#some good fucking music

[hayleylovesjessica]

But, like, seriously, check out the first line of "The Cool, Cool River", track 8 on The Rhythm of the Saints:

"Moves like a fist through the traffic"

Y'all, let that image steep and marinate with you because that is the kind of image that most singer-songwriters today would KILL to write in their lyrics. But Paul Simon did that. HE DID THAT, SO PUT SOME RESPECT ON HIS NAME! And on top of that, the verse in which he sings this lyric is in 9/8 time (wut!), which then shifts to 3/4 time during the most gorgeous, most hopeful, most profound choruses you might ever hear in your life, before horns come in towards the end, after which the Brazilian percussion (that crescendo in the congas! it culminates in what I can only describe as the fist of God reaching out to shake you up!) and bass take over to play out the song, and OMG, I WANT TO BREAK DOWN SOBBING! 😭😭😭

[rayatii]

Only tangentially related, but:

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[skeletonthecreator]

btw anyone whos following the drake/kendrick thing but doesnt listen to rap music. this is a sign you should start listening to rap music. listen to some kendrick. you wont regret it i promise. listen to to pimp a butterfly. listen to good kid, m.A.A.d. city. listen to other rappers to, not just kendrick. if anyone wants recommendations feel free to message me/send an ask. rap music is awesome. this is your sign to get into it. rap is such a broad genre with so many incredible artists, there is something for you i promise.

[kurikorso]

nostalgia slapped me upside the head a little while ago so i had to draw my favorite dudes ft. the gecko effect

[kwillow]

As an eligible young noble of no small fame, Ambroys had a number of arranged courtships and suitresses in his youth, but any nascent marriages always fell through.

It's not that he didn't try; he certainly knew how to court a lady (perhaps too well, according to many fathers and husbands), and when he lacked knowledge on the affairs of womens' hearts, he sought counsel from a young woman who was a dear friend of his (perhaps too much counsel, according to his own father). Nonetheless, all he garnered for his efforts was separation after separation.

Ah, well. Maybe it was for the best.

[unchained-hound]

"Now his medium is getting bloody rare" Is such a fucking banger of a line, major props to the songwriters cuz this show is filled with well thought-out lyric work.

[ghost-proofbaby]

thinking about how eddie munson probably has a ridiculous collection of guitar picks. little jars of them. some collected at shows, some he picked up for a nickel at the only local music shop he's ever trusted to do work on his Sweetheart, some he was gifted for free at his local record shop that he's been frequenting for years now. the little old man running the record shop even gets excited when new vinyls are sent out with promotional merch, and he knows it's a band or musician eddie is into. probably even called eddie in at times and handed him a handful of metallica themed pics, hardly worth much, but solely because "i knew you like them and will find a good use for these, son".

my point is, he's got a pick for every occasion. shitty plastic thin ones for just fucking around with. thicker, nicer ones that might have been proper holiday gifts to him. the kind that are meant to hook on his fingers like rings (he tried using them a few times, especially for rifts, but ended up saying he played better when he felt the strings against his skin instead while picking away). novelty ones, ones that just looked plain cool. so on and so forth.

and he's got his collection just sitting in little jars across his room. he used to keep them in other things, like old ash trays or tin cans he'd cut and mold to be good containers. but then he started dating you, and you insisted on lending him any empty jars you weren't using. you had your own collections in yours: pretty stones found down by the creek, bottle caps of the sodas you and eddie get every time you stop at the gas station right on the edge of town by lover's lake - you even had one of every single crumpled up note eddie had ever given you over your time of dating. a few jars of those, actually. so what was lending him a few spares? at this point, the jars were a collection in themselves, and... well... it was prettier to see his vast collection in those glass jars anyways. being able to pick out the vibrant tones of the guitar pick you'd been with him as he'd purchased two weeks prior, or the pick from the show you'd gotten him tickets to last christmas. it was nice. a cute reminder of time spent, of what made eddie munson tick.

the important thing is, eddie munson isn't blind. he sees the way you look at that collection, especially after he fills the jars with it.

how some days, he'll be strumming away on his guitar, softly humming, and you'll just grab a jar to pick through. interrupting his nonsensical playing to ask him where he got one you didn't recognize, sometimes asking for the stories behind ones he knew you already knew. he'd caught on to the way you just liked hearing him talk, especially about the things he cared most about.

you also really, really liked the pick he wore as a necklace. it was probably your favorite in his collection, and you knew it was his favorite too. giving it as a gift to you was never an option, because it had been given as a gift to him originally by his mom.

so he does the next best thing.

he figures out your favorite pick in his collection. the one you always go back to, the one you ask for the story behind on a nearly weekly basis. one similar to the one always resting against his collarbones. pearly sheen, marbled tones, a slow indent the shape of his thumb being worn into the old tortoiseshell. it's a little less red, a little bit brighter, and he can't even strum it against his strings anymore without thinking of you. it's somehow become his lucky pick - the pick he cherishes most aside the one from his mom.

and the one he chooses to turn into a necklace, for you.

does it all himself. carefully piercing a hole through the top just like his own, picks out a nice chain that costs two paychecks of his, takes an old pocket knife to it and spends weeks carving your initials into the shiny material. he's gentle as hell with it, finishing it off with some gold paint to fill in the carving that matches the chain and swirling tones of the picks.

a week before christmas he nearly backs out of the gift idea, and almost begs wayne to help him go to the mall and pick out some other basic but safe gift for you. a perfume/cologne, a nice sweater, anything. wayne refuses to let him, and the only thing the gentle old man will offer is a nice box for eddie to place that necklace born of love into.

the look on your face on christmas morning, sitting in the center of the munson's living room, on the verge of happy tears as you lift the homemade necklace so gently, soothes away every single doubt ever had about it all.

and the look on wayne's face is a simple, caring, stern vision of i told you so.

[gods-favorite-autistic]

Track list for Fig and the Cig Figs independently published Junior Year album (officially named “Infaethable”)

Teenage Rebellion

Night Yorb (a heavy metal banger)

Summer Scaries

Devils Nectar

Time Quangle (a love song about Ayda)

Multiclass (Gorgug sings on this!)

The Ballad Of Lucy Frostblade (Kristen was the one who convinced Fig to write this)

So Late, So Tactical

Do You Have A Fucking Warrant

Cassandra (Can You Hear Me)

Hall Of Mirrors

President Applebees (written entirely in the night after Kristen gets elected by a drunk Fig with extremely drunk notes by Kristen)

Raging For Love (inspired by Gorgug, of course)

The Elven Oracle (Has A Day Job) (So Stop Bothering Her)

Maximum Legend

Fury Of The Ball

Cursed

Infaethable

The Bad Kids

[ricky-mortis]

S1 Pulp Musicals Gang my beloved

[blueskittlesart]

deeply refreshing to see someone critical of Swift who also like, genuinely likes her. Like i'm neutral to positive on her, but the online discourse has been absolutely rancid. flipping between "Taylor Swift has never done anything wrong ever and she's a fucking genius" and "Taylor Swift is the worst lyricist of all time and also a bad person" is exhausting, so thank you for like. nuance or something lmao

not to make it serious for a sec but i genuinely think that being able to like things that are bad is really important. like I think that it's an important skill to be able to look at something and see what you personally enjoy about it and then take a step back and acknowledge that objectively it's flawed. and to also be able to acknowledge that liking something isn't necessarily an identity or a moral stance. and i think that fandom space in general could really benefit from more people taking the time to learn how to do that. it's okay to like things that are bad

[hayleylovesjessica]

Chappell this! Sabrina that! And, above all, Taylor, Taylor, Taylor! But what about Paul Simon's The Rhythm of the Saints (1990, Warner Bros.)??? Is all taste on this hellsite DEAD? In this essay, I will

[kiaxet]

Sooooo y’all see the latest @somerandomdudelmao comic update? Because once again it is living in my head, which means once again my brain has generated fic. This one’s ~1200 words and slightly less tragic, depending on whether or not you take dramatic irony into account.

~~~~~~~

It starts fairly innocuously.

One of the surviving technicians monitors a computer as it finally, finally boots up successfully, whooping when the Genius Tech loading screen pops up. He grins and pats the power cable. "Thanks, Raph!"

It catches on.

A water purifier, disconnected to save a struggling power supply, gets plugged back in. It chugs back to life, and the kids responsible for its upkeep cheer and high five. One of them waves at the ceiling, where a power conduit runs overhead. "Thanks, Mister Raph!"

And it spreads like wildfire.

Every time something works the way it's supposed to - every time a much-needed device pops back to life, or the emergency doors close correctly, or a dying lightbulb flickers on one more time - they thank Raph. In gleeful shouts and careful whispers, they show gratitude for the person who gave up his life - and his second chance at life, at that - to keep them safe. It makes the emergency base, ramshackle and barely held together as it is, feel a little more like a home. A little more alive.

It doesn't take long for a few unspoken rules to develop.

They never say it in front of the metal shell. It's one thing to say it to the walls, the cables, the electricity; it's something else to say it to a figure with a face, seated against the wall like a sentinel that will awaken and protect them when danger arises.

(Nevermind that they've been in danger, constant and unending, for decades, and that this sentinel is already protecting them in smaller, everyday ways.)

They learn very quickly never to say it in front of Raph's surviving family, either. Master Leonardo gets angry when he hears it. It's an anger born of grief and loss, painful but not dangerous to allies, but given how terrifying Master Leonardo can be on the battlefield or a bad day, nobody really wants that anger directed at them. Master Michaelangelo just stops when he hears it, lips curling up in an expression too devoid of life to truly be called a smile. It's almost worse to witness than Master Leonardo's anger. No, they learn to watch themselves in front of the family, carefully taking their gratitude towards a dead man elsewhere.

Until the day someone forgets and says it in front of Casey Junior.

The kid looks up at Roger with wide, almost hopeful eyes. "Why did you- is he here? Can you feel him?"

Roger stares back at him with equally wide eyes. He'd just been grateful the computer had booted correctly for his monitor shift, and he hadn't been looking, and now he has to try to explain this to a kid who's never known a life outside the apocalypse. Oh boy. "No, uh- I mean- I don't have magic like your dads do, Casey, I couldn't-" He sighs. "It's just...a thing people do, when things work. Before the Krang, we had all sorts of machines that made life easier, and...we'd talk to 'em. Thank 'em when they worked, yell or beg when they didn't...I remember threatening a fax machine once, not that that made any difference. I think that just...kinda carried over here." Wait. "Not that your uncle was a machine or anything-"

"His body was a machine," Casey says simply, with a pragmatism that Roger hadn't been expecting. Apocalypse-raised kid. Right. "That wasn't what made him Uncle Raph. He was- it's-" Casey falters, expression starting to crumble. Pragmatism be damned, the kid is still grieving-

Rem, just coming off her shift, steps in smoothly. It's not the first time she's saved Roger's ass, both on and off the battlefield, and it won't be the last. "We know," she says gently, putting an arm around Casey's shoulders. "What Roger means is that we're grateful he's keeping us going, and that people like to bond with machines even when they're too simple to bond back. We all used to name our cars - can you believe it?"

"I named mine Red Rider," Roger says wistfully. He still misses that car.

"And I used to sneak out of the Hidden City with my cloaking brooch and go joyriding outside of human cities," Rem says, a grin splitting her feline muzzle. "I named every car I stole Phantom, like I thought I was cool."

Casey smiles - small and watery, but there nonetheless - and Roger breathes a sigh of relief. "What else did you name?"

"I mean, it was mostly cars, but some people named their computers."

"I had a friend who named her phone and just kept adding numbers when she had to replace it. It was Duchess O'Brien the eighth last I'd heard."

"I know some Yokai named their weapons, but I never really kept track of those. It was more of a Battle Nexus fandom thing."

Another Yokai leans in - a four eyed lizard whose name Roger could never remember no matter how hard he tried - and Roger shuts up. She's in charge of security now, and honestly she intimidates him. She looks around - at him, at Rem, at Casey - and then intones seriously, "I once named a kitchen appliance Toasty McToastFace."

There's a beat of silence. Casey has a lopsided grin growing on his face, like he doesn't get the joke but he knows it is one, and that's enough to lift his mood.

And then Rem doubles over, cracking up, and Bob smiles carefully. "Really loved that toaster, huh?"

"It was my closest friend," the lizard Yokai replies, deadpan as hell, before leaving the conversation.

Casey turns that confused grin on Roger. "Was she serious?"

"Kid, I have no idea. Some people are just really into this kinda thing."

Rem finally straightens up, wiping a tear from her eye with a paw. "Ohhhh boy. Oh, I needed that." She turns her smile back on Casey. "Point being, naming something makes it a little more real, and makes you a little more likely to take care of it. The system here...already has a name. We're just saying thank you, you know?"

The grin on Casey's face settles down into consideration. "Yeah, I think I do. I- Thanks. I'm gonna-" He waves at the door to finish his sentence.

"Go for it, kid." Roger waves him off as he departs, then sighs once he's gone. "God, that kid is just hemmhorraging family, isn't he."

"We all are, Roger, it's the fucking apocalypse." Rem flicks an ear.

"Yeah, but still. It's rough." There's a second or two of silence. "Also, if he says it in front of Master Leonardo, I'm denying all knowledge of this conversation."

"Spirits, same."

Roger learns a few days later - from Rem, of course - that Casey has named his chainsaw hockey stick Killer, because it's what his mom used to call him. Well damn, if kids like him are gonna be the future, then maybe they have some hope after all. He raps on a wall lightly, just below where the power conduit is mounted. "I know you didn't have a lot of time with the kid, but you did a good job." He can't help but smile. "Thanks, Raph."

[lesbian-munkustrap]

I would trust Munkustrap with my cat, my worldly possessions, and my life. That’s a 100% Good Guy right there. Not a single malicious bone in his body. Nothing but green flags. His loving parental energy is off the charts. He has never done anything wrong in his life. When they say ‘hashtag not all men’ I’m like ur right, Munkustrap would NEVER.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

smth smth about 'the thing that the character did that you thought was rly rly funny in the moment is actually linked to a terrible trauma that lies within said character.' or wahtever.

[evelynpr]

Why the fuck are there roller skates, dubstep, stage lighting, an LED screen, and all kinds of modern technology in Xilonen's trailer??? I thought Fontaine had the most advanced technology next to Schneznaya and arguably Sumeru, and every instance of high-end technology we have seen leaned more towards machinations with gears, magic, alchemy, essentially fantasy styled sci-fi???

The disrespect towards Native American and African cultures is enough to piss me off already, but it even goes against Genshin's own consistency with its fantastical world design..and for what? Just so you can have this...pop and gamer aesthetic???

Just look at these two bubbly and optimistic characters for me okay

Yoimiya's design isn't the most respectful and accurate representation of a Japanese firework craftsman, but at least you can damn tell she is Japanese. The large ribbons, hair accessories, tassels, leg covering, tattoo design, shoe style, and fabric patterns all allude to this (I apologize for not knowing the exact terminologies for these, this needs further research).

Then there's Mualani who has...what? Please do correct me if I am wrong here, but her character must be inspired by the real Mualani, a Hawaiian Chiefess. Additionally, her tribe's specialty is in tourism and vacationing, which further leads into the idea that she and her tribe are based off of Hawaii despite the known issues regarding Hawaii and tourism (if there are any good sources that summarize the issue, please do lmk).

I am not too familiar with Hawaiian culture, but there really is nothing about her design that reads as Hawaiian, or even just traditional, to me. What about a 2 piece swimsuit with bows and tails, a bow + braids + ponytail hair style, combat gloves (?), and an entire neon shark, is Hawaiian???

The characters, their designs, and their trailers, are just so culturally disconnected from their real life counterpart that it's even disconnected to Genshin's own world building and design. How the fuck is the fashion trend in Natlan denim pants. I feel like the only parts of Natlan that feel like Genshin Impact and culturally inspired are the in-game music and landscapes (God bless Hoyo-mix and the world designers).