transcends mere pop or dance music, which makes them seem respectable, a kind of “model minority” in the world of music outside rock. While I don’t buy into the judgmental quality of that sort of praise, which damns so many of Kraftwerk’s greatest fans and imitators, I did get the sense, as a child, that these hoity-toity Germans, working with primitive equipment way back in the 1970s, might not be what I was looking for in a new favourite band. That was before I heard The Man-Machine.

While it’s certainly true that Kraftwerk were a highly experimental band in their own time, they’re one of those acts whose ideas have deeply permeated contemporary music, to the point where their actual work is extremely approachable and listenable to today’s ears. Of all the fairly early electronic acts, who started making this kind of music before it began to become mainstream in the late 70s, Kraftwerk are almost certainly the ones people nowadays listen to for pleasure the most, and that’s no accident. While their earlier albums like Trans-Europe Express took more overt inspiration from classical music, The Man-Machine was their first great foray into the arena of pop, which I think is key to why it resonates with people. For evidence of that, look no further than the biggest mainstream hit of Kraftwerk’s career, “The Model.”

I think it’s easy to see why “The Model'' became a hit single. Sure, it may not have the most traditional pop song structure, let alone instrumentation, but unlike a lot of what Kraftwerk had done before, it’s got a lot of lyrics and a real sense of narrative. Plus, that narrative we get is about a person and not a machine--a good-looking person, in whom the narrator is sexually interested. It’s the perfect pop material. Of course, I would be remiss to mention that “The Model” didn’t achieve all of its success until the single was re-released in many markets in 1981, and in those few years, the idea of “synth-pop” advanced significantly in the charts and popular consciousness. By the time “The Model” was a hit, Kraftwerk admirers were already taking over: look no further than Gary Numan’s "Cars” or OMD’s "Enola Gay,” two synth-pop classics that, it must be said, are still about vehicles!

That aside, though, not everything on The Man-Machine sounds like “The Model”--in fact, it’s surrounded by tracks that have much more in common with Kraftwerk’s earlier LPs. Literally surrounded, in the track listing. I think that adds to this album’s appeal as an ideal entry point into their catalogue: it has some things that sound familiar, while also preparing you for what else you’ll encounter if you choose to probe deeper into the band. The Man-Machine has the least homogeneous profile of any Kraftwerk album. While most of their other classic albums are highly cohesive “song cycles” that almost blend into one long song when you listen to them in full, The Man-Machine doesn’t really have those repeated melodies and motifs that tie its tracks together. While many people, especially fans of psychedelic and progressive rock, really like those cohesive albums, I think this change is a welcome one. It gives the individual tracks a bit more room to breathe and express distinctive identities, and makes the album feel a bit more pop, even if the material itself isn’t always all that poppy. *The Man-Machine* actually only has six individual tracks; they range in length from the three-minute pop stylings of “The Model” to the urban sprawl of “Neon Lights,” which luxuriates in an almost nine-minute runtime.

Given that the average track length is around six minutes, I’m almost tempted to think of The Man-Machine as six tiny Kraftwerk albums, or at least, musical ideas that could have been expanded into full LPs in another universe. “Neon Lights” and “Spacelab” feel dreamy and easy-going, with floating melodies that draw from the “cosmic music” scene, one of the many emergent styles that began as something uniquely German and spread throughout the world--in this case, becoming an important forerunner to ambient electronic music through acts like Tangerine Dream. Meanwhile, the hard, tick-tocking rhythms of “Metropolis” and the title track point to the newfound focus on rhythm and the so-called motorik beat that made the music of Neu! so compelling.

The Man-Machine can serve not only as an introduction to Kraftwerk, but also as a sort of crash course in this entire period of electronic music, showcasing some of the most distinctive and influential features of the German scene, as well as the shape of synth-pop to come. It’s a complex and busy historical moment with huge ramifications for almost all of subsequent electronic music, and The Man-Machine really creates a microcosm of that whole environment. There’s also the fact that each side of the record has one track from each of my three broad groups, like an expertly-designed sushi platter or charcuterie board for us to sample from, and they both follow the same formula: a pop appetizer, a cosmic *entree,* and motorik for dessert.

*The Man-Machine* also has what is almost certainly the most iconic cover of any of Kraftwerk’s LPs. This is how lots of us still picture them in our minds, and it’s inspired tons of parodies and riffs over the years. I think all of that acclaim is deserved! Emil Schult’s graphic design for the album was heavily inspired by avant-garde Soviet artists of the 10s and 20s, chiefly El Lissitzky. These visual artists used their art to express their hope for a new world, defined by the promise of technology, and their literally revolutionary philosophy--so what could be a better match for Kraftwerk’s electronic revolution in music? Lissitzky used bright, primary colours, straight lines, and geometric shapes to convey the “built environment” of modern cities and man-made architecture, and you’ve got all the same sentiment on display here. The use of strong diagonals really draws the eye and lends this image a lot of continued visual interest. It’s also worth noting the extent to which Kraftwerk’s aesthetics inspired later electronic acts almost as powerfully as their sound. When you picture an electronic band, and get a mental image of stiff and stone-faced musicians behind synthesisers wearing shirts and ties, you can certainly thank Kraftwerk for that, as well.

I also love the title of The Man-Machine! The relationship between people and technology is one of, if not the, most central themes in Kraftwerk’s entire discography, which is full of references to anthropomorphic machines as well as mechanically-mediated humans. The particular choice of the phrase “man-machine,” as opposed to words like “android,” has a fun vintage flair to it, which matches the use of early 20th Century visual art quite nicely.

As might be expected from the album’s stylistic diversity, *The Man-Machine* would prove to be something of a transition point in Kraftwerk’s career. Their 1981 follow-up, Computer World, would return to the song cycle format, but with increasing emphasis on ideas from the pop sphere, championed by percussionist Karl Bartos. By the time of the last classic-lineup Kraftwerk LP, 1986’s Electric Cafe, they had not only amped up the pop, but also incorporated influence from the electronic dance music of the time. Ultimately, Bartos would leave the group, chiefly due to discontent with his treatment by founding members Ralf Huetter and Florian Schneider-Esleben, and their persistent lack of musical productivity.

On a somewhat lighter note, my personal favourite track on this album is its opener, “The Robots.” Per my typology from earlier, I classified this as a pop-oriented song, and it certainly is an approachable one that’s proven to be quite popular. But it’s got just enough more experimental touches to keep things quite interesting. From an ominous, dissonant intro, a slightly more pop form, hinting at a verse/chorus structure, soon emerges and contrasts. I love the groove of the rhythm and percussion here, as well as the very heavy vocoder, rich in texture and certainly a Kraftwerk staple.

While the lyrics can be read as sort of light and silly, I like to think that the robots in question might also be dangerous. The track “Metropolis” seems to reference the seminal 1927 silent film of the same name, which is famous for its portrayal of an evil, mechanical doppelganger. Likewise, the choice to translate the lyrics of the song’s interlude into Russian is likely inspired by another great work of art from this era: the stage play R.U.R.--Rossum’s Universal Robots. Written by Karel Čapek in 1922, it’s the progenitor of the “robot revolution” trope in science fiction, the source of the word “robot” for autonomous machines in almost every human language, and one of the first entries in the illustrious career of an author who helped make Czech a true literary language. While the titular robots take time to assure us that they’re programmed to do what we humans want, should we really trust them...?

[boy2reality]

A friend on Discord gave me some thought provoking questions about Compositions and the pocket dimension.

I've come to realize lately that I don't think I was ever really... In complete, 100% control of the pocket dimension. Maybe 99.999% at some points, but it was never really 100% mine.

I'm almost thinking that... I dunno. It was alive? Not in the traditional sense, but in a way that it needed someone to take care of it. Sometimes structures I didn't create (pillars, rocks, floating bits of earth) would appear, and I would need to clear them out. I don't know where these things would even come from.

Also... When I first arrived in the pocket dimension, the air seemed... Heavy. Bleak. But the more I used it, the lighter the atmosphere got. I'm unsure if this was just a personal feeling, or something that was actually happening there. But it was almost as if the dimension itself was happy to see interaction?

Which leads me to think: Did it have a conciousness? If so, did it have a Composition? Why couldn't I hear it if it did?

Now onto a totally different subject: I've been thinking about how Compositions in general worked. Especially with manufactured entities.

I listened to Laer's song quite a bit. The best I can describe it is... A chipper but also elegant melody, but the instruments don't quite sound 'real'. You know like... Midi instruments? Kind of like that. She was an android, but was raised around humans from day 1. So I feel like that lead to her Composition being more like a human's.

Meanwhile, with something like SHAME, her Composition was just... Harsh screeching. A cross between nails on a chalkboard and someone blowing into a microphone. All I could distinguish from it was hate and anger, especially the first time I heard it. It was like... Deafeningly loud. At first I thought in my memory of it, she had hijacked the speaker system and was blaring her Composition out of it. Nope. Just ungodly loud.

There was also the robot assistant thing/Alexa my dad made me listen to, and that was just... Beeps. It gave me the impression that it had no thought of its own.

I need to focus on remembering things from a few places in my life; specifically, the times the SCP guys caught me, and also when I went back to the hospital with Laer and Ayaze. There were Things there that were not human that I'd love to remember what they sounded like.

[johannesviii]

Top 12 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2012

We’ve now entered the first year in a trio of fantastic years for hit songs, so yeah, it’s a top 12.

You won’t like some entries on this particular list.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

Still working in Paris in 2012. Getting rapidly fed up with that. In constant stress to pay the rent because the landlord is bad and refuses to pay for stuff he should actually be responsible for in the flat. Other than that? Life was pretty good. “Having Money(tm)” meant being able to actually eat decent food and my health started to improve. Also I adopted a cat. That’s also the year I discovered the French branch of the SCP Foundation and started to contribute a lot to it. I also made this Tumblr blog!

I subscribed to a magazine called Elegy which always came with a music sample, which was great to discover new and vaguely obscure stuff.

Quite a lot of notable albums that year: Some Nights by fun., Night Visions by Imagine Dragons, Monkey Me by Mylène Farmer, Living Things by Linkin Park (with poorly chosen singles unfortunately imho), Revelations by mind.in.a.box., Babel by Mumford & Sons, Neverworld’s End by Xandria, and most importantly, the dreamy and emotional Valtari by Sigur Ros and the dark and excellent Hide & Seek by The Birthday Massacre (even though my year was mostly ruled by Automatic (VNV Nation) that came out the previous year in 2011). Actually having money meant I could finally own the albums I had wanted for years, and you can bet the fact that I owned zero The Birthday Massacre albums even though I had loved their stuff since 2008 was quickly rectified.

Nothing too annoying as far as non-elligible songs go this time, apart from the fact that more stuff from Mylo Xyloto (Coldplay) should have charted higher, and that I kinda regret the absence of La Vie Est Belle by MC Solaar. Not even sure I would have put it on the list, but still, great song.

Honorable mentions first!

Dusty Men (Saule) - Nothing to say about this. Pretty cool.

Young And Wild And Free (Snoop Dog) - That is a super chill and nice song.

Happy (C2C) - At the time, my brother was part-time DJ and opened a gig for these guys, and I was so proud of him! And I was also really glad to see some of their songs become hits. Very good stuff.

Midnight City (M82) - Borderline annoying or very good, depending on my mood.

Burn It Down (Linkin Park) - As I said, my opinion is that the singles from that album were poorly chosen, and Castle of Glass should have been the first one because let’s face it, that song is fantastic. Burn it Down isn’t bad at all, though.

Glad You Came (The Wanted) - I love how this song is written and it’s a lot of fun to hear every sentence starting with the end of the previous one.

I Cry (Flo Rida) - A ton of energy, very propulsive song.

Domino (Jessie J) - There’s a shit ton of weird metaphors in there but it’s still a very solid song.

Princess of China (Coldplay ft Rihanna) - I know I keep going on and on about Mylo Xyloto and how weird it was that the biggest hits from the album weren’t at all its best songs, but still, that’s really good stuff.

Ho Hey (The Lumineers) - The last cut from the list. This song is adorable and always puts me in a good mood. It’s so cute it almost feels mean to leave it out of this top. It’s also elligible for 2013 but I had even less room on that list, so...

And now, a top 12.

12 - Diamonds (Rihanna)

US: #94 / FR: #5

Was considering leaving it out of the list, decided there was no way I could leave it out, realised there was no room left, and added a slot. Welcome to a top 12 instead of 10. But yeah, love that song even if it’s no longer on my playlist nowadays.

11 - Bangarang (Skrillex)

US: Not on the list / FR: #92

Yes.

The other reason this list was turned into a top 12 was to put Skrillex on it.

I’m not even remotely sorry.

Make fun of dubstep all you like, that track is an explosion of sharp colors and edges, like an audio version of edgy street art. It’s almost impossible for me to listen to it without miming the shapes of the sound with energetic gestures and some hand-flapping. Perfect stim music.

10 - Die Young (Kesha)

US: #85 / FR: #78

This is no Take It Off but it’s the next best thing available, and it’s catchy and has a lot of fun little details (like the dirty socks line), and also, unlike the previous two, it’s still on my mp3 player, so yeah, 10th spot is fair. I love a party song with some sort of apocalyptic mindset.

9 - Skyfall (Adele)

US: Not on the list / FR: #2

I usually don’t give a damn about James Bond movies but I sincerely loved that one, with its stakes becoming smaller and smaller and more personal as the story progressed, and most importantly, it had some visually striking colors near the end, and this wonderful, wonderful song. As I already said about the previous Adele song, I only like slow, emotional songs when there’s some energy behind them or at least some sort of dramatic atmosphere, and boy that’s some quality Drama(tm) right there.

8 - A l’Ombre (Mylène Farmer)

US: Not on the list / FR: #86

If C’est Une Belle Journée was the “last great Mylène Farmer song”, A l’Ombre might just be her best single released post 2003, at least imho. It’s only #8 because the general quality of hit songs in 2012 was insanely high, otherwise it would be way higher.

It’s about losing your identity and as you might already know I’m a sucker for that theme ; also the music video features Olivier de Sagazan, an artist who puts layers of clay, paint and mud on his own head and body to sculpt new faces, and it’s disturbing in all the best ways (obvious body horror tw for the link even if it’s clay and very abstract. Also there’s wolves. I’m just saying because I have one friend who’s scared of them).

7 - Thrift Shop (Macklemore)

US: Not on the list (#1 the very next year obviously) / FR: #7

Finally, a song about my favorite type of clothes: the cheap, comfy, unfashionable ones. With a great beat! And really fun lyrics! And a great music video! And a couple of actually insightful lines! Can’t even imagine how happy I would have been if this had dropped 3 years earlier back in university when I was still called “the hobo”.

I was still wearing that same old black coat from 2006 in 2012, mind you.

6 - Lights (Ellie Goulding)

US: #5 / FR: Not on the list

This song looks fantastic and, just like Fireflies by Owl City which to me looks exactly like fireflies flying in the night, it’s incredibly satisfying to hear a song titled “Lights” which looks like a series of pulsing semi-distant lights in the dark.

5 - We Are Young (fun.)

US: #3 / FR: #21

As far as favorite bands go, the 2000s charts gave me Linkin Park, Placebo, The Killers and My Chemical Romance. The 2010s charts were a bit less generous and only gave me fun., who’s own arrogance killed them right when they were at the top of their game and that’s nothing short of a tragedy considering how f█cking good their few hit songs were.

I guess your band either dies a hero, or it lives long enough to see itself become Imagine Dragons.

Oh well. At least we had some of the best songs (if not the best) of the 2010s while they were there.

4 - Turn Me On (David Guetta ft Nicki Minaj)

US: #35 / FR: #57

Ooooooh I bet some of you are furious this is placed 5 slots above Adele.

Listen. You know I love dance music, especially when it’s aggressive or with a darker edge. And yeah, that sounded like a lost Benassi Bros track, and it had a great (but way too short) rap bridge. You also know how literal-minded I am. So when I first heard Nicki Minaj’s voice with a ton of electronic distorsion saying “Make me come alive, come on and turn me on”, I didn’t picture anything sexy, but a robot. I’d rather pretend songs are about interesting things instead of generic supposedly sexy club anthems.

PLOT TWIST! As it turns out, the music video, instead of featuring some generic club stuff, featured everything I wanted and more: a weird, steampunk world of robots in which an inventor just created an android that looks way more alive than all the previous ones, and they all become jealous, and break his door down. With an axe.

Framing is everything. I absolutely love it. What a gift.

3 - It’s Time (Imagine Dragons)

US: #91 / FR: Not on the list

Believe it or not, I used to love Imagine Dragons. I still love the album Night Visions, which, apart from a couple of duds (like Demons, which is dreadful), is damn good. I don’t know what happened after that. I really don’t. Everything became slow, and heavy, and kind of boring. It worked fine for Radioactive, because that was a post-apocalyptic song, but when you try to apply the same formula to motivational songs, it simply doesn’t work.

Oh well. At least, for now, there was It’s Time. The music video, with people walking through a wasteland, is the perfect imagery for that song. Rebuild something new, but don’t change who you are. Things might get broken, but we’ll make art with them. We’ll plant trees over the graves of people who burnt them. Positive pessimism only, lads.

2 - Good Time (Owl City & Carly Rae Jepsen)

US: #38 / FR: #40

The most innocent song about parties ever written. It IS always a good time when you listen to it. It reminded me of the parties at the campus at my job training the previous year, where we’d make dumb contests like “best disguise but if you buy anything you’re disqualified” and I made Freddy Krueger claws in papercraft and a friend won with his “emperor Nero” disguise which was basically a toga made with his bed sheets, a crown made with ivy he found outside, and him looking incredibly punchable on purpose.

It’s an incredibly cute song, it never outstays its welcome, always puts me in a good mood AND gives me some much needed energy. You already know I loved Owl City to begin with, even if I wanted him to have way more hit songs, and Carly Rae Jepsen was going to end on my playlist eventually, with several fantastic future songs. I’m glad this was a hit. They both deserved it.

1 - Some Nights (fun.)

US: #14 / FR: Not on the list (why. how. f█ck off)

There’s drums! There’s ‘woho-woho’s! There’s guitars! It’s a perfect pop-rock earworm that never ever gets annoying! There’s a goddamn solo made with an autotuned version of the singer yelling “aaaaaaa”!! What more can you possibly want from a hit song?

I’m saying this right now: this is my favorite elligible hit song of the entire decade. Spoilers, I know. The #1s for 2013 and 2014 both come really close, but they aren’t as anthemic as this one. What did we do to deserve something this f█cking good in that day and age? I have no clue, but clearly, we didn’t deserve more of that, because these guys split up very quickly.

Anyone know some kind of magic spell to bring them back for an encore?

Next up: The Year When Just About Everyone Dropped An Excellent Album

[mrskylerreviews-blog]

POPPY - AM I A GIRL? (Album Review)

           Only a year after the release of her debut album Poppy.Computer, the singer and ever-growing internet personality Poppy has returned with her second musical effort, titled Am I A Girl? This sophomore record sees our favorite android widening her range in lyrical content and production quality, offering a more polished and extensive view at the world through her sweet, robotic eyes. While her director Titanic Sinclair still had a hand in some of the songs on this album, there are also major collaborations with producers Diplo (owner of the label Poppy is signed to, Mad Decent) and Fernando Garibay (responsible for Lady Gaga’s ‘‘Alejandro’’ back in 2009).

           Am I A Girl? further progresses the narrative of the Poppy character, after the first album basically introduced who she was to the world, and commentated on the presence of technology and the internet in our modern society. This time, Poppy takes us on a more personal ride, as she begins questioning everything about her surroundings, from the reason of her existence on this world, to the fate that might await humanity due to pollution that we have caused ourselves. The first half of the record, though, is focused more on Poppy’s love for fashion, and a sassier and much firmer confidence that reassures the growth of the character. She isn’t a follower of what ‘‘They’’ want anymore. Poppy knows what she’s capable of and even though this album is based on a question that could define her entire life, it also presents her with answers that she may have been asking herself since she first started appearing on Youtube back in 2014.

1.      In A Minute: a solid opener for the album, this track shows a great combination of the material Poppy is known for, and a big step towards this new polished path she will be taking us on. With lyrics such as ‘‘I used to be free willing / Now I got work to do’’, we are presented head-on with the aforementioned confidence and sense of individuality that is to become the running theme throughout the record. Overall, In A Minute works perfect as an introduction to Am I A Girl?

2.      Fashion After All: although the theme of sass and confidence tried real hard to stretch enough for several songs on the album, Fashion After All feels a bit overdone and very easy to skip. While sing-talking about how she’s mother to many and the fact that she is relatable yet scary, the electropop production doesn’t really do its job of grasping the listener, as it sounds not too exciting or like something we haven’t heard before, and the lyrics can get tiring quick.

3.      Iconic: this track attempts a go with the inspiring and ‘‘even if you’re weird, you’re still so cool’’ concept that isn’t at all new for female pop singers. While the lyrics aren’t necessarily the most original and groundbreaking piece of handcrafted artistry, they succeed in delivering an uplifting and feel-good vibe to the listener, with the production matching the joyous energy that is supposed to carry the message. Poppy’s vocals also shift from low tones in the pre-chorus that we haven’t really heard from her before, to sweet and colorful falsettos that we all know and love.

4.      Chic Chick: this track feels like what Fashion After All should have been, and it is honestly a bit surprising that both of them made it on the album. Chic Chick is a punch to the face, with Poppy making it very clear that she’s here to do her business, she is classy yet a handful, and there is nothing you can do about it. Being the only song on the project to have an Explicit warning with the line ‘‘I’m a chic chick / If you don’t like it, suck my d*ck’’, the aggressiveness and the unapologetic tone of this track steers the album towards the right path. The synth guitar solo felt like a very nice touch for adding a bit of edge to the track, as it also suffers a bit of weakness with the electropop production.

5.      Time Is Up: being the lead single of the album, Time Is Up gave us our first glance of what Am I A Girl? was going to be, and we can all agree that the raise in production quality and 80s synth sound that Diplo gave us threw us all for a loop. Not only that, but the lyrics, which narrate Poppy’s perspective of waking up in a factory then realizing mankind is destroying their own home, truly solidify the strength of this track. She is telling us that all we really have achieved during our time on Earth is pollution, overpopulation and causing sickness to the planet, and that once we go extinct due to our irresponsibility, her android body will stay here to witness the aftermath of the mess we made. Time Is Up does an astounding job of delivering a very serious message, while doing so with a sound that is sure to capture the interest of mainstream music listeners.

6.      Aristocrat: this track makes me feel the most reminiscent of Poppy’s work from the Bubblebath EP back in 2016. Produced by Fernando Garibay, Aristocrat is a very theatrical and dramatic telling of how Poppy infiltrated a party in what feels like the late 1700s France, easily capturing the attention of all those who are royal due to her dancing abilities, without realizing that, as she puts it, she ‘‘got there from the gutter.’’ The track is fresh and new for what Poppy usually puts out, while somehow still giving a nod to her earlier musical efforts. Definitely one of the strongest in the album.

7.      Hard Feelings: this is where we start getting that personal inside look on Poppy’s life, and where she becomes more vulnerable with the questions she’s asking about herself, like why she’s falling so hard for her creator if she wasn’t meant to be capable of feeling in the first place. The track opens with some lines in French, asking somebody what they want from her. We see more of the vulnerability when in the pre-chorus she asks ‘‘Am I a replica of someone that you loved? / Someone you made me to replace?’’ Then we get a very interesting touch of heavy rock guitars smoothly blending into the track after the chorus, which reappear with just a bit more intensity during the bridge, without necessarily overpowering the song or ruining the soft honesty the song is meant to portray. Overall, Hard Feelings does its task of presenting Poppy as someone who has more worries than just being chic, and also subtly opens for the surprises that are to come later in the album.

8.      Girls In Bikinis: this track leans more to the failing side of the album, as it feels somewhat unnecessary and honestly quite boring. Sounding like something that would perhaps gain more attention in the late 90s if it were released by any other female phenomenon of pop, the only redeeming quality that Girls In Bikinis might just carry is the bisexual hinting Poppy throws throughout the song. Other than that, it quite frankly sounds nothing like a track we should be getting from her, even if this album is all about expanding and experimenting with sounds.

9.      The Rapture Ball: this is another track that also falls a bit weak, especially with its lyrics. Poppy sings about going to a party and seeing everybody arrive in limousines and dance in gowns, but really she just fails at actually creating a good enough atmosphere for this grand ball that we’re supposed to be intrigued by. Perhaps the line where she states that she never got to go to her prom were meant to give it a more personal touch, but the overall content still feels like it only scratched the surface of its potential. The song in its entirety seems to rely mostly on the one line ‘‘This is the best bang since the big one’’, almost like it’s supposed to be so clever and iconic that we’ll want to sing it over and over and just forget how lacking the end result of everything really is.

10.  Am I A Girl?: Picking up once again after the disappointment of the last two songs is the title track, Am I A Girl?, where Poppy urges the listener to please not try to resolve or define her as either male or female, because she is having a hard time even knowing what it truly means to be either of those. It is a very nice track to hear, starting with the pop sound that we got on the first half of the album, and then hitting us with a hard rock that blends perfectly with the frustration of the message. Poppy is basically declaring war against gender roles and the definition of gender itself, something refreshing to hear for people like me in the LGBT community.

11.  Play Destroy feat. Grimes: this is where things get intense. First off, I simply could not imagine a world where this song would sound any good without Grimes in it. Poppy does add her own edge, and the combination of both these artists’ weirdness is just grand. Grimes is what makes the song though, which is not at all a bad thing. We hear these girls so sweetly announce that they are going to drop a match into a gas tank and burn down the local Walmart, all alongside a heavy rock production, and it’s nearly impossible to not allow them to do so. Then in the bridge Grimes says that she’s dying, with Poppy simply replying ‘‘It’s a Hollywood moment!’’, making fun of the way people there see anything that happens to celebrities as the newest gossip or article for their cheap magazine. In the end, Play Destroy is an absolute masterpiece that truly displays Poppy’s behavioral battle with herself and discovering if she really is the sweet angel she thought she was on her first album.

12.  X: Closing the album is the song that all previous rock attempts were really building up for. Continuing with the theme of going back and forth between wanting peace or wishing to see chaos and destruction in the world, this track goes for a less subtle approach (and it’s perfect). It begins with very heavy guitar, then quickly shifting into a melodic sunshine pop a la Beatles, with Poppy saying she wishes to empty the bullets out of all the guns in the world. But the calm does not last long before we go back into the metal, where we get lines like ‘‘Please get me bloody / You can get down on your knees if you’re naughty’’. A third sudden genre kicks in, this time (believe it or not), it being trap music. The track continues aggressively going back and forth, switching between all these sounds, but cleverly enough as not to get boring or overwhelming. It is definitely new and exciting to see Poppy go and attempt something so out of what she usually gives her fans, and it really could have gone either really well or horribly wrong. Luckily for her (and us), it was the former.

Am I A Girl? is an album that somehow is better when it gets out of the comfort zone of what we know Poppy for, with very nice vocals and a brave refusal to stick to only one genre. It contains very high replay value and it allows Poppy to show fans a new, edgier side that Poppy.Computer might have restrained her from. Hopefully in the future, she continues to explore and experiment in ways that keep being entertaining and interesting.

RATING: 7/10

Favorite songs: Chic Chick, Aristocrat, Time Is Up, Play Destroy, X

Least favorite songs: Fashion After All, Girls In Bikinis, The Rapture Ball

[artcanary]

1-50

oh my god dude 

im gonna put this under a cut bc this is a lot. this is a ride, have fun i guess

1. Your first OC ever?god. its got to be Super Kitty. when i was like … an incredibly small child I used to draw comic strips about this feline caped crusader, who was friends with everyone in the city, and the comics always involved him stopping an evil banana man from stealing money from the local bank. He was paid with donuts for his service to the city. i still remember how to draw him. 

2. Do you have a personal favourite among your OCs?i’d get arrested if I didn’t answer this with Bronze, probably… but really, they’re very important to me

3. Have you ever adopted a character or gotten a character from someone else?man, i cant remember! i really dont think i have… P:

4. A character you rarely talk about?there’s loads of characters ive never even posted a single picture of on tumblr, i wouldnt even know where to start asdf

5. If you could make only one of your OCs popular/known, who would it be? bronze is the easy answer, but… i guess that could also go to Servant or Westrin. Servant has a comic project in the works that basically stars him, sort of a series of one-shots about the things he’s experienced, i feel like that would be a good thing to take off and run with. Westrin’s just fun as hell, i love the guy.

6. Two OCs of yours that look alike despite not being related?real talk now… there’s at least five different characters that i refer to as a whole as “bronze-tangential”, who started out as, “what would bronze be like if they were in this world?” and then becoming their own thing within said world because i just get stupid attached 

its an epidemic

7. Are your OCs part of any story or stories?nearly all of them, actually. that’s the main reason i make characters, after all! too many to really go into specifics here, again P: 

8. Do you RP as any of your OCs? If you do, introduce one of your RP OCs here!not often, but i think Bronze and Westrin are the most common ones. unless playing a character in dnd, or running an npc in dnd counts… then a whole lot more hahaha

9. Would you ever be willing to give any of your OCs to someone else?it depends on the circumstances. i don’t really like the idea, though. 

10. Introduce an OC with a complicated design? Westrin’s old getup is a pain to draw, and there was one other design i did that I cant find anywhere… whichever way, i dont often tend to draw super complicated things often 

a couple fakemon ive designed though… heheh those can get pretty finicky

11. Is there any OC of yours you could describe as a “sunshine”? hmmmmmmmm my immediate thought was Eric Silverdale from a comic i was working on a few years ago. hes a darling, i want him to be my friend irl

12. Name an OC that isn’t yours but who you like a lothow could you do this to me i love each and every one of all my friends ocs GOD the first one who comes to mind is @d20-official‘s Smith, whos Bronze’s friend… everyone in that DND party actually

13. Do you have any troublemaker OCs? Rated on a scale from “harmless” to “honestly somewhat frightening”: -Baromet (charming and quite friendly but definitely a kleptomaniac),-Westrin (demigod of bards and travelers), -XEN09 (a nonsense hacker), -Conny (needlessly contrarian and dumb as HELL), -Enza Colie (long fucking story but hes a good-for-nothing), -Hemlocke (mad scientist, chaotic evil), -Iris (AI and hacker, VERY bad), -The Terminus (glitch-in-the-matrix demon, chaotic evil), -and Sydd (the Queen of the Faeries, hopefully the danger there needs no explaining :’D)

14. Introduce an OC with a tragic backstory Mmm… there’s a few of them, most obviously Lent (whose background I did a short comic about). Basically his entire town got eaten by ghosts and turned into zombies, he only barely survived with a sliver of his soul left. 

15. Do you like to talk about your OCs with other people?yes, i often discuss storylines and such with friends

16. Which one of your OCs would be the best at biology (school subject)? Probably Bronze’s dad! I don’t talk about him much, but his name’s Devon Reed, and he was a biotech developer specialising in android design. 

I often describe him as being something of a reverse Arthur Weasley - a very fatherly scientist fascinated to the moon and back with the concept of magic. 

17. Any OC OTPs? having trouble thinking of a lot of them right now, but there’s Eric + Lent & Naiadine + Tailias from Emerald Sigil, Avken + Baromet from my space campaign world, Sydd + Wyvv from my unnamed campaign world, and I’ve been considering Westrin + Servant as an interesting dynamic in Servant’s story

18. Any OC crackships? My character Bismuth and @autistictimeknight​‘s oc Eros. Theyre so fucking in love, I love it. Its been awhile but I do still think about them sometimes.

As I recall, Eros is an empath, she can read other people’s emotions. But Bismuth is a robot, and Eros can’t read her. Because of this Eros can let go of her fear of unintentionally manipulating the emotions of her date, which would hold her back from most other relationships. 

19. Introduce an OC that means a lot to you (and explain why)Hey, meet Bronze! I definitely do not talk about them every five minutes, why would you say that. 

Bronze was with me through two of the hardest years of my life so far, and being a DND character they grew with me, both as a fighter and as a person. They were non-binary before I started using those pronouns, they were the first character or person or anything who I fought someone about using the right pronouns for, they make a great icebreaker for if I want to see how someone reacts to non-binary pronouns … 

One funny anecdote about Bronze is that when I first made them, their “gimmick” was that they would sometimes glitch out and mess up their speech, mostly because I wanted an excuse not to engage in the roleplaying (which I was very bad at). The interesting thing is that as I got better at interacting with the group, we both grew out of needing it very quickly. 

I’m very proud of Bronze. 

20. Do any of your OCs sing? If they sing, care to share more details (headcanon voice, what kind of songs they like etc)?Westrin is a bard! His singing voice sounds like Bill Wurtz and these are his theme songs.

21. Your most artistic OCProbably Westrin again, he writes a lot of songs… and Hallux is a game designer?

22. Is there any OC of yours people tend to mischaracterize? If yes, how? I honestly dont know… no-one talks to me about them, haha! 

people use all manner of pronouns for bronze, though. 

23. Introduce OC that has changed from your first idea concerning what the character would be like?I’m gonna go with Enza for this one. Enza Colie was originally written entirely because I wanted an antagonist for a short starring his sister, Jane Colie. But the more I fleshed out his reasonings for acting how he did and explored his character, the more I realised he’d make an even more interesting character if allowed to have a redemption arc, too. 

I just want to state for the record that I was very reluctant to the idea, and he basically dragged his way out of the villain pit entirely of his own accord. I am dubiously proud of him, and also a bit scared. 

24. If you could meet one OC of yours, who would it be and why?Probably either Eric (Big Man, Best Friend), Crocus (Mother figure), Reed (Father Figure), Westrin (hed just make a good friend u kno??), or Bismuth (she makes good conversation!)

25. The OC that resembles you the most (same hobby, height, shared like/dislike for something etc?)probably the homestuck fan-troll Hallux, but that’s mostly because they were based on a troll-sona I made awhile ago. They’re a hope/prospit game designer who is small and full of rage and love

oh, and there’s dave! dave’s a superhero speedster, existing in a modern-day superhero version of seattle. theyre idiot, just like me,

26. Have you ever had to change your OC’s design or something else about them against your will? this is an interesting one… i don’t think ive ever had something Bad in a design ive done called to my attention by someone, but I did create my character Servant at around the same time I was first really expanding the diversity of my casts. (since i don’t talk about him often, a little context: he’s a magic spirit creature bound to human form to serve the royal family of the land and follow their orders.) 

somehow, younger-and-more-stupid me managed to have the revelation that making this “eternal slave” character literally anything other than a white man, especially as a white author, would be Pretty Not Good. im … thats really, really not something i should pat myself on the back for, but i do consider it one of the biggest bullets dodged in my artistic career so far that i realised that not all representation is good representation so quickly, before i could make that incredibly, incurably stupid mistake. 

after that, trying to make sure my characters and their presentations don’t harm anyone pretty much has become a paranoia. i don’t seem to have stepped on any toes yet, but when it inevitably happens, please let me know - i didnt know, and i want to fix it! 

27. Any OCs that were inspired by a certain song? None that I can think of, actually! I don’t really do that often. 

28. Your most dangerous OC? god damn it i have no idea!!! is it the terminus? glitch in the matrix god of chaos motherfucker?is it sarle? terrifying calculating scientist with the power of the soul at her fingertips ??? is it ares??? is it athena????? is it petra?????? the gatekeeper???? 

… actually, the gatekeeper might be it, if “dangerous” just refers to “the amount of raw power it can wield”. the Gatekeeper is a titanic entity that exists in interdimensional multiverse space, and its implied to have the ability to create and destroy entire universe bubbles at will. for what cosmic purpose, no-one knows. 

at a more personal scale, though, literally all of the aforementioned characters are pretty bad to run into too. 

29. Which one of your OCs would go investigate an abandoned house at night without telling anyone they’re going?god. Mina or Tawn. Tawn is the Indiana Jonesy type and probably dumb enough, but also competent enough not to get into too much trouble there. Mina would probably drag her friends along. 

30. Which one of your OCs would most likely have a secret stuffed animal collection? XEN09. No-one knows, because no-one knows xir personal identity. Xe absolutely does, though. It’s less of a secret if you know xir in person, but good luck finding out about it otherwise. 

31. Pick one OC of yours and explain what their tumblr blog would be like (what they reblog, layout, anything really)dave just reblogs memes all the time tbh. they like to keep tabs on the ridiculous superhero news going on, and they show human jokes and cat videos to their alien gf. they dont really post or add to posts, but they talk in tags a lot. 

32. Which one of your OCs would be the most suitable horror game protagonist and why? i want to say tawn because i literally just realised ive been imagining their voice as sounding like luigi this entire fucking time and i never realised until this exact instant

33. Your shyest OC?probably baromet. they prefer to keep to themself in their hideout, with their collection of shiny things. they don’t really enjoy trying to communicate much, mostly because they expect to get yelled at. 

34. Do you have any twin characters?Yes! At least two sets; 

- Crocus and Sarle. (x) (x) They don’t exactly have a very well-developed relationship, but they are both quite important to the plot of my campaign world, and they are both very interesting. Crocus is a motherly figure who just exudes friendliness, while Sarle is .. very much not that, a researcher studying very gruesome things and pushing the boundaries of reality. 

- Jane and Enza Colie. I haven’t talked a whole lot about either of them here, but I’d rather leave their story to do the talking whenever I get around to it. Essentially, the both of them were intended to do the dirty work for their crime boss family, but Jane ditched to study medicine. Most of the conflict between the two of them comes out of Enza not understanding why she made the choice she did, and coming to understand how he’s been manipulated. 

35. Any sibling characters? I can’t really think of any off the top of my head, I should … I should really work on that. 

I can talk about Westrin, though. Westrin (a demigod of many things, but namely bards, travel, travelers, and people who are lost) often becomes close friends with mortals, sometimes practically adopting them. These people who consider him family, and people who have received his blessing, are able to use his surname, Brilanta, as their own if they choose. So I guess all of the Brilantas are siblings, at least in spirit. 

Oh, and XEN09 has like, seven siblings. Xe is the second-oldest, and least remarkable. 

36. Do you have OC pairs where the other part belongs to someone else (siblings, lovers, friends etc)? I already talked about Eros and Bismuth up there a ways in question 18, but I’ll talk about another relationship here. @autistictimeknight​‘s character, Nova the Alchemist, is mentor and adopted parental figure to my character Munna. Munna … Munna isn’t a very good apprentice. She tries very hard. 

37. Introduce an OC who is not quite human That’s most of them, I’m not quite sure what to say here. Bronze is an android? Bronze again? Westrin? All the aliens ?? 

38. Which one of your OCs would be the best dancer? man. uh. westrin or jean. or perhaps valencia. 

39. Introduce any character you want ??? uhhhHHHhhHHH Lord Brillium is the reigning deity of the Cloud Kingdoms in the other campaign setting I’m working on. They represent light and the quest for knowledge, and spend most of their days in the Cathedral Observatory watching the stars. 

40. Any fond memories linked to your characters? Feel free to share!one time bronze flew a hover-bike through the stained glass window in a cathedral blaring all star by smash mouth on their iguana

also one time bronze rickrolled a rakshasa demon and then pulled updog on it like, two minutes later

another time bronze scared off an entire army by pretending to be an automated security system 

41. Has anyone drawn fanart of your OCs? If yes, maybe show a picture or two here (remember sources & permissions!)ive got a whole little folder on here from all you blessed people !!!! right now ive got a drawing quinn did of one o fmy characters as my lockscreen

but i think the one i’ll really never ever get over is this piece of Jane, by @rabendraws​ / @owoltron​: 

(i bet you thought i forgot about this, dude. dude. think again.) 

42. Which one of your OCs would be the most interested in Greek gods? this is kind of a weird question, m, I feel like Bismuth would find learning about the mythos utterly fascinating, as would Tawn. 

43. Do you have any certain type when you create your OCs? Do you tend to favour some certain traits or looks? It’s time to confesshaha. uh. i might. 

aside from the entire “bronze-tangential characters” thing i mentioned awhile back, I tend to really like designing characters with hair color lighter than their skin color. it just looks so cool man. i love drawing freckles but dont put them on enough characters. i like really curly hair, but also really long and flowy hair. i like drawing triangular body types, and pointy/prominent noses. 

44. Something you like about your OCs in generaluhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this is a really vague question. m. m. 

45. A character you no longer use?there’s old versions of characters, but a lot of my older ones have been somehow repurposed. I guess there’s Turien, my first-ever DND character, who’s just kind of sitting dead now. Haven’t really done anything with him other than a pretty recent tangential character. 

46. Has anyone ever told you that you treat your OCs badly?Not that I can think of.

47. Has anyone ever (friendly) claimed any of your OCs as their child? Im certain it’s happened, but I can’t remember any specific instances. 

48. OC who is a perfect cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pureSpring. spring knows nothing of th dangers of the world who is letting them into fights someon eneeds to stop this

(spring roll, hehe.) 

49. Which one of your OCs would most likely enjoy memesim not sure what this question is asking since many of my ocs actively enjoy memes including but not limited to westrin, dave, bronze, xen09, iris, and doctor archersen

50. Give me the good ol’ OC talk here. Talk about anything you wanti think. i think im going to pass on this one. i gave you the good old oc talk. your damn turn, yall: 

if you have any questions about any of these guys feel free to shoot one at me!

thats all from me im tired and its one am. techskylander you absolute madman 

[bittersweet-hun-ny]

Life

Life is a very confusing thing to try and dissect.

Life has a varying amount of outcomes and possibilities…

​Zeke wakes up in a cold sweat and rubs his eyes. He has been having reoccurring dreams every night for the past week. He would be walking in a beautiful garden with exotic flowers and lush greenery, but beyond that veil someone or something sinister. Zeke was zapped out of his thoughts by the ringing of his phone.

“Yeah what’s up?” He asks his manager.

“Well, Zeke we need you to come down to the studio. Your last song it got deleted somehow. So, we need you here ASAP!” His manager declares before hanging up on him and leaving him to his thoughts once again. Zeke got dressed and tied on this headband, before heading to the studio.

He walks down the sidewalk and sees someone out of the corner of his eye.

It can’t be… It was Zeke. The spitting image of him right down to wearing the same pair of ivory Converse. He stops and watches his doppelgänger gracefully walk away. Zeke runs to his studio and throws open the door almost knocking a plaque off the wall.

“Andrea you are not going t-!” He starts to shout, but his manger Andrea cuts him off stating.

“I was not going to wait for you Zeke. We need to record this now. The release date for this song was yesterday.” She glares up at him, causing him to swallow hard.

“I know. I know. Trust me though I am truly sorry, but I seen someone, and he looked exactly like me! Down to the same pair of shoes.” He says still flabbergasted about what he saw.

Andrea sighs and shakes her head, stating her concern.

“Zeke maybe you need more sleep. We can delay your next album a bit so you can focus on your wellbeing and especially your mental health. I know you must be…” Zeke shakes his head quickly and groans in frustration.

“Andrea… I don’t think you are understanding me. I have been having these weird dreams for the past few nights and I feel like that guy might be connected to them. I know it might seem like a long shot. However, every night I would get closer to the edge of the garden. Last night… I saw the silhouette of a man. I know it is him.” He says exasperated.

Andrea stands up and pats him on the shoulder.

“Okay. I believe you. How about we re-record your song and then we can hunt down this mystery man.” She says with a reassuring smile. Zeke nods and heads into his recording room.

After an hour of recording and mixing. Andrea and Zeke head out to find “Zeke 2.0”.

They start their search in the most basic of places a coffee shop. Zeke questions the barista and a few of the customers that are sitting around. After searching the coffee shop Andrea suggests checking the mall because they are usually bustled and packed full of people. So, it could be possible to find him there. Both walk around and Zeke spots him in an ocean of loud bustling shoppers. He pushes his way through the people, and he grasps the man’s forearm, using that to make his way in front of him.

“You. Who are you?” Zeke asks out of breath from wading over.

“I should be asking you that. Seeing as you rudely grabbed my arm.” The mystery man states

unbothered at the fact they looked exactly the same. The only difference was that Zeke was a well-known rapper, had piercings, tattoos, and the fact that he had longer dreads.

“You really do not know me.” Zeke states and continues “I am Zeke Gray. I’m a rapper who works under the stage name of Project 012.” The mystery man sighs and shakes his head.

“Eh.. a rapper. I am not fond of that genre of music.” He states annoyed and continues.

“My name is Sterling Q. MacIntosh. Instead of having a wack occupation like you. I am a businessman and I own a lot of buildings in the downtown district nine.” He says proudly. Zeke sighs and says

“I have no clue what your deal is man but is none of this worrying to you. I mean you are the spitting image of me.” Sterling scoffs and says

“Oh please. Do not compare us. I am on a whole other level, but if you ever feel like trying to get on my level. Here is my business card.” Zeke takes the card and starts to read it.

“hey-?” He says aloud and looks up seeing that Sterling is gone. Andrea had taken his place.

“Oh my gosh. I thought I lost you!” She says and pulls him out of the crowd, looking down at the small business card in his hands.

“What is this?” She asks softly and carefully takes it from him, reading it to aloud

“Sterling Q. MacIntosh

Architect and Business Manager

Email: SterlingQTosh@fastmail.com”

Andrea gives him back the card and says.

“So, Zeke 2.0 is a businessman named Sterling. Huh? Kinda old fashioned.” Zeke looks down at the card again and places it in his pocket.

“I’m going home.” He says solemnly and leaves the mall in haste. Zeke goes home and starts to look up information on Sterling. After being awake until midnight, he closes the laptop and looks at his notes.

“He seems completely normal, but something still feels off.” He mutters and walks over to bed laying down and falling asleep. Zeke is in his reoccurring dream again, but this time he is outside of the garden’s boarders. He can see Sterling standing next to a tree that has caught on fire somehow and on the horizon, Zeke see toppling skyscrapers. His words get trapped in his throat and Sterling smiles innocently, but his eyes hold malicious intent.

“Well. What do we have here? Ah the dreamer in life and in subconscious. Zeke Gray… Project 012… Well-known rapper… You are not real Zeke. My company made you under the guise of being a businessman/architect. I am a mad scientist in a sense. Zeke. My son I could never have. You are just a highly functioning robot.” Sterling says the smile disappearing and his head falls, tears roll down his cheeks. Zeke watches as everything around him starts to crumble and disappear. He runs over to Sterling and pulls him into a hug, not knowing why but soon enough he realizes why.

Everything in the dream began to change into a bright white room and on a table in the middle of the room… was Zeke. He was a robot an android something different and innovated. Zeke lets go of Sterling and runs over to the table. He was astounded watching the code flash across the laptop screen. Sterling walks up behind him and says

“Forgive me.” Zeke looks down at the completely autonomous version of himself, starting to declare.

“Forgive you? For what? You gave me life. I should tha-!?”

Zeke wakes up in his room with a jumping start.

“What was that? That dream felt so real, but it could not be. I family photos, memories, a complete past, but… a highly functioning robot…” He says quietly and looks at his hands, before running to the bathroom. He looks at himself in the mirror touches his skin, his hair, and his clothes. He is completely real and human for sure, right?

Zeke digs in his pockets for Sterling’s business card and luckily for him there was a number. He dials it and waits for him to pick up.

“Hello?” Sterling asks sleepily.

“Sterling… I have a question. I know this is gonna sound crazy. Okay not crazy, but definitely insane. Just hear me out. You were in my dream and you said you made me a-.” Zeke rambles and gets cut off by Sterling.

“Just meet me tomorrow at Café al Dionte. It is in district nine.” He says before hanging up and leaving Zeke confused. Sterling runs his fingers through his short hair and sighs to himself.

Zeke wakes up the next morning and gets dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie. He gets a taxi to the café and walks inside ordering a coffee, before taking a seat by the window. Sterling walks into the café about twenty minutes later and takes a seat next to Zeke, putting his briefcase on the table.

“Your dream. You are very perceptive Zeke. Yes, you are my son. I did make you with the same likeness as me, but I did not intend for this to happen. I feel like it would have been too meta and I am sorry for making fun of your career. I will support you through anything.” Sterling says and carefully opens his briefcase revealing pictures of Zeke being put together, pictures of a quite younger Sterling, and a few little robotic components. Zeke nods along and asks

“Why not just keep me and raise me as your son? That would have made more sense, right?” Sterling nods a bit and says

“Yeah… I don’t know. I felt like you would turn on me in some way, but now I see that would never have been the case. The whole reason I made you was because I was alone. At one point in my life I was married. I had a wife and a child, but that changed in an instant. My wife got into a car accident it was a drunk driver. Her and my son were pronounced dead upon impact. I guess I broke and became disjointed. No one wanted to talk to me. So, I just locked myself away and began to create you in my own likeness and my son. I made you into the future version of him in the hopes it would make me feel again.” Sterling stops talking and trembles a little. Zeke passes him the coffee and smiles.

“I understand now. How hard it must’ve been to endure all of that alone. I am glad that you gave me life and a good one at that. I have been able to chase dreams and become famous. Thank you, dad.” Zeke says with a bright genuine smile. Sterling looks up at Zeke and sees what he had always wanted for his son. A bright smile, future, and the ability to withstand any obstacle put before him. His eyes begin to tear up and he quietly says.

“I am so glad about how you turned out Zeke. I… You. Thank you, son.” He leans over and hugs Zeke tight, before pulling away and wiping his tears with a handkerchief. Sterling drinks the coffee and sits the empty mug on the table. Zeke looks at the mug and then up at Sterling.

“Dad, why don’t you come and live with me? That way you can learn more about who I’ve become and so we can have a familial bond.” He suggests and Sterling smiles.

“I would love that. Oh, and can I ask you a personal question?” Sterling asks. Zeke nods and Sterling continues.

“I see that you are wearing a ring on your left ring finger. Are you perhaps married?” Zeke blushes and covers his face.

“Oh yeah. That is probably important.” He says with a small nervous laugh and says

“I am married. My wife’s name is Onyx, and she is an independent writer, and she tends to write romance novels. I met her at a bakery in Toronto while doing a tour to try and get my music out there. She is really nice. So, I am sure she would love you, but wait… Should she know I am a robot or android or whatever? I feel like it would complicate or make things bad…” Sterling looks at Zeke and takes a moment to think.

“I think that is up to you. However, for relationships and marriages to work there needs to be honesty. So, I think for the greater good you should tell her and if she is as nice as she sounds then I am sure she won’t mind.” Zeke nods and ponders on his father’s answer.

“I will tell her when she comes back from her book signing events. Anyways, here is my home address. Come over when you are ready to get settled in. I have a guest room with your name on it!” Zeke says cheerfully and stands up leaving the café and going to his house. He starts to clean up and waits for the time his father decides to come home. Zeke sits in his living room a smile on his face, as he looks down at a picture of him and Onyx, but slowly the picture develops, and Sterling is standing next to him with a big smile.

…

…

…

Life is what you make of it and it can be wild at times.

Life is a thing that can be created, destroyed, and altered in various ways.

Life is a miracle.

[mikunology]

Mikunology File #6: Kagamine Rin

OK, to make up for the lack of Halloween fanart, I decided to try and actually get out a new Mikunology File/Info Post! It’s been a while, anyway.

So, like the last Mikunology File about Miku, this time we will be talking about Rin, my personal favorite and our token lancer! Strap yourselves in, folks, because BOY do I have some headcanons for this character.

Info under the cut! (WARNING: Lots of ranting. I’m very passionate about this one.)

So, about Rin--Rin is the second-in-command and main muscle of the team, as well as one half of the Character Vocal Series Model 02 (designation CV02-R) opposite her twin brother Len. With her brother, Rin unwittingly starts the more actiony part of Vocal Android’s plotline by completing her road roller transformer mecha, and joins her “sister” and best friend Miku on her musical journeys across Japan and the globe. Rin often finds herself getting more into trouble as a heroine rather than just a Vocaloid due to her thirst for adventure, but is just as important as Miku in the grand scheme of the premise.

Personality/Portrayal

I’ve also made little notes about Rin’s personality on this blog before, but let’s get more specific, shall we?

Let’s start our description of Rin with a description of her by Len: Rin is like the sun, essentially. She’s big, and bright, and warm, and fiery, so much so her light tends to blind people. Rin is cheerful, grandiose, and absurdly energetic, with a constant desire for excitement and thrills. She has a skip in her step and a flame in her eyes, and she’s not afraid to go and show the world what’s she made of, whether it wants her to or not. You could call her more than a little abrasive. But she’s pretty silly, mischievous and non-serious most of the time, especially compared to her always-serious brother, and really, all she likes is to have fun and spread her music. She’s also quite the hard-worker when something catches her fancy, but otherwise she’s a lazy bum--her attention span is very selective.

However, Rin is one of the most notably flawed characters in the main team, for more than a few reasons. Rin is quite self-assured and proud to be herself, but she can be quite selfish, prideful, and arrogant, often getting too caught up in being “the star” or “the hero” to the detriment of the rest of the team. She’s very much fueled by emotion and drive and tends to go too far with things, even if her intentions were initially harmless, and she acts before it even occurs to her she needs to think first. And while her stubbornness and refusal to give in can be one of her best qualities, she tends to ignore warnings about the consequences of her actions, and sometimes only focuses on herself and what she wants over what others want, even her brother. There have even been times where she’s been unabashedly rude to Len, as rare of an occurrence that may be (that usually ends with her regretting it).

Though, while Rin may not be perfect and do the above things listed, she does try her best to learn from her mistakes and fix them, and then go on to try to do better. As much of a ball of fire she may be, she usually tries to use her stubborn warmth to help people, as while she can get caught up in herself, she shares Miku and Len’s dislike for seeing others unhappy. She always stands up for herself and her friends and family, and if you give any of her loved ones heck on her watch she won’t hesitate to defend them. She absolutely refuses to be pessimistic or hopeless (or let anyone else be that way), and would rather fight for her world rather than stand down and let others take it. She’s very much headstrong, and deep down inside, very much a loving soul.

Abilities

Since they’re from the same series of androids you can look back to Miku’s post for some of Rin’s basic abilities (her singing voice, flight, durability, download, etc.) but here I will describe the ones Rin has to herself.

Super strength. Unlike Miku, who is more a jack-of-all-trades in the combat department, Rin’s more prominent specialty is her immense strength, from a source currently unknown. While her strength hasn’t been measured exactly quite yet, to give you an idea, Rin was capable of nearly smashing in her own road roller when it went haywire.

Shockwave clap. A technique Rin learned by playing around with audio allowed her to use her strength and amps to perform a shockwave clap as a backup for her voice. It’s super effective!

Technological prowess. While Rin tends to be a little lazy about it, Rin really knows her machines. Along with the modification of her road roller, Rin is talented at fixing and modifying vehicles and other engine-run machines of similar caliber. She also knows fairly well about robots and is capable of tinkering with simple ones.

Musical prowess. Of course, though compared to Miku, Rin’s greatest instrumental strengths are with guitar (especially electric guitar) and grand piano. 

Equipment

Rin is very much big on equipment compared to the rest of the team, even Len. Mostly because, who doesn’t like messing around with cool weaponry all the time? Plus, she usually knows how to handle it best next to Gumi and Meiko. This list is open to change as I come up with ideas.

Her arm sleeves. Like Miku, her most common piece of equipment next to her trademark headphones and hair ribbon. They’re computerized and allow Rin to access all her song data, information, voicebanks/libraries and system menu. She can also video call via hologram with it, and record sounds with it.

Her headphones. Rin’s headphones function most often as normal headphones and a secondary on/off switch. They can also function as a sort of audio-based walkie talkie, letting Rin contact her siblings and the other Cryptons.

Road roller (aka “Josephine”). Rin’s special Yellow Car, the great, the terrifying original road roller “borrowed” from a nearby construction site. Rin has specially modified it to go faster than your average road roller, thus making it the perfect flashy transporter for her and her brother. She also edited it to be a Transformer, pretty much, becoming a pilotable mecha with various functions.

The Rinmobile. A secondary method of transport created by Rin, a small motorbike outfitted with a small version of a road roller’s front wheel and a couple of other adjustments. Rin rides it when she needs quick (and not as flashy) transport across town when not carpooling with the others.

Bonus Headcanons

Rin’s bow tends to emote with her.

She is described as tsundere.

Rin has a special place in her room filled with orange-themed collectibles, like hackey-sacks, bean bags, orange candy, toys, and the like. Rin calls it her collection, Len calls it her “orange shrine”.

She loves Pokemon games. Unsurprisingly, her favorite is Pikachu.

Her absolute worst fear is losing Len, especially because of something she did.

She draws manga of her own adventures in her off time. She’s hoping to be able to publish it.

She’s really good at making sweets and desserts, but not so much at regular meals.

Inspiration Songs

Some songs I used to help characterize my Rin are “RING×RING×RING” (especially this one, it’s basically my Rin in a nutshell), “RinRin HIGH MIND”, “Sweet Magic”, “Bucchigiri ni Shite Ageru”, “I Like You, I Love You”, “Do RinRinRin”, and “Princess Cowgirl Show”. For anyone curious, of course.

[moveswiftly-blog1]

...Ready For It - a not so brief meditation on reputation.

Hi! Long time listener, first time caller. 

A few things to introduce. - I’ve been a huge Taylor Swift fan for a long time. She’s great. 

I’m also really bad at brevity, and currently, I’m obsessed with the ...Ready For It video and the whole concept behind reputation. I think she’s doing some extremely interesting things and it’s got me massively excited for the album.

A warning before I get going - this might ramble and go on different tangents, but I’m trying to make somewhat of a coherent point, I promise!

Like anything else Taylor Swift does, there’s been a lot of discussion about the ‘...Ready for It’ video. While the general consensus is that it’s awesome, I’ve seen been a number of comments saying that it doesn’t fit the song, or that it’s a nice looking video that doesn’t mean much. And I completely see where they’re coming from.

That said, I absolutely and wholeheartedly disagree. Maybe it only makes sense in the wider context of reputation, but I feel like it is massively important. I think the story of the video adds huge credence to the visual album theory; it really does feel like the start of something, especially when you link to it to the LWYMMD video. This is the genesis of the Taylor Swift we see in LWYMMD. This is the moment where Taylor Swift “dies.”

But more on that later.

Imagine you're Taylor Swift. After the massively successful 1989 era, which towered over everything around it and left you on top of the world, it all comes crashing down. Not only does your personal life go through some considerable turmoil, but your name is dragged through the mud publicly. The reputation that you had worked hard to build, and were smart and diligent about, not out of spite but out of savvy, is stained. The reputation that you used to give back to your fans, to inspire people, to stand up against Apple; besmirched. 

Now, the same people who just months earlier were praising you as the Joni Mitchell and Madonna hybrid the world has always longed for, have turned on you. Everything you do is being contorted into the worst possible "O M G - LOOK WHAT SHE DID" story. You can't even speak out against it, because every time you do, some thinkpiece writer [n.b.: irony noted] has something to say about it. You're a serial dater. You’re a serial victim. Your entire life is a manufactured PR power-play. You hate women. You’re a racist. You're a Trump supporter. "Taylor Swift is over" they say, but they still won't stop talking about how terrible you are for doing...whatever it was you did. Even if you made mistakes or did people wrong (that debate has been had a million times and isn’t really relevant to this), even if most of the terrible and cruel rumours are true; does it really warrant that level of vitriol?

If I was Taylor Swift, I would be tired. I would have little desire to deal with it anymore. In fairness, even if you disagree with her on everything she has said or done, could you blame her? I mean, this is exhausting. Why bother with the endless interviews, the endless promo, the endless fake award shows, when they are all just opportunities to subject yourself to people who want to hate you. So she goes away for a bit. She writes. She meets someone gorgeous. And while she won't let mean people get in the way of her passion, she knows she can't come back as "the old Taylor Swift" - her reputation precedes her. They want the old Taylor Swift back, so they can continue to throw rocks at her. It makes sense for the old Taylor Swift to play that role in the bible of celebrity. But that's not a fun role. She's a person too, and it's fair to ask whether this is a crossroads for Taylor Swift. Whether Taylor Swift can even be Taylor Swift anymore, or if it's unfair of us as an audience to expect that.

So that’s the background.

That brings us to '...Ready For It', and lady-in-white-android Taylor. We’ll start here, as potentially-exciting-album-hints-that-everybody-has-already-analysed aside, this is where it really gets interesting to me.

She's a shapeshifting, master-of-all-trades pop assassin, the likes of which you've never seen before. There are no rules for her. She can be savage and sexy, but guess what: the curls are back too, bitch. She's every type of Taylor, turned up to 11. 

Meanwhile, Hooded Taylor plays the role of Dr. Frankenstein, inspecting her creation, putting it through the motions, each of which is a someone's version of Swift pushed to the extreme. 

Taylor Swift was a snake? No, that's robot Medusa now.

Remember the Bad Blood video? Yeah, she's got a giant lightning sword now too. 

Did she ever say something about a White Horse? Well that’s HER horse now.

And it's ready for WAR.

I’ll give you a moment to think of another time where we saw a bunch of different Taylors from over the years featured in the same video. More on that later.

Just as her creation is showing its creative, naive, whimsical side, Dr. Swift - while obviously fascinated - prods her creation instead of encouraging it, asking that all important question: “Are you ready for it?”. 

If this is going to work, then she needs to be able to deal with this. Any good Taylor Swift needs to be able to deal with being prodded at, especially when they’re in a moment of happiness. 

This sets off the extravagant, indulgent display of power we see next. 

We get some really interesting moments with the lyrics here, with the video shedding a different light on the song. As Swift-via-Motoko becomes Thor-incarnate, the "let the games begin" part of the bridge starts, as Dr. Swift realises that her work is complete. She’s alive.

As the two Taylors approach each other, we get the rest of the bridge (which, as a sidenote, I think has one of Swift's most amazing harmonies, I absolutely adore this moment musically). It's here that the "touch me and you'll never be alone" line gains a new significance; it sounds a lot like Dr. Swift is warning Swift-Prime of the consequences.

The next thing that happens is where everything starts to become clearer. Dr. Swift (aka "the old Taylor") is replaced with this new, omnipotent ultra-Swift. There's no stopping her. She will obliterate everything in her path. If 1989 was Swift's skyscraper, this is a nuclear weapon. Not even Taylor Swift herself can stand in her way, and Dr. Swift knows this; she built it, after all. She willingly sacrifices herself for the cause of reputation. Taylor Swift is dead, long live Taylor Swift.

As an aside, there are more interesting lyrical bits here too, as you can read the chorus as a conversation between the two Taylors. In this context, "In the middle of the night, in my dreams/you should see the things we do, baby" reads less as a plea to a lover and more as a promise to herself, that they're going to be free from all of this one day. This works especially well if you read the subject of the song, the killer and the jailer, to be the pressures of fame rather than a particular individual (which is it's own kettle of fish, and not to say that the song isn't about a person - just an interesting perspective when tied in with the video!).

But this is also the moment when the proverbial ish hits the fan, and we get hit with the twist, as it's revealed to us that Dr. Swift IS A ROBOT TOO. WHAT IS GOING ON?! 

But before our minds even have time blow, as Dr. Swift's skin melts away from the sheer fierceness radiating from Swift-Prime, we can see that the other robots are being destroyed too and SOME OF THEM ARE HALF-FINISHED TAYLORS.

Swift-Prime stands triumphant at the end as the last Taylor standing, asking us if we're ready for her. A single tear trickles down her face; happy to be free or sad in understanding her purpose? 

I’m not sure, but, while we haven't heard the rest of the album or seen any more videos, I think it's a fair assumption (read: at best a solid theory, at worst a really, really fun thought) that this is the same Taylor Swift who goes onto slay the entire universe in the LWYMMD video. So, spoiler alert: WE WEREN'T READY.

Alright, wrapping up on the gist of what happens in this video: in this world, *someone* has been building robot Taylor Swifts to take the place of the real Taylor Swift, and it took many, many iterations to get here - even to the point that the robot Taylors took over the role of creator.

That leads us to the question of "who on earth is behind all of this?" Logically, I'd say there are a couple of options presented to us. The first is "the real Taylor Swift" - who has been conspicuously absent from all of this. The idea here is that Taylor needed someone who can take it to a level of shadiness, savagery, and literally-dying-ness that people could never have imagined. Why? There could be any of number of motivations behind it, which I'm sure will become clear after the album drops. Maybe she has sacrificed her previous reputation and taken ownership of her new one in order to continue doing what she loves. Maybe she just wanted to give everyone the most powerful response possible, and badass Terminator Swift is one big middle finger to the rest of the world. Maybe she just wants to get away from it all, but wants to continue to give us music, so creates this caricature version of herself to take the heat - a Ziggy Stardust popstar messiah that gives her a hard psychological split between public and private life. There are a million different ways you can read this (and it's getting kind of too deep), but I'm not sure I quite agree with any of them.

The other possible perpetrator, and the one I lean towards, is the outside world. With Swift having shied away from the public eye, there was nobody to give her take on things. This has a number of consequences; first of which is that she didn't defend herself from the endless accusations that were thrown her way. Another is that other people will speak up and give the other side of the story - but while they may have an understanding of who Taylor Swift is, there's no replacement for actually *being Taylor Swift*. The result of that is that all of these different opinions pile on top of each other, and snowball into creating an image of Swift she had no say in. Whether photos came out of her doing charity work, or it was another article about the Kardashian-West incident, what went ignored is that "the real Taylor Swift" was just living her life and didn't engage in any of this - and she seems to be okay with that; "There will be no further explanation. There will just be reputation."

To me, that sounds a lot like her letting go of any control she might have over these mirror universe versions of herself. She removed herself from every narrative, and just kinda did the stuff that she wanted to do. All the while, Taylor Swift as a concept continued to exist and evolve in gossip columns, tweets, candids, tumblr praise essays [n.b.: again, irony, I know], internet speculation and gif collections. It makes "Look what you made me do" look less like an "Oops! I Did It Again" moment, and more of a "no, literally, you did this. LOOK."

Swift-Prime is the culmination of that. She's the critical mass of every clap and clapback. She's the ultimate, and logical, conclusion to all of this. She is reputation - the armageddon of celebrity culture. Whether she's a false prophet or the second coming probably depends on who you follow. The key thing is that she isn't real, because the real Taylor Swift can't come to the phone right now. Why? Well, we don't know. Yet, at least. Some Taylor Swifts are dead - we know that much from the RFI video - but all of the above creates another very interesting parallel to the LWYMMD video (which is genius in its own right). If we know that someone has been building all of these different Taylor Swifts, then what does that mean for this scene?

Are any of these Taylor Swifts real? Are they all man-made (or Taylor-made) robot Swifts? Is Swift-Prime in this picture somewhere? AND WHO IS ON THE WING OF THE PLANE?! 

I’m sure we’ll find out, but there's a theme here, and through everything else in this era, of only being shown what someone wants to show us. The story of reputation so far is that it's a narrative about the narrative of Taylor Swift. It picks up where Blank Space left off, in that it's not actually about Taylor Swift. Put simply, LWYMMD parodies and comments on all of these different versions of Swift that are portrayed in a certain way for whatever reason, only focusing in on one singular aspect of her personality or identity, and RFI gives us an origin story of sorts for how we got there. Whoever is behind these robot-Swifts is literally building a reputation.

Now, Taylor Swift is the author of the work, so at some point she's the person pulling the strings behind all of it. But whether she's the one narrating of reputation is a completely different story. There could be a LOT going on here. Could Swift channeling Cervantes, while simultaneously casting herself as Don Quioxte. I don't wanna be the "look at me I'm referring to a classic 17th century novel" guy, but if you're familiar with Don Quioxte then you're aware that that is completely insane and awesome!

But enough of that, there's an elephant in the room.

All of this begs the question: where exactly is the real Taylor Swift? Because if any of this is anything to go by, she might not just absent from this video; we might not even have seen her this whole era. It's a question that remains unanswered no matter what stance you take - because there's certainly no real, human Taylor Swift in the RFI video. Maybe she's somewhere with an island breeze and the lights down low. Maybe she finally picked a rose garden over Madison Square. However -  to bring it back to RFI as a song - maybe, just maybe, the bigger question here is, "is it really any of our business?"  

While '...Ready for It' as a music video sets the scene perfectly for the world of reputation (and I hope I'm right on that and hopefully more will become clear), I've skipped over the fact that, at it's core, '...Ready For It' is a song about wanting to be left alone. It's a song about the constant pressure that fame brings along with it, and the risk of subjecting someone you love to that. Swift has always had a gift for hiding sadness in happy packages. There's no doubting that RFI is a bona fide banger, and it certainly has its fair share of funny, snarling, exciting moments. But there's a longing underscoring it, from the sheer lust in the second verse to the genuinely melancholy bridge.

At some point it just hit me that it's actually quite strikingly sad. It made me feel that, after all that, I can't really blame her for wanting to be somewhere else for a bit. To be someone else for a bit. I would too. It makes sense that, for all intents and purposes, she isn’t here.

Maybe that is where reputation comes in. I'm in no position to magically guarantee that this is going to be some high-concept album, and that this idea resonates throughout the whole thing. I could be way, way off the mark. But if I was Taylor Swift, I'd sure want to show people exactly what they made me do: kill Taylor Swift, and turn out to be pretty damn proud of it.

So on November 10, we are getting a Taylor Swift album, with Taylor Swift songs that are written and performed by Taylor Swift. Some of which might be about Taylor Swift's life. It's going to have Taylor Swift on the cover, and Taylor Swift will tour in support of it. But is this really an album about Taylor Swift? Is this an album about what we think about Taylor Swift? Or is this an album that Taylor Swift wants us to think is about Taylor Swift?

Maybe it isn't about Taylor Swift at all.

Maybe it's just reputation.

Are you ready for it?

[sugarplumbfaerie-blog]

The War Robots generator And How It Could Make A Difference To You

While many individuals intend to acquire a smart device, such as an War Robots generator, they are frequently unclear of the best ways to utilize it. This post is full of beneficial pointers that will aid you check out the various attributes of your war robots gold hack. Maintain reading as well as try these ideas on your War Robots hack no survey as soon as possible so you will remember them.

Decreasing your war robots unlimited gold's illumination setting will certainly help expand battery life. To change illumination levels, just most likely to war robots hack android settings. At a reduced brightness, you'll locate your War Robots hack tool lasts for a lot longer. This is especially practical if you understand you are going to go a very long time between costs.

If you are navigating the web utilizing your War Robots hilesi, do not stress about including the ". com" at the end of a website address. Simply place the major address - anything before the.com - to browse to the site you want. Although this seems miniscule, this can conserve you a terrific amount of time over your war robots hack's life.

Siri permits you to establish reminders based on your area. Instead of asking Siri to tell you to do something at noon, you have another option. You have the capacity to ask Siri to inform you to check out to dry cleaner when you leave your residence. The war robots cheats will certainly acknowledge when you reach home as well as remind you to perform your job. This helps when you have no suggestion what time you will be arriving at house, and also lets you set a tip.

While in the Safari browser, you can just make a telephone call with one faucet. If you find an internet site for a completely dry cleanser that is near you, seek the number on the website. When you locate the number you were searching for, there is no should change to the phone part to place the phone call. Just touch the number as well as your phone will certainly attach you to the business.

It is feasible to create an application from any of your favored websites. Just most likely to the website. Once you are there, faucet on "Go". Doing this will certainly allow you to include the website onto the residence display. You could have your very own app once you rename it.

Do you wish to consist of an umlauted or accented letter in your conversation, but have no idea just how? Below's exactly what you need to do. If you touch a private letter for just a few seconds, choices will appear for that letter. Expect a box to open up, including included choices. This will enable you to kind with fancier letters and also you are sure to find what you are searching for.

In its default setup, your war robots hack apk will highlight inbound messages on its lock display. Some individuals like this, yet others don't. If you discover it annoying, you could disable this feature easily. In your Settings, navigate to the "messages" alternative that is found in your "notifications." Program Sneak peek is the alternative you intend to switch off.

You could make use of the consisted of calculator to do fast mathematical computations on your war robots hack ios. You could use it conveniently in the normal vertical setting or transform your phone horizontally for a streamlined scientific calculator look.

Your war robots hack ios's Safari mobile web browser will certainly enable you to do practically everything that you would certainly have the ability to do on a normal Web internet browser. Simply press on and hold any images you want to save. A menu will show up, asking if you desire to conserve the photo to your Electronic camera Roll. It can even be used in a message.

Choose a customized ringtone if you have an war robots hack ios. Undoubtedly you would love to stand apart from those that make use of supply ringtones. It's straightforward to publish a favored song or sound byte that attracts you. Choose something you will quickly notice in a noisy setting.

As you most likely understand, you can establish reminders to start at particular times. Likewise, which most individuals aren't familiar with is that you can set a location-based reminder also! For example, you might state, "Advise me to drop in the food store when I leave the office." Numerous pointers types are available with an war robots hack ios.

If the war robots hack ios freezes up, remain calmness. First, test the rest or wake switch. If that does not resolve the issue, choose the sleep/wake as well as residence buttons with each other. When held for a few seconds, they start a tough reset on the phone that will certainly restore its functions.

You might take advantage of an application for battery management. There are a couple of offered that could inform you of when you use way too much power and just how you could reduce it to conserve battery life. That can additionally assist you find out when you should calibrate, so your battery stays healthy and balanced.

Save time keying with your war robots hack ios. Select settings, after that general, and also lastly, choose keyboard as well as include some new shortcuts. When you do this, you have the alternative of preprogramming longer words or phrases you often say. Then, going forward, you would certainly not need type out all the characters.

You can take a screenshot with your war robots hack ios at any time. Merely press the residence as well as power switches all at once. The phone will record the screenshot and also wait to your photo roll. It is necessary to note that you ought to only press these buttons rapidly to prevent undesirable results.

You war robots hack ios can be utilized to send out wonderful pictures to your friends and family. Thare are two very easy ways to obtain this done. You could either send conserved pictures through email or publish them to your social media account.

There is a very easy method to remove undesirable emails with simply a swipe of your finger. In your e-mail inbox, by dragging your finger across the mail will certainly reveal a popup erase button that will permit you to remove it instantly.

Having read this write-up, you now comprehend all the technology used by the war robots hack ios. People could conveniently be perplexed concerning new apps as well as have no idea just what their phone can do. Nonetheless, you have actually now read about simply how you can stay up to date on your war robots hack ios.

[behindbecaused-blog]

Janelle Monáe: The Art of Concept Albums

Album design is almost always universally overlooked; it is a corner which few would expect to find artistic intention in. In fact, if asked, many music consumers would assume album design was random. Ergo, there isn’t really a demand for deliberately constructed album designs. 

And when there isn’t demand, there won’t be supply. Few of the ways most mainstream musicians design their albums are ‘artistic’. In an age of digital music where attention spans are short and artists are hard-pressed to capture as much listening time they can, the most common modus operandi might be to “save the worst for the last”: put your best songs first to entice audiences into listening to the rest of the tracks, especially the less popular ones. But this approach is not worthy of an ‘art form’ - it’s just pragmatic.

The question we want to ask is: is there a better way of doing things? Can album design be an art form? The best artists don’t just hit the right keys or string together a combination of notes. They have to tell a story. Album design is just one among an array of techniques to do so.

Meet Janelle Monáe, an up-and-coming R&B American artist. So far, Monáe has released a debut EP, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase), and two full length albums, The ArchAndroid and The Electric Lady.  These are all concept albums, part of an ongoing 7-part series, titled Metropolis, for Monáe. Set against the backdrop of a dystopian future, the series chronicles the rise of the android Cindi Mayweather, an alter ego Monáe assumes in her music, as a messianic figure for her fellow androids to rally around. By tracing Mayweather’s struggle with systemic oppression, inequality and discrimination faced by the robot community, the political undertones of Monáe’s songs are strikingly obvious.

“Good morning, cy-boys and cyber girls! I am happy to announce that we have a star-crossed winner in today’s heartbreak sweepstakes: Android Number 57821, otherwise known as Cindi Mayweather, has fallen desperately in love with a human named Anthony Greendown. And you know the rules! She is now scheduled for immediate disassembly”

‘March of the Wolfmasters’ from Metropolis: The Chase Suite

What makes Monáe special is her impressively unique album design, which immerses us into the world of Cyndi Mayweather. Monáe begins each “Suite” in her series with “Electric Overtures”. These preludes set the mood for the subsequent tracks in each suite; take “Suite IV Electric Overture” for example - its slow and ominous feel, together with digitally distorted vocals chanting “I don’t wanna be a slave again”, keys us into the deep-seated political tensions of her world. At the same time, Monáe includes “radio interludes” in The Electric Lady, which serve to expand the world she’s constructed through dialogue and exposition, in a way that remains consistent and faithful to the medium of her work. At this point, we are no longer just listening to a list of songs; instead, we begin to exist in Monáe’s futuristic dystopia as if we were fellow listeners tuning in to DJ Crash Crash. In other words, her technique makes her story - of oppression, freedom, and love - more believable, as if we were actually in it.

Monáe also employs a technique known as beat-matching to create seamless segues at multiple points throughout her album. Segues like the one between ‘It’s Code’ and ‘Ghetto Woman’ elevate the audience’s listening experience by achieving an effect we like to call “flow”. This effect is crucial to the musical coherence of her songs, in the sense that they are no longer isolated stories of their own, but chapters of a continuous narrative; they blend, add and mix into one another.

This technique is not unique to Monáe - artists like Coldplay and Lin-Manuel Miranda have employed it in their music to great effect too. But perhaps none of them work quite as spectacularly as the segue between Monáe’s ‘Q.U.E.E.N.’, and her album’s title track, ‘Electric Lady’. Have a listen.

Barring the prelude at the start of the ‘Electric Lady’ MV, which the original song does not feature, ‘Q.U.E.E.N.’ blends seamlessly into it (To get what we mean, try listening to the two songs on Spotify).

Towards the end of “Q.U.E.E.N.”, Monáe launches into a politically-charged rap - “We rising up now, you gotta deal you gotta cope/Will you be electric sheep? Electric ladies, will you sleep? Or will you preach?”. Her tone rises, her lyrics grow in intensity, and the momentum of her argument rises to its peak. Segueing seamlessly into “Electric Lady” prevents Monáe from losing that momentum; it lends the latter song the same weight and intensity. Moreover, Monáe’s somehow manages to sew together multiple songs with enough finesse to prevent them from sounding like fragmented parts of a single track or, worse still, duplicates. That is a tribute to impressive album design as well.

Notice that we haven’t even gotten around to talking about the actual quality of Monáe’s music, as we would usually do when dissecting most mainstream music. But Monáe is not mainstream. Far from it. Her techniques are unconventional, her story is uncanny. We don’t need to go into the many genres Monáe crosses into effortlessly or her hauntingly impressive vocals to prove that she is an artist, in every sense of the word. She takes something familiar - album design in this case - and turns it into an art form.

Monáe is challenging the artistic conventions of the industry. That is simultaneously the beauty and tragedy of her music: like any good piece of art, it takes effort to digest, but the thing is, most music consumers are lazy to think or try something new. This is why, besides several Grammy Award nominations and a number 17 spot on Billboard 200, Monáe isn’t getting the fame and popularity she deserves. The truth is, most of us are undiscerning consumers of music; we feed off an industry which discourages innovation by diluting music into a kind of manufactured commodity; we would choose mainstream pop tunes over Monáe’s afro-futuristic jives any day; we would opt for what is familiar.

But, as with any art form, what is the point in sticking to the ordinary?

[universeinform-blog]

Sure, slap an Android touchscreen on some headphones

New Post has been published on https://universeinform.com/2017/03/24/sure-slap-an-android-touchscreen-on-some-headphones/

Sure, slap an Android touchscreen on some headphones

Appearance: I’m not pronouncing that the Vinci headphones, which places a full touchscreen interface on wireless headphones, are an awesome concept. But they may be surely an idea that managed to elevate over 1,000,000 dollars on Indiegogo. The concept is simple: you just want your track to your headphones instead of for your cell phone, However, surely you furthermore might need Spotify and the only correct way to do that is to use a touchscreen. Bam: personalize Android a bit and positioned it at the facet of some cans — properly they’re more like Altoids tins because they’re rectangular — and away you go.

What can I let you know about the Vinci headphones? I will inform you that they in reality sound like nothing special for on-ear headphones, mainly ones that value $129. I’m able to tell you that once you get over the ridiculousness of getting a display on the side of your face, there is something barely smart approximately making a fully self-contained track device that nonetheless works with Spotify. I can inform you that you may turn the display screen off robotically once they’re on so you don’t Look absolutely insane. I’m able to inform you that you may slap a SIM card in there and use it to movement track

Hell, I can even inform you that despite the fact that touch controls on headphones are universally bad, the touch controls at the Vinci paintings midway decently, because the contact surface on the aspect is so large that you may simply make large, extensive gestures which are less complicated to pull off. I’m able to inform you that the custom construct of Android right here is clearly well designed, speedy and simple. My 2016 Honda Civic has a custom version of Android, too, and it’s rubbish in comparison to how nicely this works. cross figure!

I’m able to inform you that there’s a custom clever assistant in them so you can use voice manipulate to manipulate Spotify and SoundCloud — one that didn’t definitely work all that well for me.

I will tell you they threw Alexa in there, too, because why not

What I will tell you is to shop for them, due to the fact even though these are much better done than I would have anticipated, they’re nevertheless executing on a peculiar idea. And they don’t sound proper enough to justify everything that’s happening right here. But I like that they exist and that I even like that’s there’s a “Pro” model with higher sound and extra storage coming out later this yr.

Android Mobile Application Development – The Essence of Any Business

Android is the open supply operating system by way of Google. Since 2008, it has come to be the most favored alternative to traditional working systems especially in terms of mobile gadgets. This is why android cell software development has emerged as crucial to any business that would love to get noticed, attain out to extra clients, and provide the best-quality customer service. There are many benefits to developing an app for Android gadgets, most extensively flexibility. App porting is problem-unfastened, and app developers can easily control the gadget sources.

When you have an Android mobile app to your enterprise, you could make it be had in Google Play Save wherein purchasers download the majority of their packages. Play Keep has greater than 1.three million programs (and counting) thus far. This indicates the recognition of Android apps with millions of users around the arena. A reputable Android utility development business enterprise with years of experience in developing mobile apps for this operating device ought to be able to help you get started out in growing a custom and cellular app that could help increase your ROI and improve your customer service.

Android cellular utility improvement is cost-effective, and this makes it best for small and medium-sized organizations that may not have the assets to invest in apps for every other OS. Being open supply is the reason why Android mobile app development calls for a lower funding. This means developers can use the software development package freely and broaden apps based totally on Java, ensuing in a development technique that is less difficult to grasp and conduct. Likewise, developers can without problems make the application extra intricate at a more reasonable fee.

App improvement for Android has a tendency to have a quicker turnaround, too, for the reason that stages usually involve only three steps: (1) utility development, (2) testing, and (3) deployment to Google Play. Seasoned developers comply with a streamlined approach for growing Android mobile applications, too, and that they offer similar protection and guide on your apps, so you do no longer have to fear about accomplishing periodic updates and addressing bugs and vulnerabilities with the aid of your self.

Android cell software development may be realistic for a business that is implementing a BYOD policy. With Android, an enterprise will find it greater possible to undertake a BYOD coverage, When you consider that many Android devices are moderately priced, and the fee for utility development can be lower. builders can create an app which has diverse functions for an enterprise, even as ensuring that it’s miles relaxed.

Square Bits Non-public Restricted is an India based totally, cell utility and recreation improvement organization. We provide modern, properly designed, interactive and dominant mobile software improvement answers for small and employer degrees. We have a verified music report of partnering with worldwide customers and help them by developing out-of-the-field cellular packages for iOS, Android, and Home windows structures. We help our clients in hiring our experienced and informed developers for cellular software, video games, and website development.

What Is the Technology Behind a Touch Screen?

Have you ever questioned simply how the contact display screen in your cellular smartphone, pill, LED tv or every other device really works? It’s far brilliant to think that we can now trouble commands to our gadgets with the contact of our hand and whilst this generation would possibly appear new, it has genuinely been around since the 1960’s.

In fact, the generation at the back of the touch display can sincerely trace proper returned to the 1940’s however it turned into only many years later that it, in reality, have become possible to apply on a big scale.

ATMs had been the usage of technology in view that 1965 that is when E.A. Johnson invented the primary finger-driven touch display screen that honestly used the equal capacitive contact mechanism this is still used in cell telephones and other gadgets to at the present time.

Despite the fact that there are other kinds of contact display screen generation together with resistive contact or multi-touch generation, capacitive contact technology is only that is desired for mass produced purchase products.

How is a Capacitive contact display Made?

Nowadays, a capacitive touch display works thru the use of an ITO touch film this is attached to the display screen. This touching film is basically a semiconductor that has been published out the usage of semiconductor production strategies which includes roll to roll processing which uses a roll to roll evaporator machine to create an electronic tool on a bendy plastic.

A roll to roll evaporator gadget from enterprise main producers are capable of mass produce ITO touch movie that may be used on diverse gadgets along with clever phones, Liquid crystal display or LED monitors, tablets, and Pc video display units.

Roll to roll generation is the desired approach over other technology inclusive of the roll to plate and plate to plate technology because of it providing a non-stop system and higher throughput than the others. That ITO touch film is then programmed the usage of software that allows us to present our devices instructions thru the usage of our fingers on the screen.

How to Choose Headphones That Will Pleasure Your Leisure Time

The journey of the headphones changed into in no way been clean. Once upon a time, the headsets had been so big, that putting them in the ears were a bit hard for the listeners. However, with the development of technology and making use of the evolving person of the machines, people have now produced something that we are able to call ‘wireless’.

The word ‘wireless’ can itself depict much stuff. It reveals the bodily benefits and the fitness benefits one could have in the event that they use those headphones. You should not deliver the notable wired thing around your head all of the time. As a substitute, just loosen up and placed the set on and voila!

The fitness advantages that you can get from the nice wireless headphones can be of numerous kinds. Well, no one can deny the blessings of taking note of the song even as the gym, going for walks, strolling or writing. It soothes the nerves of the brain and enhances the productivity, which continues you active. Now not only that, these headphones have their own speakers settled in the front of your mouth so that if a name comes, you could without difficulty pick it up and speak. those speakers are also adjustable which you can regulate with the aid of transferring right, left, up & down.

There is some functions extra which you need to be aware of.

The water resistant earphones Spilling of water can sincerely damage your headphones if they don’t have the water resistant facility on them. However, some headphones come with the earbuds which are a product of such a fabric so one can face up to the water from ruining it. This lets you run or walk putting them on your ears even inside the rain.

[spin-attaxx]

1, 2, 11, 12, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 26, 27, 31, 33, 38, 40, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50

1. Your first OC ever?

Already answered.

2. Do you have a personal favourite among your OCs?

Oh god, it largely comes down to Jessica, Lumina and Charn. But if you put a gun to my head, I’d have to pick Jessica. She’s the oldest of the three, and I feel like I relate to her more.

11. Is there any OC of yours you could describe as a “sunshine”? 

Lumina, no question. If she sees someone feeling down, she’ll do her best to cheer them up and make them feel better, and even when things seem at their bleakest, she’ll find some way to find hope in the situation.

In fact, I imagine seeing a genuinely upset Lumina would break anyone’s heart (unless they’re Charn or Shade).

12. Name an OC that isn’t yours but who you like a lot 

Already answered, but since I get to say another one, I like @jezmm​‘s Alice Grayson. I like her design a lot (particularly her long red hair and blue flares), and she’s a pretty cute character.

14. Introduce an OC with a tragic backstory 

Hmm, not sure if introduce is befitting, since I’ve drawn her once or twice, but I imagine Tesla has it particularly rough compared to the other Elementals (all of whom can claim to being the last of their kind and losing at least one friend or family member).

She was once a kind-hearted Electric Elemental in a high class aristocratic city on a Mystic planet far from Enchantus. Things were bad enough when her Time Elemental fiancé up and died one day (along with, mysteriously, every other user of Time magic in the universe), but when a bunch of haggard refugees came to the planet some years afterwards warning about some android named “Charn”, she dismissed them and chose to stay.

Then Charn came and did what he does best; annihilate the city, kill everyone, them proclaim himself the ruler and creator of the planet and torture what survivors were left into believing him without question (”2 + 2 = 5″ style). Though Tesla escaped, she became more jaded and cynical now that she was forced to live her immortal life in squalour fleeing from his threat.

Today, you’re likely to find her glugging down unhealthy amounts of alcoholic, poisonous and generally unpleasant drinks, swearing her head off at those who slight her, and taking immense pleasure in talking down idealistic minds, all while craving the days of her old life.when she wasn’t such a bitter lightning cloud of loathing.

17. Any OC OTPs?

Three come to mind. Ivorn x Lily (the thought of an easily flustered metal technology geek and a calm and peaceful Plant Elemental being in a relationship always felt right to me), Shade x Evil (even if his original goal of proving Elementals can be evil is kinda null and void now, he just loves doing things he shouldn’t do), and Charn x Himself (dude has an ego the size of the universe. He wouldn’t actually compliment alternate versions of himself, though - he’d kill them so there’d only be one Charn).

18. Any OC crackships?

Beta and Jessica. The idea of a psychic robot having a crush on a socially-awkward human he’s trying to kill on threat of death sounds both plausible and totally bonkers at the same time. In fact, Beta X Cassidy also counts, only it’s instead with a human who’s got steelier nerves than he does.

19. Introduce an OC that means a lot to you (and explain why)

I’m probably going to say Jessica. I feel like she’s changed quite a lot since I first doodled her as a semi-afterthought to round out a trio. I’ve always wanted to make a Metroidvania game, and Jessica was originally just one playable character (and not even the “main” one). Eventually, she became the main character of the trio, and now she’s the only playable character.

That’s because I keep thinking about her character and her role in this story;s world. I devised her with the idea that what would normally be the mysterious aloof serious side character to a more conventional and emotional protagonist would instead be the main focus. I freely admit much of her personality is derived from mine; being hard to approach, somewhat anti-social and always living with the feeling that she’s being judged every moment and that deep down she’s a failure at what she wants to be.

(That said, I think it’s fair to say that I’m more well-adjusted and approachable than she is lol.)

20. Do any of your OCs sing? If they sing, care to share more details (headcanon voice, what kind of songs they like etc)? 

Lumina’s the most obvious one of the lot. When it comes to genres, she’s very adaptable and open-minded, but she prefers upbeat pop songs. Especially with 80′s/90′s synth sounds or catchy dance songs (think something like “Butterfly” by smile.dk?)

As for her voice, I don’t know any singers who’d fit her, but I’ve always felt that Tara Strong would be my first pick for her. So I guess something like this, only more upbeat and with a more British accent?

(In case the link dies in the future, I’m referring to Ember McLain from Danny Phantom, which I actually saw little of back then.)

22. Is there any OC of yours people tend to mischaracterize? If yes, how?

Already answered.

26. Have you ever had to change your OC’s design or something else about them against your will? 

Already answered.

27. Any OCs that were inspired by a certain song?

While I don’t think a full-on OC was inspired by a song, Lumina’s design was altered after I heard the theme to Jem. At the time, she was a fairly generic pink-haired pixie girl in a white and pink jumpsuit, and then after hearing it, I (for some reason) decided, “Hey, what if I made her super J-pop idol/80′s glam girl?” and tweaked her outfit and gave her her big poofy ponytail. I regret nothing.

31. Pick one OC of yours and explain what their tumblr blog would be like (what they reblog, layout, anything really) 

Lily’s would be super pretty and calming, with reblogs of cute animals, pretty flowers, relaxing scenery, and the occasional conversation/picture/embarrasing situation with Ivorn.

33. Your shyest OC?

Jessica. She never starts conversations, always sweats and panics internally while talking to someone who isn’t a close friend or family, and is more comfortable staying inside than going out in public. Though if you’re antagonising her and/or trying to kill her, she gets more of a backbone and snarky lip.

38. Which one of your OCs would be the best dancer?

Hmm, maybe Lumina? I imagine it comes with her performing onstage, though I magine someone else may have more natural talent at it than her. Cassidy, maybe? I dunno.

40. Any fond memories linked to your characters? Feel free to share! 

Honestly, any time I get fanart of them, especially if the artist did it without me prodding them about it or as part of a mutually beneficial art trade or the like. It makes me super happy that there are people who liked them enough to draw them when they didn’t need to.

43. Do you have any certain type when you create your OCs? Do you tend to favour some certain traits or looks? It’s time to confess 

Already answered.

44. Something you like about your OCs in general 

I guess the fact that I’ve created a range of characters with their own lives, backstories, personalities, relationships and futures in a world of my own creation, which I can control as I see fit. Like, sometimes I’ll see a character like Genesect that makes me go, “Wow, that looks so cool/cute/whatever, I wish I came up with that!” And then I look at any one of my characters and I feel better because I came up with them before anyone else did.

45. A character you no longer use? 

Admittedly they were in a sort of limbo status for quite a while anyway, but Stuart and the third robot character aren’t likely to be part of the TSOTS-verse any longer. Besides the fact that Jessica’s gameplay style differs from traditional Metroidvania characters like Samus and I was afraid their styles would be weaker by comparison (plus extra work), I was never really able to come up with a concrete design for Stuart, nor could I settle on a name for the robot (for the longest time I went with Dave, after David Bowman from 2001, but that never sat well with me, and the only other alternative I could think of was ROM, which is taken). Will they get a new lease on life in the future? Maybe, but for now, they’re dead in the water as far as major uses go.

Still, at least they’re better off than a third Charn minion alongside Beta and Cassidy. He was an old man who’d be a cyborg, and the reveal of this would have him decking a reluctant Dave in the face. That’s about the only thing I miss from axing him; I think having Beta and Cassidy in a duo is a better choice for their characters.

48. OC who is a perfect cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure 

Voidica. A nice girl who’ll gladly accept anyone as her friend, and born to a universe with Charn in it. And then Charn killed her off in cold blood, with zero chance of her coming back or having any kind of afterlife.

49. Which one of your OCs would most likely enjoy memes 

Lumina, no question. Shade and Jessica get driven up the wall by her antics when she falls in love with a new meme.

50. Give me the good ol’ OC talk here. Talk about anything you want

- Shade’s character of being a total bastard just to prove he can be is basically one giant spit in the face to the Pokémon animé (and I guess to a much lesser extent the games), which made the bold claim of saying that Pokémon - who are more or less as clever/sentient as humans - cannot be evil, and routinely made Pokémon that followed that statement to a T or else turned good (mostly legendaries like Deoxys, Darkrai, Kyurem and Genesect). In fact, I think a precursor of his character came in the form of my headcanon for Genesect in my (short-lived) playthrough of Black 2, where he was a homicidal maniac who only tags along with the protagonist so he could get back at Team Plasma for ditching him in favour of the Tao trio.

- If Shade ever does a good deed entirely of his own will, he’ll go out the same way as Rorschach from Watchmen.

- Charn’s name came from a book I read years ago, “Through the Dragon’s Eye”. His design, meanwhile, started as a generic final boss doodle I off-handedly made, then changed many times since then. Ironically, his head remained consistent in all of them (though his eyes were less triangular and villainous.

- I came up with several possible backstories for Charn, such as him being a robot controlled by a t-rex’s brain (yes, really). I even toyed with the possibility of pulling a Joker and giving him no clear-cut origin, though now it’s far more defined.