#i love you david bowie inspired dragon <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[userparamore]

@gameofthronesdaily's HOTD SEASON 2 APPRECIATION WEEK Day 1: Dragon(s)

↳ Moondancer was a young dragon, pale green, with horns and crest and wingbones of pearl. Aside from her great wings, she was no larger than a warhorse, and weighed less. She was very quick, however. – FIRE & BLOOD, George R.R Martin

[temporalhiccup]

In an effort to ease out of burn out and try to feel real and human again I'm digging around old games and seeing what would be fun to tinker with. For most of my games they get to at least an Alpha Build/Playtestable stage, but Never Break The Chain is one of the few that didn't quite manage to get that far (though it honestly wouldn't take that much more I think!)

Never Break The Chain mechanically and emotionally is a response to The Eventide Club, which was @jdragsky's response to Apocalypse Keys.

It's clear that this game is partly a love letter to jay dragon's design and how it makes me feel, and I wrote this during a time when I was insecure about my design. I was reeling from the idea that my games were too emotional to be enjoyable, that strangers were never going to like the games I create. (Typical Capricorn, even the way I work through my shit has to be productive in some way)

Every player character is made up of two components: a Musician Playbook and a God Playbook. It's my take on the very popular idea of fallen gods feeding off divine worship as musicians. I wanted to create a really fun and emotionally intense game (inspired by how famously messy Fleetwood Mac and other bands can be, definitely The Wicked + The Divine too).

It's been three years since I took a look at this stuff and it's fun remembering the mechanical shenanigans I was up to: tightening chains, breaking them, creating halos, shattering them, etc. I'll tinker a bit with these mechanics and see what comes of it.

The more complex of the playbooks are the Musician ones. What remains of the divine is raw and simple, ever fading and barely there. In comparison, the Musician playbooks are a chance for me to explore some truly messy human stuff.

Here's the Musician playbook, The Mask, it's mostly intact from the last time I touched it years ago. I just tightened a few options here and there.

I'll spell out the inspiration for this playbook: David Bowie, specifically the maddened Bowie interviewed by Cameron Crowe in 1975.

Bowie was famous for his different personas, and you can see some of them represented in the masks below: Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, Halloween Jack, the Goblin King, and the Minotaur.

This playbook is an exploration of what it could have been like for Bowie exploring these different personas, based on various events written about or talked about in later years, offering points of tension and intensity (deconstructed and awaiting creative input, like always) and hopefully creating explosive moments of playable drama.

I do think this playbook leans most into Bowie's contentious phase as the Thin White Duke. This was a man who was clearly breaking apart on stage, underneath the thinnest veneer of a persona that was holding itself together with a white-knuckled grip. Other personas were haunting him, discarded or never worn. Station to Station is my favorite Bowie album on most days, and his live performances of its music are almost painful to watch (while impossible to look away from).

I think, if we ever get this to playtest, I'll probably leave this playbook mostly as is (barring some mechanical tweaks that will be applied to all playbooks maybe) and just see where things go.

The Mask

You understand better than anyone that music is a story, and that performance is a mask well worn. You have created several Masks and stories over the years, and the Masks have recreated you. But as you seek fame and fortune, will the Mask become more real than you ever could be? One day you'll wake up and there won't be anything of you left, just a blank face both empty and signifying nothing.

Your Name

(Choose 1): A completely made up name that is never questioned, an appropriately dramatic name, a single initial that no one pronounces properly, I change my name every few months, a series of letters and numbers that only makes sense to my fans, a name that is as enigmatic as it is beautiful.

Your Look

(Choose 3-4): A painfully sharp and pale business suit with splatters of paint and blood on it, shades that almost no one has ever seen me take off, hair dyed into every imaginable color, the cruelest smile, the kindest eyes, an intoxicating scent, small and delicate tattoos that tell all my secrets, the body language of a predator, an unexpected scar, something else that betrays my mortality and weakness.

Your Role in the Band:

(Choose 1-3): Lead vocalist, lead guitar, muse, song writer, fuck buddy, everybody's ex, the face of the band, I'm here to look pretty baby

Choose the Mask you currently wear, one Mask you discarded, and one Mask that threatens to consume you.

I am an alien from a dying planet and harbinger of an inescapable apocalypse, my music is wild and haunting

I am royalty from a fictional past and deride the love I desperately need, my music is rhythmic and romantic

I am a rebel leader from a dark future and I shall orchestrate a dystopia of our own making, my music is hypnotic and delirious

I am the fae king who grants ill-cast wishes and offers dark bargains, my music is ethereal and manipulative

I am a serial killer who turns willing victims into impossible art pieces, my music is violent and eerie

I am a fallen angel, on the run from divine hunters and mortal lovers and only you can save me, my music is soft and beautiful

I am a broken doll mimicking life, perfect and made to fulfill your every desire, my music is naive and inviting

I am a warrior from another time and place, only you can heal my wounds and recreate my fate, my music is loud and lustful

As The Mask I gain 2-4 tokens when I:

Hide my true feelings behind a Mask

Ask someone to wear one of my Masks, for now

Give a part of myself to a Mask

When you gain your fifth token:

The divine music swells within you and seeks release. You cannot gain new tokens until you choose one:

Go to another band member and take off your Mask, reveal something vulnerable and raw about yourself. If they reach out to touch your real face, they break a chain. If they do anything else, break one of your chains.

Reflect on the god you once where, and create a new Mask to contain that memory. Your power wanes, crack one halo.

The Mask's Chains:

A whisper that comes from my mouth but doesn't sound like me at all

An embrace that promises more than it should

A kiss that comes dangerously close to unmasking me

One of my Masks on someone else's face

A song I wrote that will weaken a single Mask

A Mask I created that takes a life of its own

A Mask someone else creates to imprison me

Someone I love wearing my true face

The Mask's Move:

When you put on one of your Masks to tell its story, describe how you embody it and how you draw others into your spell. Spend tokens and roll.

On an 8-10 You are in control of the Mask, choose one:

A part of your Mask becomes more real than real, create a new Chain that reflects this.

A part of your true self gives way to the Mask, one Halo becomes whole again.

Someone is inexplicably drawn to you, you have them wrapped around your finger, for now. Say who they are and place a chain on them. If they're a band member, they place a chain on you as well.

On an 11+ The Mask begins to consume you, and you cannot tell the difference between art and reality. Choose one:

Another band member must become a part of your story, both of you place a chain on the other. For now, you are obsessed with crafting a Mask for them to match your own.

One of your fans is convinced the Mask is your true self, you cannot outrun them. For the rest of the scene you are at your fan's mercy. Describe how their obsession for you draws out something painful and real from you. When you return in a future scene gain the chain: an obsessed and dangerous fan

On a 7- your sense of self shatters and the Mask bleeds through. Until you regain your sense of self and remember you are not your Mask, you cannot perform. The Audience will tell you what happens next.

At the start of every session:

Spend a moment with your Masks and consider who they are and what story they have to tell. Choose one:

Put down the Mask you're currently wearing and pick up another, why does this one call out to you?

Change something essential about one of your Masks, what part of you refuses to bend or break?

Create a new Mask, based on someone you're obsessed with and yearn for. What does it feel like when you pretend to be them?

[trans-luis-serra-navarro]

HI AGAIN ITS ME HIIII!!

so as you might tell I LOVE to add a song or a lyric or whatever to like all of my art. all of my art usually comes from a song I love or a lyric I love. SO. that led me to asking you what songs make you think of Luis / serrenedy the most or inspire you to make art or fics of Luis / serrenedy.

TYSM SORRY I HAD TO ASK IM JUST OBSESSED WITH ANALYZING CHARACTERS AND SONGS <3

HELLO I AM SO SO SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO GET TO THIS ASK I PROMISE I WASN’T IGNORING IT!! I sat down to make this post and then I remembered that I have an ENTIRE album FILLED with songs that remind me of Luis/Serennedy, and it’d probably be a liiiiiiiittle difficult to name them all obviously, so I nailed it down to my top 15 for each!!! I hope that’s OK!!

Songs under cut!!

Serennedy

1. King Of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1 & In The Aeroplane Over The Sea- Neutral Milk Hotel

2. Treehouse- Alex G

3. First Love/Late Spring- Mitski

4. O Sol E Lua- Pequeno Cidadão

5. Mary On A Cross- Ghost

6. Country Motion Sickness- Mae Valerio

7. Ready Now- Dodie

8. Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow- Freddy Mercury

9. Christmas Kids- R.O.A.R

10. Fernando- ABBA

11. Devil Town- Cavetown

12. My Love Mine All Mine- Mitski

13. Everybody Wants To Rule The World- Tears For Fears

14. Sarah- Alex G

15. No Children- The Mountain Goats

Luis

1. Hotel California- Eagles

2. The Milk Carton- Madilyn Mei

3. Burning Pile- Mother Mother

4. Plastic Jesus- Tia Blake

5. This Year- The Mountain Goats

6. Starman- David Bowie

7. Ramblings Of A Lunatic- Bears In Trees

8. Isle Unto Thyself- Miracle Musical

9. American Pie- Don McLean

9. The Pantaloon- Twenty One Pilots

10. Dragons & Demons- The Herbs

11. Twin Size Mattress- The Front Bottoms

12. Class Of 2013- Mitski

13. Dancing Queen- ABBA

14. Video Killed The Radio Star- The Buggles

15. Saint Bernard- Lincoln

Honorable Leon Mention:

1. Welcome To The Black Parade- My Chemical Romance

2. You’re Gonna Go Far Kid- The Offspring

3. Wasted Summers- JuJu<3

4. It’s Called Freefall- Rainbow Kitten Surprise

5. Vanilla Twilight- Owl City

[birdmitosis]

Fanmix-slash-playlist for Slay the Princess! Song list under the cut. There’s 96 songs on this fanmix/playlist, and it’s about 6 and a half hours long.

Some of the songs were not available on Spotify, and they will be linked to on YouTube below. (Some artists have 2 songs on the playlist; aeseaes, The Crane Wives, and Hozier each have 3 because they were just too perfect. Also, some songs are definitely on here because of other people's fanvids or even just suggestions, and I've made note of and credited all of those!) (All fanmixes/playlists are a perpetual WIP.)

aeseaes - All Things Devour

aeseaes - Semantics

aeseaes - Tongues

AG - Terrible Thing

t h e . a i m s - Violence & Blood

Alanis Morissette - Everything (friend suggestion)

Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra - Trout Heart Replica

Amber Run - I Found

The Amazing Devil - The Horror and the Wild

The Amazing Devil - That Unwanted Animal

Andrew Bird - Imitosis

AURORA - Your Blood

Baby Storme - This City is a Graveyard

Band of Horses - No One's Gonna Love You

Beth Crowley - Monster

Blindside - Withering

Bring Me the Horizon - Deathbeds

Camera Obscura - Fifth in Line to the Throne

Chonny Jash - The Soul Eclectic (inspiration)

City and Colour - Little Hell

Coldplay - The Hardest Part

Coldplay - Square One

Collective Soul - The World I Know

The Crane Wives - Curses

The Crane Wives - Hollow Moon (inspiration)

The Crane Wives - Tongues & Teeth

Crystal Castles - Suffocation (inspiration)

David Bowie - Changes

The Echoing Green - Starling

Electric President - Some Crap About the Future

Elizabeth & the Catapult - Do Not Hang Your Head

Elizabeth & the Catapult - My Goodbye

Ellie Goulding - Salt Skin

Eurielle - Hate Me

The Feeling - Mr Grin

Florence + The Machine - Kiss With a Fist

Florence + The Machine - What the Water Gave Me

Forgive Durden - A Dead Person Breathed on Me!

Foxtails Brigade - Long Route

Foxtails Brigade - Nun but the Lost

Ghost and Pals - DEATHBODY

Ghost and Pals - In Iolite

Hannah Fury - Angels & Absinthe

Howie Day - Collide

Hozier - Francesca

Hozier - In the Woods Somewhere

Hozier - Who We Are

Jack Conte - Kitchen Fork (inspiration)

The Jezabels - Hurt Me

Jhariah - Flight of the Crows

Kate Nash - Paris

Kiltro - Softy

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Magenta Mountain

lasah - taixu (inspiration)

Lisa Hannigan - Oh Undone

Little Dragon - Twice

The Lord Dog Bird - The Shedding Path

Ludo - The Horror of Our Love

Madilyn Mei - Knotted Constellations

MGMT - Little Dark Age

Michelle Branch - Everywhere

Mili (feat. KIHOW) - In Hell We Live, Lament

Mirah - You've Gone Away Enough

The Mountain Goats - No Children (inspiration)

The Mountain Goats - Sudden Oak Death

Mr.Kitty - After Dark

múm - Prophecies & Reversed Memories

The Nor'easters - 715 — CRΣΣKS (inspiration)

Olivier Bibeau - Better Run, Better Hide

Passion Pit - Seaweed Song

PEGGY - Villains Aren't Born (They're Made)

Perfectly Human - Bad As

Perfectly Human - Fly Again

Racoon - Took a Hit

Reinaeiry - When the Sun Loves the Moon

Ricky Montgomery - This December

RIProducer - Fruiting Bodies

RIProducer - What Gave It Away?

Sarah Blasko - Bird on a Wire

Satin Puppets - Bad Moon Rising

Seeming - Someday Lily

Sharon Van Etten - It's Not Like

Shayfer James - Boots Worn Through (inspiration)

Sleeping At Last - Mind

Sleeping At Last - Taste

SNAKE POOL - FIGURE IN THE BACKGROUND (inspiration)

Snow Patrol - Open Your Eyes

Solas Composer - He Who Devoured the Dark II

Southwest Statistic - Fairy Tale (friend suggestion)

Stars - He Dreams He's Awake

Subsignal - The Bells of Lyonesse (inspiration)

Sunset Rubdown - For the Pier (and Dead Shimmering)

Talking Heads - And She Was

Trespassers William - I Know

TV on the Radio - Stork & Owl

Woodkid - Ghost Lights

[asmodeus-snoof]

Kin-g Dedede!

a playlist by Dee!

[ spotify link | youtube link ]

seeing that there didn't seem to be a lot of dedede themed playlists around, and inspired by my own post, I decided to share a personal playlist based on the great king!

I hope you enjoy it!

[more info and tracklist under the cut]

personally, I would recommend listening to the youtube version of the playlist, as the spotify version doesn't have all the songs available.

[tracklist!]

1. Kin Related Songs!

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out — The Smiths

Saturn — Sleeping At Last

Home — Josef Salvat

Honeydew — Leather Tramp

Lost With You — Patrick Watson

High — Young Rising Sons

Choice — Jack Stauber

Tired — Skott

Bend & Break — Keane

Achilles Come Down — Gang of Youths *

Hey Lover — The Daughters of Eve

Icarus — Bastille

Fractions — Juniper Vale

Is It You — Crush 40

Sólo Soy Una Persona — Mecano

Freaks — Surf Curse

The Killing Moon — Echo & The Bunnymen

:) — Policías y Ladrones

Hot Rod — Dayglow

2. Dedede Songs!

| Spring Breeze |

Roar of Dedede — Hirokazu Ando, Jun Ishikawa

The Tradition — Halsey

Are You Satisfied? — MARINA

Bad Reputation — Joan Jett & The Blackhearts

Primadonna — MARINA

Emperor's New Clothes — My Chemical Romance

Oh No! — MARINA

Run The World!!! — Dayglow

Boys Will Be Bugs — Cavetown

King Dedede Theme — Jun Ishikawa

Nobody — Besomorph

Mr. Fear — SIAMÉS

Stop and Stare — OneRepublic

Everybody Hurts — R.E.M.

Gold — Imagine Dragons

|| The Fountain Of Dreams ||

Gourmet Race — Jun Ishikawa

Midas — Skott

Who Can It Be Now? — Men At Work

Masked Dedede Theme — Jun Ishikawa, Hirokazu Ando

Choice — Jack Stauber

Inner Demons — Julia Brennan

Nowhere Man — The Beatles

No Rain — Blind Melon

Staying Up — The Neighborhood

The King and the Sun — Jun Ishikawa, Hirokazu Ando

Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want This Time — The Smiths

False Direction — Dayglow

Baby Hotline — Jack Stauber

Arsonist's Lullaby — Hozier

Home — Cavetown

Ship in a Bottle — fin

Back to The Cave — Colonel Suns

Viva La Vida — Coldplay

Neon Brother — Nothing But Thieves

M Bosque — Porter

In The Shadows — The Rasmus

Ya No Sé Quién Soy — Alejandro Lerner

Afraid — The Neighborhood

Blow Away — BAECHIGI

King Dedede & Meta Knight Theme — Tokyo Philarmonic Orchestra

||| The Crystal Shards |||

Love Like You — Rebecca Sugar

Everybody's Changing — Keane

Glittering Full Course For the King — Jun Ishikawa

Free As A Bird — The Beatles

Icarus — Emma Blackery

Wake Up Call — Nothing But Thieves

Home — Vince Staples

Dancing in the Dark — Bruce Springsteen

Light — Sleeping At Last

Blackbird — The Beatles

The Author — Roosberg

All Right — Christopher Cross

Jupiter — Sleeping At Last

The Sea — Haevn

|||| Returning to Dreamland ||||

With Four Buddies: Cookie Country — Jun Ishikawa, Hirokazu Ando

Starman — David Bowie

Burnin' For You — Blue Öyster Club

King Of Everything — Dominic Fike

Brothers — SIAMÉS

Here Comes a Thought — Estelle

King — Lauren Aquilina

Have You Ever Seen The Rain — Creedence Clearwater Revival

Ready Now — Dodie

Turnaround — Camille

Dreams — The Cranberries

Constellations — The Oh Hellos

Clash! Mid-Boss Tower — Jun Ishikawa

Hold on Hope — Dan Gautreau

Stars In The Sky — Kid Cudi

Outsider — Eve

Warriors — Imagine Dragons

Glitter and Gold — Barns Courtney

Peace Of Mind — Boston

Underground — SIAMÉS

KING — Kanaria

Heroes — David Bowie

Return to Dreamland — Jun Ishikawa, Hirokazu Ando

Bonus Track: Four Buddies and the Wayfarer — Jun Ishikawa, Hirokazu Ando

3. Ship Songs!

Arthur's Theme — Christopher Cross

Deeper Conversations — Yuna

Head Over Heels — Tears For Fears

Here We Go — Punch Drunk Love

Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't Have) — Buzzcocks

I Threw Glass At My Friend's Eyes And Now I'm On Probation — Destroy Boys

Dangerous — Big Data

Stalker's Tango — Autoheart

Lost Stars — Adam Levine

Clocks — Coldplay

Starlight — ALMA

Sunflower — Post Malone

Lovesong — The Cure

Is This Love? — Survivor

Bad Blood — Bastille

Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) — Journey

Boats & Birds — Gregory and The Hawk

Precious — Depeche Mode

Dear Friend — Dayglow

I Love the Stars — The Orion Experience

Always On My Mind — Pet Shop Boys

All The Love In The World — The Outfield

Stray Italian Greyhound — Vienna Teng

Beggin' — Madcon

Creep — Radiohead

Lights Off — Ace Of Hearts

The Promise — When in Rome

Barracuda — Heart

Sweet Tooth — Cavetown

Sweater Weather — The Neighborhood

Meteor Shower — Cavetown

Je te laisserai des mots — Patrick Watson

Ángel — Elefante

Summerlove — David Tavaré

Do I Wanna Know? — Arctic Monkeys

Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy — Queen

Everlong — Foo Fighters

Animal — Def Leppard

Sweet Boi — Chevy

Homesick — Cavetown

On Melancholy Hill — Gorillaz

King Dedede — Jazztick

* trigger warning!: "achilles come down" deals with heavy and possibly triggering subjects such as intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideas, so if you're sensitive to those topics I would advise for you to skip this specific song.

[charliedawn]

Question for slashers: What is your fav movie and song

Question for autor: How are you feeling today, my dear? Also, what country are you from?

Kevin : "We like to watch superhero movies. At first, it was only Hedwig, but we all grew to enjoy them. All of us have a favorite. Mine is Superman, Dennis is Batman, Patricia is Wonder Woman and Hedwig is Spiderman to count a few.."

Pennywise : "Since when I was alive there was no TV or real music ? I guess I don't have a favorite anything."

Penny : "I like all kinds of music ! As long as it is catchy and you can dance on it. As for my favorite movie ? Easy. The nurses made me watch something called.."Tim Burton"..I liked all of them."

Arthur : "I've always been a fan of theater..especially musicals. I remember when I first saw the Phantom of the Opera and it brought me such inspiration..The music, the stage, the costumes..I knew then and there that I wanted to be on a stage. Of course, I wanted to make people laugh and happy, so I decided to become a comedian. But, looking back ? It was the emotions I felt in front of that play that started it all.."

Freddy : "One song ? Impossible..There have been too many legends during my life span: Kiss, Queen, David Bowie, Michael Jackson..So many..Yup. But, if you really wanna know ? In the female category: It's Raining Men by The Weather Girl is the best. I remember listening to that every night. Catchy as hell ! Those women could f*cking sing and don't get me started on Gloria Gaynor. WOUHOU ! What a woman ! The 1900s was the music era and this is why music is in my blood !" *starts dancing to I Will Survive*

Michael : "Well..I did love Star Wars when I was little. It was one of the first movies that I watched and I remember begging my father to bring me back 3 to 5 times to watch it all over again."

Norman : "Frank Sinatra or Ray Charles ? I used to listen to them on the radio all the time. Their voices were extraordinary and I even got to meet them. I got their autographs and I remember being so proud when I got home to show them to my mother."

Jason *answers you in sign language* : "Me ? I'm not really into either..I didn't have a TV and never really listened to music."

Freddy *stands in the background and shouts* : "ABBA SUCKS !"

Jason *takes up his axe and chases after Freddy*

Five : "Classical music will always beat all the rest for me. Beethoven was not called a genius for nothing."

Brahms *smiles* : "I like cartoons..But, my favorite movies are Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda and How to Train your Dragon. I just love them. I can't explain it.."

Author : "Hi there. I'm feeling good. Thank you for asking, dear. Also, I have decided to pick music or movies for the slashers since I've got no idea what the answer is for some of them. I hope you still like it ? And I'm French. 😉"

[beatgod]

WHO  ARE  YOU ??

NAME:   jaqi! STAR SIGN:   aries! HEIGHT:   5′ 3″ and violent MIDDLE NAME?   you’re not gettin’ my ass PUT YOUR SPOTIFY ON SHUFFLE. FIRST 6 SONGS? ❥   head to toe ... lisa lisa & cult jam ❥   peaches ... the presidents of the united states of america ❥   e-pro ... beck ❥   one punch ... aries ❥   as the world falls down ... david bowie ❥   inspire the liars ... dance gavin dance

EVER HAD A POEM / SONG WRITTEN ABOUT YOU?   yes! three! to my knowledge at this point! one was a little poem assignment in middle school and my best friend at the time wrote a silly poem about me and turtles and anime, i still have it with me to this day! and the other two i’m aware of are in my dearest friend’s published collection! he has other works, too! please buy them! WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU PLAYED AIR GUITAR?   never! i actually do pantomime the cello now and again in my car though! WHO IS YOUR CELEBRITY CRUSH?   mary elizabeth winstead! WHAT’S A SOUND YOU HATE & A SOUND YOU LOVE?   absolutely hate a lot of sounds! i do love the sound of my friends and my mother’s laugh! DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS?   regrettably yes because i am such a big fucking baby... HOW ABOUT ALIENS?   oh fuck yeah. DO YOU DRIVE?   yes IF SO, HAVE YOU EVER CRASHED?   no! and i won’t! WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ?   the silver chair by c.s. lewis of the chronicles of narnia! i’m rereading the series again for the millionth time! DO YOU LIKE THE SMELL OF GASOLINE?   hm. WHAT WAS THE LAST MOVIE YOU SAW?   turning red! the batman! both on the same day saturday! WHAT’S THE WORST INJURY YOU’VE EVER HAD?   too many thank you DO YOU HAVE ANY OBSESSIONS RIGHT NOW?   dandadan! and my usual hyperfixations: labyrinth, blood+, the future trunks saga in dragon ball: super. DO YOU TEND TO HOLD GRUDGES?   yes! even after i forget! i wish i didn’t! IN A RELATIONSHIP?   YES! we are engaged and to be married may 2023! we’ve been together almost 6 years now! he actually wrote for trunks when i picked up mai over at @buster-cannon​! he gave it a shot for me because he knew rp is a hobby i adore and it made me cry that he’d even attempt, it meant the world to me!

stolen from:   @viopolis  i had so much fun reading yours! tagging:   @aisight (to any of ur blogs if u wan’a do this too!),   @cakotopia​,   @nostomannia​,   @victoryclaimed​,   @falxsaint​,   @tidesborn​,   @featherchan​,   @crossingredqueensrealm​,   @cpirits​,   @henkou​,   @ YOU!!

[jasmine-tea-latte]

I’m going to be completely self-indulgent and promote myself a little during Self-Love Saturday for @zkfanworkweek​ (Zutara Fanworks Appreciation Week).

(Click here to see my earlier post about my favorite Zutara fics as well)

As I’ve said before elsewhere, I discovered ATLA shortly after it premiered in 2005, back when I was in high school. I enjoyed the show on occasion, but it wasn’t until Fall 2006 that I rediscovered it and got bit by the Zutara bug hard.

I still remember spending hours browsing and saving my favorite fanarts on DeviantArt and chatting with fellow fans and shippers on the Distant Horizon forums (side note - rereading some of my old posts on there is a total cringefest. Ugh.)

I stepped away a year or so after the show ended and dived into other OTPs and fandoms. Then earlier this year, I decided to return to the Avatar fandom once more and created this side blog so I could post all the Zutara/ATLA stuff to my heart’s content.

Anyways, I’ve enjoyed reading so many wonderful fics over the years, and I’m being serious when I say that I still have certain lines and scenes from some of them memorized.

Yet until this year, I had never sat down to write any fanfiction of my own but then, everything changed when the pandemic attacked.

Since I live in a big city and was under self-imposed quarantine (my husband is a non-medical essential worker, I get to work from home), I suddenly found myself with a LOT of free time, all alone save for Zoom calls and Facetimes with family and friends. So, after hyper-fixating and rewatching one of my favorite shows, I decided there was no better time to try my hand at something I’ve always wanted to do.  

And so, my series The Phoenix and the Dragon was born, based on the Zutara Week 2020 prompts. It all started when I thought up an idea for the prompt “Celestial” and sat down to write a one-shot where the Gaang teaches Zuko how to dance in the days leading up to the comet, and he ends up dancing with Katara under the starlight and moonlight.

Once I finished that (and split it into chapters for my own sanity), I realized I needed to know what happened next. So I plotted out the remainder of the series, one fic that corresponded with each prompt, and the rest is history.

Want lots of fluff, a dose of the occasional angst, and tons of symbolism and callbacks/foreshadowing/all those other literary tropes? That’s what you get with The Phoenix and the Dragon.

(Side note - if anyone were to animate or draw either of the sun shower scenes from this series, you would make my YEAR, and I would tearbend over you forever.)

Since Zutara Week ended a few months ago, I’ve added several extra entries to the series, including a fic that explores things from Mai’s POV and her own personal journey to find happiness.

~*~*~

I’ve also written a handful of one-shots and am finishing up on a 3-part series as well.

My one-shots (all are rated M, so minors beware):

Snuffed Out

This is what happens when I decide to dive into angst. I’ve actually been called a monster for this one, and frankly, I’m quite proud of that. The opening and ending scenes were inspired by Metallica’s “One” and the rest by Slipknot’s “Snuff” - hence the title. Fair warning that it gets dark.

Just For One Day

A return to fluff and happiness - an AU of sorts inspired by David Bowie’s “Heroes.”

Because these lines now forever make me think of the Last Agni Kai, and I get all in my feelings listening to this song now:

“I, I will be king / And you, you will be queen /  Though nothing will keep us together / We could steal time, just for one day /  We could be heroes, just for one day...”

Sweeter Than Honey, Stronger Than Whiskey

A self-indulgent modern AU Blutara fic entirely inspired by a dream I had while sleeping off the crud, under the influence of decongestant medicine.

AKA, the Blue Spirit actually saves the Painted Lady from the pirates.

~*~*~

It sounds crazy, but diving into writing this series, as well as my other fanfics, has truly helped keep me sane during this difficult year. It’s become my own personal little slice of happiness, and I’m so thankful to each and every one of you who has left a comment or Kudos or expressed their love for my work.

Seriously, you guys mean the world. Love you all, fellow Zutarians.

[aion-rsa]

15 Worst NES Games of All-Time

https://ift.tt/3y1xEdG

The worst NES games of all time are a truly special breed of bad video games. Say what you will about the downsides of the modern video game industry (and there is certainly a lot to say), but there is, in most cases, a baseline standard of quality ensured by better, cheaper technology, experience, and more controlled distribution channels. You may get the occasional indie game that is basically a scam, but when it comes to major releases…well, even Cyberpunk 2077 was pretty good in a lot of ways.

That wasn’t the case during the NES era. At a time when console gaming was basically the digital wild west, it was incredibly difficult to tell good games from bad ones, and developers often exploited that fact to get us to buy titles that refuse to leave the deepest, darkest parts of our nostalgia all these years later.

That’s the thing about these games. Are they among the worst NES titles ever? Absolutely, but years later, there’s something about remembering the pain of playing them and sharing those memories with others that is strangely enjoyable. 

15. Tag Team Wrestling

Even with all of the other bad wrestling games for the NES (and there were many), Tag Team Wrestling manages to stand apart largely by virtue of being fundamentally unplayable in nearly every way you can imagine.

In a dream world where you manage to overcome this game’s all-time bad animations and unresponsive controls, you still have to deal with the fact that there are times when the opponent A.I. difficulty is raised to such a degree that it becomes quite literally impossible to win. If it weren’t for the fact that this game eventually inspired Homestar Runner’s Strong Bad character, it would be entirely worthless.

14. Friday the 13th

There are some who will credit Friday the 13th for being unique and ambitious. We shall not speak their name in this house of truth where we recognize that the Friday the 13th franchise was never scarier than the moment you tried to play this game as a child.

This game’s bewildering map and unforgivable controls were practically designed to eliminate the possibility of fun. It’s easy to love Jason’s weirdly stylish purple jumpsuit in this 8-bit nightmare, but much like Patrick Bateman, no amount of style can hide the monster beneath.

13. Super Pitfall

There’s no shortage of NES games that are difficult to the point of being fundamentally unenjoyable, but Super Pitfall may just be the king of that particular trash heap.

Super Pitfall‘s developers seemed to believe that the reason people love video games is that they offer the chance to listen to repetitive music while dying all the time to obstacles you have little to no chance to avoid. Just in case that level of abuse wasn’t enough to make you love their project, the developers decided to just go ahead and fill their game with essentially invisible items that no sane person would ever find organically despite the fact that they’re required to progress. To it’s credit, this game does recreate the sensation of being trapped in a dank underground cave.

12. Operation Secret Storm

While it almost feels too easy to pick on developer Color Dreams (the studio responsible for many terrible unlicensed NES games, many of which were based on the Bible), Operation Secret Storm is really on another level in terms of all-time bad games.

Even if we can put aside the often blatant racism and bizarre Gulf War storyline, we’re left with a game where control commands are more of a polite suggestion and hit detection is a bug, not a feature. From top-to-bottom, this may be the “best” example of just how bad those old-school unlicensed NES games could be.

11. Where’s Waldo?

You know, it’s pretty amazing that Where’s Waldo? the video game can’t offer an experience comparable to the Where’s Waldo? books considering that the books weren’t exactly the great American novels.

Beating this game will either take you five minutes or 50 years. It really all depends on your ability to determine which of the blurred on-screen figures the game is trying to pretend is supposed to be Waldo. It’s truly impressive that this game manages to botch a concept this simple, but that’s the magic of the NES era. 

10. Back to the Future Part II and III

The first Back to the Future game for NES was bad, but at least it followed basic video game logic in terms of its level structure. Back to the Future Part II and III, meanwhile, somehow beats Primer for the title of “most confusing use of time travel in entertainment history.”

To be honest, I still don’t know what this game expects from me. It’s supposed to offer a time travel adventure that spans the scope of the last two Back to the Future films, but I dare you to play this for more than 20 minutes without feeling tears in your eyes and the words “What do you want me to do?!?!” escape your lungs. If it’s not the most unintuitive bit of 8-bit game design, it’s certainly one of the most unenjoyable.

9. The Adventures Of Gilligan’s Island

There are two things worth remembering about Gilligan’s Island: the theme song and how annoying Gilligan was. To its credit, this game nails both of those elements.

This game is basically the result of escort quests and bad comedy games forming an unholy union. Imagine being dropped into a hedge maze and being forced to endure the constant jeers of the dumbest man you’ve ever met while trying to figure out where to go. Also, your legs are tied together. That’s basically the Adventures of Gilligan’s Island experience. 

8. Bad Street Brawler

It’s tempting to overlook the golden age of beat ‘em ups for their seeming simplicity, but as Bad Street Brawler shows, it’s very much possible for those kinds of games to go incredibly wrong.

Bad Street Brawler was designed to be used with the NES Power Glove, which should probably tell you everything that you really need to know about what it’s like to try to “play” this game. Manage to master its nearly unplayable controls, and you’re left with a beat ’em up with bewildering visuals and fundamentally unsatisfying gameplay that leave you wondering how the industry lasted this long.

Read more

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7. Mario is Missing

Look, there are a lot of bad video games on the NES, but there’s something especially insulting about a terrible Mario game on NES that passes itself off as an educational experience.

This game feels like it was made by a dentist who wanted to give young patients a way to pass the time in the waiting room while also making them less afraid of the impending pain. Nothing in this game makes sense, and the fact it fooled young gamers into thinking it was an actual Mario game makes it that much more infuriating.

6. Ghostbusters

You know, it really shouldn’t have been that difficult to make a respectable Ghostbusters game. Honestly, the only way to go wrong is to pass up the more obvious genre opportunities and try to do something weird and stupid that nobody ever asked for.

As you probably guessed, that’s exactly what we have here. Ghostbusters has the audacity to try to be this strange combination of various gameplay concepts when the fundamentals of controls, visuals, and logical progression so clearly elude it. It’s genuinely hard to believe someone had the chance to make a Ghostbusters video game and came up with this.

5. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

There are some who say that you really need to learn to play this game before you can judge it. The fundamental flaw of that premise is that it assumes that there’s a game here that’s worth playing in the first place.

I genuinely can’t imagine what Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s developers were going for when they concocted this unintuitive blend of confusing mechanics, overwhelming (yet unimpressive) enemies, and controls that only seem to work seconds before you convince yourself to give up on the game entirely. You can read every guide about this game that’s ever been written to try to understand how its needlessly complicated mechanics work, and they still wouldn’t answer the one question everyone has about this title, “Why are you like this?”

4. Action 52

It almost feels bad to pick on Action 52 considering that it is an unlicensed collection of 52 small games that were clearly made by underfunded and inexperienced programmers working on a project that legally probably shouldn’t have been “released.” Then again, that’s perhaps all the more reason to make fun of it.

Against all odds, not one of Action 52’s 52 games manages to be even remotely playable. These games would have been embarrassing even if they were released for the Atari 2600, but in the age of the NES, they offered young gamers the chance to quickly realize that the world is full of scammers and they will try anything to part you with your money.

3. Deadly Towers

Every NES gamer has that one game they just couldn’t beat and never seemed to understand no matter how hard they tried. Well, Deadly Towers is all of those games of your respective childhoods rolled into one.

There is not a single aspect of this game that makes any kind of sense that I’m familiar with. Imagine you’re trapped in the maze from the movie Labyrinth, but instead of getting to meet sexy David Bowie at the end, you have to listen to Eric Clapton tell you what’s wrong with your generation. That’s about what’s it like to play Deadly Towers. Even if you bother to learn the game’s structure, you quickly find you don’t want anything to do with the “rewards” that follow. 

2. Dragon’s Lair

How do you take a game like Dragon’s Lair (an innovative arcade experience that combined FMV visuals with QTE gameplay) and port it to the humble NES? Well, if this port is any indication, you…don’t.

I don’t know if there’s ever been another game that inflicts so much pain on its first screen. I’m willing to bet that 90% of Dragon’s Lair players never figured out how to cross that first bridge and actually enter the castle. That’s probably because the solution to that “puzzle”makes no sense and is fundamentally unenjoyable to execute. Those 90% will be happy to know that the game only gets worse from there. 

1. The Uncanny X-Men

Imagine how easy it would have been to make a decent X-Men game for NES. Just take Batman, Mega Man, Castlevania, or any number of the other great NES games, throw some X-Men designs on the whole thing, and you have a game most of us would probably fondly remember to this day.

Infamous NES developer LJN decided to go a different route, though. They decided to make a top-down action game where hit detection is basically non-existent, the music constantly assaults your ears, half of the characters are essentially useless, the graphics are so bad that you quite literally can’t tell where you are or what you’re supposed to be doing, and the AI is useless to the point that I”m pretty sure the in-game characters have become aware of the game they’re forced to exist in and are doing everything in their power to get out.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

There’s no shortage of bad NES games (clearly), but when it comes to wasted potential, this is truly the worst of the worst. 

The post 15 Worst NES Games of All-Time appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[tearsofahime]

Anyways buckle down folks this has been sitting in my head ever since I started seeing spoilers about the identities of the zodiac heroes that have been revealed in Season 3

Click below on why I think Marc Anciel will get a miraculous in season 4/5 and what I will predict it will be (Spoilers for everything up to Party Crasher and Ikari Gozen):

The first and obvious piece of evidence that would lend some form of credibility to this theory is based off of the number of confirmed (and shown) miraculouses in the show vs the number of eligible users. As of season 3, we know that there are 19 miraculouses in Paris: The Ladybug and Black Cat, The 2nd-tier Miraculouses (Bee, Fox, and Turtle as well as the Butterfly and Peacock), and the 12 Zodiac miraculouses (Rat, Ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig). Take away 2 of them (the Butterfly and Peacock as they go to Gabriel and Nathalie) and you are left with 17 miraculouses that can be given to new heroes.

As we have seen from past episodes, Ladybug tends to appoint new heroes based off of who she is close with and can trust as well as who is best fit for the task at hand. So far, the people Ladybug has appointed as heroes have all been Marinette’s friends (or her peers), and given that this is also a kid’s show designed to cater to and be relatable to kids, it would stand to reason that ALL of the new heroes would be around Marinette’s age. In addition, in “Timetagger”, Older!Alix also talks about there being a TEAM of superheroes in the future, which presents plenty of opportunity to explore the lore of the show through each Kwami and their powers and what better way to do that then to add new superheroes to the Miraculous team (plus it would be a waste to see some miraculouses be used but not all of them over the course of the show, even if some light is shed on past heroes in history).

Back to the math: There are 17 miraculouses, and 15 members of Madame Bustier’s class (including Lila), plus recurring students like Luka, Kagami, and Marc, totalling to 18 candidates for kwamis. As “Ikari Gozen” and “Party Crasher” confirmed, Kagami and Luka both get Miraculouses, leaving 15 to be distributed amongst Marinette’s peers and classmates. The Cat, Ladybug, Fox, Turtle, and Bee miraculouses were all accounted for with Adrien, Marinette, Alya, Nino and Chloe, leaving a total of ten left. Alix, Kim and Max were confirmed to be Zodiac heroes of the Rabbit, Monkey, and Horse, respectively. This leaves 7 miraculouses remaining, and 8 potential candidates.

Now this is where the theory and predictions of who will get what remaining miraculouses occurs.

If you go off of the popular fan theory that the girls of the class will each get a miraculous (Which many had used to predict Alya and Alix’s miraculous holder statuses so would hold more weight as a basis for a theory), the remaining girls in the photo, Juleka, Mylene and Rose, will each respectively get the Tiger, Rat, and Pig miraculouses. I know it’s confirmed through reference image leaks posted by Jeremy Zag that Marinette will be a temporary wielder of the Rat miraculous, but that is just that: Temporary. Marinette is Primarily the Ladybug holder and as such if given the chance (which is certain there will be), she will gladly give it to someone else who can use it to assist her in saving the day.

Many a Fan theorist will also suggest that Sabrina, due to her immense personality trait of her loyalty to Chloe, will be a shoe-in for the Dog Miraculous.

This now just leaves Ivan, Nathaniel, Lila, and Marc and the Ox, Rooster, and Goat miraculouses to be distributed amongst them.

As stated earlier, we’ve seen that Ladybug appoints new heroes based off of people she knows she can trust from her civilian life (with the exceptions of Queen Bee, which was an accident but one that served to better Chloe, and Kim, who Master Fu himself appointed, although I’m sure had he not given Kim a miraculous then Marinette would have anyway). With the matter of trust, we can ABSOLUTELY rule out Lila based on the virtue of her being a liar hell-bent on ruining Marinette’s life (As well as how the show seems to hint/imply her being a future villain from the end of “Timetagger” and from Lila allying herself with Gabriel which means from a plot standpoint, her being willingly given even one of the “Lesser miraculouses” like a zodiac one will be unlikely).

With Lila out of the way, that leaves an equal kwami-to-remaining-friend ratio. If one goes off of physical appearances and traits, Ivan with his size and strength would be a shoo-in for the Ox, and Nathaniel with his bright red hair and fiesty-if-you-anger-him temperament could work well with the Rooster (who could also help him learn to open up and be less shy).

That leaves Marc with the goat.

“Why Marc? Why not another recurring teenager like Aurore or Wayhem as an alternative candidate to Lila?”

It’s doubtful that Marinette even KNOWS Wayhem personally outside of being Adrien’s fanboy, and we’ve hardly seen Aurore on-screen except to have Stormy Weather be a plot vehicle for the intro episode and a recap episode, and we hve yet to see Marinette and Aurore interact in a way that would suggest that they’re actually FRIENDS and not just mere acquaintances.

MARC on the other hand, has been established in the show as being a friend of Marinette’s (as seen in “Reverser” with Marinette already showing her familiarity with him), and is also the one character outside of Madame Bustier’s class that is seen frequently hanging out with the rest of the ensemble class (as seen as being invited to the Heroes Day Picnic in “Mayura”, getting invited to test play Max’s new video game, and getting invited to Adrien’s boy’s-only party (that had initially just been amongst Adrien’s school friends).  

With Marinette already being familiar enough to Marc to be friends with him and him being close enough to Nathaniel and the rest of the class to be invited to hang out with them relatively frequently, it is ABSOLUTELY plausible that Marinette would consider him to be trustworthy and enough of a team player to give him a miraculous.

“Why the Goat though?”

Marc getting the Goat miraculous would be fitting for many reasons. One of the most obvious would be the similarities in color schemes and patterns between Marc’s Reverser form and Ziggy (the goat kwami).

This would not be the first time that a Kwami-Holder match-up would make a callback to the holder’s past akumatization: Alix’s time travel powers as Timebreaker ended up being similar to her powers as Bunnyx, and other Kwamis like the snake, fox, and bee kwamis all design-wise had at least SOME similarity to their holders in terms of physical appearances/character designs.

Another reason, appearances aside, that a goat would be suitable for Marc is that his personality would be suitable to be matched with a goat. Goats/sheep are popularly characterized as skittish, anxious, and overall kind of shy, which are all personality traits that can be used to describe Marc. Some kwamis match their users in terms of similarity of personality, others are opposites that complement their holder’s personalities. Either way, one would agree that a goat would be very fitting personality for Marc. There is also the fact that Hope Morphin (a friend of Thomas Astruc and who was the inspiration for marc) also said on her twitter (I couldn’t find the tweet at the moment) that Marc’s favorite animal is the sheep/goat. Make of that what you will, as she could just be banking on a popular theory.

Speaking of Hope, the creators of the show, through various tweets have confirmed Marc is LGBT, and given that Marc was based on Hope, who identifies as genderfluid and bi.

That, along with Marc’s comparatively more “feminine” features (like his painted nails, his visible eyelashes and his pink-tinted lips which suggests he wears lip gloss), lends to lots of fans and show creators referring to him as “androgynous”.

Why bring up Marc’s androgyny as a point? Good question. Consider Ziggy the Kwami. Thomas Astruc confirmed in a tweet that Ziggy was named after David Bowie’s stage persona, Ziggy Stardust.

David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” alter ego was FAMOUSLY known for his androgyny.

Now back to Ziggy the kwami. Another interesting feature design-wise about the goat kwami is her seemingly “feminine” features like her long eyelashes (just like a certain androgynous writer). The goat kwami, though genderless like all other kwamis, does prefer female pronouns according to the wiki. However, just because Ziggy uses feminine pronouns doesn’t automatically mean that it rules out that Marc won’t get the goat simply because he doesn’t match the “gender” of the kwami, as although most of the male miraculous holders have been given kwamis with preferred masculine pronouns, female holders like Ryukko and Rena Rouge have kwamis that use masculine pronouns. Given Marc’s androgynous design and behaviors, it wouldn’t be out of the question for him to have Ziggy as his kwami at all, On the contrary, it would be a PERFECT fit from a symbolic standpoint (and let’s face it, writers, ESPECIALLY showwriters like the miraculous ladybug team, LOVE their symbolism).

“I don’t think Marc should get a Miraculous. He’s hardly there in the story.”

We’re all entitled to our opinions and I respect yours as long as it doesn’t step on mine. Personally, I think giving characters a day in the limelight as a newly-appointed hero provides for LOTS of character-development, which is something that admittedly, most of the miracuclass could benefit from having more of. Even so, the show was confirmed for their fourth and fifth seasons, which leave plenty of episodes for which less frequently-seen-but-still-relevant-enough characters like Marc (and let’s face it, Nathaniel too) could get more episodes focusing on them. And if not, they’re still considered very good enough friends of Marinette’s and valuable and cherished members of the Miracuclass to still be considered in the running to be Zodiac heroes, especially over other characters that have even LESS story presence like Wayhem or Aurore.

[youdonthavetobe]

Self-Care Activities Part 3: Singing

I know. Not everyone has a voice that they’re really proud of. I myself sound like a dying seagull when I sing, but I still do it.

It helped when I was able to acknowledge that my voice did not sound very good to other people. I would never be that one person with a golden voice and an inspiring musical journey.

But I also realized that I wasn’t singing for anyone else. I was singing for myself. It didn’t matter what I sounded like. It mattered how I felt.

And singing is a good way to release some negative energy in a positive way.

So, here’s a list of songs to sing along to when no one’s looking:

1. Whatever it Takes by Imagine Dragons

If you haven’t heard this song, go listen to it right now. There’s something about the intense energy of this song that is so uplifting. It’s perfect to sing with, and it makes me feel so powerful.

2. Emperor’s New Clothes by Panic! at the Disco

Yes, the music video is really weird and kind of disturbing, but the song is catchy as hell. You will probably get this tune stuck in your head, and if no one else is around, feel free to scream the lyrics out loud.

3. High Hopes by Panic! at the Disco

Another Panic! at the Disco song? Absolutely. The lyrics may seem a bit repetitive, but listening to this song before work almost always makes me feel more ready for the day.

4. Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie

Really, any Queen song is almost guaranteed to boost your mood, but I remember this one specifically because it was in my favorite trailer for Bohemian Rhapsody.

5. Nothing Like Starting Over by Hunter Hayes

This song is more of a relaxing song, but I love to sing along to it. To me, there’s something so appealing about starting fresh.

[loysurana]

I got tagged by @illegalizards to do these questions.

1. 3 songs that best rep you as a whole: Grey Warden from Dragon Age Inquisition, Rainbow Connection by Kermit, Creature of the Night by Lacy Rose

2. 3 songs that describe how you act in the face of challenges: Save Me by Queen, Great Pretender by Freddie Mercury, and Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie

3. Describe your type of fashion: Either goth cowboy or formal child

4. Aspirations/goals in life? Or just general direction? I’ve always wanted to be a video game designer although at the moment I’m kinda questioning whether that’s actually what I want to do. If not that, I’d like to be able to be financially well off so that I’m able to help my friends and strangers while also having a nice house for myself, my girlfriend, and my best friend.

5. Some things you wish your friends could do better/improve about themselves. My friends are already fantastic people and I probably wouldn’t change a thing.

6. Biggest regret in life? Not training myself to be more disciplined

7. Favorite type of weapon(s)? Crossbows for sure, Bows, Daggers, Maces, and Swords large and small

8. Weirdest way you’ve made an OC/weirdest inspiration for an OC: I misspelled Clone as Clon once and ran with it.

9. If magic was similar in mechanics to video games, what type of spells would you study? (Illusion? Telekinesis? Fire/earth/water/air/void/electric etc? etc etc) Conjuration magic for sure so that I can have minions help me do stuff

10. Assuming you had money/time/etc, what hobby would you pick up/classes you would take? I’d love to play more D&D and I’d love to study robotics a bit more

11. 1 - 3 song you would consider your boss battle music. I can’t decide by the scissor sisters or Princes of the Universe by Queen

12. Something you’ll never tire of learning about? Sea life and fantasy creatures

I’m lazy so I’ll ask @cartoon @ch4lk34t3r to do these same questions plus, who is your favorite character at the moment?

[haleths]

BIG hugs to @sindar-princeling​ for tagging me in this! Your questions were really fun to answer, thank you! ♡ ♡ ♡ 

RULES: Answer 11 questions and give 11 of your own!

1. Favourite fictional universe? Middle Earth of course!! 2. Fictional role model? Elizabeth Bennet from Pride & Prejudice. Honestly she takes no shit from anyone and is such a badass, she’s everything I want to be. 3. Real-life role model? I’m inspired by particular elements of a lot of my friends. Whether that’s self-confidence or courage or enthusiasm or honesty. I know some pretty awesome people and I hope that rubs off on me! 4. Favourite foreign language? Italian maybe? 5. First Tumblr blog you followed? Probably the friend who first introduced me to the site 6. A magical creature you’d love to have as a pet? DRAGON OMG I WANT ONE 7. Do you sing a lot when you’re home alone? If I’m in a good mood then yes! 8. First movie you’ve ever watched in a cinema? The earliest one I can remember seeing was The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (1999 - so I was 3) when mum had to take me out because I burst into tears when Elmo lost his blankie... 9. Best gift you’ve ever received? The gorgeous map of Middle Earth currently hanging proudly on my wall. 10. Best gift you’ve ever given? My work secret santa this Christmas! I got them a David Bowie badge and some teacakes which I know must sound weird but trust me, that present was spot on. 11. In what role do you see yourself in a movie/novel? Either the main character, long-suffering, destined to accidently blow up the universe, with sarcastic self-deprecating voice over. Or a quirky side character, making jokes no one gets, goofy but underestimated so everyone is stunned when I turn out to be an absolute bad ass and take out 20 bad guys single-handedly.

My Questions: 1. What would be the most amazing adventure to go on? 2. What is something you wish you were gifted at doing? 3. Which of your parents are you more like? 4. What is at the top of your bucket list? 5. What is your favourite thing about yourself? 6. What TV show or movie do you refuse to watch and why? 7.  What are you absolutely determined to do? 8. Did you have a good Christmas? 9. Did you have a good 2017? 10. Any New Year resolutions? 11. If you could give your younger self any advice what would it be? And I tag... @whiteladyofrohann @sternassteel @starlightwalking @jrrtolkiens and @forlornoccult

[placegrenette]

A list of things I love about “Ah! Yah! Mah!”

(It’s a long list.)

(But not as long as my draft literature review chapter, which was 16,000 words, including bibliography and a whole lot of written throat-clearing. If you have pity to spare, send it to my committee.)

1. To refer back to my original commentary: I love its bigness, the vast expanse of the song. It’s also a nice close to the promotion cycle, where “Su Asty” and “Yeski Taspa Bii’“ were similarly packed, “Bayau” and “Mooz” a little less ambitious. (A little, in the case of “Bayau.”)

2. While remaining very much a Ninety One song. I tend to favor the specific over the general with pop lyrics, songs where the performers make their skin in the game more obvious. (”Tend to”: and yet my favorite song off 1989 is “New Romantics.” I’m not consistent.) “Aiyptama,” as good as it is, was pre-packaged; you don’t have to know anything about Ninety One to enjoy it. “Ah! Yah! Mah!” is not only full of callbacks to previous Qarangy Zharyq songs but continuing the overall theme -- see the analysis by @qisforqazaq, which points out the references in greater detail.

(2a. I’ll add one more reference: Alem’s Make your brains cross the borders line echoing ZaQ’s Borders do not exist, they are only in the vastness of your consciousness in “Mooz.” The Kazakh lines are Жо�� шекаралар, ол сенің миыңдағы мекендерде бар тек and Таптаурыдарыңды бұзаын, Шекарадан ассын миың, respectively, so the repeat of “borders” doesn’t seem to be simply a coincidence of translation. Thus “Mooz” would be about recognizing the illusion of borders and “Ah! Yah! Mah!” about destroying that illusion.)

3. While we’re talking lyrics, let me rave about my favorite: AZ’s From your conversations, I feel nauseous, as if I’m drinking tea with fat. “Mooz” used tea metaphors to throw shade too, but that’s not why I love that line. It is perfect -- at once visceral, getting the feeling it wants to convey across in a minimum of words, and so culturally specific; when would an American rapper deliver an insult by talking about tea? And it’s so AZ, too, casually dismissive. It makes a whole human experience instantly legible and I love it.

4. Which leads me to AZ’s and ZaQ’s whole section. Way back before Ninety One even debuted and I was raving about Infinite’s Reality, my favorite part of “Take Care of the Ending” was Dongwoo’s and Hoya’s trading off the rap, the way they bounced off each other. AZ and ZaQ trade off with even more energy, and complement that in the video with a delightful playfulness that gets a lot of things done at once.

apologies, y'all, I still can't make GIFs for crap

With a Korean group I’d be tempted to speculate about fanservice, but Ninety One doesn’t seem to have embraced that part of idol marketing, and I don’t get a shippy vibe from this sequence. If Leslie Fiedler, God bless his memory for all time, were around he’d call this reveling in homosociality, affectionate but not sexual, a friendship on full display. But the sequence also -- after Alem staring down the camera, Ace having to cope with the unexpected (more on that in a minute) and Bala turning Bala Seduction Mode up to 11 -- injects some needed humor into the video. We’re going to make your brains cross the borders, sure, but it’s going to be fun.

5. Speaking of Bala:

I mean they all look good but Bibotta gets an extra round of applause for the sequined-jacket-and-curls idea.

6. Speaking of Bala #2: mouthing along to the sound effects during the first dance sequence, when he’s right in front and you can’t miss it. Nine out of ten video directors would have cut, told him to knock that off, and re-shot it. The tenth is Boss Yerbolat, and God bless him for it.

7. I mean they all look good:

apologies again for the small GIF but static shots didn't do AZ justice

8. Y’all know what it’s time to talk about.

@miiumao commented to me that The Hat was the second time she’d been genuinely shocked by Ninety One and their approach to masculinity, the first time being the 2016 New Year’s greetings video -- which I, used to K-pop conventions, hadn’t found shocking at all. Which should serve as a reminder to you all that I am not a good source on gender presentations in Kazakhstan. But that hasn’t stopped me before and it’s not going to now.

I love the hat. Or, rather, the decision to use the hat. Which should shock no one. (For what it’s worth I remain convinced, in the absence of direct evidence, that Bibotta was inspired by Taemin’s “Everybody”-era promotional pictures.) That said, I don’t think the hat entirely works on Ace. His scenes play as if Boss Yerbolat instructed him to act haughty and disdainful, and he overshot “haughty and disdainful” and landed on “I was promised a nap twenty minutes ago goddamn it.” Y’all know AZ would have handled that hat without a second thought. Bala probably could’ve worked the hat just fine. (ZaQ would have said hell no, and Alem would have lasted about thirty seconds before bursting out laughing.) So that Ace got the hat is interesting in and of itself.

Assume with me two different spectra of masculinity, or “masculinity” if you prefer: female/male and boy/man. Add in submissive/dominant, which is (again, in the West; I can’t speak for Kazakhstan) culturally tied to the first two, for better or for worse. AZ, for example, has been using more coded-feminine and coded-submissive gestures -- compare his body language in the “Aiyptama” video to that in “Su Asty” or “Ah! Yah! Mah!” and you’ll see what I mean -- but he never really comes across as boyish, as opposed to full-on adult. It’s something of a surprise, in the Space videos, to hear him giggle.

Whereas Ace has been in charge of boyish appeal from the very first verse of “Aiyptama.” (See Anne Helen Petersen on boyishness and the teen idol -- again speaking very specifically of a Western, Hollywood-produced set of products.) There’s a reason why my fellow Eaglez (*kisses* to Cay and Crystal) used to joke about picking him up from the day care. As late as “Yeski Taspa Bii’“ he’s the guy gently hugging and listening to the girl while the other four act out drama in the background. The appeal of the boyish hero is that he steps aside from the dominant/submissive paradigm, in his practice of gentleness and restraint. To play with dominant/submissive tropes is adult territory. To play with obvious femininity is too, for that matter: we can deal with grown men using feminine gestures to paradoxically assert their power -- think Little Richard and David Bowie; that’s the tradition that I’d argue AZ is working in, and G-Dragon worked in some before AZ -- but the feminized “boy” is another matter entirely.

But in “Bayau” we got prone, head-bowed, eyeliner-to-hell-and-back, shyly-smiling Ace talking about his personal patron of the night: the boyish member seemingly going for submissive tropes in a way that suggested he knew what he was doing. And now on top of that is a shooting-for-haughty Ace with an exaggerated hat that reads as feminine and body language that runs counter to the rest of the video -- Alem is throwing his body around the space as he does, Bala is at the head of the table, ZaQ is at the podium, but Ace has his legs crossed and arms folded close to his body. Thus boyish + feminine + haughty and imperial + submissive = ...? I don’t know! No wonder Ace needed a nap.

9. Leaving that entirely unresolved and turning to a different aspect of Ninety One’s treatment of gender: ZaQ starting his final announcement with “Ladies and the rest!” I love that. Intentionally or not, it comes across as Ninety One centering itself as a group that appeals to women and talks to women, without apology: with insolent pride, actually.

10. I haven’t spoken of ZaQ enough here, so speaking of ZaQ: his declaration that “My skill is a collection of randomly scattered rhymes in accelerated motion,” which is both sweetly self-deprecating and 100% accurate.

11. And finally: if you can do it, you can do it! Do it! Back to the point about specificity: if “Ah! Yah! Mah!” were my first Ninety One single I wouldn’t find anything particularly interesting or inspiring about the line. But knowing what they’ve done so far, and what they’re doing, and what they’re trying to do -- create an entire music scene practically out of whole cloth, in Kazakh no less, which let me emphasize is not the dominant language of pop even within Kazakhstan. And ambitious enough and grandiose enough to try and create this scene not by analyzing their steps with the question of how each will appeal to the broadest possible audience, but by building their own narrative and all but daring the audience to follow along. Not if it will work or if it will sell or if it’s acceptable, but if you can do it. And I’m listening and feeling a new energy, wanting to scream too. Ah! Yah! MAAAAH!

[punkddiva]

I was tagged by @strutherford !!! thank you so much love!

Rules: Answer 30 questions and tag 20 people.


Nicknames: Mo, Momo, Morgana (mostly just Mo)


Gender: Female


Star Sign: Sagittarius


Height: 5′6” (maybe 5’5”)


Time: 8:22 pm


Birthday: November 27


Favorite Bands: Panic! At the Disco, Queen, Green Day, All Time Low, Halestorm, Fleetwood Mac


Favorite Solo Artists: David Bowie, Matt Nathanson, Hunter Hayes, Stevie Nicks


Song stuck in head: Life on Mars? by David Bowie


Last Movie Seen: Spider-Man: Homecoming


Last Show Watched: Gilmore Girls


Why did you create your blog: My friends convinced me to several years back and after my initial confusion, here I am


What do you post/reblog: a little bit of everything but primarily humor and relatable text posts, though I try to post some positivity too.


Last thing you googled: Mike Flynn


Other blogs: I have a Dragon Age blog (@elvesarebetterthanpeople), an aesthetic blog, and a (sort of active) anime blog (@daisukishimakei)


Do you get asks: rarely (please end the drought I love getting asks)


Why you picked your URL: there was one post going around at one point that said “I’m not punk rock i’m more punk pebble” or smthin like that so that inspired the punk bit, then diva came from the song There’s a Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey You Just Haven’t Thought of it Yet by Panic! At the Disco


I follow: 1000+ lmao (I don’t usually unfollow people but I often follow back)


Followers: 778!


Average hours of sleep: 6? Maybe 7


Lucky number: 3


Instruments: I sing, but I know how to play the intro to Welcome to the Black Parade on the piano 😉


Current Outfit: bootcut jeans and a black tee shirt that says “choose your weapon” under a picture of a row of dice (soon to be PJ’s tho)


Dream Job: Writer, geneticist, singer or actress


Dream Trip: Ireland!!! Possibly Italy


Favorite Food: there’s so much but like... pasta with browned butter and mizithra cheese. listen. It’s So Good


Favorite Song Right Now: Leather and Lace by Stevie Nicks and Don Henley (though that may change soon)


Last Book I Read: Hamlet


Top 3 fictional universes: Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and perhaps Skyrim (though I’m not sure on the last one)

I’m not tagging 20 people lol BUT I’ll make an effort to tag some: @707-deserves-better @dancing-in-oblivion @volleyboysonice @let-me-be-rad @chilledlegumeandahalf @spoopycena @yourwitsaresleepy

(Seven works, right?) If you don’t want to do this of course you don’t have to, and if you weren’t tagged but you’d like to do it then please go ahead! Consider yourself tagged. I’d love to read your responses 💕

[ifyouregoingtakethemoon]

last days - a collection of nostalgic and optimistic songs inspired by graduations and goodbyes (it’s very lame yes I know)

(-listen here!-) - current exhaustive tracklist under the cut, but I’ll probably add more songs later lol

1.khalid - young dumb & broke // 2.ester dean - crazy youngsters // 3.david bowie - heroes // 4.lana del rey - love // 5.lorde - perfect places // 6.blondie - atomic // 7.blondie - 11:59 // 8.harry styles - sign of the times // 9.wolf alice - bros // 10.amy shark - adore // 11.amy shark - deleted // 12.bruno mars - young girls // 13.halsey - new americana // 14.nessi - just a line // 15.lorde - supercut // 16.arcade fire - we don’t deserve love // 17.ed sheeran - castle on the hill // 18.florence + the machine - dog days are over // 19.francesca michielin - se cadrai // 20.the go-betweens - bye bye pride // 21.imagine dragons - its time // 22.the killers - when you were young // 23.the killers - mr.brightside // 24.liv - heaven // 25.maroon 5 - must get out // 26.maroon 5 - she will be loved // 27.m.i.a. - paper planes // 28.onerepublic - counting stars // 29.selena gomez & the scene - middle of nowhere // 30.taeyang - let go // 31.timbaland - if we ever meet again // 32.tom odell - still getting used to being on my own // 33.tracy chapman - fast car // 34.vampire weekend - unbelievers // 35.vampire weekend - don’t lie // 36.zella day - man on the moon // 37.arctic monkeys - fluorescent adolescent // 38.wolf alice - don’t delete the kisses // 39.wolf alice - don’t delete the kisses // 40.the killers - human // 41.lorde - 400 lux // 42.foxes - shaking heads // 43.arcade fire - everything now // 44.mgmt - kids // 45.avril lavigne - keep holding on