#like if I’m gonna read mid shit which is a lot of ff it’s gotta have some other pull for me like thst

[macbethz]

Society if POV outsider fics were as popular as shipping

[mcrmadness]

Oooo, how about two from each of them? Fanfic asks: J and P, film asks: 15 and 16, music asks: 20 and 26.

OMG thanks!!! :DDD

Ask games: Fanfic asks, Film asks and Music asks. (People you can still send me asks if you want, asks are fun to answer to!)

***

FANFIC ASKS:

A little background before we get to the questions: I haven’t written too many, actually only 6 quite short ones (and one of them is a bit longer than usual) about Die Ärzte (Bela/Farin FTW) and all of these I have written between the years 2009 and 2012, so I was 18-21 which means they are not that good. And there’s lots of things I wouldn’t write anymore. I also have a WIP on my computer, I started it in 2012 but stopped writing altogether only to start writing again in the end 2018, it has bit over 28k words currently and tbh I have written 90% of that when I started writing again two years ago. I still have my old ones up on LiveJournal (ask for a link), but I haven’t published anything fron this later one as I’ve just been writing down all kinds of snippets whenever I have had an inspiration. I think those are also a lot better in quality than what I wrote before, the old ones are quite cringey.

J. What is your favorite fic that you’ve written?

I guess we talk about those fics I have also finished, now. It’s actually hard to decide but I would say my favourite is either Why not even once? or The Boring Book Freak. I think the latter is actually The favourite.

The first one (was actually my second dä ff overall) is set to happen in 2003 and in that one Farin is leaving for another vacation somewhere and Bela wants to go with him, but Farin wants to travel alone and Bela is struggling with that, as well as with Farin finally leaving and having to somehow survive his time at home without Farin there. The writing itself is bit stupid and I feel that the end got bit too far but otherwise I like the idea.

The second one (came actually after the previous one) is set to happen in the early/mid 90s (my fave Bela/Farin era btw) and on that they just are at some random summer cottage. Now, fuck cottagecores and such, I wrote it because summer cottages are a thing in Finland and I wrote it when cottagecore was not even cool yet. Somehow I imagined that it would be very Farin-like to rent a cottage from the middle of nowhere, in a forest and then spend a weekend or so there with Bela. Who then is not entertained at all and is bored because Farin won’t put away his book and won’t give him any attention, so he tries everything to get Farin’s attention. I especially like the visual images this fanfic gives to me, I can see their hairs and outfits so well and those are also aesthetically very pleasing. (They look the same as in that Absolut Live interview from the 90s, I don’t control their looks with my fics usually, I just have an idea and then my brain creates how they look in that particular scene :D)

I have also written a short songfic around the lyrics of their song “Ich weiß nicht (ob es Liebe ist)” and it was fun to imagine that as Bela/Farin. That was fun to write.

This got a bit long so I put the rest under a cut:

P. What are your favorite tropes to write?

(Had to google what a trope is lol. I’m old-school and no longer know most of the terms unless they’re old terms.)

Angst - I put my own angst, sadness and angriness into my writing often. It’s when I feel like in real life I would need other people but I don’t know how to reach out or don’t just feel comfortable about opening up, I open up a file and start writing. This is also where we get to the next trope...

Hurt/Comfort - But not so that X hurts Y, but that Y feels hurt for other reasons and then X comforts them. I kinda got obsessed with this theme after being bullied at school so I was always hurt but never comforted, so I often go back to those feels and emotions with my text to look for that comfort (hug, nice words, whatever) I never got in real life.

Fluff - This is bit complicated because I like writing fluff but I also hate reading fluff I have written. Because it does not sound like me. And sometimes when I write, I feel like standing behind my own back and vomiting a little on the inside because of how cheesy and disgusting that is but still I can’t stop writing. And then I feel like a different person when I read them because I can’t believe it’s ME who wrote them. The same way when I watch movies and people kiss, I always look away. And I want to look away when I read my fanfiction. But I can’t, especially because I know I looked at that scene in my head when I wrote it.

Humour - I love humour so much and I like to include this to my writing. Normally I put the humour in my comics but some of that fits also in the regular texts too.

***

FILM ASKS:

These are super tough but also fun - I have been trying to think of what to answer to these for days.

15. A film everyone loves but you hate?

The Avengers (-12). Sorry but not sorry. Well I don’t hate it but I don’t understand why everyone says it’s the best Marvel movie ever. It’s not. It’s full of clichés and stupid forced heteroromances and whatnot and the plot was just so, so predictive I don’t understand why it’s often talked about as some sort of cinematic master piece. I literally was able to tell everything that was gonna happen next when I watched it for the first time. Only cool things in that movie are Loki and Iron Man, whose character I already liked as I had seen the Iron Man movie and liked it. But I hated both Thor movies (the third one is awesome tho). 

I like Marvel and I have seen I guess most of the movies - before MCU all good Marvel movies to come out were The X-Men movies and Spider-Man movies, and because I saw so many terrible Marvel movies, I was avoiding the whole MCU and I got into these movies much later and still, after seeing them all, I say The Avengers is one of the worst ones. Thor and Thor 2 are pretty much even worse (and I haven’t even seen the Hulk movie because it looks terrible), mainly because I just can’t stand the fact they’re mainly just built around Thor and his love interest...

16. A film you love but everyone else hates?

Spider-Man 3 (or the whole trilogy with Tobey Maguire). I see we continue with Marvel here but seriously I don’t understand why everyone is always picking on Tobey’s version of Spider-Man? And people especially hate the third movie and how Venom was portrayed in it (I’m obsessed with Venom’s human teeth pls I want his teeth), when it’s actually the best one for me. The second one is bit boring because it was again all about whining and Mary-Jane... Anyway, the reason why I am so attached to these movies is that I saw the first Spider-Man movie from TV when I was a teenager and in junior high myself, and I was bullied and a bit of a nerd so I could relate to Peter Parker a lot, and it gave me just so much strength to see him become Spider-Man and to stand up against the bullies and other assholes.

I also saw the third movie in the movie theater and there was one scene during which I started hysterically laughing with my friend because of an expression Tobey made as he was sitting on a bed, I don’t know why but somehow I just totally lost it at that :D It still makes me laugh so much when I see it! And when the movie ended, I heard a The Killers song “Move Away” for the first time during the end credits and TK was one of my favorite bands at the time (and still is).

***

MUSIC ASKS:

20. a song that empowers you

It gotta be Dead! by My Chemical Romance:

This album was what got me through all the shit that happened when I was 15+ and especially this song always made (and still makes) me feel so good. I often listened to my old mp3 player while walking to school and back home and every time this song came by, I just felt like nothing can harm and that life FINALLY was so great! It’s so energetic and still makes me feel that living is actually super awesome.

26. a song that taught you a lesson

Hmmm. I think I will answer to this with Dusche by Farin Urlaub.

That thumbnail is terrible but... And why did I choose this song? Well, I’m all for the sound what comes to music and I’d say at least 80% of all lyrics go way over my head. I just don’t have the skills for understanding poetry and also very poetic lyrics make me go crazy. I hate not knowing and when I have to assume, guess and interpret something. I don’t want to guess but I wanna know what someone has actually thought.

Dusche was the first song that had lyrics that for the first time ever actually spoke for me. I probably saw some video with English subtitles a fan had made and it just blew me away because holy shit, people are capable of writing lyrics even I can understand??? And that way I realized I can like lyrics but only if they make absolutely no sense (aka are funny or somewhat crazy, like Dusche) or when they are written in a story form or sung from the 1st person view or to “you” or in passive - but only if I can get behind the idea there.

After Dusche, Farin’s song Porzellan followed. And one of my absolute favourites is Karten. So, Farin is one of the only few people whose lyrics I have been able to understand. I still don’t hear lyrics and don’t understand a majority of the lyrics my fave bands write, and I have understood only a couple of Bela’s lyrics and I’m not sure if I’ve understood any of Rod’s lyrics. It’s not even about the language barrier anymore really, it’s just the topics or wordings I cannot comprehend.

Thank you again for the ask! This was very interesting to ponder and answer to :)

[michaelmilkers]

I saw in one of your tags that you mentioned how 21 pilots made emo pretentious and im actually curious about why you say that (not hate i just never knew about them that much)

my friend you have asked me about a topic i am very knowledgeable and very angry about so prepare yourself for what you have wrought

it isnt just twenty one pilots but theyre just the biggest and most popular example

like. take my chemical romance in the early-mid 2000s aka the peak of emo. it was very melodramatic and theatrical, the way emo should be. there was a presence of “we are not like other people” in a lot of the songs, but it was never just that. it was more of a “we have been cast out and we kinda suck but thats okay.” one of the best examples of this is, ironically, i’m not okay.

take, for example, the opening to the mtv music video:

[Ray] You like D&D, Audrey Hepburn, Fangoria, Harry Houdini and croquet. You can't swim, you can't dance and you don't know karate. Face it, you're never gonna make it. [Gerard] I don't wanna make it, I just wanna...

this immediately establishes the song as being about social outcasts and people who dont fit the mold. the fucking tag line of the song is “i’m not okay” ffs, that really tells you all you need to know about the song. but the important thing is it doesnt take itself too seriously either. the music video takes place in a private school, and shows scenes of the band members eating lunch alone, being bullied by jocks and preps, etc., but it ALSO shows scenes of frank putting swim goggles on in chemistry class and ray drawing on his test with a crayon and then licking it, and at the end they all ambush and beat the shit out of a guy in a mascot costume. all of this is cut up by text saying things like “if you ever felt alone” “if you ever felt wronged” “if you ever felt anxious”

do you see the juxtaposition here? the music video could very very easily be a fake deep bullying psa, but its not, because while theyre getting bullied and playing their music in a garage they are also, unequivocally, total fucking losers for obvious comedic effect. it is a very exaggerated and lighthearted version of real phenomena, which makes it more relatable to a wider audience.

the same can be said about the song itself. it has some pretty heavy and angsty lyrics (”i’m not o-fucking-kay”) but the instrumentals are punchy and energetic and catchy and gerard’s vocal delivery is very theatrical but also very deliberate and he still puts real emotion in the words. it sounds like its taking the piss out of not being okay, which is exactly what i as a clinically depressed 13 year old needed, and i bet a lot of other people can say the same. i’m a loser and thats okay. i fucking suck in school and thats okay. i feel shitty and thats okay. i’m not okay and that, in itself, is okay.

with twenty one pilots, on the other hand, there is no theatrics, theres no taking the piss, theres no over-the-top melodrama that made emo what it was. 

take, for comparison, the opening lines of heathens:

All my friends are heathens, take it slow Wait for them to ask you who you know Please don't make any sudden moves You don't know the half of the abuse

and this presents, immediately, one of my biggest criticisms of twenty one pilots: their rampant appropriation of mental illness.

because my first thought when hearing this is as an abuse survivor and someone with ptsd they can kiss every single square inch of my ass.

Welcome to the room of people Who have rooms of people that they loved one day Docked away Just because we check the guns at the door Doesn't mean our brains will change from hand grenades You're loving on the psychopath sitting next to you You're loving on the murderer sitting next to you You'll think, "How'd I get here, sitting next to you?"

they try to do the same kind of nuanced poetic lyrics that my chemical romance did and in my opinion is just doesnt fucking work because they take themselves SO. FUCKING. SERIOUSLY. it sounds JOYLESS. 

and the song closes out with this:

Why'd you come? You knew you should have stayed (It's blasphemy) I tried to warn you just to stay away (Away) And now they're outside ready to bust (To bust) It looks like you might be one of us

this is what i mean by pretentious. there is a clear separation of the person/people from whose point of view the song is told and the people the song is meant to be listened to by from the greater population, but theres no high energy or comedic self deprecation to counteract it. 

now take some lyrics from heavydirtysoul, a song i actually really like the sound of, im not just shitting on this band bc its not to my taste yall:

There's an infestation in my mind's imagination I hope that they choke on smoke 'cause I'm smoking them out the basement This is not rap, this is not hip-hop Just another attempt to make the voices stop

Nah, I didn't understand a thing you said If I didn't know better I'd guess you're all already dead Mindless zombies walking around with a limp and a hunch Saying stuff like, "You only live once." You've got one time to figure it out One time to twist and one time to shout One time to think and I say we start now Sing it with me if you know what I'm talking about

right back at it again with that appropriation of mental illness symptoms! and some dumbass critique of our generation that doesnt fit in with the rest of the song at all, closing out the verse with “we are not like you” shit. the vocal delivery at least has more energy than heathens, but the lyrics just feel like a mishmash of different points theyre trying to make that have nothing to do with each other.

the best line of the song is undoubtedly “death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit” but its poetic just... for the sake of being poetic? its one of those lyrics that sounds like someone came up with and was like “bro we gotta put that in a song” but then couldnt actually figure out how to fit it into a song in a way that would flow. another example of this is “i cant drown my demons they know how to swim” in bring me the horizon’s can you feel my heart. not shitting on bring me the horizon, i really like sempiternal, but thats another line thats just poetic for the sake of being poetic. and to be put on t-shirts. i know this because when i was 12 i had a shirt that said “i cant drown my demons they know how to swim” on it.

i could do more analysis on other mcr songs, namely welcome to the black parade and famous last words, but i would be here for literal hours and idk if people actually care that much.

to sum my points up:

they take themselves too seriously. they appropriate and romanticize mental illness (forgot to mention that top’s website, at one time, described their music as “schizoid pop” lol). they pull a lot of “We Are Not Like Other People..,.,.,,...” shit. 

that last point is not inherently a bad thing, for example the new slipknot album is literally called “we are not your kind” but the song that contains that line as a lyric is all out life, and corey taylor is screaming that entire song and the instrumentals are reminiscent of speed metal with how fucking energetic they are. its edgy and its GREAT. twenty one pilots just sounds like they think theyre the shit.

also, and i want you to read the following sentence in a bass boosted voice to best understand how i feel when i say this:

the twenty one pilots cover of cancer is an embarrassment that completely misses the point of the original song and changed it into a weird amalgamation of lo-fi synth pop.

emo music is dead. thank u and goodnight.

[canaryatlaw]

So today was interesting. Overall better than the rest of this week, though I probably couldn't point you to any specific factors there. I guess I just mentally felt better so things followed that. Morning was a bit of a lol, my alarm goes off at 7, I turn it off and pick up my phone, then close my eyes for a few seconds. When I open my eyes, my phone now reads 7:40. What the fuck??? Like okay, it wouldn't be the first time I've over slept an alarm, but doing it just like that was weird. Thankfully it left me just enough time to get to work mostly on time if I ubered instead of took public transit, so I did a mostly normal morning routine and then ubered to work, getting there at 9:05 so that's enough for me to call it a win, if an accidental one. So for the morning I did some of my paperwork setting up the timeline from the other day, and about mid-morning I think I popped over to see if our tech guy was in and he was, so I let him know that I still couldn't get the prison calls to play on my computer which I felt bad about because they'd already like, switched out a computer and everything to make this work haha. But he was like nah it's cool, imma call my supervisor and we'll take care of this. And a little while later they came and did something (while I sat on the chair on the other side of my desk and scrolled through Facebook on my phone) and pretty soon they had it up and working. Okay, I forget if I provided any context for this when I first mentioned them, but I don't think I did so I'll give some here. To my understanding, we have recordings of prison phone calls from a man and the mother of his daughter, who is in DCFS custody. I'm not totally sure here, but I think he might've been in prison for some sort of child abuse (I don't think it was sexual, probably aggravated battery to a child). But basically they want to argue in court that mom is gonna get back together with dad when he gets out which would put their daughter in danger and they shouldn't regain custody, so the attorney wanted me to go through the phone calls between the two of them to see if there was any talk about getting back together or anything about their daughter specifically, them trying to get her back. So I set off with 530 audio recordings, most of them listed under "time limit exceeded" for reason of termination, which means they were 30 minutes long. WOAHBOY. So the first few I listened to were in the early days of his prison sentence and they had lots of good stuff for me to write down, but they started getting more monotonous so I like, checked my email and did some other random shit while still listening (I didn't read any fic, because I knew if I did that I probably wouldn't N able to focus on the calls). Soon enough I switch over to the more recent calls (so switch from August 2016 to March 2017) and suddenly there's a much different tone. The first one had them arguing over the fact that he said he'd call her right at 8:45 and he called her at 8:46, which I was laughing at pretty hard. Fun little prison break reference here, but the prison is called "Big Muddy River Correctional Center" located in Illinois, which of course isn't too far off from "Fox River Correctional Center (or facility?)" also fictionally in Illinois. So that made me smirk a little. So I kept listening, and then they decided to have phone sex, and I was very thankful for the fast forward button because having to listen to that I'm pretty sure is a violation of my 8th amendment constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment. Lol. But for the most of the afternoon I just let the conversations play (I had headphones in so they weren't being broadcasted to the whole office) and noted when they said something relevant. For the record, they didn't need to talk about getting back together because OH, THEY'RE TOGETHER, and there was plenty of mentions of "getting their daughter back" (smh). So then I was just left to marvel at the strange range of tasks my job has me carrying out, lol. But anyway. My physical therapy options were pretty limited this week since I could only come after work and my normal guy is in Europe, and despite being there yesterday the only other appointment I could get this week was for tonight at 6, and of course I get off of work at 5. I figured if I ubered though I could probably make it with enough time to run to my apartment and get changed from my suit into physical therapy appropriate clothing, lol, however, my uber driver didn't take the best route and we got caught in traffic and I didn't end up getting to PT until 6:20 and I was such not a happy camper because if you pay attention on here at all, you know being late is my biggest pet peeve possible. It was okay though, it was just a little shorter of a session. Not a big deal. Now we just know 6 pm appointments are a no-go, lol. The girl I worked with was fine, I like my regular guy so I was kind of meh about working with other people but she was nice enough and she did a pretty good job, so that's good. When I finished there I walked back home and ate some dinner- I forget if I ever discussed my weird eating issue I've developed lately on here so I'm just gonna talk about it now. For weeks now, no matter what my big weekend meal I use for leftovers throughout the week is, when it comes to eating those leftovers it feels like I have to shove the food into my mouth. And then I get stuck in the whole quandary of "oh well I should eat it anyway because it's healthy" ("healthy") and no, don't force yourself to eat something you don't want to, but obviously a ton of meals I make have been going to waste because of this and I have no idea what to do about it. This week I was gonna try to really test it because I did my creamy Parmesan chicken pasta (I definitely mentioned that on here recently, but I don't remember the rest of the context) which is like phenomenal and I'd see if I had an issue with that, and yupp, when it came down to eating the chicken it felt like shoving concrete in my mouth. This is a totally new and out of nowhere development?? Like this has never been an issue before. And it's not just chicken, because I've tried other meats and it's the same thing (I can have like, two slices of turkey on a mini sandwich, but that's really nothing). And I just don't know what to do about this because I feel like I started the whole weekend meal thing because I wanted to make sure I was getting enough protein in my diet, because I wasn't really eating meat unless I was intentional about it. But I mean, I have been making eggs very often since getting my rapid egg cooker off amazon (seriously, I'm in love with this thing, it does them perfectly every time) and I also eat yogurt very frequently which are both good sources of protein so maybe not? Idk why but I have this idea in my head that protein = healthy which is true in some instances but not when my mind wants to apply it to like, a McDonald's hamburger because that's what it tries to do. I did just remember though when I was reading the info about acid reflux on my new doctors website he had one of the trigger food listed as "high protein foods" which I thought was weird that that would cause a reaction, and I hadn't noticed one.....but maybe now I have? It's obviously a different reaction but hey, if the latest theories are true my acid reflux has been fucking up pretty much all my systems with random ass symptoms like furious coughing, not being able to breathe while running, and of course not being able to eat anything that hits the mild salsa level of spice (that's not an exaggeration, that's legit how I describe it sometimes or people just don't understand when I say I can't have just "spicy" foods, like it's much worse than that) so who fucking knows if this is a result of it too. It just makes me anxious about my other eating issues that I purposely have never talked about openly on this blog for a lot of personal reasons that I just don't want to be out there for the whole world to see quite yet. It's just....concerning. Sigh. I need to move on. I ate dinner and listened to the flash podcast for a little bit because I was very into the episode, before turning on Riverdale about 20 minutes into it (thanks TiVo). I vaguely remembered it was the season finale so it should get some good drama. And there was some good drama, for sure. But damn, I gotta say, I feel so damn sorry for Cheryl Blossom. I mean the girl just lost literally half of her family and found out her entire family's business was a criminal sham. Like I feel like having her go out into the frozen lake was maybe one of the only times I've seen in tv where a character resorting to attempting suicide in reaction to an event actually felt genuine and not contrived. But goddammit Archie, just let someone else help you punch through the ice ffs because there was a LOT of blood in that last shot before the ice broke and boy you probably hurt yourself real bad there. As far as the other plot stuff, I was irritated of course by the inaccurate portrayal of the child welfare system getting involved in Jughead's life. First of all, he's in a safe fictive kin placement right now, even if it's unofficial fictive kin don't have to be licensed. Fred Andrews having a single DUI on his record would not disqualify him from fostering children. He also cited money, but now that the state is involved he would get a stipend for Jughead that would take care of the money issue. Second of all, they don't take kids into care when they have another perfectly capable parent who's just in another state and "overextended." What is that word even supposed to mean? To me it feels like it could only really boil down to finances, and there are legit laws in every state saying you can't take a kid into care just because his family his poor. They even have these cool things called Norman funds to assist families in those positions. So in conclusion, if this were real life, Jughead would either stay with Archie or go to live with his mom and jellybean (which is the cutest nickname ever). I don't know why I still care though, because it's not like there is ever an accurate depiction of the child welfare system on tv or other sorts of media. And that's an issue because it perpetuates ideas like "don't call CPS, they'll just make it worse" which is how kids end up staying in abusive homes and KIDS END UP DEAD. So this is an actual problem, believe me. Sigh. The one other note of feedback I will give is I do like Archie and Veronica together. When I finished that I turned on Blindspot, which I knew was the penultimate episode so there was gonna be some big firefight with a hidden twist at the end, and of course that was exactly what happened, lol. It was a pretty good one though, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do to wrap it up next week. And I'm glad they got another season to work with. And that was more or less it for my day, and it is late and I don't want to be dead exhausted tomorrow- oh that's right, today was the first day in like, 5 work days that I didn't fall asleep at work!!! So that's progress!!! But uh yeah, I need to sleep now. Goodnight loves. Happy Friday.