#my only goal is to be the biggest most powerful motherfucker in the game and mow everything down

[mychlapci]

fear and hunger is my greatest enemy because i don't play a lot of video games with turn based combat but when i do my strategy to win is "just be a higher level than everyone else and upgrade the same weapon/move over and over until you can take down everything in one hit" but this is something that fear and hunger just doesn't let you do. you never really level up. the most powerful weapons will either kill your party or can be bought for the prize of a small child. even then the enemies are difficult to kill and half of their attacks are entirely luck based. i am going to tear out my hair

[kymerawrites]

Maffia boss! x Simon Riley

I’m way to creative, needed a small break from sir Simon Riley as I have ALOTT of ideas

I was the daughter of one of the most rich and powerful people in underworld. Too bad I was a daughter and not the son yet my mother couldn’t conceive any children after me my dad was doomed with a woman taking over his business, and I was fucking great at it.

Because of me, his empire expended way beyond Cartagena, Colombia. I got our secret formula in the USA, England, Seychelles South France, Brazil, China, Australia, and many more countries. We also had a lot of allies in politics because of me and the CIA I was booming in this business, and the people I partnered with were all crushing on me, I was the baddest bitch alive right now and everyone knew that. I was on top of the game and I liked to stay that way until I started playing a dangerous game with SAS, agent and member of the task force 141 Simon Riley.

My head was all over money. I only talked in money. I only loved money, and I only wanted money. I was a material girl I love anything that was expensive you could see it on me. I was really expensive looking woman and it made me felt super powerful. But now that I am on top of the game there are always the jealous motherfuckers that want to take you down.

“Do we have any information about this woman price?” All the task force and even general Shepard was in the meeting.

“ this is one of the most dangerous woman on our list right now Shym Medusa. She has one of the biggest maffia leaders in Colombia and has a very secretive formula of drugs that no one can find out and it makes people go to war. We need to take her down as soon as possible because she’s also overruling us.”

 Simon looked at the information “there’s no picture of her..”

Soap also agreed “how do we find a woman if we cannot even see the woman?”

Price sighed “ we also found el sin Nombre who was faceless in their business. This will be easy.”

 Simon looked again at the information on the screen. He was kind of impressed a woman doing after that on her own, and have been one of the strongest leaders in the world right now he wanted to find out who she was, and of course take her down.

He didn’t realize that it might be so easy to take her down, but it was way harder to actually take her down. They infiltrated her in Columbia in a club where they went out as regular guests one of the bars she saw her sitting with a whole team of people that were seen as her ‘family’ were a few of the most skillful, murderers, snipers fighters, and even some agents. She had a strong army with the task force one for one even be powerful enough to take them down?

 I was sitting on my regular table. We had a bunch of cash on the table almost too much to even count. This was my club when I implement my money and my hour into something I own it just like one of the many clubs, banks, and other things that I have taken over until I saw someone with a school mask and a bacalava sitting on across in the club. he was muscular and mysterious something pulled me towards him. He looked deep in the eye. Those eyes spoke something that I couldn’t catch.

I excuse myself from the table and walk towards the bar where I ordered a martini. I lit up a sigaret and looked at the man again, he stared me in the eye

“i’ve never seen you in my club before who are you? are you here to make a deal maybe because I’m talking cash right now.”

 Simon was in shock. This woman was magnificent, beautiful, and she had an aura that said I am that woman. She look confident like she’s bragging about it.

“I’m here for you miss medusa, but I don’t know what my goals are yet, I just wanted to see such a stunning woman like you.” 

“You’re playing a dangerous game doing business with me sir, it’s for the players who really want to play.”

Ghost nodded “I’m aware sugar.”

She looked him in the eye, tilting her head to side something about the way… the way he said Sugar made her impressed something not everyone could do, everyone who approached her, wasn’t that good for her, but somehow she was from this mysterious skeleton mask man.

I sipped my martini “what is your proposal? Do you have any allies or affiliates I need to know about to consider doing business with you?” 

Simon instantly fell questions. How would he play this off? She was maybe one of the most stunning person he’s ever seen, he gave her the thrills no one else could in a woman, he dated a few but they were all so mediocre, he saw something in her that stood out.

“ if you join me tonight there’s no going back, from now you’re my partner and you cannot leave so I suggest you think really good about the choice you’re going to make next.”

this was a big sacrifice, but it was needed for his team. The only word he said “I’m down to do business.”

“Very well..what is your name?”

“Call me ghost.”

LMK IF YOU WANT A PART 2 bc I know I can write this GREAT

[musicallynerdy]

hey ryn long time no see that d&d ask meme is insanely cool (frankly I love all of them so I tried to choose but there are still a lot, feel free not to answer all of these), so: 2, 3, 7, 9, 11, 12, 15, 16, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27, 31, 33, 35, 44, 60, 72, 77, 87, 93, 94, 97!

Hi Taylor! Long time no see! I hope you’re hanging in there! @hoot-h00t So, Hannah sent me a few of these last night on my D&D sideblog (@gmsguild) so I’ll skip those ones but I’m gonna do the rest! I’m gonna focus on my primary character, Sahar, my tiefling wizard in my home Tal’Dorei game.  2. Who in the party would your character trust the most with their life? I think our party rogue most likely. A few weeks ago (in game time) the rogue saved her life (literally- failed death save, would have been dead if that shadow hit me again), and Sahar returned the favor in a fight with a succubus, so there’s some trust there. 

3. What are your character’s core moral beliefs? I think she’s redeveloping her morals for the first time in a decade. She’s becoming a better person and it’s interesting really interesting to play. She never hurts kids, she’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect those she loves, and she’s devoted to the pursuit of knowledge. She’s got a dark side and isn’t afraid to hurt or kill to get what she needs, but she’s starting to try not to cause more harm. I think she feels the need to make up for what she’s done in the past. 

7. Describe your character’s current appearance: clothes, armor, scars they’ve picked up along the journey, etc? Sahar Tel’Urdyn is a deep purple-skinned tiefling with these stormy grey eyes with catlike pupils and a light blue nictitating membrane that she can flick over them. Her horns come from her forehead and then curl back forward similar to but not the same as a bighorn sheep (I don’t really know how to describe them?), and she has a thin pointed tail that flicks like a cat’s when she’s excited. Her hair is a darker purple, close to black, and is pulled back in a single french braid. She has a number of piercings, earlobes and cartilage. One of her cartilage piercings has a thin chain that connects to a band around one of her horns. She also has a belly button piercing, a nose stud, and a ring in her tail, all in silver tones. With the exception of the chain, she wears almost entirely studs, bars, or rings. Nothing that could catch on something or make noise. She has a number of scars and tattoos from the Tragic Backstory, but the most interesting is probably a lot of blackwork on her left arm that extends from her hand up to her elbow, almost like she dipped her arm in ink (although there is a triangular design on the hand, almost looking like a bit of that type of glove that only attaches to the middle finger?)-- or more accurately it looks like blackwork but it’s actually a lot of really intricate work, lots of script and sigils.  She wears a white, v-necked, with lacing in the V, like a flowy pirate shirt sorta thing, with black pants and brown leather boots, and a dark blue almost black sash around her waist. She has a dagger at her waist and her spellbook sort of sits in a bit of a holster thing in the small of her back. She hasn’t actually picked up much over the journey... she’s got a really nice dark gray traveling cloak she took off of... some dead body somewhere. She’s also got a wand of magic missiles tucked into a leather thigh sheath. She’s probably got a scar or two from the one battle I’ll detail below in number 15.  9. What deity, if any, does your character worship? What’s their opinion on other people’s worship? She grew up worshiping the Moonweaver but sort of lost a lot of her faith during the Tragic Backstory period. As a wizard she also prays occasionally to Ioun. She doesn’t really have opinions on other people’s worship so long as it doesn’t start causing her problems.  

11. Describe your character’s current relationship with the player character sitting to your right. So my group is a crew of old friends from my hometown, so we haven’t played in person in a while. 

12. What is your character’s current goal, summed up in one sentence? To crack this puzzle cube and learn more about conjuration and transmutation magic in the process. 

15. What battle in the campaign has been most memorable to your character? Oof so we broke this girl out of prison, she’s the daughter of a crime lord, but in the process we sort of... alerted the entire town to what we were doing and our barbarian punched the guard captain in the face? So we were burnt and tried to get out of town and hide, but they sent guards after us and we had no spells left and our barbarian had one rage and our rogue, our warlock, and our druid all went in with like low health and Sahar ended up having to be a tank for the battle and was just casting shocking grasp and somehow we still won? We killed six guards coming after us and somehow got away. That was the moment it was like ok we’re a team and we have each other’s backs even when shit royally hits the fan. 

16. If your character wasn’t whatever class they are, what would they be instead? Probably a bard or a warlock. Magic is just like, ingrained in her and she’s a curious motherfucker so like, if her troupe had lived she probably would have become a bard, or she would have stumbled into something deep and dark and made a pact with something for knowledge. If she had focused in her Tragic Backstory more on the sneaking bit of being an assassin rather than the “i will kill people creatively with magic” bit, possibly a rogue too. 

23. If your character could go back in time and change one thing about their life, what would it be? To not get kidnapped by the crew of the Talon’s Breath because that just started a decade of bad things. On the other hand, without that she probably would never have gotten to Tal’Dorei from Marquet and would never have found the party, which she’s starting to count as the best experience in her life. But it doesn’t erase the previous decade. 

24. Which other player character does your character find themselves having the most in common with? Definitely our party rogue. Tragic Backstory Buddies

26. What would your character say their best trait would be? “My Wit, of course” (her virtue name she used for years was Wit, so that’s a pun)

27. What is your character’s greatest fear? Deep, irrational? Ooh tough one. She’s afraid of losing her powers, I think. Her magic has been what has kept her alive and allowed her to become who she is and I think she’s wrapped up so much of her identity into the magic she wouldn’t know who she is without it. She uses minor illusion like people in the real world use a fidget spinner. I think she’d have a hard time functioning without her magic. It was a source of trauma and now it’s the way she’s helped herself through that trauma. She’s definitely going to need to deal with that at some point but therapists are hard to come by in Tal’Dorei. 

31. What stereotypical group role does your character play in the party? (The Mom, the Mess, the Comic Relief, etc. Optionally: What role would your character play in the “Five Man Band” structure?) Ya know I’m not sure. She’s sort of the brains (her intelligence is like a full 4 points above anyone else’s in the party) but really our party is six dumbasses held together by spit and a prayer and the fact that they keep stumbling on sketchy shit in every small town they come to (literally, they’ve had one town that hasn’t had sketchy shit going on in it) (well, and one city. So two stops on their entire journey). 

33. What person does your character admire most? In our party? Tough choice. Probably Thea, our warlock. She’s a 16 year old human girl and Sahar just thinks the world of this kid. She also has this huge Big Sister drive to keep this girl safe and also teach her about magic. 

35. Why is your character’s lowest stat their lowest (the in-character reason, not “because there’s no reason for a wizard to have 16 strength, duh”)? 10 in strength (I rolled well) but in character, she never really had a chance to develop it. She was the prisoner of a cartel for years and just didn’t have the space or the means to build up her strength. 

44. Does your character think more with their heart or their brain? Brain. 18 intelligence. She’s a wizard. Everything is logic. 

60. What decision would the party have to make in order for your character to consider splitting off from the group? Answered over at @gmsguild with number 20!

72. Who in the party would your character trust the most to keep an important secret? Oof yikes... honestly? Probably Mire, our barbarian. 

77. If your character had to multiclass into a class they currently aren’t the next time they level up, what would it be and what reason would they have for doing so? hmmm..... Something with spells. She’s such a magic nerd she would do something stupid for knowledge. 

87. What major arcana tarot card best represents your character? I’m only skipping this one because I’m not really familiar with tarot

93. Who in the party does your character trust the least? All of them. We all have flaws that make us untrustworthy in particular circumstances. But also she knows all of them have her back if she needs it. She just needs to know their weaknesses so she can help protect them. 

94. What is your character’s biggest flaw? She always has to be in control. It comes from years of not being in control and now she’s a bit of a control freak. 

97. What is most important to your character: health, wealth, or happiness? Happiness. I don’t think she knows what that means yet, but she left employment with a crime lord that could have made her very rich because she knew it wasn’t making her happy.  Thanks, Taylor, that was fun! Took me like 2 hours, but whatev. Hope you’re hanging in there!  Also I’m reading back through this and realizing like, folks trying to piece together her Tragic Backstory from this and my post on @gmsguild are going to have a rough time Much love to my party yall are amazing and I love you (@geekoz87, @skirtsandbattleaxes, @miniaturetanks, @vaguelyconcerning, @tenebris-felidae)

[oldstonedjenny]

« They will all come to see you for what you are »

Including the rest of the description here because it is good.

I recognize I'm a bit late to the 'Dany tribute party', but in my defense, I had this started since before the season finale. It's the same excuse as always, don't think I need to spell it out at this point. So, the season finale of Game Of Thrones...actually, the whole season of game of thrones, how to even begin? I have so much to say about this season, most of it I've ranted about for hours on end on every groupchat I'm a part of and every social media account owned by me. I was extremely disappointed with the rushed and careless way they handled basically everything from plot points to character development, Jon, for example, was downright unrecognizable. But oh well, this video is about Daenerys, so let's talk about Daenerys. For quite some time before the season aired I was already predicting Dany would go down as the big antagonist of the series (as I've made clear in the other video I made of her 'Kingdom Fall'), and at that time I was excited for everyone to see what I was seeing, cause honestly the concept was so incredible to me? I mean, there's this character that's basically a pop culture idol, a hero of the ages, a feminist symbol, the breaker of chains! To imagine that a character like that would fall from grace to become a villain? That would leave such a lasting effect on the fictional world. I was REALLY excited to see it happen and how it would happen, but then came the seismic event. Someone wise once said 'Be careful what you wish for', and so it was. 

It was EXTREMELY disappointing to me to watch something I've been excited about forever be done so improperly. I feel like the whole season was sacrificed in order to antagonize Daenerys and in the end it wasn't even enough? It was still tacky and badly handled and I'm so sorry that this is the final impression this series is going to have on people. And I am sorry it was bad enough that hardly anyone is going to understand the message behind Daenerys' character. She was always meant to go this way. While I understand the people who said 'it came out of nowhere', cause the whiplash affected us all, I disagree. They built this cult of personality to a person who'd always used power arbitrarily. But it's not always easy to understand this problem when said power is aimed at slave masters and overall what is the audience's consensus of 'Bad guys', but essentially the only thing that changed about Daenerys' behavior was perspective. She'd always wanted to return cities to the dust in order to build her new better world, because she has motherfucking dragons, how much easier could it be? Not to say her goals are evil, absolutely not. Abolishing slavery? Freeing the world? Those are some solid great plans...but like in that last conversation with Jon (that I'll be surprised if anyone really paid attention in cause it was so cringey) she basically said her vision of a good, ideal world, is the only one that matters, everyone else with different views? Well, they don't get to choose, and that basically sums up what Daenerys has been about all along. She's despotic, she wants to break the wheel but by that she means she wants to be the one turning it, because she alone understands whats right and what's not, and if anyone disagrees, well, dracarys. 

I find that about her quite fascinating, I am passionate about sociology and world history, and we've those types of rulers quite a few times thorough our tragetory, and asoiaf is based of real history (the war of the roses, anyone?), and I just love when fiction is used not only to entertain but to bring about reflections on real life issues. With all of that said, I love Daenerys' character, but no I don't pretend or endorse the traditonal hero colors she's often painted with. She's grey, and young, and impulsive and with some real pyromaniac tendencies. Amazingly, her biggest nemesis thorough her story was been her own self and her worst impulses, she tried, countless times, to fight against it and plant her trees, she was almost there with the help of all the people who didn't let her succumb to the throes of her wrath, but in the end she lost all of them, and she's a dragon: dragons plant no trees.

[everysuperherofighting]

Best Albums of 2016

I think we all know how we feel about 2016, though I will say that on a personal level it was actually pretty good, and involved a lot of positive personal development, though also a fair amount of death, and I’m not talking about all the celebrities right now. My aunt, grandfather, and former band instructor all passed away this year.

As far as music, my tastes feel like they fall on the same continuum they always do, though there seem to be a few more old guy rockers than usual, which I guess means I am no longer aiming for “Noisey” but rather “Rolling Stone.” This is probably also personal: I am not an old guy yet, but I am getting closer and I am also becoming aware that I will probably not accomplish all of my artistic goals within the next 5 to 10 years, and so am becoming increasingly open to artists staying relevant into their middle age and beyond.

RIP all the folks, RIP all the artists and celebrities, RIP all the people in Syria and Yemen and the Philippines, and all the people killed in terrorist attacks in Europe and Africa and the Middle East, and killed in shootings (police, mass, and otherwise) in the United States,  and RIP the short term possibility of having a federal government that is at least potentially responsive to the needs of marginalized people. Here are the best albums of 2016, according to me:

Image via the Hold Up music video

1. Beyonce - Lemonade.

This album was cathartic when it was released at the beginning of the year, but now that we’re at the end we probably need it even more.

Though largely about infidelities within an interpersonal relationship (dammit Jay), with a heavy smattering of race commentary (particularly in the videos) and empowerment feminism, the frustrations and self-empowerment in the face of all adversaries expressed in these songs transcend the specifics. Especially in a year determined to put us in our place, to make us feel worthless or powerless.. Whether a cheating lover, an orange race-baiting huckster masquerading as politician (and ascending to the highest office in the land), the goddamn fucking forces of white supremacy/the patriarchy/global capitalism or our own private struggles with self-doubts and mental illness, this album had something to offer, if nothing else than a reminder to hold our heads up and say “fuck ya’ll.”

I didn’t like every song on this album but look: When I saw a room full of women, middle fingers raised, jamming out to “I’m Not Sorry” like a giant “fuck you” to whatever it was that was fucking their day up, telling them they weren’t valuable or whatever, I realized that it didn’t necessarily need to be for me.

Rubbery dancehall, Nahleans jazz,  futuristic (though I guess present now) R+B, diva voice: Beyonce does that thing where she overdubs like 20 different vocal tracks over one another, but her voice is already so powerful it sounds like a chorus of Amazonians or gods. And of course there’s the image of Beyonce walking around smashing car windows with a baseball bat in the “Hold Up” video, which now seems to be remarkably prescient.

The biggest pop star in the world right now has our back. We could do worse.

Watch “Hold Up”

2. Anderson .Paak - Malibu

Deceptively breezy soul and funk that inherently understands the political power of a block party. Like so many artists before, Anderson .Paak understands that sometimes just getting by is a revolutionary act, and thus this album often seems like a celebration of the awe one feels at their own continued existence. Some pretty good jams for fucking also.

Watch “Come Down”

3. Schoolboy Q - Blank Face

A gangsta rap album that absolutely nails the paranoia and sense of menace that must accompany the lifestyle. The vibe alternates between blazed out soul samples and claustrophobic, almost manic moments of paranoia. Sometimes you’re smoking the Kush and then sometimes there’s a black SUV in your rearview. Schoolboy Q rides over all this with straight-faced hood talk and almost gleeful depictions of acts of depravity, like so many others grasping power in whatever avenue is available to him. Kanye West has a show stealing feature and Vince Staples continues to shine, but I’m all about those Jadakiss and E40 bars.

Watch “John Muir”

4. Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition

Beats that sound like they were compiled from the intro to old VHS tapes and people banging on trashcans.  Little oft-kilter touches mirror the descriptions of substance abuse, the pitch-heightened background voice in “White Lines,” B-Real’s blitzed nursery rhyme delivery of the hook on “Get Hi.” Not that much music can probably still scare your cool boomer parents, but I’d nominate this one.

Watch “When It Rain”

Image via the Nobody’s Baby video

5. Sheer Mag - III

Sheer Mag sounds like the best basement band in the world, grimy rock n roll made by people who got punk but also grew up on Thin Lizzy and Jackson Five. Guitar solos that sound liberating instead of masturbatory and powerhouse vocals from Tina Halladay about love and heartbreak, like someone’s memory of what 70s rock n roll was like, inevitably better than it actually was.

Watch “Nobody’s Baby”

6. The Falcon - Gather Up The Chaps

Technically this is a punk rock supergroup, with members of the Loved Ones and Alkaline Trio, but it feels very much like Brendan Kelly’s vision, a chance to get a little grittier than the Lawrence Arms and indulge in his ever present artistic interest in the guy puking in the alley, then asking you if you know where to score some coke. There’s a song named after the video of David Hasselhoff drunkenly eating a cheeseburger, and though in a different band this may be a gimmicky (and like, really really out of date) reference to internet culture, here it comes across as a recognition - a dark moment is a dark moment no matter how meme worthy it becomes.

Watch “Sergio’s Here”

7. Jeff Rosenstock - Worry

Massive sing alongs, noisy genre hopping (or combining), and huge power-pop hooks that always seem to be just on the verge of descending into chaos. Jeff Rosenstock has often managed to make whatever he’s going through personally seem to speak to larger scale generational woes (I’m pretty sure there were at least two albums about not wanting to get a job, which came out at the same time that I and most of the people I know also didn’t want to get jobs). A reoccurring theme here seems to be the gentrification of places that you love, which is connected to the experience of getting older and feeling like you’re missing out. Jeff has definitely crafted his own “sound” at this point, so when he switches styles to the straight genre homage in the three-song punch of “Bang On the Door,” “Rainbow” and “Planet Luxury” (garage punk, third-wave ska and hardcore) in 3 blistering minutes, it’s a perfect reminder of all the music we (well, me) grew up loving.

Watch “Wave Goodnight To Me”

8. Kamaiyah - A Good Night In the Ghetto

Remember when people used to call beats “slappers?” Probably only if you were into Bay Area hip-hop circa 2007. Anyway, this shit slaps.

Watch “Out the Bottle”

9. YG - Still Brazy

Similar to how A Good Night in The Ghetto feels like an amalgamation of several decades of Bay Area hip hop, this is puuuuuure fucking LA fat bass, eerie keyboard sampling G-funk. Gangsta rap has always been political. Have I written that before? It’s worth saying more than once. Those last three songs though. FDT will obviously have a lot of shelf life, but “Blacks and Browns” and “Police Get Away Wit Murder” are sharp contributions to the tradition of “fuck this shit” also.

Watch “FDT”

10. Run the Jewels - RTJ3

A rush of weird beats, shit talk, and surreal imagery, hip-hop dispatches from a dystopian future, but one that feels weeks rather than years away. El-P and Killer Mike are honestly not that similar stylistically, (El-P is more from the highly conceptual east coast underground school, Killer Mike is more the southern testifying and telling straight truths school) but their mutual love of the game has always made this work and they are both world class shit talkers.

Watch “Talk To Me”

Image via the Chili Town video

11. Hinds - Leave Me Alone

Garage… pop I guess? that feels close to the vein, emotionally. I don’t mean heartbreak, though that’s here too, but also friendship, drinking wine in the sun, with surfy guitar melodies. There’s something that sometimes happens with some lady bands, where people kind of get into some sort of perceived naiveté or innocence or something, so I’m going to assume these women can fuck you up.

Watch “Warts”

12. Pup - The Dream Is Over

The frustration of reaching your mid-20s, realizing that you have not accomplished any of your goals and that you don’t have any prospects. In song form. It would sound like a kiss-off if the singer wasn’t desperately grasping for change.

Watch “DVP”

13. A Tribe Called Quest - We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service

Classic Tribe components still here - the swing in the rhythm, the walking bass lines, motherfucking Busta Rhymes(!), but with a foot firmly planted in the present. Did they used to swear this much? I don’t remember. Extended music breaks. Guitar flourishes. Q-Tip is clearly the ringleader, wearing the role more comfortably than ever, but with a kind of quiet humility that comes from age. Yeah, we still here, shit still sucks, but sometimes you find those little moments, you know?

Watch “We The People”

14. Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker

Is there hope for salvation before death? Or just further disappointment and failure? An album to drink wine to in a dark room, alone but for ghosts.

Watch “You Want It Darker”

15. Drive-By Truckers - American Band

Pretty sure the Truckers have always been angry and political, it’s just never lined up with current events quite this overtly - but there’s always been a real siding with the have-nots, the people screwed over by bad economics, and the (not just white) working classes, though sometimes this manifests as concept albums about Lynard Skynard. Still, with a band that clearly flirts with a Red State target audience, at least sonically, and judging from the youtube comments on some of their videos, hanging their hat so clearly on the “blue side” is a risky move and one that should be commended. Here we get stories about the founder of the NRA murdering a Mexican teenager in the 20s, the shooting at Umpqua community college, hypocritical religious folks, and Black Lives fucking Mattering.

Watch “Surrender Under Protest”

16. David Bowie - Blackstar

To be honest, I thought this sounded a little bit too much like Pink Floyd the first time I heard it (plus a sax player) but the sultriness of cuts like “Lazerus,” the keyboard line in “’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore” that sounds like it came out of an 80s fantasy movie, and the weird vocal flourishes and marching rhythm of “Girl Loves Me” won me over. Bowie has left this mortal coil, and either ascended to a tinsel covered 70s movie set or an 80s computer game about going to the moon, but it’s definitely some kind of heaven.

Watch “Lazerus”

17. Death Grips - Bottomless Pit

A soundtrack for glitchy meme art, ordering 2CI off the Silk Road, and those computer generated DeepDream images, while MC Ride bellows avant-garde street poetry. I’ve never been sure if Death Grips are railing against or with the shitposting internet culture that’s embraced them. Some of these tracks are just fucking metal though.

Watch “Eh”

18. clipping - Splendor and Misery

Breakneck raps over the sound of an airshaft opening on a spaceship. This is supposedly a concept album about a slave revolt in outer space. Musically this equates to old spirituals and malfunctioning computers.

Watch “Air Em Out”

19. The Coathangers - Nosebleed Weekend

In the music video for “Nosebleed Weekend” the women in the band crash a party of hipsters to punch everyone in the face, but then the video ends with them probably trying to keep a straight face while they get covered with buckets of fake blood. Tough sounding surf punk, much about heartbreak.

Watch “Nosebleed Weekend”

Image via the Victim of Me video

20. Descendents - Hypercaffium Spazzinate

There’s a lot of older musicians on this list for whatever reason (all the dead guys I guess,) but a few lyrics about dietary changes aside, this band could have stepped wholesale out of their 1994 variation. Fast, hooky, with the most underrated bass lines in punk.

Watch “Victim of Me”

21. Paul Simon - Stranger to Stranger

Alright, this one’s a little NPR but I will say that I think Paul Simon sounds a little more of-kilter, a little moodier than he sometimes does. There are dark things around the edges in this one, whether it’s the ghostly guitars on the title track, or the way his funny song about getting stuck outside a club you’re supposed to play suddenly starts alluding to class uprising, a buildup that feels both surprising and also strangely inevitable.

Watch “Wristband”

22. Mikey Erg - Tentative Decisions

A lot of emotionally earnest music (dare we bring up emo?) gets slammed, essentially for being melodramatic. It’s a difficult balancing act, but I’ve always felt like the Ergs managed to avoid this, and here Mikey Erg continues that streak on his first solo album, with tastefully poppy tunes full of yearning melodies and (more) broken hearts, ala Big Star or an early Beatles album. When I saw this guy live a few years ago, it made my friend get back together with his ex-girlfriend.

Watch “Faulty Metaphor”

23. NOFX - First Ditch Effort

There is no way I’m not putting an album that has a song where Fat Mike sings about being a fetishistic crossdresser in my top 25.

Watch “Six Years On Dope”

24. Ramshackle Glory - One Last Big Job

It’s amazing how many people’s favorite band this is with virtually no mainstream recognition. Like, even Bomb the Music Industry put out stuff with Asian Man, who’ve put out Alkaline Trio records and stuff. And yet this (and Patrick Schneeweis’s other projects) is like Bob Dylan to thousands of kids across the country. I knew something was up when all the kids at the Rainbow Gathering I went to (2011) were playing Johnny Hobo covers. Anyway, this is their last album, and as such is a somewhat slow, contemplative affair. Pat’s always been excellent at espousing anarchist ideals while also representing that problems and hypocrisies that accompany radical lifestyles. Swan song for a true alternative.

Listen to “Face the Void”

25. AJJ - The Bible 2

Very much continuing ideas first developed on Christmas Island, a collection of noisy rock/pop tunes with upbeat melodies and lyrics about losing your shit, dirty middle schoolers who hang out by themselves in construction sites, and the Herculean task of feeling kind of ok with yourself.

Watch “Goodbye, Oh Goodbye”

[bekahdoesnerdshit]

9, 20, 24 for Raini and cog for at least some!

So! I realized about halfway through answering this that I read your question entirely wrong and I do apologize, but now you get some Bonus Cog Lore. And, since we all know this is a Cog stan blog atm, that’s certainly on brand!

9. As a child, what did they want to be when they grew up? Did they realize their dream? Raini: Raini! Wanted! To be! A god! I know I’ve answered an ask about it before so I won’t go into super detail, but that was her goal from pretty much as soon as she was old enough to understand what the people at the temple were doing, who they were worshiping, and why. Not to psychoanalyze my own dnd character, but the root of this, I think, is that she wanted to be Important. She wanted to matter, and for the longest time that was the way she saw people mattering Most in the circles she was in. Now, obviously, she doesn’t remember that dream, but even pre-wipe I think she was chasing it less directly. But that being said, she does have that holy symbol of Amaunator on her.... Cog: Cog thought she’d be dead by 20 so-- No but like. Honestly? She grew up knowing she was being Prepared for the Ritual, and she did Not know what this Ritual involved. Did she trust that her mom wouldn’t put her though something she wouldn’t survive? ......probably?? Maybe?? Most likely? Potentially. Even before she was old enough to register that this was a potential end for her, I think she didn’t necessarily have aspirations beyond “be like mom! Everyone tells me how alike we are and this is a Good thing! I am a baby :)” Which, of course, would have meant joining the cult church and just. Seeing how things rolled out from there. Now....I dunno! She’s just trying to go out there and do Good, and inspire people to do the same. I guess in the most abstract, longest term sense, she imagines she’ll eventually go back to New Alexandria and start climbing the ranks there. Maybe end up teaching some day? Getting to help repay the city that welcomed her by building it up however she can? It’s the least she can do, at least when this adventuring deal has run its course.

20. Do they like to travel? How do they pack and prepare? Raini: Raini is fine with traveling, she’s just fucking sick of walking. How do four level 19 adventurers not have a single horse between them? Are we not better than this? Have we not transcended walking? Fuck! I think I’ve talked about it before, but while Raini’s room is a Mess her travel supplies are very well organized. She does (or did I guess) know exactly what components went in each pocket in her robes, what went where in her pack, what she’d stored in the bag of holding, everything. I don’t think she’s the type to overpack, but I do think she’s the type of figure out exactly how much she’s going to need and pack only that, even if doing so takes longer than just overpacking. When you have a bag of holding at your disposal, is there such a thing as overpacking? Maybe not. Doesn’t matter. Cog: In a hot bit of contrast, Cog’s backpack is a Mess. She is Lucky she has a focus and can’t afford consumable materials because she’d just lose them. She fully has to do that thing where you shove something in, then jostle the backpack up and down a few times to get everything to settle in a way that gives you just a couple more inches to jam stuff in. The exception! Is her violin case, which hangs neatly from straps below her backpack. (This is foreshadowing for another ask where I’m going IN on this violin Lore. Get ready.) I don’t think she minds travel either! I think she wants to have a home base to circle back to every so often more than Raini does, and I think in game rn she’s about ready to do that circling back, but sometimes you just gotta put on your big girl pants and go meet the Bandit King anyway. Such is life 😔

24. How do they react to being physically injured or undergoing medical treatment? Raini: Raini’s number one priority is (was? Maybe??) making sure she does Not get hurt. If it happens though, she gets Mad. She’s gonna dig in her heels, grit her teeth, and say, “Alright, motherfucker. You asked for it” and then use some Fuck Off Big Magic to make them no longer exist. You can also see a taste of this in the way her encounter with the Abeast went last session! I was watching her hit points go down, she could feel herself getting weaker, and there was one point where we were staring down 16 hit points where all of the damage rolls had previously been a 17 or higher and we had to make a decision. And what decision was there? She had more questions, she needed more answers, and there was no way of knowing if she’d have a chance like that one again. Is she pain adverse? Yes. Is she also stubborn as hell? Without question. As she’s gotten more powerful and more confident in her abilities and in her ability to trust the people around her to have her back if something happens that second point has started to overshadow the first. Cog: Cog’s that bitch who’s at a third of her health saying “I’m okay!!!!” because she doesn’t want anyone to worry. Cog, you’re the fucking healer. You can’t be this irresponsible. The biggest problem with this lie, however, is that her school robes are: entirely white. You know what shows up really well on white robes? Red blood! Uh oh! Your party members are gonna know that you’re hurt, kiddo, and Wol’s gonna hurt himself trying to cast Healing Word on you. I hope you’re happy. This is also the game where occasionally spells will backfire and do 1d8 damage per level of the spell to the caster, which -now that we’re dipping into sixth level spells- can seriously hurt! Cog’s don’t backfire super often (which is just luck of the dice) but the few times they have she’s just steadied herself, wiped the blood from her nose, and tried again. Because what else can you do? Your party needs that Seeming so they can sneak into the bunker! They’re counting on you! For someone who fusses over her party over the smallest things, she sure does Not take care of herself quite the same way.