#so many good classic sound cues

[zincbot]

mario movie made me emotional more at 10

[sunalee]

jam to my heart — Jay

summary: The handsome guitarist set his eyes on you, and lucky for him, you did the same.

with: Jay (Park Jong-seong)

warnings: rockstar au!, enhypen as a band, jay is a smooth fella, he's charming enough to make my cheeks warm.

a/n: jay with a guitar is such a perfect sight i can't even ratiocinate. Some of the boys aren't metioned, but they're still part of this au.

“C'mon _____, let’s stay on the front so we can see them better!”

Ami calls you out, dragging you through the ’90s themed new pub you’re visiting, “Cords and Jam”. The place is really cool, with black and white checkered floors, red walls with various themed lamps, and posters of classic rock bands. The staff is very friendly, not to mention the drinks and snacks that make you want to spend your whole wallet there.

But the reason you’re here it’s the almost one-year hiatus, not having seen any live show since this period. You miss this environment, the thrill of waiting for the next band to perform, and even the sound check that the musicians do five minutes before the music starts.

Ami told you about this band tonight, Orange Blood. You haven’t heard anything from them yet, but they’re really known on social media for their impressive covers, skilled talent, and very, very, good-looks. 

Rock is great, but a handsome guy playing makes the experience one hundred times better.

She drags you to the front as you both get your bubbling drinks, fortunately not having too many people blocking your path. You don’t mind being in the back of the room, it’s even better to dance there, but you won’t lie, it’s so exciting being right close to the stage, even with the frenetic heartbeats that make you want to take another sip of the drink.

The band finally arrives, five handsome men in their twenties coming in front of the stage. The crowd shouts excitedly, you join them with your own hollering.

“Good night, everyone! I’m Jake, and we are the Orange Blood!” The blonde lead singer announces, a cheeky smile appearing on his face as he hears the crowd’s euphoric cheers.

The drummer, a dark-haired lad with side shaved haircut and looks of a runaway teen, taps four times the drum sticks together, a cue for the other instruments to start playing as well. On Jake’s left side, there’s the keyboard player and the bassist, the two with similar features and exhaling confidence. You heard around their names were Sunghoon and Heeseung. 

But it’s the guitarist on the right side of Jake who catches your attention; suddenly, he’s the only thing you can focus on.

Not only for his great solo at the beginning, but his very charming personality. The way his fingers pluck the strings with such mastery, as if it were as eyes as breathing, his built arms taken by cool tattoo shapes matching with his dark, medium hair, his thin and well cared lips that forms a pleasing smirk whenever he hears a praise from the female crowd. 

And when you hear his smooth, deep voice singing on his microphone, your legs almost give out.

It’s like this man put a spell on you, taking you to a place without time, space or circumstance, all your senses fixed only on him, mind navigating and daydreaming about different scenarios where he’s the main star, and you, his forever partner.

The show was a blast. Everyone had the time of their lives, and Orange Blood for sure would receive a lot of invitations after this concert. The mysterious guitarist wipes his sweating forehead after waving at the crowd, his black regatta clinging on his torso and making him look even more attractive. Unfortunately, he moves away with the rest of the crown, sparing one last glance before going.

That glance goes directly on you.

You don’t know what to think about it, your heart racing and mind numb from the unexpected moment, but before you can try to come up with something, Ami is dragging you by the hand again, leading you to the bar.

She tells you that she’s going to call her friend outside and would be right back. “Don’t accept drinks from strangers” was the last thing she said before leaving. You decide to order another drink, sitting on a free stool there.

You start wondering about what that gaze meant, the sweet flavor of your pinky lemonade helping your mind work even with the pub buzz. But you focus so much on your thoughts, that you don’t notice the main problem right in front of you, brown eyes staring at you with amusement.

“Pinky lemonade?  Sweeter than I thought you would be, huh?” That smooth, dreamy voice wakes you up, making your heart suddenly flips as you finally realize who just sat beside you. He gives you another one of his charming smirks, supporting his jawline on his hand while he extends the other in your direction. “Jay. A pleasure.”

“______.” Best say your name right away than rambling trying to come up with a sentence. “I-It’s nice to meet you too. You played amazing tonight.” You can’t help but blurt your thoughts. 

“You think so?” He tilts his head, looking even more interested now, his eyes following you like a cat gazing at its prey.

You bite inside your mouth, feeling uneasy but not in a bad way. “Yeah, totally.” You nod to your own sentence. Jay tries to hold back a chuckle. “Uh, shouldn’t you be in your dressing room after playing?”

“And lose the party? What’s the fun in that?” He questions, raising his pointer finger to call the barman. “Same thing she’s having.”

Now you can’t help your chuckle. “Are you a sweet man too?” Your interest wins your nerves, showing Jay your playful side that he’ll surely enjoy in the future.

“I don’t like getting drunk. Especially not when I’ve just met a pretty girl like you.” He flirts without shame, making you swoop into his charm so easily that you even forget that you came with Ami here. Not that she wouldn't support you, anyway.

“I don’t know If I should be flattered.” But you’re not hooked enough to be fooled. Whatever this man wants with you, you want to figure it out now.

He gives you a knowing smile, as he just reads you like an open book in front of him. His pinky lemonade comes just in time for his answer, his hand holding the glass but not taking his brown eyes off you.

He wants you to know that feeling too.

“You should be.” He answers honestly, self-confidence boosting around him. “ It’s not every day that I set my eyes on someone special.” He moves to click his glass with yours, taking his time to take a small sip of his drink before leaning close to you, gaze and smirk never faltering.

“And when I find someone special, doll, I don’t lose my chance.”

© sunalee 2024 — all rights reserved.

[lovelyiida]

interview shenanigans.

PRO-HERO KIRISHIMA x FEM INTERVIEWER READER

WARNINGS: suggestive content, vulgar language

MASTERLIST

WORDS: 1.1K

IMAGINING PRO-HERO KIRISHIMA COMING IN FOR AN INTERVIEW, tired as all get out. having done patrol the day before and the next day be jammed packed with interviews due to his successful victory.

hair still messy from jumping out of bed and straight into his chauffeur van, his spikes not leaning the correct way due to him sleeping on the window.

Kirishima was very tired, to say the least.

"alright guys, let's all do our best and make this very quick!" even though he was tired, he still kept up his cheerful attitude, how sweet. feeding himself a bite of his hard bagel and gulping down a whole double expresso coffee, the pro-hero burps. politely handing his trash over to the nearest assistant, he starts to scratch a rather important spot.

he couldn't help it, really, he didn't understand why he had to come into interviews wearing his hero suit. why can't they just do business casual?

the tight texture of spandex rubbing against him made him curse under his breath. he starts to really dig into that spot, letting out a satisfied groan, his eyes roll back and close in delight.

too into bliss, he didn't even know the cameras started to roll.

"excuse me, Mr. Riot?" you voiced out.

Kirishima's eyes pop open, snapping toward your figure.

your classy, business casual outfit displayed your figure well. light makeup with a well-kept updo, you smile awkwardly at him. cue cards in hand, you bat your eyelashes at him.

Kirishima lets out a dry chuckle, properly adjusting himself in his seat. "yes! sorry I was um...occupied, apologies." Kirishima says with a proper tone, you let out a small chuckle.

you give him an understanding bow, "it's great to have you here this morning, I'm sure you're exhausted after your victorious battle Mr. Riot." you smiled at him, he didn't understand why...but after hearing so many people say his hero name, it sounded so good coming off of your lips.

"oh, you have no idea, honey."

You laugh at his words, as he'd assume you really didn't have a single idea how tired he was. turning to the camera, you begin to start your opening statement for the interview.

the pro-hero started to linger his eyes on you more, you were damn hot. maybe it was cliche for pro-heroes to get with interviewers, as it wasn't an uncommon trope within the industry.

it's even known that many people practice becoming interviewers to inhabit the specific role of interviewing heroes just for this reason alone. maybe you were here under the same circumstances, he could really care less...he was just thankful you were here.

from your beautiful eyes to the way your thighs sit so pretty in that stiff-ass chair given by staff. he wondered how soft they'd feel if he gripped them as hard as he could. lingering further down to your legs, he'd wonder how they'd look wrapped around his waist as he pounded into you relentlessly.

he even loved how pretty your feet looked in those classic black heels, he's not into feet, personally. but maybe seeing your feet wrapped around a specific part of him could be an amusing moment in his life-

"Mr. Riot!" you yelled out.

snapping him from his thoughts, he lets out another awkward laugh. "so sorry... I'm just not myself this morning haha." a toothy grin shows on his face.

rolling your eyes, you hold your hand up. signaling to cut the cameras. Kirishima's eyes widen at the sudden change of attitude, the less professional one of course.

you let out a sigh and jump out of the chair, heading out of the camera's view and towards the exit. Kirishima's hands land on his face, fighting away a rather red blush.

fuck.

throwing his head back in embarrassment, he looks back up in the direction you went. letting out a deep sigh, he gets out of his seat with a tired groan. sleazily stepping out of the camera's way and out of the exit.

the cool crisp morning air rudely hits his shoulders, he lets out a shudder as he looks around for you. stepping around a corner, he sees you almost distraught. Cigarette in hand, you take in a slow inhale.

you look toward him, basically unfazed by his presence. stumbling towards him, you lean close and blow thick smoke in his face.

Kirishima breathes out, letting out a single cough as he fans away the excess smoke. "y'know that's bad for you-"

"fuck off," you spat at him.

"c'mon! I'm sorry, I'm just a little distracted by...you know" he mumbles. you stare at him for a moment before flashing him a smug smile.

"y'know Mr. Riot, word of advice...oogling at your wife at her place of work is very inappropriate," you seductively whispered in his ear.

there it is again, the way you say his name.

the pro-hero chuckles at this, sliding his hand around your waist he pulls you in close. "well I can't help that you look so fuckable" he growls in your ear, giving it a soft nibble with his sharp teeth.

you let out a soft moan, giggling you suddenly push him away.

"hands off Ejiro, what would the people think if they saw us like this?" you purred. "they would think that I have every right to take you right here right now," Kirishima tries to grab you again, but you quickly step away.

Kirishima growls, snatching away your cigarette in retaliation. Drawing his lips towards the small "bundle of joy." dragging out a slow puff before blowing it into the air.

biting the inside of your cheek, you snatch the cigarette back.

Kirishima chuckles at your cuteness, "I swear you're a bad influence on me."

"well, you put a ring on this bad influence, last time I checked" you retorted.

"mhm," he hums.

smiling, you look down at your phone and check the time. Groaning, you throw the cigarette on the floor and stomp it out. "hey! I just bought you those shoes, don't fuck 'em up!" he curses at you.

"honey, they aren't red bottoms, you'll live," you say back.

starting to walk away, you stop to turn back around, you show a sly smirk as more words enter your head.

"y'know Mr. Riot, if you're good this time, I'll let you give me a tour of your van again" you let out a not-so-hidden chuckle. the pro-hero gives you a mischievous grin.

turning back around, you begin to walk.

smack.

you jump, startled at the sudden sting of your ass cheek. Kirishima grabs your waist once more and growls into your ear.

"well, that's how it all started didn't it?"

just wanted to dabble into something a little bit more mature than what I usually do lol. anyways, keep those requests coming guys!! Finals are kicking my ass but I should be sending out messages to those who’ve requested by now.

⎯ lovelyiida ♥︎

[ghostherlig]

i am very slow with writing atm with being sick and also my wrists are starting to hurt more now that it's getting colder- but here's some silly goofy random headcanons while im recovering!! (for johnny, kenshi, raiden, and kung lao) under the cut bc this really ran away from me- (collected over the course of this entire day as things popped into my brain, i apologize for the mass of words you're about to read :'))

johnny can play piano!! he has a grand piano that he really loves and he plays anything from classical to ost's to his own little tunes whenever he thinks them up- he has a recorder attached to it so he can remember them or maybe post his own song one day

(based off the previous hc) if/when kenshi is over/moves in he'll play at night and let kenshi listen in- but randomly johnny will transition what he's playing into the jaws or michael meyers theme and that's kenshi's cue to start running- because now the house is in hide and seek mode, and as soon as johnny stops playing, he'll be searching

kenshi used to play the violin growing up, but he dropped it once he was old enough and competent enough to commit himself to the yakuza- he can still remember some of the songs he used to love to play. he hums them from time to time and has been caught doing the motions of playing the violin before

kenshi loves animals but has an extra soft spot for cats and bunnies especially- he's a cat magnet in places where strays are common, they always flock to him (he for sure keeps catnip in his pocket when he can)

johnny loves his action and hero films but kenshi enjoys romcoms and horror- romcoms for the stories and drama, and horror films because the sound design usually slaps- he also can tell you what fruit or vegetable was absolutely destroyed based on the sounds alone

lao and raiden are way too good at Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes- raiden is on the manual while lao is on the bomb and they can crack the normal mode in like 45 minutes (they're a little slower when they swap places but they can still do it impressively fast (fastest speedrun time is sub 30mins)

johnny knows how to play mahjong after taking a role and having to play on-screen for five minutes- he wanted it to look authentic and thought "there's no better way than to actually play"- raiden and lao found out and now they're all trying to teach kenshi with specially made tiles with braille in the corners

kenshi is ridiculously good at poker- he brought a deck of cards with braille stamped on them and him and johnny played strip poker for a night- needless to say kenshi was smirking to himself as he switched his button up for johnny's

johnny can do pitch and diction perfect impressions of people he's heard talk for long periods of time- you can bet that a lot of his free time at wu shi was spent scaring his fellow champions by talking to them in liu kang's voice from behind a wall-

(based off the last hc) johnny only does it around people he knows well or as a party trick with different characters from pop culture- most often his power is used for evil though

raiden isn't a morning person and actually is super groggy in the mornings- the first thing he does on early days is take a cold shower to wake himself up

(based off the last hc) lao is a morning person and is usually the one to wake up raiden by ripping his blankets off of him- he's lucky he has survived this long, but he tells everyone that if looks could kill, raiden would have killed him long before he made it to wu shi

we all know kung lao eats for a family of five, but that man also naps like a divorced dad after an all you can eat buffet- he is OUT after he's done absolutely fucking up like five full plates of food

raiden really likes boba!! kenshi took him to get some after an errand run and he fell in love with the taro flavor- he also really enjoys winter melon and the regular thai tea

johnny always gets his boba with coffee- he doesnt really like tea flavors and no matter how many sips of kenshi's tea he has, he will always prefer his coffee

kenshi bought johnny a really nice espresso machine that he uses every morning- johnny didnt buy himself one before that bc he never thought he would enjoy making coffee at home and it was easier to just stop by the local cafe since they always had his order ready early- but he finds it really calming and really nice to slow his mornings down and make a latte before leaving for work

johnny, to return the gesture, bought kenshi a really nice kitchen knife since he knows the man really likes to cook- it sees a lot of use as it's a santoku that he basically uses like a chef's knife (it's his sharpest and most well treated kitchen tool, right next to his 8 inch cast iron)

kung lao owns maybe three articles of clothing with sleeves- all of them are coats for when it rains- oh and one hoodie that he stole from raiden that somehow survived when he went into his wardrobe and cut and hemmed all of the sleeves

when kenshi visits, johnny makes him coffee in the morning too but since kenshi doesnt always like the bitter coffee flavor he'll add some fun home made syrups- he has plain vanilla, but also has seasonal flavors like pumpkin spice, snickerdoodle, sugar cookie, white mocha, peppermint, etc.

kenshi LOVES mint chocolate flavored things- he especially loves the kitkat flavor and the pocky flavor, as well as ice cream- johnny CANNOT stand it, he's never liked mint outside of gum and even then he prefers cinnamon or clove gum (the first time kenshi kissed him he was confused bc he tasted like spices)

johnny keeps a jar of butterscotch candies on his desk for when he needs to brainstorm ideas- he finds he thinks better when his mouth is occupied (oral fixation haver)

(based off the previous hc) kenshi bought him some violet (the flower) flavored candy after he found out johnny always kept a stash- he also will refill the giant glass jar with butterscotch candies when he knows johnny is busy and will forget

(also based off the candy hc) lao and raiden also buy him hard candies- they get him ginger and lemon ones that johnny falls in love with immediately- he has two jars on his desk now, one for butterscotch and one for ginger

raiden really likes sketching and coloring- lao bought him one of those adult coloring books with mandalas and really intricate shapes and raiden finished all of it in like two weeks- he used to sketch in his free time and has an entire sketchbook dedicated to drawings of lao and his features (a lot of his arms, hands, eyes, and smile) it's hidden under his mattress

kung lao shaves his own undercut when it gets too long- normally cant let it grow out for longer than two or three weeks. sometimes, raiden will offer to do it for him so they can spend a bit of time together and just talk and be close <3

johnny definitely really enjoys washing kenshi's hair- johnny has a bit of a curl to some of his hair but he never uses the products he's supposed to or the methods he's supposed to when it dries- so it's pretty straight, but kenshi's is pin straight and doesnt tangle the way his does sometimes, so he really loves running his hands through it and has even convinced kenshi a few times to sit so johnny could put coconut oil in it for him

johnny loves coconut flavored things and purposefully buys ice cream bars that have coconut cream based ice cream- kenshi was unaware of this and was offered one and said yes thinking that it was vanilla- kenshi does not like coconut, so it was a very sudden and unpleasant surprise

kenshi cuts fruits as his way of showing love very often- he washes and cuts fruits for himself when he's stressed but preps it for others out of love and will often take apple slices, peeled oranges, cut melon (of any kind), or strawberries and grapes up to johnny's in-home office while he's working

johnny buys kenshi small gifts year round and goes crazy for the holidays and his birthday- he asked kenshi how he would feel if johnny bought him (technically them) a house back in japan- kenshi drew his line in the sand and capped johnny's gift prices at $2k per holiday/birthday (which he had broken before)

raiden keeps taxidermy bugs!! he always loved butterflies as a kid and his first framed butterfly was a gift from lao

please excuse any typos, it's later in the day now and my eyes are a little strained- i hope this was comprehensible, lol

[8beats-per-minute]

‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️MUTANT MAYHEM SPOILERSS ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVENT SEEN IT AND DONT WANT SPOILERS

Okay now with that out of the way, my thoughts on the movie

I really enjoyed it.

I went to see it with a few friends and one of them made a really good point. They actually act like teenagers. Like yes, it was kinda cringey at some parts but that’s because it sounded like something a teenager would say because teenagers are awkward.

I’ve had very stupid conversations with my friends that sound like the conversations in the movie.

I noticed that this movie did the “teen talk” a lot better than I’m pretty sure all other versions of tmnt (in my opinion), even better than rise I think. Most others sound like adults writing teenagers and it sounds good most of the time but others it sounds weird.

Now for the main reason I made this post: April and Leo.

I was kind of dreading this when I saw in the trailers Leo would be interested in her (2012 April and Donnie flashbacks) but it was well done. I am a bit tired of April being a love interest for the turtles but I think it’s important to include that April is black, plus size and has acne and how Leo described her as “the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen”. Unfortunately the qualities she has aren’t shown very often to be attractive because of bs beauty standards.

It’s late so I can’t fully explain what I’m trying to say so disclaimer in case I didn’t come across this way: I don’t think that being black, plus size or having acne makes you not pretty, you are, just society sometimes says that and society is stupid.

April and Leo are cute together and written well and there is no “one of them is obsessed and the other is leading them on” going on. The fact that they end the movie looking into TCRI is adorable to me. My fav investigator duo.

Also Leo is an absolute dork. The whole phone call scene: “it’s a date then!” “Wait what a date?” “Uhhh *cue fumbling and wrestling for the phone* uhh nothing bad service byeee! Who’s got no rizz now?” Like Leo you are bad at this oh my god. (Again awkward teenager stuff)

And his bothers teasing him was so funny. They did not let that slide and teased him at every opportunity. Classic sibling behaviour

The tease for shredder was fun and I can’t wait to see what they do with him and his backstory.

Best Splinter. I love him so much. I love his whole “hating humans” arc and how he paralleled superfly and how he CHOSE to not be like him.

Both superfly and splinter have a very understandable fear (that turned into hate) of humans and how they both thought that the best way to protect their families were to hold their family too tight.

While splinter hid from the world and his fear pushed him into hiding and laying low, superfly’s fear caused him to lash out and take out his anger in a destructive way.

But splinter getting a girlfriend at the end was so cute he deserves this.

Also side note: why did so many turtles almost get hit by cars in this movie? Specifically Mikey.

He almost got hit in the flashback, then in the garage, then in the final battle with the flying cars. Then Donnie also almost got hit, I think just before they were captured but I’m not sure.

When they had to leave the movie and walked home really sadly and kept looking at the humans longingly I legit almost cried.

I was kind of surprised they ended up actually going to school and everyone was accepting. I thought they’d be like “we don’t need humans to accept us cause we accept ourselves” but I’m glad they got to go to school. They deserve it.

Also April being super upfront with them about if they didn’t save her she’d probably be running screaming was so funny. Also how she was planning to release a story about them while knowing humans probably wouldn’t accept them was a very realistic thing.

I loved April so much by the way. The way she fucking chucked the news mic into the crowd was iconic.

The fight scenes were SOOOO AMAZING I LOVED THEM SO MUCH. The splitting between the 4 (I think) fights at the same time and every other fight scene were so well done. Them figuring out that they skills they learned for years actually work in a fight and how they’re awesome at it was adorable to watch. And the way in the beginning how they were using their skills to steal get groceries was great.

All the turtles up from every version are good fighters (in their own ways) but these versions are definitely up there with how skilled and how well they work as a team. Love them.

AND THE TURTLES SHARING A ROOM AND BUNK BEDS WAS ADORABLE. It’s so funny cause later they were like “yea we have so much space to hold the 6 or 7 other mutants in our house on short notice we have lots of space!” Which means they chose to share a room with is adorable and a little bit unrealistic lol.

It seemed like a pretty realistic movie and I have bullet points of the least realistic parts (excluding the mutant animals cause duh). And this is just me being picky lol, I still loved this movie and these are just jokes.

The fact that they wrote nice things on aprils locker at the end of the movie

(Pointed out by my friend). She went from being puke girl to April O’hero. They would probably stop teasing her since she was friends with the most popular kids in the city but the 2 most likely outcomes would be

1. They just stopped and then left the insults on there, maybe scratched them out

2. Wiped off the locker and never spoke of it again

No one writes nice things on other peoples lockers lol

The boys want to share a room

I guarantee if 4 teenage brothers had a choice between sharing bunk beds and each having their own rooms, they’d have their own rooms.

Imagine arguing with your sibling and you don’t have your own room to sulk and avoid them? By choice??? People need their own spaces. No matter how much I love my siblings if I shared a room with them it’d be chaos.

There would be one prank done in that room to one of their beds and that’d be the end of the shared room lol

The fact that everyone unquestionably liked them (especially at school)

Kids are assholes. That’s it.

AGAIN this is just things I thought were unrealistic in a funny way, it’s a kids movie so it’s not that deep.

This was definitely one of my favourite versions of tmnt (I haven’t seen all of them but still). It was a good mix of serious and goofy and I liked it a lot. I recommend seeing it, I want to watch it again lol

[mint-merriment]

things about the rhythm doctor act 5 update

just some stuff i noticed/liked abt act 5 !

note: this covers the new content added so there Will be spoilers! also i Just bought the game (despite knowing the prior levels through youtube hee hee) so this is from the perspective of someone playing seamlessly through the acts :)

misc pre-act-5 stuff:

i dont know if the 'simulated' option was there before, but it is very cool actually!

after playing 1-xn (act 4 boss), instead of the credits playing, paige suggests the intern take the day off. the screen fades to black and we are implied to have had a restful day before coming into work the day after and starting the cutscene with hailey and logan

from the steam page, i noticed that you have to play 2-1n in order to start act 5, so i purposefully didn't play 2-1n to see what they would do. (now that i think about it, this definitely is because the boss level uses the 'skip a beat' cue that is introduced in 2-1n's tutorial.) in order to let you know you need to know about skipped beats on svt patients, nicole blocks the doorway to the physiotherapy ward and asks you to go check on cole because he's got a bit of writers' block. it then cuts to 2-1n immediately so you can play it!

before you play 5-1, the ward takes the appearance of the field (which confused me a lil). after the level finishes, the illusion of the field dissipates to reveal the actual ward :0

5-1 & 5-1n:

in the level itself, the background sign counts your hits! other things are also displayed on the lights of that sign when its shown (such as the 'ready get set go' from the nurse, imitation of static during the rainy part, etc)

whenever you have to hit a "two" or "three" or etc, the lights that orbit the patient have that number of beams. nice visual cue there

the beat right before the cutscene where paige is startled awake by lucky, the ball is flung at the screen. even if you hit it perfectly, the animation that plays is lucky's early/late animation- ie, the one where his rotator cuff is tearing :(

speaking of. paige was sleeping/dozing off next to lucky to be startled awake in the first place, and throughout the level and after she notes that he might be feeling anxious

whenever you're cued for "four", lightning flashes in the background. this is just cool to me

in the second half of the level, the hospital ward actually glitches in and out! good foreshadowing for what the actual ward looks like on a first playthrough

5-1n actually starts with ian's hand as a fakeout- you might think he'll take the first few beats, but it immediately fades into the dream where our hand is taking the procedure, and transfers over to real life too

the miner actually has a single held beat in this level, with a unique running animation! foreshadowing his appearance in 5-3 intermission :)

"one slip, too late, three strikes, for me" I LOVE WHEN THE LYRICS COUNT!! AND ALSO IT COINCIDES WITH HOW MANY BEATS YOU HAVE TO HIT THAT TIME. (these lyrics also show up on the sign in the background!)

when logan says 'my hero would never hesitate to take his shot!', hailey joins in from the word hesitate. to me, it reads like he's said this a lot before and she knew what he was going to say, which is quite cute

the second chorus was from the trailer! which. is where they got it from probably lol.

5-2 & 5-2n:

5-2's tutorial has new tutorial music :0

the song itself is called lofi beats for patients to chill to, which is obviously a reference to 2-1 lol

speaking of 2-1, in the level proper, the part after the short cutscene between ian and paige includes that one piano part from it (specifically the part synced to the samurai's heart that ian is doing)!

ahh the classic 'i thought i was getting better so i went back to normal and made it worse' :(

i do like the snickety snick sound of the freeze cue! as well as the texture of the ice, it is very... cool B)

the tutorial (of 5-2n) shows the continuing friction between ian/paige vs edega, focusing on ian. edega is trying to push the rhythm doctor program to be something it's not really, which is just a tasty lore bit (i talk more about the story below)

...okay so 5-2n is sooooo hard for me, specifically me, but maybe also some of you. but it is a banger! and the burn/freeze beats are a very cool concept. (also the burn cue sounds very.. blacksmithy? it reminds me of that one forging minigame in patapon.)

the 'stage' thing is cool, introducing us to the individual concepts, before we get thrown off the deep end. very difficult, very fun. this level will haunt me.

i also liked the background ! oh yes and also: the mythical "5" cue :0

5-3:

5-3 is an intermission! one revolving around held beats haha, fittng for our second character- the miner! i liked the miner's reintroduction, and how his philosophy and views on life and his own health ended up greatly affecting lucky's viewpoint as well. as we see in the future!

the digging through bag to find things and multiple other random things being thrown out was very funny :)

samurai being at the other end of the bungee cord lmao

its nice that miner doesn't even know who lucky is, it makes their interaction a lot more genuine without the veil of 'fan' and 'guy who has fans' :) (even if it is a bit of a hit to lucky's ego oof)

i also really enjoyed the conversations overheard! cole not knowing anything about baseball players was funny, and mr and mrs stevenson reunion was so touching,,,(and also the birds hehe.) i love how they conveniently narrated it so that someone who isn't physically there can know almost exactly what's happening

this also really shows how much the hospital is a community of its own now actually. paige calling everyone over to see the reunion, even wondering where we, the intern finger, are. the doctors work very hard to make everyone's stay comfortable, and i'm glad that everyone's comfortable enough to be reaching out and finding this moment touching.

also speaking of which. its very funny and very in character that the reason mrs. stevenson wasn't moved to mr. stevenson's room earlier.. was that everyone involved forgot about it oops. at least the birds are there too!

annnd as evidenced by 5-x's pre-treatment notes, the miner's words seems to have really helped and affected lucky! good job!

(also. i got an s- on this the first time. dunno if you can get an s+)

5-x:

now. 5-x. the BIG ONE. god its so good but you already knew that

a preface for everything: the window movement is IMMACULATE. IMMACULATE I SAY.

the crunchy guitar chord coming in right as the screen pans up to the sunset-sky and the 'boss stage' fading in was PERFECTION. BY THE WAY.

i like the window moving like a clock! and sometimes, each tick actually ticks over to a different scene at a different time, with different people in the hall (but edega watching from that observation room at all times. unnerving)

the snapshots of people hanging out is also really nice, i like seeing that most have come to visit :) and also in multiple combinations! they are all hanging out :D

i cant get the blast beats perfectly, but i like the timing and occurrences of them- syncing really well with the lyrics/song!

"it'll never be a hundred percent. you have to make peace with that" this line hit me so hard. i have nothing else to say. its a good quote.

this scene is just good actually. it shows that the miner and lucky have spent enough time together, and when he responds to that quote with "i know... it's just..."? that speaks of understanding! and he was also spontaneously willing to share why he strives so hard, which lines up with all of his previous behaviors perfectly.

this cutscene also acts as a checkpoint; if you fail after it, restarting quickly returns you here! (during my initial playthrough i only failed twice, once before and once after)

SAMURAI COMING IN CLUTCH WITH THE "CAN YOU TEACH ME BASEBALL" thank you samurai you've done us all a great service

i really like how when the running sections start up again, everyone who was shown to have been roped in shows up in the next one (ie logan and hailey joining after the box of beans part)

also. the return of beans hopper! nicole's coffee throw being repurposed for baseball! cole and the samurai (who are of course friends since at Least 2-2n) texting each other! cole's "X" response before immediately after being shown running with the rest of them! (interestingly, nicole doesn't show up in the next running scene. maybe because she was designated as pitcher??)

also, lucky is running Behind everyone, the samurai is rolling/skating/thats his run animation apparently, hailey and logan are running together, and cole is running ahead of them all. fitting!

the team!! the people who were roped into this impromptu team include: samurai, logan, hailey, cole, nicole, lucia, hugh (farmer), miner, and the insomniac. thats... almost everyone lol. besides the birds, the stevensons, and the doctors

lucky's 3am thoughts were portrayed really well. imo, even though it doesn't seem like it, i believe that this game does mean something to lucky, though maybe this isn't realized until after the game. the virus kicks in here, and the screen movement is very intense here

glad they included him brushing this negative mindset in the morning to focus for the game though! late night thoughts can be very mean...

the lil graphic of the game playing out under lucky's heartbeat was really cute. glad they didn't go the 'intern, you must now treat Every Patient Here while they're playing' route (though that might be what is implied actually happened storywise rather than gameplaywise? through paige and ian's convo). ayo, hailey scored!

THE BALL BOUNCING AROUND THE SCREEN WAS SO GOOOOOD AUGHHHHH . fun fact the first time i saw it i was so entranced by the ball richocheting that i forgot i had to hit it. i think thats where i failed here lol. also, the parallels between the samurai and lucky here are quite thematic

ahhh lucky's final speech to the team! it resolves his feelings about his coach (whom, as we know, didn't think he could succeed in the role he wanted to play, but from whom lucky still sought validation from), and also helps him portray his own thoughts about his stepping away from baseball for a time to recover.

fun fact: if you fail between the game's start and the final speech, lucky expresses doubts about this being worth, but the players are still ready! they aren't backing down yet!

and of course. they win!! lucky refuses dr. edega's treatment, preferring to stay at the hospital for an extended period of time for his physical therapy :)

fun fact: i talked to the janitor after this (the janitor has some surprising insights actually) and while he was tempted to join the team, he ultimately didnt, instead deciding to cheer from the bleachers! thank you janitor

(also. this poor, poor local university team. they got beat by a cobbled-together team consisting of *checks notes* patients at a hospital who literally All have some sort of heart problem, ranging from some teenagers to people who have been doing hard labor or been incredibly sleep deprived for years. f on their part. but also a big name baseball player was coaching them, so that softens the blow haha. still tho. teenagers. thats gotta suck for them. lmao)

and! even though lucky hasn't been added to the credits (which perhaps the final release might change?), the roof where paige sings still has the net and baseballs strewn around :)

bonus 4-4n because it was also added:

spoiler: it was very cute. im glad they added it, it's very fitting!

the 'skip' cues were quite underutilized before, so im glad that they used them here (especially to signal that the characters were going to speak a short sentence, hehe)

NICOLE ACOUSTIC GUITAR!!! from all the way back in 2-4!! glad she's trying it out again :)

also its SO cute that she dusted off her skills because she was thinking about cole, perhaps wanting to make a song for him.

can't believe that when asked if they were thinking about playing for someone, neither cole nor nicole answered properly.

also. their hearts are beating in sync here. there is no one else to call the other heart's cues, the nurse is enough for both.

((sorry, i love act 2. they are so good.))

logan doesn't have heart eyes on hit, because hailey's out of town :(

leitmotifs!! i like the guitar from 1-2 coming back in for logan and hailey. and also the samurai's part threw in a bit of 1-1 too !

about the story+misc thoughts (this one is WAY more rambly):

this act is about lucky's struggle with his hospital stay, and also brings edega into the spotlight a bit more with the overarching story.

actually, this act is structured a lot like act 2 (which is. my favorite act actually)(all the times is SO GOOD OKAY) but only one person; it uses mostly two-beat rhythms, the first night level is a song with lyrics and the only lyric'd song before the boss, including an intermission, and a moving window final boss (with lyrics!). it also focuses on a singular (2 patients in act 2) patient's struggles for multiple levels, rather than multiple recurring patients for the levels, which i think really fleshes out said character a lot.

and i really like lucky's story! he was so impatient to get out, worrying about losing everything he had built for himself, but through the efforts of everyone at middlesea hospital, he realized that he could take it slow, that he won't suddenly be nothing if he takes the recommended amount of months to heal, and even if he steps away from the game. (i think his friendship with the miner was so good for him, im glad they brought the miner back)

as for the overarching plot, it brings the question of 'if the rhythm doctor treatment is really effective, does this make traditional medicine more obsolete?' and... the answer is actually no. in 2-4n, paige brings up that the rhythm doctor treatment only stops the symptoms, it doesn't treat the cause. and that's what she and ian are actually there for! (although paige does start to wonder if it'll ever get to the point where the rhythm treatment Can solve such things. shelve this for now)

we, the intern finger, are merely throwing a rope to a drowning person. paige and ian (more prominently paige bc ian is splitting his time working on the rhythm doctor program) are the ones actually pulling them back to safety- recovery takes time, and while some problems can be solved with a bit of rhythm defibrillation, Not All Of Them Can. in my mind, the ideal scenario is the rhythm doctor program supplementing a full hospital staff, but...

worryingly, edega doesn't seem to have picked this up, or if he has, he's deliberately ignoring it. as seen before and also in 5-1's tutorial, he's allowing the hospital to remain understaffed while pivoting towards the rhythm doctor program. he's pushing ian to make the rhythm doctor program do more things than what its meant to, as evidenced in the 5-2n tutorial, and in the pre- and post-5-x conversation. (and possibly more but those are the ones i remembered fastest.) ian has actually figured out what's causing the connectifia abortus (and what a shock that was, to learn that the program itself is dealing with inherent glitchiness), but edega making him work on other things is stopping him from being able to fix it. (ian also mentioned edega's plans for a 'miracle cure' which is. hm. worrying to say the least.) i am intrigued about the plan to distract edega long enough to let ian do his job tho...

also. edega's theme is very unsettling. make of that what you will.

if you're down here thank you for reading! tl;dr rhythm doctor act 5 update Good :)

[severalpossiblemusiks]

@lightineventide and I had a short discussion about understanding how to appreciate different music genres, sports, art styles, etc., and I figured it'd be good to make a big old post about how to understand each genre in it's own right, rather than comparing it to another genre. Which kinda falls into a life motto I have been developing: "you can find something you like in anything you look at, you just have to know what you're looking at". Cause once you learn to appreciate each different thing for what it is, all of the sudden you find yourself liking way more stuff than before.

So for music:

Rock, punk, and metal tend to focus on things like tempo, riffs, and look/attitude. So when looking for what makes a band or song appealing in these genres, those are probably the major cues you're looking for: do the riffs sound cool? Is the tempo something you can headbang or mosh to? Do you like the image they present? Of course with how many subgenres of punk and metal and rock there are, you can find more specific things to look for in whichever subgenre you're being introduced to. Elitists will often argue that a certain genre of punk or metal isn't "real" punk or metal for some surface level reason often repeating to the tempo/riff/look combo, among other reasons. But ignore these people. They're the equivalent of right wingers telling you why something sucks cause it's woke.

Classical and opera focuses on the harmonics and musical framework of the piece. Classical is almost a "meta" appreciation. Rather than just liking the music cause it slaps (though this is a very valid way to enjoy classical music), I found my appreciation for classical deepened when I found myself looking for how the music was presented. Of course this meta level of appreciation requires some knowledge of music theory and classical music forms (why a sonata is different from a concerto, which is different from a symphony, etc.). You can still appreciate classical without all the music theory meta, and I actively encourage you to enjoy classical outside of the meta analysis of the music, cause it beats elitists who think you need a BA in music to like Bach when you can also just go "music go weeee".

Jazz focuses on improvisation and phrasing. Most jazz tunes have a kind of pattern: you introduce the main melody of the tune, you play a verse and chorus, then you improvise around those melodies, and eventually you return to the main melody and finish the song. The improvisation in the middle is usually where the magic happens. Experienced jazz players can change keys a lot, reference other famous tunes (I think it was Charlie "Bird" Parker was a great fan of classical composer Igor Stravinsky, and would find ways to work phrases of Stravinsky pieces into his solos). Some kinds of jazz also feature a similar vibe to rap battles, where two members of the jazz group try to outdo each other in their improv sections (very common in bebop jazz and their "cutting sessions"). So to appreciate jazz it helps to notice when they go into the improvisation sections, and see how they change and adapt the original melody.

Folk music is about as "by the people, for the people" as you can get. A lot of the tunes are simple, the words can very massively, even having two totally different songs for the same melody (for example, "Red is the Rose" and "Loch Lomond" have the exact same melody, but wildly different lyrics). Folk is probably best appreciated when you know the history behind the song, if anyone knows what the history is. Folk songs are often steeped in local culture, so understanding a Scottish folk song will be greatly assisted by understanding Scottish history and culture, similarly flamenco will be best understood when you look into Spanish culture and history, cause these different elements of history and culture will affect the musical traditions and explain why the song sounds the way it does. I found I started to appreciate rap a lot more when I thought of it as a sort of modern folk song tradition: understanding the history of black Americans and the racism and abuse they received and how they used rap to touch on those subjects.

I can't think of more musical genres and traditions to use as examples, but I think this gets the idea across (hopefully). Each music genre is very different, and so to appreciate each genre properly you have to understand where they're coming from. And of course you can skip all of that and go "I like this cause it sounds cool", but for people like me who overthink their love of music, stuff like this can be very helpful, because sometimes you do just have to recontextualize your conception of music and cultures to get an idea of why it sounds the way it does, and that recontextualization can also help you find what you like.

Hope this helps somebody, and anyone who wants can reblog with their thoughts, additions, critiques, compliments, etc.

[searsage]

Skorri sat in place hidden behind one of the many pillars of the keep, across the hall she could see Lady Efrideet following suit, hiding in a similar spot behind a pillar just shy of the stairwell.

Her lovely ivory and bronze armor glinting gently where the stray light caught it, it made the singer's heart skip beats.

She looks beautiful and excited, just as excited as Timur, the warlock had been glowing for days, it was great to see his mind free of the stress that often plagued the him, never had he seemed so young.

Down the hall she could just make out lord saladin's silhouette, he was frowning like always but even skorri could see Timur's vigor had infected him as well, he too was invested in the mischief about to unfold before them.

It seemed everyone's spirit's were high, for once things were unexpectedly looking up for the iron lords.

Beautiful music filled the echoing halls of Felwinter peak, it shattered the dreary ambiance, Tchaikovsky's symphonies filled the silence, their notes chasing each other around in timeless loops.

The delightful trap was set and now all that was left was for the iron lords to wait, and to Skorri's surprise and Timur's pure delight they didn't have to wait long.

The drowned out sound of a bed chamber doors creaking shut could just be heard just trickling through the obnoxiously loud classical music, across from her skorri can see Lady Efrideet brimming with mirth and excitement, as lord Felwinter emerges from the staircase true to Timur's predictions.

She finds herself holding her breath as the curious iron Lord descends the staircase, his right hand is full of paperwork, no doubt charts and data sheets but he doesn't bother setting them down, instead the curious Exo immediately heads for the antique record player, there he hovers around it for a good while, curiously looking about, but obviously too infatuated by the machine to thoroughly scope the parameter for hiding iron lords or even question the suspiciously empty common space.

Eventually he reaches his hand out, metal fingers plucking the nail up and setting it back two tracks, his head tilted elegantly downward as he listened to the mystifying.

He looked like an artistic sculpture, standing so still near to the table, the machine who was all sharp edges and elegant posture, for once looked..at peace..

Fleeting light crept in from the windows, illuminating the thick faded fur of thr robe against his back and catching the horns of his well worn helmet.

He looked utterly radiant in his little moment of private peace, skorri could practically feel Timur's soul leaving his body, and silently hoped the man had the strength to go through with the prank he himself orchestrated.

Again Felwinter set the nail back, the exo had no doubt found his favorite song, his finger tapping against the table once, twice before the iron lord finally pushed away with all the reluctance of a sailor under a siren's spell, slowly vanishing into the nearby study, to no doubt deal with the moutain of charts wedged under his arm.

This was her cue.

Her heart slammed in her chest as skorri darted out from behind the marble piller, to her left Lady Efrideet was practically vibrating in place, quickly motioning for her to go forward before the iron lord returned.

Skorri swallowed her apprehension, if she was caught it was game over, with a brief scope of the room and hall leading to the study Felwinter had retreated to, she dashed forward swiftly closing the distance between her and the record player.

The moment her nimble fingers plucked the needle from it's track the melody adruptly died, instantly the room was all too quiet and Skorri felt her heart freeze under the weight of apprehension.

"Pssst!"

The singer jolted as a small sound jumpstarted her reflexes again, it was Timur, the man was waving wildly, pointing from the study door to her hiding spot, quickly she replaced the record, leaving the nail idle and carefully placing the pilfered record on the table, then she darted out of sight, sighing in relief as the shadow of the piller cast a cool concealing shadow over her.

Luckily for the songtrist she had made it just in time!

It was mere seconds before Felwinter's silhouette reemergred from the study, his peculiar ram helmit pointed towards the idle player

[callsign-relic]

THANK U FOR THE COOL BEAST WARS FACTS >:00!!!

GUTS GUN... very cool! very fun!! love design decisions like that. also NO WAY Beast Wars Megatron has the same VA as TFA OP????? I would. genuinely never have guessed :0 range indeed... EDIT: I went to go listen to their voices to compare and I realised he also plays Megatron in Armada LMAO,, I should probably have recognised that one, considering I'm forever swooning over Armada Megs' voice but. anyway.

livebloggin round TWO!!

EP2

i love that Dinobot is all about killing but also more importantly he's got an honor code... kill them BRUTALLY but WITH HONOR <3

is that STONEHENGE?

Megatron sounds like he's on the verge of an orgasm or something half the time ksdfjhsdfjkjskdf,, i mean- i love it, slay, my guy- but also why.....

man. the music and music cues fuck severely- i love when they time it to Megatron's footsteps and stuff like that. Fun details!

OH SHIT DINOBOT... they're even now :o

title drop! BEAST! WARS!!

EP3

Scorponok's hugeass eyebrows in his scorpion mode are amazing LMAO

OH!! guts! gun!! it looks so messed up but i love it conceptually.

HUH? IS THIS CYBERTRON?????????????????? THAT WAS A DECEPTICON SYMBOL. are there Decepticons and Autobots in addition to Predacons and Maximals??

oh my god Cheetor just Lounging in his dream(?) is very cute.

Tarantulas is genuinely pretty creepy in this. fucked up little freak... <3

"EhhhHhehhhehhehhehehh..." love me a weird guy with weird, creepy laughter.

HES GONNA EAT HIM? ??? ??

oh so he just LIKES doing it. he doesn't even need it to survive!! fucked! up! little! freak!!!!!!!!!!!!! (appreciative)

i just suddenly realised that quite a few of the Predacons don't have hands. how is Tarantulas holding his gun.

"-I got garbage to munch." does Rattrap also have weird food preferences. is he actually going off to eat garbage.

i really like seeing how everyone interacts with each other :0 fascinating character dynamics...

EP4

i love getting to see inside the ships in TF media but truly what the hell is going on in the Predacon's base. Why are there so many floating platforms. The Maximal base looks normal compared to whatever's going on here.

SUDDEN TELEPORTATION?!

Terrorsaur's awful screeching every time he transforms will always be funny to me- AW CHEETOR..... "Cheetor! Maxim- I did that already" my poor boy LMAO

IS THAT FUCKING LAVA? what's up with their base!! the floor is lava (literal)

ah yes, the classic attempted betrayal arc in... episode 4. good lord.

oh!! DOUBLE BETRAYAL!!! now it's a character trait.

KSHDJKSDH Waspinator systematically shooting holes in the vents as he tries to shoot Cheetor... sir, you gotta fix those later.

oh!!!! the PROBES are the reason the teleportation happened!! that's really neat actually- i like that there's an actual explanation for it happening and not just Plot Convenience

it's so interesting that Rattrap's initial distrust of Dinobot was actually pretty justified jskhfjdf he IS ready to fuck everyone else over... very interesting!!

WHEW okay that's a wall of text lmao. i tried paring it down a bit but i love to Chatter so. it's still long lol.

i'll probably split these depending on how much i have to say per episode/set of episodes because i assume some are more Eventful than others, plus if i did them one by one i'd end up sending you like... 50+ asks of liveblogging alone and i'd assume that would get tiring to answer kjdhfkjf

- initiate

YESSSSSS I LOVE ALL YOUR THOUGHTSSS EHEEHE

Genuinely I love reading through these and being like “OH I REMEMBER THIS EPISODE” AAHGASHDJ. It might be too early to say but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the characters themselves so far 👀 like who are your favorites, who don’t you like that much, etc etc hehe

I love the character dynamics so much in this show. OH YEAH and you mentioning armada— Optimus Primal’s VA, Garry Chalk, also voiced Armada Optimus HAHAHHA

[adamwatchesmovies]

Doctor Sleep (2019)

Doctor Sleep is a sequel to The Shining 40+ years in the making. Taking its cues from the follow-up novel by Stephen King and the Stanley Kubrick classic, it’s a different but robust sequel nonetheless. Rather than try and recreate what worked about the first film (an impossible task, the 1977 horror classic is a one-in-a-million kind of movie), it tells its own story while paying homage to its predecessor and giving the fans what they want to see. Yes, it’s long at 152 but there’s an even longer director’s cut I’d love to visit sometime.

31 years after escaping the Overlook Hotel, Dan "Danny" Torrance (Ewan McGregor) is haunted by childhood trauma and struggles with alcoholism. When a young telepathic girl named Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran) reaches out to warn him of a group who “Shine” and feed upon people with psychic abilities, he chooses to work with her to stop them.

Unlike The Shining, Doctor Sleep isn’t a horror movie. It’s more of a drama/thriller, with action-y bits coming in the later half and some horror sprinkled on top. For a good chunk of the story, we’re following a traumatized, ruined Danny Torrance trying his best to hold at bay the lingering ghosts of the Overlook Hotel while getting over his addiction, finding his place in the world and befriending Abra. There’s a lot of great material as Danny talks to his AA group about the way he relates to his father more than ever now that he is also a prisoner of the “demon in a bottle”. The way he and Abra’s childhoods differ make for great character-based moments.

And then come Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) and the members of the True Knot cult. If there’s one area where the film bites off more than it can chew, it’s with the villains. There are too many of them and several wind up being nothing more than generic baddies but otherwise, they’re the kind of villains you love to hate. As Rose the Hat puts it, the “steam” they steal from other shiners tastes best when the victim is young, terrified and in pain. If seeing kids die is something you can’t handle, know that writer/director Mike Flanagan has no mercy regardless of his characters' age.

The members of the True Knot gang who are fleshed out make for great, complex characters. One of the best examples is Snakebite Andi (Emily Alyn Lind). Under normal circumstances, she would be heroic but when she joins a group of psychic vampires who prey on children just so they can expand their lifespans… the support your initially support for her evaporates. These vampires act high and mighty but when it comes down to it, they’re just as prone to petty emotions as the rest of us, which makes every victory Dan and Abra score feel extra good.

So far, none of this sounds anything like The Shining. Psychic vampires? That���s far removed from a haunted hotel. You’re right, but Doctor Sleep makes it fit. It isn’t merely people that can shine; it’s the dead - such as the ghost from Room 237 - and places - like the Overlook - too. What we thought was a haunted building is actually much more and if that makes you wish we could get just one more look at that iconic location, the film obliges. This is where it feels most fanboy-ish, as we get pretty much every single prop and shot recreated: the blood flowing from the elevator, the twins, the tricycle down those corridors with the weird carpet, etc. Before we start docking points, however. I’d like to see anyone who didn’t want - even a little bit - to see the Overlook again. That's what I thought.

What makes these references and recreations work is how well they’re done. We see Dan confront Lloyd (Henry Thomas), who says he’s merely the Overlook's bartender but looks strikingly like Jack Nicholson. It isn’t an exact match (obviously) but even this inconsistency works. It’s a twisted memory, a ghost held captive by the Overlook looking to use a familiar image against the now grown boy who narrowly escaped its clutches years ago. The resemblance is so uncanny and the flashback and callback scenes so well done (Alex Essoe does a spot-on impersonation of Shelley Duvall) they don’t feel self-indulgent.

While we didn’t need Doctor Sleep, Stephen King felt the characters were worth returning to. Based on this effort, it’s hard to disagree. This sequel is telling its own story AND giving us more of what we enjoyed before. The performances are strong, the characters compelling and the callbacks are so well done that it makes the overlong running time feel… merely long. (December 17, 2021)

[sumersprkl]

I finally watched Descendants: The Rise of Red and I am........... deeply baffled and confused by so many of the storytelling choices they made here........................... But I think *puts on tinfoil hat* they could be able to save it if they have the sequel they alluded to go something like:

Red, who grew up with an abusive parent and does not at all know how to be a good little sweethearted Auradon princess, goes through her "Mal breaks down from the pressure and goes back to the Isle" arc with the added complication that she's living with someone who is a stranger to her, and she has to be a disappointment to her mother AGAIN in horrible new ways.

Meanwhile, Chloe realizes that something is DEEPLY wrong with HER OWN home situation now. Maybe Cinderella isn't married to Charming, because she was grounded on the night of the dance (because of Chloe breaking the vase) and couldn't be there to fall in love with him. So Chloe goes to meet Red and convinces her to go back in time again to fix what they messed up the first time.

Blah blah, blah blah, plot, music numbers, fight scenes with way too many unnecessary flips and somersaults, a new wig for Chloe in every scene for no discernible reason. They save the day! They find a way to get Ella to the dance AND prevent the prank on Bridget! But because of what happened the last time, they decide to check that everything's fixed with the looking glass before they hop back to the present.

And they realize that everything has gone back to the way it went the first time, before they jumped back in time at all! Because it turns out that one single prank from a group of people who already hated her WASN'T the straw that broke Bridget's back. It was the fact that her best friend Ella got a boyfriend, married into money, and dropped her entirely, leaving her friendless and vulnerable in a world of people that hate her! Red and Chloe prevented the one prank at Castlecoming, but did NOTHING to prevent further retaliation, and if Ella went to the dance and fell in love with Charming, she doesn't bother to be there to protect or console her friend in the aftermath.

And now Red and Chloe know what they have to do: They have to save their mothers' friendship in order to save Auradon! Because love and friendship and support in hard times is what REALLY saves the day, NOT stopping a few horrible people from doing ONE horrible thing and then dipping out because it's all good now.

They go back to the present, Red tells her mom the truth of what happened, they hug (and the Queen of Hearts mourns the daughter that SHE remembers raising who she is never going to see again, but shh, this is a Disney movie so that bit's glossed over and tossed to people like me who think WAY to hard about the implications of kids movies). In this timeline, Ella and Bridget remember meeting Chloe and Red in the past, because it isn't immediately overshadowed by meeting the love of her life/losing her best friend. Everyone reconciles, and the moms tell their kids that they're proud of them.

Cue big sappy dance number that actually feels earned this time rather than being a payoff for absolutely nothing, and then some little thing goes wrong in the background of the dance number and this time either Red or Chloe gets to say the sequel-baity "Oh, you didn't think this was the end of the story, did you?" line while looking right into the camera. Credits roll to the sound of another China-Anne McClain cover of a classic Disney song despite the fact that Uma was barely in the movie because she's the only cast member who can actually sing.

THE END!

[angrelysimpping]

Okay so….this one is fucked. Like, you got all the other mush, this one is fucked. Enjoy! ;3c

M!OC x friend’s M!OC uwu

Warnings: stuckage; noncon; noncon turned dubcon; pseudoincest with implied past incest; use of the word “rape” used once

Aksel and Joaquim belong to 💜@inkyquince💜

Words: ~2.3k

(Good End Variant: Here)

For the first time in months, Danny’s tempted to tap into the entity’s power. Even when he’d been trapped under Aksel’s thumb, when Aksel had tried to break him, had fucked Danny dumb in an attempt to make him desperate enough to use the entity’s abilities, he’d held strong. Danny knew there was a chance of slipping, of losing control, of the entity forcing him down, down, down, until he could only witness the destruction the entity wrought while using his body as a vessel. Trapped, only able to watch how it would reward Aksel for freeing it, how it would hurt Joaquim for sticking with Danny. No, he never tried to wield the thing’s powers unless it was an absolute emergency.

But this was Danny’s breaking point. 

It was fucking humiliating. A little painful, too, but, really, it was more humiliating than anything. How does shit like this even happen? How did he get stuck under the bed? 

Well, apparently getting railed every night wasn’t the best for the bed’s support or whatever, but still! There was no way something like this could happen! Crawling under the bed to hunt down a missing ear stud, knocking his head on a support, and that being the last straw for the bed’s structural integrity? Collapse on Danny, keeping him trapped? Really? What were the odds?! Like something out of a bad porno.

Danny huffs a small laugh, mumbling “What are you doing step bro?”

God, those were such stupid videos. Still, Danny had jerked it to more than one of them. Apparently, one too many, his cock twitching in interest as a few scenes flit through his mind. The classic ‘stuck in a washing machine’ girl. Two brothers fooling around after one was only able to free the other from between half-closed elevator doors by fucking him out. 

A man caught in a wall, his boyfriend teasing him, licking over his rim, jerking him off. Sinking his fat cock into his trapped partner’s cute, twitching hole.

“Fuck.”

Stuck and also uncomfortably hard, now. Double humiliating. Maybe he really should try tapping into the entity. Surely he’d be able to control it, right? It wasn’t like when Aksel was trying to break him down. His emotions weren’t running…that high. So, it should be fine, right?

No, no, no. He should wait for Joaquim. He’d only gone out for a quick trip to the shop around the corner. He’d be back soon.

And as if right on cue, the door opened.

Face burning, Danny’s right about to call out before it hits him: he doesn’t recognize those footsteps. That’s not the sound of his lover slowly making their way across the small room.

“Oh, little vessel, what a sticky situation you seem to have gotten yourself into! Aren’t you lucky I found you again?”

Danny grows cold at the sound of Aksel’s voice, heart dropping through the floor as his efforts to free himself redouble. 

It doesn’t work. Of course not. But that doesn’t stop him from twisting and thrashing, refusing to give up. He’s so bent upon his efforts that he barely hears Aksel’s harsh laugh, doesn’t even hear him kneeling down behind him. It’s not until cool hands grip his hips and Danny freezes that he realizes how close Aksel is.

“Don’t touch me,” he growls, lashing out with his feet, attempting to kick the older man away. “Don’t fucking touch me you goddamn monster.”

It’s with delight that he feels his foot make contact, a soft oof from the cultist letting Danny know he’d at least hurt the fucker. His victory is short-lived, a hand snaking under him and grabbing his dick, hard.

White lights skitter across his vision, a wave of nausea sweeping over him. Worse still, he can feel the entity deep in the recesses of his soul, stirring, pricking its ears up as the call of Danny’s distress sings out to it. 

“Do that again whore, and I’ll give that pretty cock of yours a new piercing, got it?” Aksel punctuates his sentence with another harsh squeeze. Danny isn’t aware of the broken sound he makes, too busy struggling to breathe, blood pounding in his ears as he tries to keep himself together. 

When Danny remains still, doesn’t try to kick out or squirm away, Aksel’s grip softens. “There we go, princess. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Danny bites down on his bottom lip with the too-sharp teeth the entity gave him, easily piercing through the thin skin and filling his mouth with metallic, tangy blood. Still, it was that rather than provoke Aksel further. 

Those cool hands are back on his hips, thumbs digging into the small of his back as Aksel sighs, almost dreamily, behind him. “Been waiting to find you two again. Imagining it, finally getting you to break. Getting rewarded by that entity you keep pressed down.” In one quick, rough action, Aksel yanks down Danny’s jeans. There’s a beat of silence before Aksel’s cruel laughter fills the room again. “Lacy panties? Were these for my little brother? Shame he won’t ever get to see them, eh?”

“Shut up.”

Aksel’s laughter dies just as suddenly as it started, plunging the room into an icy silence.

“What did you say, whore?”

Danny doesn’t think, snapping back, “I said shut the fuck up you fucking-!”

The sound of ripping lace cuts him off, ruined tatters of the panties hanging limply from his hips as something hot and blunt pressing at his hole. The cavity of Danny’s chest fills with ice, the entity slithering out of the depths of his soul as his panic grows. All his willpower goes to shut the thing down, keeping it locked away, his body frozen in place and unable to move. Makes it all the easier for Aksel, pressing against the tight ring of muscle before it gives, head popping past the rim and allowing him to slowly sink into Danny’s ass.

Danny’s brain blanks as he’s forced open, trying to keep the entity under control as it thrums under his skin. He wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t give in, wouldn’t let the entity take over, wouldn’t let Aksel get what he wants.

But,  that meant he couldn’t even swear as Aksel starts to fuck into him, hips slamming against his at a brutal pace. He can hear Aksel rambling, cruel words and vile filth spewing past his lips. It goes right over Danny’s head, words sliding off him like water rolling off his back. He can’t think, can’t move. He can only use everything in him to keep himself from letting the entity take over.

That is, until Aksel grabs his cock again.

“You’re still hard, whore. Knew my baby brother would find me a pretty, masochistic bitch.”

Joaquim. Danny’s concentration shatters. Joaquim was supposed to be back by now, but here Danny was, trapped under a collapsed bed and getting split open by Aksel. Was he okay? Had Aksel gotten to Joaquim first? Was he hurt? If Aksel was involved, then nothing good could come from it. 

The horns sprout before Danny can stop them, poking out of his hair and catching against the underside of the bed. The tail comes next, unfurling from the base of his spine, skin itching and burning as he tries to suppress it even as it springs forth. 

“That’s it,” Aksel growls, starting to pump Danny’s aching cock in time with his savage thrusts, “give in. Give me what I want.”

Danny sobs, the mark up the side of his body carved into him by the entity burning as he fights for control. He could use it, he knows he could. He could use his new tail to lash out, wrap it around Aksel’s throat and pull him off. But could he stop after that? Could he keep himself from killing Aksel? Danny had killed before but it was different then, on his terms. This? This wasn’t the same at all. This was a desperate struggle, one that he knew, deep in his bones, would leave him open for the entity to take over fully. 

“Aw, don’t wanna?” Aksel coos, stilling with his hips pressed flush to Danny’s ass. Idly, almost as if he were bored, he starts to grind against Danny, pressing deep inside him, making him squirm, tail thrashing uncontrollably. “Don’t wanna go under so I can play with the entity? Wanna play with your big brother longer?” 

Danny nearly stops breathing, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, cock twitching pathetically in Aksel’s hand, dribbling thick precum over his knuckles. 

“You always love cumming on big brother’s cock, don’t ya? Dirty whore of a baby brother. And so greedy, never wanting to share with our other brother. Aren’t brothers supposed to share everything?”

Delusional. Danny thinks, vision going hazy as Aksel’s cock keeps grinding away at his insides. Aksel is delusional. Still, that doesn’t stop the heat pooling in his gut as Aksel keeps babbling, the entity’s control becoming a fraction of an amount weaker as the disgust, rage, and desperation inside him mixes with something else. Something Danny would never name. 

“And then you go and keep our brother all to yourself too. Bouncing on his cock every night. But we can share, you know. You know how to share, right? Papa would be so happy to see all his boys again, and you could keep my cock warm every night and Joa could suck it clean every morning. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

The tail wilts, fizzling away. It’s almost as bad as if he’d cum, as if he’d pressed back into Aksel and fucked himself on the monster. Because he’s close. Danny’s getting close, hurtling towards an end he’d rather bite off his tongue than admit to.

Aksel, lost in his own fantasy, doesn’t seem to mind that his actions are starting to push the entity away, rather than bringing it to the surface. No, he just keeps going, fisting Danny’s cock, thumbing the dusky pink head and making more of a mess out of the trapped man. “You’d look so pretty in my bed together, my two pretty baby brothers humping each other's brains out and begging me to come fuck them proper. To ruin their tight holes or ride their pretty cocks until their balls are nice and empty. Cute lil mouths ready for me to cum down the back of.”

“D-don’t-”

“Don’t what, princess? Don’t wanna share your big brother? Still just a greedy lil whore after all?”

“Y-yeah,” Danny nearly chokes on the word, tears dripping softly to the floor. “Don’t���don’t bring Joa, in-into it. Don’t wanna…share.” Shame burns his face as he speaks, brain sluggish trying to find the right words to steer Aksel away from talking about Joaquim. His Joaquim. His Kimi. His always. His to hold and love and worship and adore. Not someone for Aksel to use. Even as the heat in him grew, a familiar tingling in his balls sparking to life, he couldn’t stand Aksel’s fantasies of hurting Joaquim. 

“Want your big brother’s cock all to yourself?” Aksel’s lazy pace starts to pick up again, the grip on Danny’s pierced cock following suit. “Want your big brother to rape you day and night? Wreck you for anyone else? Shape your insides so only your big brother’s cock can fill you right?”

Danny tries to speak, tries to do anything that would make the shame that lights up his whole body dim, but he can’t. Everything is too much, too good. The hand on his cock, the thick dick carving him out. It would be heaven, if only it wasn’t Aksel doing this to him. If it wasn’t Aksel the one making his body respond like this, the horns from the entity subsiding and electricity tingling up his spine as he’s pushed ever closer to the edge.

“Gonna cum on your big brother’s cock, aren’t you? Gonna let me fill up your slutty ass and then keep begging for more? Such a brat, keeping your beloved big brother all to yourself but that’s okay, princess. You’ll learn to share eventually. But until then you’ll get big brother all to yourself, okay?”

Aksel punctuates his ramblings with a particularly harsh jerk to Danny’s cock, and it spells his end. Danny cum’s with a cry, spilling over Aksel’s hand and painting the ground under him. He nearly blacks out, knees giving way under him as Aksel’s thrusts become even rougher. If it wasn't for Aksel’s grip on his hips, he’d be fucked into the floor, Aksel chasing his own pleasure with no regard for the limp body under him.

The ringing in his ears keeps Danny from hearing most of Aksel’s continued ravings, weakly willing for the man to just cum already and let him rest. When Aksel’s stills, cock still buried deep as he cums, Danny almost sighs in relief.

Of course, that feeling is short-lived. Danny’s brain is still fuzzy, body loose and weak, as Aksel pulls him out from where he was pinned under the bad. He’s dizzy, exhausted, on the verge of passing out, but he’s still conscious as the shorter man crouches down next to where he lays. Danny could count each freckle across his face with how close he is, bright red eyes boring into Danny’s. Idly, he wonders if his own eyes are still brown, or if the tussle with the entity had left them purple for the rest of the day. It doesn’t matter, not when he’s too tired to even flinch as Aksel reaches out, stroking a strand of sweaty dark hair from his cheek. 

“Don’t worry,” Aksel murmurs, tucking the stray lock back, behind Danny’s ear. Then, almost tenderly, he traces the shell of his ear, over the piercings, and down along his jaw. “I’ll take you home now. Joaquim will be so happy to see you.” 

That’s the last thing Danny hears before succumbing to unconsciousness.

[schismusic]

THE DISCOGRAPHY PRINCIPLE, Episode 6: Kraftwerk - or, Electro-Shock for President

I've actually been sitting on this one for a really long time. It's hard to think of anything meaningful to add in the presence of History itself.

TIME Magazine had this cute cover out on February 8th, 1993 — a guy sits on his computer, his left eye is prosthetic and the cables from the CRT screen swerve and swirl towards a purple spiral in the background. Big title in the middle, CYBERPUNK, and right under there a small blurb that reads like an amateur Steam developer trying to make his generic-ass game set in twenty-seventy-something appealing to you. It's mesmerizing to think that the early 1990s were still a time where you could legitimately hope for a cyberpunk utopia without hearing your own personal Seinfeld laugh track in your head. Of course this devolved into one of the foundational bits of reading in my teenage years: Ondarock's biographic pieces about specific artists and bands. Eddy Cilìa — one of the deans of Italian music criticism — wrote one about Kraftwerk that at one point says the following (translated to English by yours truly):

"… if Kraftwerk's music is still to this day all bent forward, lyrics and visual concepts still taste more like modern antiques than they do modernity. Theirs is a vision of the future hailing from a past when it was possible to imagine prosperous and tidy days to come, with squeaky-clean cities, immense green spaces, eight-lane highways overruled by giant electronic brains. Before the petrol wars and microchips. Before Blade Runner. Before cyberpunk. Before we realized we were fucked. Those who know that unforgettable William Gibson short story, The Gernsback Continuum (off of Burning Chrome) will understand."

Cue the BBC using Kraftwerk's Musique Non Stop and Electric Café to soundtrack William Gibson reading some of the bleakest bits off of Count Zero (I'm gonna link the program here, but unfortunately the bits where the tracks play have been muted, so there's that). I don't even find it infuriating or distracting or inappropriate, even: at this point cyberpunk as an aesthetic is modern antique, whereas cyberpunk as a collection of themes wildly oscillates between the hopelessly romantical and the unfortunately timely. Both of these things very aptly describe Kraftwerk's Electric Café, the last record with the classic lineup of Hütter, Schneider, Bartos, Flür. Electric Cafè, or Techno Pop for either irredeemable zoomers or the unlucky few who worked with the band from 1982 to 1986, sounds like someone trying really hard to be relevant: Sex Object is like one degree of separation away from Depeche Mode, minus the inherent sexiness of Depeche Mode — as retroactively superimposed as it may be — and as such laughable, and not in a good way. Basically the entirety of side one (perhaps even The Telephone Call, if Computer Love didn't already exist) would go stupid hard if it had come out on, for instance, in The Man-Machine era. Unfortunately the record feels too thematically unsound to work the way a Kraftwerk record usually works, mostly because for the first time ever the band seem to take the concept with actual seriousness.

So many people focus on the supposed future-proof nature of Kraftwerk which in retrospect kind of feels a bit laughable — it's like when some of these YouTube guys allow the possibility that the work of a band like Boards of Canada "still sounds fresh". It's good, obviously, but can we really close our eyes and pretend like no one ever considers making intentionally warbly sounding electronic music in the year of our Lord two-thousand-and-twenty-four, where people are falling head over heels for the new Oneohtrix Point Never record? Kraftwerk is dated, because Gary Numan and John Foxx and Depeche Mode and Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul-Sonic Force and Cybotron and Model 500 and Aphex Twin and Autechre and Deadmau5 and Avicii and Skrillex and NERO and Caterina Barbieri and DJ Haram and Suzi Analog and so many others exist and have, in their own way, dated. That is exactly what makes Kraftwerk the greatest. Their studio production mostly wears its age with confidence: sure, if you want to be terrible to it you could argue it sounds like a bunch of Apple IIe terminals desperately fighting for their life in the bathroom after a night out at Taco Bell, but that would fundamentally miss the core point which is that they very clearly fucking knew that this was going to happen. And even their lyrical optimism is much darker than most give them credit for. Like, seriously, stop and think for a moment: science fiction in the 1970s was all about aliens, everywhere. Isaac fucking Asimov, robot dude par excellence, wrote a book about aliens for the first and, if memory serves, only time in the year 1972, and then never again. The highway was a gleefully old fashioned concept to be excited about, and so was the train — more so than the highway, actually. They hopped back onto the zeitgeist with Computer World, but again, it was minimal, barren, and the lyrics used to bite. The German version of the title track, for instance, loves to remind the listener that "Interpol und Deutsche Bank, FBI und Scotland Yard, Finanzamt und das BKA haben unsere Daten da" — they have our data there!

A while back there used to be this great blog on this site called One Week One Band where they once did a week fully dedicated to Kraftwerk which explains most of the shit I would be going on in this post, and does so in a much more interesting and accurate way than I could ever; obviously so, since I'm writing at 3:20am because I had a really rough Tuesday night which fucked up my sleep schedule into unrecognizability. Anyway yeah I'm not even going to try to actually get into the lyrics, mostly because I never really gave a shit, minus the funny bits about meeting Iggy Pop and David Bowie from station to station back to Düsseldorf city and that bit about how they want to fuck an up-and-coming starlet (Big Black really upped the sleaziness factor in their cover, actually making it sound more like Kraftwerk's backstage activities — at least according to Wolfgang Flür — than Kraftwerk's recorded output); the short version is that it's simply insane to me that nobody ever bothered thinking "goddamn, this is simply too shiny and chrome and polite to be serious, and how the fuck am I supposed to take the robot disguise seriously, maybe they're taking the piss somewhat?", which is extremely egregious given the very nerdy humor on constant display in their lyrics and song titles — Antenna, for instance, reads like a dirty poem on a trade school's toilet stall, and I don't think I have to add anything to Ohm Sweet Ohm. But what do you know: as some of you might have guessed I like nerdy humor that makes no sense and fails catastrophically at conveying any sense of zest and class and sexiness, because Kraftwerk never meant to be fucking sexy. They wanted to make volksmusik, i.e. a literal German translation of popular music. They succeeded.

In case you're wondering, my favourite Kraftwerk record changes depending which one I've listened to the most recently, but gun to my head I would probably say Trans Europe Express. I spent a lot of time listening more or less exclusively to the German language versions of some of these records, and it's weird using the English titles for me, but ultimately it makes more sense. If it is to be volksmusik, in this day and age, it has to be musik of all volk, and as such of all folks, and statistically speaking there are more people speaking English than German — at least in my personal social circle. Anyway, the thing about TEE could be this: the beauty of it is that it has everything in itself, but the real kicker is that none of that is made explicit to the fullest. All of the sequenced hopping synthpop, the melancholy melodies of New Romantic, the drive and danceability of hip hop, a certain sense of coldness that post-punk as a whole would make its own — see Ian Curtis's obsession with this particular record (and, on a slightly different note, how the surviving members of New Order would go on to sample Uranium, which if you ask me might rank as one of the hardest interlude tracks on any record ever) — are here but in very throwaway forms, i.e. they do not make the case for themselves. In the moment of their conception, they must have been seen as ad-hoc arrangement tactics, perhaps even as a holistic compositional approach: they are not their own justification, nobody woke up and said "I am going to make a whole record about this here technique", as testimonied by the change in mission statement right in the middle of the making. The band had been recording trains to see if they could use the inherent rhythm in their motion to make something danceable, but they realized it didn't work because they'd have to be sped up to unrecognizability; so, they dropped the field recording/tape loop idea and recreated the groove in the studio with conventional drums. On the other hand, cue John Foxx turning into a Ballardian neon-lit dandy for his solo debut, extrapolating on TEE's sounds to better delineate a colder, more anthropic, more impersonal, more atonal and (why not?) perhaps more violent European landscape.

Sure one might argue that their reference landmarks are predominantly European, predominantly focused on the classical era of music (1600s-1800s, very roughly), predominantly if not entirely diatonic, but their opus very clearly works — it very clearly has worked, over and over again — as a potentially ever-expandable theoretical framework. Their minimalism became the empty spaces it left open, the boxes it didn't tick. As much inspiration as Kraftwerk drew from funk, a slight increase of the funk coefficient on the part of black artists in the United States invented techno, hip-hop, electro. Kraftwerk didn't, themselves, change the face of contemporary popular music, they "simply" allowed other people to reshape contemporary popular music a hundred times over. It feels like a miracle to listen to this music in the current day and age.

[gravelgirty]

How I lost a month of work and health

This is not easy for me, but this is the situation. Buckle up, this is wild.

Our ex-roommate is a hoarder and has all of the mental health issues you may imagine. Among them is executive function disorder, the inability to make important decisions and procrastinate until it is almost/too late to do anything.

After 4+ years of threatening to move when we tried to get them to agree to a cleaning program so we could, you know, live in a healthy house, they found a new place to live. Cue worst moving company ever, that are so terrible they would make you feel sorry for the FAWLTY TOWERS cast if they contracted out to these misogynistic, lazy and ham-fisted movers and I won't name them because their employees have a disturbing history of holding your goods for ransom (extra fees out of nowhere) and actually threatening you if you hold your ground. Let's say the company name starts with S and rhymes with 'makeway' and leave it at that, ok?

Well, roommate had 2 cats rescued from the great outdoors and when they were kittens they were shy and skittish but they were somewhat socialized and gentle. But after about 4 years of living in a hoarder's classic labyrinth and losing every imaginable social interaction with humans, they went feral.

I tried to stop them from escaping the bedroom because the movers were leaving the doors open (another thing they ignored while they were busy breaking stuff).

Three of us wound up in Urgent Care that night; me, my kid and the roommate because these poor creatures thought they were fighting for their lives. I hold them no grudge.

Doc says if things don't improve in 2-3 days go straight to ER.

Well. My hand balloons up in short order and I can't bend my thumb at all. I dutifully pay for a Lyft (roommate is gone even if their things are still here) and this happens:

Diagnosis? Septic Arthritis.

This is a rare and scary condition. Cat bit through muscle, tendon sheath, tendon, and even impacted the BONE right at the thumb joint which is a spot almost impossible to reach with oral antibiotics. There's just not enough circulation for the drugs to do their work. So. To save my hand the plastic surgeon on call opens me up AND STRIPS THE SHEATH. I don't know how many stitches I even have.

They have me on a lot of antibiotics plus opiods for the pain and a shunt and tubes and all the good stuff.

Then they put me on vincomiacin, which is a common allergen. I woke up trying to take off my hair in the middle of the night. Like a hive of stinging wasps were under my skin. Cue IV benadryl for 2 nights.

I wound up paying $60 to get my hair cut short as a breath in vacuum when I was back on my feet because my scalp still hurts and is sore from the reaction.

I wasn't even the only person hospitalized in the largest hospital in South Puget Sound over a cat-inflicted wound. I was the 3rd. If you count the first night, I was the 5th. The winner was a woman who kept 4 unspayed cats in her house and thought she could wade in and break up a cat fight.

Priceless was the moment when the salty old nurse in ER muttered that at least I hadn't been bitten by humans, and it turned out she has Seen Things from the ambulance behind the mall on certain nights.

Ultimately, because I can't use the thumb without incredible pain and the mobility is toast, I'm off work until the 10th of November. I used up all of my employee sick leave and will have to muddle back to work and talk to HR about other options on getting some sort of emergency compensation to survive. Friends and family have been wonderful. They've helped with rent and offered rides, helped us get groceries, and all the things you need to make it through.

But I've lost my independence and it hurts, bone-deep. It's deeper than the injury.

We are facing a deep clean of the apartment because we love living here and we love the landlady and maybe if we'd been a harder a** about the hoarding this wouldn't have happened. Who knows. But lyft rides have cost us $200 and there will probably be more to come as I muddle through rehab and appointments and exams. I'm annoyed about the hair cut. I'm not feeling great about the ballooning weight and I am baffled that there is still a ton of stuff that isn't ours, waiting to be hauled out and the rental agency wants me to pay an extra $500 to re-word the lease (re: start over) because rental controls are on the ballot and they would make it hard for these jokers to sock me with admin fees if the new controls are met and I'm betting this is why they are trying to get the money NOW. In the meantime, the carpet needs to go because my kid has asthma and cat pee carpets aren't healthy for anyone. Not a word about the cleanup has been made from the person who caused this mess. I don't expect it, either. They are mentally ill and not capable of drawing the dots when it comes to things like this. Nor do they have the money. Hard lessons learned.

I'm not posting any of this to beg for money. Frankly, nobody I know has it to spare. As I sit at home I'll slowly work my way through my ko-fi page and try to sell more fiction, and art if my confidence levels go up.

But this is health care in America and I am considered one of the lucky ones because my co-pay stopped at $75 for the emergency X-rays and my pharmacy (Rite-Aid) is finding new and improved ways to keep us from getting our RX in a timely fashion, ran out of bandages, and my GP is tearing her hair out because she faxes meds to me and they simply don't read the faxes that come in.

There is no transportation assistance on my insurance--and I repeat, I am considered one of the lucky ones with a state job + benefits.

I'm applying for emergency assistance to see if there is anything out there because pride goes first.

My sister likes to say, "Life's a lesson, sometimes you're it." This is my lesson. Don't vote down health care. Vote up.

[ausetkmt]

Image: courtesy of Ricky Codio/Ricky Codio Photography

“The creation of Black Music Month was the brainchild of Grammy Award winning songwriter/producer and one of the architects of The Sound of Philadelphia (TSOP) Kenny Gamble,” schools Dyana Williams, the music industry veteran and celebrity strategist. The songwriter/producer—along with his partner Leon Huff—has created countless classics, including “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” originally recorded by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes; “For the Love of Money” by The O’Jays; and Teddy Pendergrass’ “Turn Off the Lights.”

“When he established the Black Music Association in the late 1970s, we were a couple at that point; we had two children,” continues Williams, whose illustrious road to premier Black music advocate and tag as “the Mother of Black Music Month” began as a radio pioneer, holding her own on the airwaves during a time when women were woefully underrepresented.

It was a collective effort to that day on June 7, 1979 when President Jimmy Carter hosted the reception at the White House that made Black Music Month official. Williams, who played a critical role, describes it as “a coming together of various aspects of the music industry to celebrate and recognize this multibillion-dollar industry, not just the songwriters and the singers, people behind the scenes as well.” 

Williams' love of Black music, she shares, was sparked in her native New York City at a very early age. As a child, Williams learned how to dissect music. She grew up knowing where songs were recorded, who wrote them, who sang them, who played on them, who engineered them, who produced them and more. Later the daughter of Puerto Rican parents would mix and mingle with those same folks, even dating musicians as well as forming meaningful relationships with many other titans. City College of New York’s radio station WCCR gave her the first taste of what being a behind-the-scenes mover and shaker could be. 

“I was the music director. I had a jazz show, but I also availed myself of student funds to produce concerts to bring artists to the school,” she says. At a time when very few women were on the air, she took her cues from one legendary figure who is today best known for Mama, I Want To Sing!. “Vy Higginsen was on the radio at WBLS and she's the first Black woman that I listened to that inspired me to want to be on the radio,” shares Williams. 

Although radio no longer physically occupies as much of her time as it did throughout her life, even as she raised her three kids, Black music still keeps her busy. She is the president and founder of the International Association of African-American Music Foundation, which organizes conferences and educational symposiums as well as produces panels that communicate the vastness of Black music. In addition, IAAAM has honored many Black music greats, including Stevie Wonder, Patti LaBelle, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Babyface and L.A. Reid. She’s also a board member of the Nashville-based National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM), which recently honored Missy Elliott. TV One fans also recognize her as a frequent and trusted contributor to the network’s acclaimed series Unsung.

Even as Williams enters her 70s later this year, advocating for Black music is a personal mission and calling from which she can’t retire. And for good reason. “Black music deserves champions and advocates, and that's what I see myself as,” she insists. “Black Music is American music created in this country and exported culturally, but also economically. We don't tend to think of it that way, but the reality is that Black music is big business. I'm talking about not millions of dollars, but billions of dollars. We are the trendsetters. We are the weathervane so to speak. We’re the taste. We’re the flavor all over the planet. It is us and I see myself as a person who uses her platform, whether it's social media, whether it is talking with [journalists] to spread the word about the magnificence, the viability, and the power of Black music.”

[mlobsters]

supernatural s15e11 the gamblers (teleplay: meredith glynn, story: meredith glynn, davy perez)

so had an infuriating ep, a light (in theory) funny ep, so what's up with this possible alaska excursion. recap was full of a whole mess of things including some random class of angels i forget 2 seconds after hearing it

are they truly driving to alaska

reminds me of this tiktok i saw today of a guy from the uk who lives in the us now and had his mind obliterated when he just realized how close alaska is to russia

but wait, garth says road between barrow and kotzebue, which is nowhere near each other. kotzebue is ....

ok so driving 3800 miles - on a budget, as sam reminds dean - in their like... i'll be generous and say 12mpg impala. that's 316 gallons of fuel, one way. we'll say $3/gal? $950 gas one-way? sounds like any way you slice it, that's a lot of money

lol nic, please, drop it. it's just picking alaska is so wacky because it's so so far away from the rest of the US and it's so big and so sparsely populated

DEAN What can we get for, uh, $4.60? WAITRESS Um, a slice of pie and a cup of coffee? DEAN Two forks?

SAM A-A pool hall that makes you lucky or might kill you? I mean, it sounds like a demon or a witch or… DEAN Or it could be awesome. It’s pool. The- the- the game of champions, kings. My game. Hell, our game. How many honest-to-goodness great memories do we have hustling pool? SAM Yeah, because we had to. To eat. DEAN Okay, well, my point is, that if pool is the way we get our mojo back, then maybe we ain’t as screwed as thought.

but how good are they at pool under the chuck whammy.

day 2, still boggling over driving to alaska. also this whole thing reminds me of the poker playing for years thing from whatever, 5x07 let's get into it

DEAN Man, I’ve been slinging pool cues since before you were born. SAM What? When you were four? Really? What, between nap time and snack?

seen gifs of that one, classic. even knowing it was coming, made me laugh. sam's face, perfect

DEAN Look, we barely made it out of that monster fight club, okay? We need this. And you know it. Now, look, you’re better than me at pretty much everything, okay? That’s okay. I’m not mad. I’m proud. But I can wipe the floor with you when it comes to pool.

that's very sweet. i will take it

i don't even know what's going on with this little heart-eating jack sidequest for cas

Grigori were watcher angels, some of the first placed on Earth to watch and protect humanity. They were an elite unit that turned rogue and were thought to have been wiped out. However, a handful survived and hid on Earth, feeding off of human souls.

literally only appear in 2 episodes, this one and 10x20 - one thing i really got tired of (which i also understand because the show went on for so long with so many episodes) is just piling on random lore and creatures and weapons and devices and secret societies, etc.

having the pool playing sucking away luck from nice rando humans as opposed to the witch or whatever is kind of an interesting twist. a moral quandary!

the roman goddess of luck, ok. these are the episodes i watch and almost immediately forget :p

FORTUNA When I play someone, I get a read on them. And you… you’re just a beach read. Sexy, mm, but skimmable. DEAN Beach read? Lady, I’m Tolstoy.

cringe

JACK Fair? The last one I killed was pretending to be a doctor. Feeding on the souls of humans he was supposed to heal. You do it, too. Only you like children. KABAIEL Who told you that? JACK Death.

so billie yanked him out of the empty to go kill some bad guys? okayyy??? and eating the hearts because...??? laughed out loud when cas popped up to have a sword fight?? with the angel blade

i was on board with jack and my 3 dads and i feel like this should be heartwarming but i'm just 😐

dunno why this remote alaskan bar has jazz music as a theme but whatever. cheaper than licensed music :p (christopher lennertz and philip white on music this ep)

FORTUNA When you apes first climbed down from the trees, you didn’t pray to him. You prayed to the… the sun, the womb, the rain, and the stars. Well, at first, the creator was furious. How dare you not recognize his beneficence? But soon enough, he birthed us… Ra, Anu, Hera, Mixcoatl, all the rest. DEAN Why? FORTUNA Why? [scoffs] Why? To take the blame. Bad harvest? Stillborn child? Our bad. Not his. Plus, we made for epic stories. But his ego could only handle that for so long. Now he’s happy to behind whatever religion has the best syndication deal. While we survive on scraps in the wilderness.

feels like they're trying to finally wedge in an explanation to how the christian god is The god, by way of like oh no, he's just some generic creator and he's actually responsible for everything in all religions which just makes my head hurt if i think about it too long

FORTUNA You little minx. You got me talking. You’re good. SAM I learned from my brother.

there is a lot of cheesy dialogue this episode, i dunno what's going on

the people matter to me. to us. i cannot take this seriously :p

EVIE Because of you. She said she thought your kind had gone extinct. SAM Our kind? EVIE Heroes.

loll. whyyy. am i just being an ass again? so cheesy!

EVIE And, uh, she gave me a message. She said, “Don’t play his game. Make him play yours.”

okily dokily. whatever that means

awkwarrrd

sweet and weird, respectively

JACK Because if I don’t stay hidden, if I use my powers, my grandfather… he’ll know I’m back, and he’ll try and kill me… again. He’s afraid of me. And that’s why we had to wait. CAS Billie kept him hidden in the Empty until Chuck went off world. JACK She let me out when it was safe. DEAN Safe to what? Eat a bunch of angel hearts? JACK Safe to do what I have to. The hearts, they were just the beginning. They made me strong, but I-I’m not strong enough. I… If I do exactly what she says, if I follow her plan, then I’ll get stronger and… I’ll be able to kill God.

LOL ok, sure. to say this season has lost me would be an understatement. i know when i'm like this i'm gonna pick at every little thing, where i let things slide a bit more when i'm fully engaged. i regularly complain about the main plots but usually i'm still here for the character beats, but i'm having a hard time staying connected with even that at the moment