#publishing my music

[pitsazawr]

you look kinda mad, Bradley... are u okay?

[emilyjunk]

Mean Girls 2024 + Reductress Headlines

[pa-pa-plasma]

[soupmanspeaks]

something something headcanon Michael wrote a good amount of the Fnaf songs as a way of coping with the horrors™️ so like in his handy dandy notebook, right next to his plans of arson and vivid drawings of nightmares, it reads "I can see you there, warmth and life, why don't you share, it's been many years, stuck here living with out fears-" and it doubles as Michael trying to categorize all the information he's learnt and helping him process all this information and it gives this really funny visual of later on, Gregory asking Glamrock Freddy something from the past of Fazbear Entertainment or his previous family drama and then Freddy just starts humming and muttering "....mmm all stay strong, we live eternally, all is well in mmmmm pure insanity, mmmmm-AH!- here is your answer, Gregory! :333" no because imagine he shows Gregory "Too Far" (by CK9C) and Greg's like "Thats......a lot of yelling." "I was going through a rough time haha." -listens to it further before taking of the headphones- "...You good man?" "I'm really not, but we ball, Gregory."

[shocktreatment]

Hair (1967)

[bleaksqueak]

Since I posted some of my old fanart yesterday... if you're not familiar with Slayers, and thus have never heard its amazing music, do check it out. It's largely by the same songwriter, Masami Okui, that did Utena's iconic opening (Rinbu Revolution) and ofc (TRUTH) and sung by a duo of her and Hayashibara Megumi (you know, the GOAT)

The entire OST pretty much slaps. there's only a couple of bad image songs in an absolute expanse of pure gold. GIVE A REASON, the opening to the second season, tends to be the reigning favorite. (I've a hard time pinning down my absolute favorite... of the original openings, it might be Breeze, but all three are so good. Of the entire catalog? Impossible to choose. Midnight Blue, Raging Waves, Within my Unlimited Desires, Gloria, Get Along... Impossible Choice)

[cheriekos]

no context these songs remind me of these dc characters:

bruce:

kon (blue foster in general makes me think of kon)

core four:

TIMOTHY JACKSON DRAKE:

[lucky-clover-gazette]

i like watching video essays where people freak out about popular authors who wrote fanfic because like. if that ever happened to me it’d be like “oh she wrote uh. about two characters from a 2004 manga based on the least popular zelda game to the transformative extent that they’re nearly unrecognizable, about herself and the villain from a pokemon spinoff game, about a minor npc from botw/totk, and years before that, catradora.”

[gennyrthewriter]

waiting on the second round of edits for book 2 is AGONIZING.

so, to stay sane while i wait around for the blorbos on my pages to become perfect, i made Spotify playlists for book 1 AND book 2!

Each song corresponds to its respective chapter, mostly based on vibes, but there are some meme picks in there. THE PLAYLIST FOR BOOK 2 IS SO HYPE LISTEN TO IT TO GET HYPE FOR THE HYPE BOOK

And of course, here's a link to the Amazon page for book 1

[youling-the-ghost]

GUESS WHO JUST WROTE A TITCH AND DEREK FIC!

well technically this is just chapter 1, but hey it's still (nearly) 3k of Aubgergine Goodness so it still counts

Anyways if I don't post an update for a while (a while as in longer than a week or so) you guys have my permission to spam my DMs to get me to update. I need y'all to hold me accountable.

[tachimichishrine]

Could I ask for a little Christmas special with Tachi x Fem!reader? With smut, the cherry on the cake could not be missing. Ñakañaka👀

<HAHAHA CANT BELIEVE IVE GOT A CHRISTMAS SPECIAL REQ,,, keep in mind i dont celebrate xmas so im pullin out a lot of clichés and i'm assuming it's a stereotypical northern hemisphere winter vibe just for funsies. ñakañaka to you too, dear reader>

"by the fireplace"

⫭◦⨝◦⫬

tachihara michizou x fem! reader {christmas special}

warnings: nsfw ; fingering ; cockwarming ; soft sex ; ooc tachihara bc i can ; playful cursing ; intended lowercase ; unedited as always

stupid. you are stupid.

stupid for getting so excited around the holidays. for using your day off to prepare your painfully small studio apartment with a bunch of decorations bought from the local store, anything that was cheap and shiny. you expertly coordinated the colours, the theme and the shapes, putting up zigzags of fluffy green boas on the walls of your kitchen and swirls of red streamers in your living room. you couldn't afford a christmas tree both financially and space-wise, so you took your local houseplants, covered them in random cut-out figures and makeshift ornaments, then allocated a small corner in their honour. it was cute, but there was no one to share it with.

stupid for getting your hopes up. you hadn't spoken to your boyfriend in so long, hadn't received a response to all your lovesick voice messages or texts, telling him how much you missed him and how badly you wanted him back home. chances are that the number you were contacting had gotten tossed, thrown in the garbage on a mission that was too high-risk for him to compromise your safety. it was worse when you thought about the fact that he was doing this for you; sometimes you wanted to track him down, show up to wherever he was spying and kiss him numb in front of whoever he was supposed to be infiltrating.

stupid for baking cookies. they were really good too— you picked whatever recipe online that you could find and made 2 dozen of them. you ate half, music playing on your speaker, sitting down on your sofa all alone. you wished you'd have someone to share them with.

the cold outside made this holiday season all the more unbearable, with the delicate snowflakes whisking around the frigid air outside. you were safe inside, snuggled up by the fireplace with a book and a blanket, but feeling incredibly lonely.

"you've probably tossed this burner phone by now..." you couldn't resist the temptation and pulled out your phone in order to leave him another voicemail, "but michi, baby, I miss you. I know I'm supposed to love all this me time or whatever, but... fuck, I made cookies and all I wanna do is stuff them in your beautiful face. man, I've gone crazy, haven't I? anyways... I miss you. I love you. I just hope you're safe and come home soon."

you had to get your mind off of things. you had to do something, anything to get out of your head. you were off work, but you didn't have the mind to concentrate on any activities at home by yourself, and all your friends were busy with family and loved ones.

you decided to go for a walk outside, in the freezing cold snow.

it did wonders for your head. you didn't even have your headphones in, which was odd, but instead listened to everything around. you snuggled further into your coat, told yourself that you should've worn more layers, been more prepared for the cold, but it was refreshing nonetheless. you didn't keep track of the time, instead visiting every corner of your neighborhood and just strolling around as you pleased. by the time your nose felt like it was going to freeze off, you were approaching the entrance of the building.

someone was at the door, in a familiar army-green coat with beige fur around the collar. you nearly tripped over yourself running over to the figure, excitement louder in your mind than the fear of accidentally trapping the wrong person in a bear hug.

to your surprise, you didn't hug a person at all. you were hugging a floating jacket that seemed to be carrying all its weight at four spots where small metal clips were positioned. you yanked the coat off of the clips, relishing in the faint smell of your lover, only pulled out of your happiness by a cold impact on your back.

you turned around to look at the son of a bitch who threw a snowball at you.

"aren't you cold?" you chuckled, seeing tachihara in only his v-neck long sleeved shirt you would tease him about and say looked like that of a school girl. "taking off your coat just 'cause you're dramatic as hell."

"you're spunky for someone who left me about a million sappy voicemails in the past week," he retorted in a sassy tone. despite the words exchanged, you dropped his jacket on the snow and ran over to him like you were a housewife waiting for him to come back from war, which you might as well have been. he caught you hurling your body at him and gave you a twirl around while you giggled and peppered his face in kisses.

when he finally set you down, you had your hands wrapped around the back of his neck, his on your hips, and you pulled him in to feel his lips on yours. "you really are dramatic as hell."

"and you love me." his gloved hand balanced your chin on his curled index finger and brought you back in for another kiss. "m'sorry I was gone for so long this time."

you shook your head, holding him tighter as if he would dissipate and float away if you let go. "you're here now. that's all I care about." your grip tightened and you hopped up so that you could wrap your legs around his hips. "now carry me inside and make it up to me."

"oh, she's demanding, ain't she?" he chuckled, holding you up by your thighs. "I haven't even been back more than two seconds and I'm getting ordered 'round."

"shut up, you know you love it," you giggled, trying to climb off of him so you could walk into your home but his grip was firm and he didn't seem intent on letting you go. "baby, I was joking, you can put me down now."

"hm? if ya say so."

and he tossed you onto the ground.

you weren't expecting that, but laughed in the snow as you processed what he'd just done. in retaliation, you kicked out his ankles and he collapsed right next to you. obviously, you both knew that he could've dodged it, but he let himself fall by your side and lay his arm across your waist. he shivered, his barely covered torso coming in direct contact with the cold snow while snowflakes fluttered onto his lashes and hair. he laughed again as he rolled onto you, trapping you under his weight while you looked up at him dreamily.

"I missed you," you whispered seriously, saying those words for the thousandth time today, "a lot. I'm glad you're back."

he struggled to formulate a response, blush almost as red as the tips of his frozen ears or his hair, instead letting his body drop onto you and kiss you on the forehead. "I missed you more than you could ever imagine. almost got caught daydreamin' about you a few times on the mission."

"is that so?" you perked up a brow, amused. tachihara finally got off of you, offering his hand to help you up while the other brushed off the melting wetness on his back and knees. "what kind of daydreams?"

he pulled you up once you took his hand, leading you inside the apartment building while he shook his head to loosen the water droplets at the tips of his hair— almost like a dog. he leaned into your ear and whispered, "the kind I can't say out loud."

"how 'bout a more visual description, then?" you offered innocently, and he chuckled. once you reached the front door, you'd completely forgotten all of the loneliness you'd been feeling when you'd initially left. you barely made it inside the entrance when he had your back pressed against your decorated walls, knee slotted in between your legs and lips back on yours.

you took off your jacket and other garments, trying to toss them in the closet without breaking the kiss. only, once you'd finally kicked off your boots, you remembered his jacket.

"fuck, it's still outside, my bad," you murmured against him, "should I go back down and get it?"

"no need, just open up a window."

you did as he asked while he got settled, warming up by the fireplace and munching on the now cooled-down baked goods. the place still smelled like the sugar cookies, so he commented on how incredibly festive it all seemed. you just shrugged and said you had free time, but quickly admitted you were a little lonely lately. he noticed your frown and unconsciously mimicked it.

"anyways, are you gonna tell me why I'm opening a window when it's freezing outside?" you asked, turning towards him.

"close your eyes," he instructed. you felt a twinge of excitement as you complied.

a few moments later, you heard some clattering outside. barely resisting the urge to peek, you stole a quick look outside and saw the floating jacket, again. you rolled your eyes, placed a hand on your hip and scolded him for acting so melodramatic again. he just chuckled, but his laugh was enough to get your heart thawing out. he brought it inside and you closed the window behind it, but told him to levitate it to the closet. meanwhile, you had to drag him to the bedroom to get him to change out of his soaking wet clothes.

you watched him pull his damp shirt over his head while you got yourself comfortable on the bed. with his torso bare, you stared just a little too long at him, shamelessly, and tsked when he reached for the drawer for a replacement.

"hey, I'm still fuckin' frozen," he explained himself, but you jumped up and grabbed his wrist to stop him from putting anything on.

"we have a fireplace for that reason, love," you retorted.

that was just an excuse to get him naked for you in any way you could, and he let it happen. you cuddled with him on the sofa, his head buried in between your tits with your hands roaming all over his skin. under the covers, you got greedy and began sliding your hands under his pants. he let you take them off, but took your shirt off as well. heavy breathing into his mouth distracted you from skilled fingertips tugging off your pants next.

"I... mmm..." you hummed softly against him as you let him pull you on top of him. you sat down on him, legs parted on both sides and throbbing in between them hard to control. "haven't felt you... in so long..."

it was a request, and he knew it. your fingers couldn't do the trick, not once you had gotten used to his own, skilled and rough and so knowledgeable in understanding every spot and nook that could have you sighing on his knuckles. and he was just that; knuckle-deep in your soaking pussy as you spasmed around his fingers and felt him curl them around inside your walls.

"someone missed me a lot," he remarks with a smug grin while he looked at your eyes tightened shut and jaw slacked open as you rode his hand. you placed your hand on his neck, both steadying yourself so you could fuck yourself harder on his hand and choking him lightly so he would shut the fuck up.

you lowered your chest so you could kiss him heatedly through the fingerfucking, and whispered sweet nothings in his lips while occasionally gasping and panting for air.

"still cold?" you asked cheekily in his ear, licking around the shell and biting down on his earlobe. "or d'you want me to sit on that pretty cock of yours?"

he really was frozen; you felt his frigid skin as you pulled down his boxers and his cock sprung free, familiar pulsating as he grunted through the sensation. you lowered yourself onto him, slow and relishing in his pleasurable whimpers, and rocked into him even slower. it was just the two of you, by the fireplace, gently fucking while you smothered him in kisses.

you couldn't have asked for a better christmas present this year.

[vix2section]

calcutta (maida vale session)

[truethes]

munday question! tell me either the last song you have added in your muses playlist, and/or a song you had added in your most recent muse playlist and why you have added them / how it relates to your muse. mine are below the cut:

the last song i added to one of my muse playlist's was brand new city by mit.ski for kuro's. the repeating bridge is hard to explain but the verses in between sum it up nicely, the state of depression he found himself in for the past 500 years, the feeling of knowing hes rotting from the inside and being unable to do anything about it. the line that ends up standing out the most is, ironically, the titular one's: But if I gave up on being pretty, I wouldn't know how to be alive / I should move to a brand new city and teach myself how to die. pretty is a placeholder here when the message is clear: this sadness / depression / lingering feelings of negativity ruled the majority of his life, all brought down to the count. going to japan and murdering him, at the risk of his own immortal life, was his own way of trying to kill that.

the song that comes from my newest muse playlist i nominated was art by chonn.y jash for tills playlist: an immediate add from it's first line disrespecting the audience that listens to it, encapsulating the entire theme of the song, as brought up by the first verse: I don't do requests, I'm not your clown / Fuck you all / Who cares about broader reach? / This is not about you, this is all about me / And my tiny, little conscience / And staving off unease. at the end of the day, it's a song that sums everything up nicely, a musician who has love for his music, has confidence in it, but is brought towards an audience that holds everything in the balance - he'll work hard, sing from the heart, feel strong for doing as such, but deep down it's fickle, it's dependant. just like his own life, in the end.

[corviiids]

For the director's cut fanfic thing: ⭐⭐⭐ (these are THREE stars valid for whatever. I'm giving you blank checks)

thank you again <3

blank check 2/3 goes back to as you like it again! but this time i want to talk about my shadow designs for the akechi bossfights we've encountered in the preceding chapters >:3 there are five - the Puppet, the Singer, the Bard, the Dancer, and the Magician.

but this got really ABSURDLY long this time so ill stick to mostly the Puppet, and just do a brief ("brief") overview of the others for now.......

(for context: this is my palace au and akechi's keywords are akechi goro, the world, theatre.)

the Puppet (photos of giant puppets below if that freaks you out!)

the first Wing the thieves encounter is the puppet show, and the boss shadow is a giant marionette:

For one thing, it’s huge—maybe three or four times the size of a human being. It’s also gleaming, carefully polished and buffed, reflecting light more viciously in the areas where it seems the wood might be chipped or worn. The polish throws the lines of joints and pieces into sharp relief, giving the puppet the general impression of something whole that had been cut up and pieced slowly together with hinges and nails. Behind it, mostly concealed by its limp bulk, is a door. As they might have gleaned from the chatter of the audience, the show does not yet seem to have begun. As such, the puppet on stage is limp on its strings. Most disturbingly, it’s draped backward, not forward, snapped unnaturally at the spine and giving it the extremely uncanny look of a corpse on uneven ceiling hooks. They can just make out the side of the thing’s eyes from where they’re standing. Gravity has not been kind to them: the puppet’s eyelids are dropped open, bulging eyes left wide and staring up as far back as the build will let them. They haven’t rolled all the way into the wooden skull, presumably because they can’t. Instead, the unseeing yellow eyes remain fixed on the back corner of the stage. The puppet is entirely still. “I think I’m going to be sick,” Makoto says faintly.

i think the Puppet is my favourite of the five because he's so disturbing. i imagine he looks a bit like the giant marionettes by the french street theatre show royal de luxe:

but i really love these guys, so i think it's uncharitable to say akechi's shadow looks exactly like them. i know giant puppets are always a little freaky but i genuinely love the royal de luxe puppets and i think the workmanship on these does genuinely do a ton of work to dispel that uncanny vibe.

puppet akechi on the other hand is absolutely drenched in uncanny valley, so i guess imagine these puppets but much scarier. the main thing is those places where different pieces of wood are joined, in the joints / on the limbs / etc, because that's very key to puppet akechi's look in my mind, hence "something whole that had been cut up and pieced slowly together with hinges and nails". the Puppet is a marionette, but the way he's been constructed and set up on stage almost calls to mind the imagery of a corpse that's been reconstructed to perform. the way he moves is really unnatural:

Ren is beginning to think they might be able to get past and slip through that door without a fight when the whole creature rears up, back strings going taut, and lashes wildly out at him with a horrible clack of its arms—he leaps back and crashes directly into Haru, who catches and dips him like a princess before twirling him frantically into Ryuji and the puppet gouges a deep gash in the stage floor.    As they watch it screeches, howls an unnatural shriek, eyes suddenly wide and bulging larger. They ‘blink’ a few times, eyelids flipping, then the puppet Akechi goes limp on its strings again, though decidedly more upright than before, like whoever’s pulling the strings is now on guard. Its eyes stay open this time, bright gold and piercing.

very much not like something exercising its own agency, but like a body on strings being operated by someone who did not care to practice in the artistry of operating a puppet to make it look like a live thing - the puppet is literally just a tool to be flailed about.

this also shows in the way the puppet sits when it's at rest. guys do you know how god damn hard it is to find normal pictures of puppets? when you google marionette it just comes up with a bunch of fnaf shit. anyway check this guy out

at rest, they usually just kind of dangle innocently, or might slouch forward if given too much slack, right? it was important to me that puppet akechi look very wrong at rest, as if he's not "at rest" so much as he's just been left to hang. hence: "it’s draped backward, not forward, snapped unnaturally at the spine and giving it the extremely uncanny look of a corpse on uneven ceiling hooks." i'm basically imagining meat hooks, like, in a slaughterhouse or something you know? like he's just dangling from those.

that imagery was inspired by persona 5 dancing, actually - akechi's finishing pose in his dance is this:

this is just such an unnatural pose. when i saw it for the first time, i just couldn't get the image out of my head of a string puppet who'd been hung up and left to dangle without any regard for how it might look or feel (lol). not to mention that blank look in his eyes. i think a lot of the Puppet was born from this dance because the dance itself is so dynamic and silly but then the lead-up to the end suddenly gets very jerky and puppet-like. i really like his dance!

the Puppet's battle mechanic is that the applause will continue as long as the Puppet is either acting or getting hurt (kind of like the mettaton fight in undertale actually?). if the applause stops, then the Puppet will be inflicted with Despair - in p5 the Despair effect means you lose SP for each turn and then instantly die on the third turn. makoto ends up healing the Puppet and yusuke mercy-kills it before it can commit suicide:

Fox silently raises his gun. The Thieves collectively flinch as the Puppet dissipates. The applause starts back up. “If we’d left things silent,” Yusuke says, “it would have only happened again.”

because this is the first shadow bossfight the thieves encounter in the Theatre, i needed it to have some broader implications (vs some of the later shadows who have more specific interactions). so obviously the analogue for akechi is that the performance needs to continue and he needs to continue receiving acknowledgement from the public / from shido / etc because if he's not useful and entertaining and noticeable and such, then he's nothing - his life doesn't mean anything. obviously, if he doesnt perform for shido (perform in the sense of working, but also in the sense of showmanship) he'll probably be killed. but also, akechi really externalises his sense of self to an insane degree. the conceit of the palace is essentially that his entire internal world is the show, it's just this shallow performance, the backstage is empty. if he stops existing in the cognition of the masses, he essentially "stops existing".

i think a lot about third semester akechi in royal and how completely he's faded from public awareness. he doesn't care because he's a dead man walking and has locked into nihilism at that point. but if you look at what akechi says in the engine room:

his voice when he says this says a lot to me. akechi's envisioning the world as it will look when he has to return and face the consequences of the world discovering what's behind the curtain and realising his credibility was all a show. to be honest, i think this also plays a role in his decision to sacrifice himself in this scene. i don't think he wanted to die, but i think he did realise that the post-thieves, post-truth world wasn't a place that held anything for him anymore, and his desire to return to that reality was dramatically weakened, so it was an easier decision for him to choose to make that sacrifice than it otherwise might have been.

um, i had a point. okay, so, i was saying that once the applause stops, the Puppet begins to despair. the Puppet also is the most direct representation of akechi as someone who is being used. all the shadow bosses correlate to some aspect of akechi's need to perform and to the varying reasons why they all have that sense of desperation:

“Kinda feels like they’re just defendin’ themselves, you know,” [Ryuji] says. “Or somethin’. Look too much like him. It’s weird they can’t talk, cos it’s like fighting a dumb animal. Don’t they all seem real scared to you?” None of Akechi’s Shadows have delivered grand speeches about conquering the world. Even Futaba’s Shadow had given them a fairly strong indication of what was going on with her, that overwhelming guilt which had given birth to a resolve to lock herself up in her mind and die. Akechi’s Shadows have lashed out, tried to destroy them, sure. But it feels different in a way that’s growing more and more impossible to ignore. Desperate to fend them off, more than anything, like each one is the final bastion standing for a world that could crumble at any moment.

that's why once you figure out how to stop each shadow's "show" from going on, they instantly die:

ripping the Singer's mask off causes him to cease to exist (see below)

silencing the Bard, who relies on the power of his words to manipulate others, removes his power and reveals that he's pretty easy to take down

the Dancer's feet are always bleeding because he can't stop moving. he's hard to catch, but the moment he stops dancing, he's revealed to have extremely low defence and can be taken out very easily

but the Puppet is literally being manipulated by a puppetmaster. because he no longer has any use when the applause stops, he no longer has a reason to exist. i also just thought this would be a fun effect to start on because it's so drastic as an introduction to akc's psyche and really gives the thieves a sense of what they're working with by throwing them directly into the deep end.

ok let's leave the puppet behind for now. im gonna be more brief with the others i promise (maybe)

the Singer

LET'S TALK about. beneath the mask. a song about ren. but it's also a song about goro.

I'm a shape-shifter at Poe's masquerade Hiding both face and mind All free for you to draw

the fic goes over some of my meta about this:

[Yusuke] I have done some research. [Makoto] Oh? [Yusuke] I believe when the Opera Shadow sang of “Poe’s Masquerade”, he was referring to a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, entitled “The Masque of the Red Death”.

eternally grateful for the scene during the pyramid arc where yusuke loredumps about egyptian mythology so i have precedent to do this

yusuke summarises the story in this chapter (chapter 4), but basically: the story is about rich people abandoning the common folk to a plague, until a personification of the plague wearing a red mask enters the castle. when his mask is removed, it's revealed there is nothing underneath. everyone in the castle then succumbs to the plague.

the superficial connections to akechi are pretty obvious - red mask, plague doctor. etc. but this song is really, really telling for both ren and goro. i briefly went over this in my last dvd commentary post about the palace fic, but this relates to my meta around both of them as mask wearers. the line "all free for you to draw" is a big one - ren is "all free for you," the player, "to draw" - he becomes who you need him to be, and because you need to max out your confidants, he becomes (via you) who his friends need him to be.

goro is similar on a different scale because he moulds his personality to what the public expects him to be. he takes it one step further, because it's less utility for him and more foundational - as i said, to an extent the performance is the substance of his personality, which is the core of the distortion. so both ren and goro are wearing the mask, malleable in character, their actual personality being somewhat questionable, but that emptiness is only true for goro. ren's definitely got something underneath it, but goro feels like he doesn't.

brief cw for suicidal ideation, but i also generally take it as a given that goro doesn't really expect to live past 18 after defeating shido. not that he's actively suicidal, but i think literally or figuratively he knows after shido's downfall, his own life will pretty much be over, and that's part of what drives the emptiness. the show really only needs to go on until that point, and after that there's no need to build a real thing underneath to return to. he's very much living for that goal.

anyway: so the Singer starts out singing the Phantom of the Opera - the Shadow is very much modelled after the phantom - but swaps to beneath the mask and begins to connect with ren. the Singer wears a red mask. i really like this mask! i envision it as looking like someone pouring blood over his face and then the blood freezing in place, so it just looks very molten and liquid but fixed over half his face.

ren defeats the Singer by ripping his mask off:

[Ren] Please don’t take off my mask, revealing dark [Ann] OMG!! [Ann] THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED WHEN WE TOOK OFF HIS MASK!! [Ann] HE REVEALED DARK!!!! [Ann] HE DISAPPEARED!!!!!!!!!!

(i love the thieves because i dont have to be subtle about my symbolism i can just make them say it)

anyway, just like the figure in the Masque of the Red Death, ripping off the Singer's mask reveals "dark" underneath - he ceases to exist.

Just a cage of bones There's nothing inside

the Bard and the Dancer

when i was first plotting this fic, i was actually designing the palace not as a written environment but as though it would be a playable place. so a lot of it is informed by me picturing what this palace would be like to play through and explore, building it out as a video game environment in my mind's eye and then trying to describe it from that point. i took the same approach to the bossfights, so they're all designed around central gameplay mechanics which are largely based on status effects and how the player would strategise around them. (to that end, a lot of the design stuff in my doc never made it into the fic...)

the conceit of the bard was a shadow who can manifest abstract concepts into being by manipulating reality with his words. so the status effects he uses are brainwash and sleep, mostly. his monologues are modified versions of shakespeare's works.

part of the reason why i started writing this fic was specifically to challenge myself in aras of writing im not very confident in: so longform planning, progression of plot, environment description, and action scenes being major ones. writing all the boss fights was and continues to be a real challenge. the chapter that the bard shows up in (chapter 5) ended up taking ages and ages in part because i kept putting off writing this fight. now that it's done, though, the bard fight is actually maybe my favourite fight scene i've written lol. it always turns out that way!!! the reason i like it is because i realised the physical action wasn't the fun part of writing a fight like this. since it was focused on status effects, it meant i got to crawl into ren's headspace when he got brainwashed, which i really really enjoyed doing because i got to drag out some trauma that joker has lovingly repressed.

   to set my fellows, phantoms in the wings    in deadly hate the one against the other…    This isn’t the Casino. This is somewhere else entirely. The Casino, and everything that came with it, that was months ago. How did he forget? The cottonwool that had crept so slowly into his blood dissipates in a mad rush that leaves him dizzy with disbelief. His hands, now that he can feel them again, are trembling. The knife between his fingers, trembling. The cool floor beneath him, the air in his lungs. How close had he come to never feeling that again?    Had he really just been feeling safe about that plan? Had he really felt everything was going to be okay? If anything had gone wrong—anything at all—he’d have been gone. He’d have been dead. How had they made it so he felt okay with that?    A trick? A ruse?    How blasé they’d all been, when it was his life they were gambling with like a worthless set of poker chips! And they’re here—all around him. Safe? He’s never been in more danger.    “Joker!”    Surrounded. He’s surrounded by the ones who left him for dead.

the Dancer doesn't get as much attention in text because i didn't want to slow down the pacing of the story every few minutes to do another huge scene tgat doesn't really serve a purpose, just like the exploration of the Globe Wing didn't. all that mattered was that he was shown to be adaptable, agile, and resilient - the Dancer needs to be in top condition at all times and ready to dodge any threat. the imagery that came through to me the strongest was the idea that his feet are always bleeding, so he leaves bloodstains all over the floor.

the Magician

this was another scene i adored writing. i think environment-wise, the House of Cards is my favourite Wing in the palace because it's the most unique structure. it's not a styled theatre like the others, it's more on-theme to the Magician, like he's set up his own performance environment. so it's just a huge house of cards made of crumbling playing cards which is really difficult to navigate and which joker kind of blends into.

the premise for the Magician was someone who needs to perform miracles and present impossible illusions as reality with a flair for drama. the Magician fools the Thieves over and over and over again, because they are good-hearted people who want to save him.

did you ever see that unused mementos request in royal where akechi tells the thieves about a target to save someone, and doesn't tell them that the someone in question is dodgy themself, and watches to see how quickly the Thieves immediately trust them?

i don't think i based this fight off this request because im pretty sure i had it planned out before i ever saw this, but i was really pleased to see it because it's very much the same idea. even in the engine room, akechi calls the thieves idiots for inviting him back into the team. of course, this isn't a good or healthy worldview lol and it's something he has to unlearn because he literally trusts no one and that's not an extreme anyone should be endorsing, but he also has a point in that the thieves are willing to throw their faith into things way too easily and don't look critically at people or situations. so the magician fools them, victimises them, tricks them into considering him a victim, fools them again, traumatises them, but they all continue to feel empathy for him and try to save him when he's in trouble. akc's cynicism vs the thieves' faith is a big theme of this one i think and the question is like, when to doubt vs when to trust even when you have evidence to the opposition. i think the right position is somewhere between thesis and antithesis (which iirc is not actually the wording hegel used when describing dialectics? lol... i might be wrong. i never studied hegel so my knowledge is pretty superficial. but i think this was a translation thing anyway because allegedly goro doesnt refer directly to hegel in jp? someone can confirm or deny idk)

anyway those are the bossfights we've had so far!!! just the VIP Box to go now......................... :3

[skinnyscottishbloke]

🎶Put your music library on shuffle and list the first 20 songs that come up 🎶

1. Breathe Your Name - Sixpence None the Richer

2. Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand

3. Flashdance (What a Feeling) - Irene Cara

4. Alfie - Burt Bacharach

5. Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) - Green Day

6. Das Land Des Lachelns - Franz Lehar (sung by Placido Domingo)

7. Bluer Than Blue - Michael Johnson

8. Johannesburg (I’m Sorry We Have No Engineer) - John Finnemore, Cabin Pressure

9. Girl Right Next to Me - Goo Goo Dolls

10. Climb Ev’ry Mountain (Reprise) - Main Cast, Sound of Music

11. Sachita - Los Pinguos

12. Through the Trees, Pt. 2 - Mount Eerie

13. Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys - Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings

14. Land of Confusion - Genesis

15. Andante Catabile for Cello and Strings - Tchaikovsky

16. Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out) - Hombres

17. Samwise the Brave - Howard Shore

18. something special - joan

19. I’m a Believer - The Monkees

20. Uhh Ahh - Boyz II Men

Tagging my music buddies just for funsies 🥰

@tolkientrash @bisexualwvtson @sunnyrosewritesstuff @lordoftherazzles @turniptitaness @asexualromanroy @exlibrisfangirl @tumbrunes @calculatedmadness @enough-effing-owls @fandomcartographer @shantismurf

[pinazee]

I have two dueling ideas and i cant decide which one i want to do more! I want to write a one shot where ted drags paul out for drinks, but does it go:

1. Ted gets drunk, hits on everyone in the bar, makes a real mess, and paul has to clean everything up. But as hes taking ted home, paul learns that ted was actually sad that charlotte cancelled plans on him and just didnt want to be alone, thus helping paul understand ted better and leading him to actually consider ted a friend. This is also the first time emma sees paul outside of beanies, and how he handles ted convinces her to give him her number.

Or

2. Ted convinces paul to drink, telling him he needs to loosen up if he, a man who’s never left the state let alone the island, wants to keep someone like emma, who’s explored the world and gone on adventures, interested. Paul gets drunk pretty quickly and gets a bit sloppy, emma shows up (as theyre at the birdhouse, her favorite bar) and both ted and emma end up taking care of him and he learns that she likes him just the way he is, boring, stable, and reliable. Ted doesn’t get much development here though.

Now mind you, before you vote, know that i might not even publish it. I hoard my fics in google docs like a collection of broken toys. So you might not read it. But please help me anyway. This is the most divided ive ever been because i want both :( i want someone to see ted for who he really is, and i want to explore paulkins.