#submitted lyrics corrections

[mintjeru]

sometimes i make myself sad thinking about the kvthm fallout text is lyrics from "who knew" by p!nk

open for better quality | no reposts

[semiotomatics]

dear musixmatch,

please god just put me in charge, put me in charge of it all, these fools have no idea what they're doing and they're ruining everything

sincerely,

me

[sixffrindagger]

Sixffrindagger: The #1 In Stars and Time Facts Blog

We're just a group of people who are passionate about ISAT and want to share all the facts we know about it.

We've noticed that there's a lot of misinformation or just things people don't know in the ISAT fandom, so we want to help people keep their facts straight, as well as spread some little known fun facts! Here, thanks to our lovely fact checker Mod Odile, we only share true facts.

Speaking of which, below the cut we have introductions for all of our awesome moderators. We have decided to all take an ISAT character as a "faceclaim" we can use to represent ourselves. We are not roleplayers, we're just using our favorite characters to represent ourselves! Feel free to send us questions; we're always willing to learn more, you can even submit a fact you'd like us to make a post about (which, as always, will be fact checked!)

Mod Siffrin.

Hmph. Hello, I'm Mod Siffrin. I ONLY use he/him and I like to use this 🗡️ to represent myself.

I'M the one who made this blog, as I thought it'd be a good way to correct certain things I've seen around this 'fandom'. I like to use Act 5 Siffrin specifically to represent myself as I feel he represents me the best of anyone.

Enjoy the blog or whatever.

haiya everyone!! i'm mod isabeau!! ( ദ്ദി ˙ᗜ˙ )

call me mod isabeau! you can address me with any pronouns you want ৻( •̀ ᗜ •́ ৻)

i sign my posts with 🧵!! but i also like ending my posts with lyrics from songs i like teehee... it's my watermark (˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧

you might be surprised a person like me is using isabeau as my faceclaim but i chose isabeau because i relate to his love of fashion!! i have a fondness for all things beautiful and have taken it upon myself to spice up this blog!!

send me asks about the theme!! i'm always up to aestheticify this blog ( ˶ˆᗜˆ˵ )

"I'm waking up, to ass and bust, I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust... I'm breathing in the chemicals... HYUUUUGH-ahh~"

-

Mod Mirabelle

Ah hi!!! I'm Mod Mirabelle!! I go by she/her and the little bell 🔔 is the emoji I use... ding ding! I hope that I can be a good addition to this blog and that we'll all get along well...!

Mod Odile. 📓

-

Greetings, I am Mod Odile. You may use whatever pronouns you wish, though I figure She/Her is easiest for the sake of simplicity.

Much like the others, I am thrilled to partake in this blog. I enjoy trivia and other such things quite a fair amount, so it is only fitting for me to be present here.

You may recognize me by the notebook emoji I will be signing off with: 📓. I chose it in order to keep with the monochromatic theming of In Stars And Time, as it displays as a black and white book on my device.

This has been your resident facts nerd Odile. That is all.

-

ughhhh okay ill do this. im mod bonnie. they/it pronouns but i dont really care that much. im only using bonnie because everyone picked their faceclaims while i was asleep so im stuck with them now.

i use 🍳 for my posts. dont expect to see it a lot im not gonna be active. enjoy the blog or whatever

-

Mod Loop

heya friends! it's mod loop here hoping this blog will bring more fun to my amazing life! everything is going well! i'm doing great! i use he/xe/ae pronouns, aaand i will be using this 🌟 emoji

-

mod running one

mod running one. 💨. i'll finish this shit later fuck

[rojekte]

like the lyrics are all to entirely different songs by different artists that just happen to share a title with the songs.

"Wallflower" has the lyrics to a song of the same title by The Monochrome Set

"Shadow" has the lyrics to a song of the same title by The Southland

"Let Go" has the lyrics to a song of the same title by The Postmarks

"Turn Away" has the lyrics to a song of the same title by The Quireboys (which btw i had to look up these lyrics on fuckin BING to find out where these lyrics came from! google wouldn't turn up SHIT!)

and then for the song "Tonight" ...... i still can not find what ever song these lyrics are actually from. though based on all the other examples im gonna hazard a guess that it also comes from some type of band whose name starts with the word "the"

i just need to know who did this. you can find the correct lyrics for these songs on other sites so like... even if its because the person who posted them is just copy pasting lyrics from other sites, how in the world did they end up with the wrong ones and not the ones that would come up with "[song title] by the shroud" ???

its just so aggravating to me because these are the lyrics that show up ON SPOTIFY!! when you use their dumb fuckin show lyrics feature!!! and it is not easy to FIX these mistakes because musixmatch is a horrible fucking website that does not allow you to actually correct shit - at least not when the lyrics you're trying to correct are from an obscure 90s band!!

i really want to know who exactly it is that just put a bunch of Completely Incorrect lyrics to the shroud songs on spotify (or ig technically musixmatch but whatever) so that i can tear them apart with my hands

[narcosfandomdiscord]

Narcovember Prompt Roulette List

Saalud a mi gente! We in the Narcos Fandom Forever discord server are excited to bring another 30-day challenge: a multifandom event that we’re nevertheless calling Narcovember. Despite its name, this is open to ALL FANDOMS, NOT JUST NARCOS. Creators are encouraged to submit fanworks (fic, art, gifs, vids, op-eds) for any fandom your heart desires!

This event's format is a bit unconventional. Instead of a prompt for each day of the month, there's a Prompt Roulette Wheel and a Prompt Index (☟ below) featuring numbered items with three prompts each. Every day you'll spin the wheel. The number that comes up on the spin corresponds to a number on the index where you can then pick one of the three prompts.

So for example, say on day one, I spin the wheel and get number 8. I’d go to 8 on the index (titled These Damn Restraints). Of those three prompts, I like Yikes best so that's my day one prompt. Next day, I spin and get 14. I find 14 on the index (Decisions, Decisions, Decisions) and pick one of those for day two's prompt. And so on. Note: If, on Day 2, instead of 14 I got 8 again, I’d spin the wheel again to get a new number. If, for whatever reason, you don’t want to spin twice, you can choose another prompt from that "Book of" that you haven't used (e.g. Day 1, I chose Yikes. So Day 2, I’d go for, "Now you know why I never say anything.") Ideally, we think it’s more fun to not repeat index items, but ultimately it’s dealer’s choice. Aka we're not about to get real fascist policing, aint nobody got time for that.

Here's -> the roulette wheel. Or you can make your own! (Just make sure it has 30 slices.)

Use the hashtag #narcovember or tag us to submit your entries so we can reblog them! A note on the masterlist - bc of the Tumblr-imposed link limit, for now we'll only link the fic. BUT at the end of the month, there will be a comprehensive list with all the contributors’ blogs so ppl can find your other work easily. 

Happy spinning, everybody!

❖ Prompt Index ❖

1 — Book of Genesis

Fanwork inspired by someone else’s fanwork (be sure to tag the creator of the OG work!) 

“The fun begins here.” 

Ghosts

2 — Book of Fuck-ups

Righteous indignation glo-up aka fanwork that corrects a plot misstep or writing blunder that bugs the shit outta you 

“It’s not the what-ifs that fuck you up, so much as the what-might-have-beens.” 

Bite

>>>>>>>>>> more prompts below the cut <<<<<<<<<<<<

3 - Book of Stuff That Goes in the Junk Drawer

Fanwork inspired by a song and include why the song sparked the idea (was it the lyrics, genre? something you thought a character would like? etc) 

“It’s never too late to make history.”

Juice

4 — Book of the Uno-Card-Reverse

Fanwork based on your fav reverse/inverse trope**

“Evil isn’t always forever.” 

Mirrors 

5 — Book of Negative Spaces

Fanwork using a line from a diff show/movie as a prompt (e.g. line from Mad Men, “I don’t think of you at all” in a Narcos fic, line from Band of Brothers, “The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you’re already dead,” in a Hannibal fic, etc etc) 

“We gain more from our mistakes than our success, you know that?”

Pitch

6 — Book of (un)Consciousness

Fanwork inspired by a dream you’ve had (include 1-2 sentence summary of the dream at the beginning of the post) 

“Just dream with me.”

Technicolor 

7 — Book of Time-travel

Fanwork inspired by ancient mythology (Greek, Norse, aztec, celtic, etc. Bible counts as mythology, fuck it) 

“It’s only a matter of time.”

Constellation

8 — Book of These Damn Restraints

Fanwork that ends with 2(+) characters trapped in a phone booth with no way out 

“Now you know why I never say anything.”

Yikes

9 — Book of Fateful Conversations

Fanwork where the plot takes place entirely in the back of a cab OR where one character is the cab driver and the other is the passenger 

“You'd be surprised what you can live with.” 

Cursed

10 — Book of Nepo-baby Levels of Incompetence

Fanwork where character is in a profession they have no business being in with no prior training, so they fake knowing what they’re doing – like imposter syndrome except they’re just actually a fraud (e.g. Rust Cohle is a grief counselor, Richie Jerimovich is a hedge fund manager, Roman Roy is a beat cop) 

“And who hasn’t believed a flattering lie?” 

Evergreen 

11 — Book of Pit Stops

Fanwork that starts with a character hitchhiking and getting picked up by another character(s) 

“Tell me to stop, and I’ll stop.” 

Rush

12 — Book of Balancing In Between

Fanwork whose setting is a liminal space (e.g. empty swimming pool, bar or arcade after hours, airport terminal, church confessional, empty elevator, Twin Peaks black lodge, John Wick continental bar, etc) 

“Good things come in threes.” 

Wire

13 — Book of in Urgent Need of Assistance

Fanwork where a character wakes up on an empty submarine, 300ft underwater, thinking they’re the only person aboard until they run into another character(s) 

“One day I’ll wake up and it won’t hurt so much.” 

Desperate

14 - Book of Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Crossover for 2(+) fandoms you have used before but 2(+) characters you’ve never used or vice versa 

“All we have are our choices.” 

Crossroads 

15 — Book of How tf Did We Get Here

Fanwork that starts off with 2(+) characters waiting in line at the DMV and ends in a completely different, totally unpredictable, why-and-how-tf-did-we-get-here place 

“There’s a moon a mile from here and nobody home.” 

Ambition

16 — Book of Locally Sourced

Fanwork that mimics a bottle episode, so the entirety of it takes place in a relatively mundane setting (e.g. the stockroom of a store, interrogation room, a hotel lobby, waiting room of a doctor’s office, etc etc) 

“Make yourself comfortable while you can."

Notebook

17 — Book of Inception

Fanwork that provides an origin story for a character that doesn’t have one in canon 

“It (he/she/they) made me who I am.”

Improvement

18 — Book of Mysteries

Fanwork where 2(+) characters have to escape a panic room. Depending on fandom, this can be like the innocent party version that you take your friends to for someone’s bday, or can be an actual doomsday shelter 

“I thought they were with you!?"

Endurance

19 — Book of Near Misses

Fanwork with 2(+) characters from the same movie/show/book who’ve never met 

“Looks like we missed our window.” 

Rattled

20 — Book of Sleight of Hand

Fanwork of partners (romantic, profesh, or both) running into each other unexpectedly while both are doing something criminal/something they know they aren’t supposed to do (e.g. burying a body, carrying out a heist, meeting someone they shouldn’t)

“You can't ask the truth from someone who trades in lies.” 

Brace

21— Book of Nerves of Steel

Fanwork where 2(+) characters do a B&E, but get stuck when the owner unexpectedly comes home, and they whisper-yell argue over how to get out

“You won't believe the day I just had.”

Cortisol

22 — Book of Identity Theft

Fanwork where 2(+) characters meet accidentally bc one has accidentally dialed the wrong number (e.g. Syd [The Bear] tries to call Carm to yell at him for Something Dumb He Did but ends up calling Cousin Greg [Succession] instead) 

“I'm not the one.”

Brand

23 — Book of Just Chaos™️™️™️

Cracked crossover/ship with 2(+) characters from very diff genres (e.g. Dwight Schrute [The Office] & Tommy Shelby [Peaky Blinders], Frenchie [The Boys] x Penelope [Bridgerton], etc) 

“You’re my idiot, forever.” 

Untouchable

24 — Book of Revelation

Fanwork where 2(+) characters are stranded in the desert and in a sick twist, must decide which one of them to leave behind in order for the other(s) to be saved

“I like that I don't have to worry about you.”

Rapture

25 — Book of Reciprocity

Fanwork where 2(+) characters play poker (or any card game that has betting) but the chips are magic and the winner gets extra years of life instead of money (e.g. say, in poker, green chips = $500, blue chips = $1k, red chips = $2k, black chips = $5k. In this scenario, green chips = 6mos, blue chips = 1yr, red chips = 2yrs, black chips = 5yrs, etc) 

“Fine, I'll do it myself.”

Quid-Pro-Quo

26 — Book of Abduction

Fanwork where 2(+) characters get kidnapped by a kooky cult, are thrown into the trunk of a car together and have to figure out how to escape

“Somebody has to be paying attention.” 

Spiral

27 — Book of Caretaking

Fanwork where a character accidentally shoots/stabs/otherwise maims another character and has to perform first responder, triage levels of first aid to save them (dealer’s choice as to whether it's successful bc yolo) 

“Don't make me take care of you.” 

 Ritual

28 — Book of Weaponized Passive Aggression

Fanwork where 2(+) characters attend a dinner party and witness that moment when a couple starts passive-aggressively arguing but not outright fighting in front of the whole table and it’s even more painfully awkward than if they just straight up fought OR the 2(+) characters are the ones arguing making everyone else uncomfortable asf

“I wish you the best and I hope you find it far from me.”

Attitude

29 — Book of the (un)Dead

Fanwork where a character dies and another character shepherds them to the afterlife like their own personal grim reaper

“We bury our dead alive.” 

Siesta

30 — Book of There's No Place Like ...

Back from the dead: a character came back wrong or right, but either way, no one else knows how to handle it

“Even if you make it, you’ll never really go home.” 

Homesick

**There will be a reverse trope list in another post for examples.

[whumptober]

The Results Are In!

Hi all, remember the trope vote we did in July? Well, now the event is coming to a close, we wanted to share some of the statistics!

So out of the 1526 responses to the 223 tropes:

The TOP 10 most voted for tropes were:

Collapsing/Fainting/Passing Out: 974 votes [Day One]

“I'm Fine”: 951 votes [Day Fifteen]

Hidden Illness/Injury/Scars: 920 votes [Day Fifteen/Twenty-Seven]

Ignoring An Injury/Illness: 887 votes [Day Fifteen/Twenty-Four]

Bleeding Through Bandages: 875 votes [Day Twelve/Fifteen]

Not Realizing They’re Injured: 863 votes [Day Fifteen]

Passing Out From Pain: 860 votes [Day One/Twenty-Six]

Touch Starved/Touch Aversion: 855 votes [Day Seventeen]

Emotional Angst: 818 votes [Day Nineteen/Twenty-Four]

Fatigue/Exhaustion: 807 votes [Day Twelve/Twenty-Six]

And the LEAST 3 voted for were:

Rejection: 205 votes

Cardiac Arrest: 156 votes [Day Sixteen]

Sunburn AND Reluctant Whumper: 146 votes [Alternatives List]

How the prompts list came to be:

From the trope vote, we took from the very top of the list so that we could include the most popular tropes. We also took some of the least voted for tropes to challenge participants outside of their comfort zone, which included the trope Reluctant Whumper, which was our least voted for trope along with Sunburn.

We chose the rest of the tropes from across the list, and also included some suggestions that were submitted by participants. Some of the names of tropes were altered to create more of a provoking prompt for creators to work with, and also to avoid too many duplicates from previous prompt lists. For example, 'Passing Out' became 'Swooning' on day one for a light-hearted start to the event. We also wanted to add a couple of unconventional items to help inspire out of the box thinking. While scented candles, journals and bouquets are traditionally 'comfort' items, it has been truly interesting to see how people have taken the comfort and twisted it to their own whumpy desires.

After the tropes were picked, we assigned them lyrics which would become the days 'theme', and then applied a line of dialogue and an object to it. It took some consideration to fit the right lyrics to the correct tropes, whereas adding dialogue to the tropes was arguably the easiest.

We are very proud with how the prompts list has turned out, and we have been blown away with the positivity and warm welcome we have received - thank you all very much. It has been amazing to see what everyone has been making this month based on our prompt list!

We have more to come, so stay tuned!

Mods Yenn, Kitty, Vanne and Surro

[eatengod]

Destroying the Corrupted Gaze: An Analysis of Momose Amane’s Second Trial

In case you don't know, MILGRAM is a Japanese interactive music project by DECO*27 and Takuya Yamanaka, established in April 2020, where 10 prisoners are put into three rounds of trial to gradually express their guilt and sins into a song. The viewers, representing an ungendered guard named Es, vote if the prisoner should be “innocent” (forgivable) or “guilty” (unforgivable). Each prisoner has a different experience and style of music and visuals, but have a single thing in common: they all have committed murder.

This will focus on one of the 10 prisoners, a 12-year-old girl named Momose Amane who has known to have been brainwashed into a cult’s practices, and will analyze four aspects of her music video: the visuals, lyrics, song title, and the convention defied (hopefully, once I submit this to my professor, I too will also be forgiven for the length of this analysis since I am very fond of this series; I apologize in advance).

Visual and Lyric Analysis

The music video starts with an army of countless Amane’s, all poise and flawlessly in position. Each row waves four flags of different colors, representing the cult’s “commandments”. The following are the official English translations of the lyrics, with the original Japanese beside it:

Thou shall follow thine destiny. / 人は運命を生きよ

Thou shall discard vulgarity. / 人は卑しきを捨てよ

Thou shall deliver unto those thou believest in. / 信じたものに納めよ

Thou shall stay thine course, then perish. / 道を外れずに果てよ

The way these were written were imperative, and were enumerated with the word “ひとつ” (hitotsu, which means firstly or one) before it. This shows that there is no order to their commandments—all of them were of utter priority. Additionally, these lyrics were made to look like actual commandments, but the following are the actual meanings of the lyrics:

People must live out their fate.

People must abandon the lowly.

People must submit to their beliefs.

People must meet their end without straying [from their path].

Moving on, one of the Amane’s is holding a blue flag, which represents the second commandment, fails to deliver the correct pattern in the march. The leading Amane catches her mistake, summoning clouds that caused rain to sink her down the “snow” as a punishment. After an uncomfortable sequence of her struggling, she is then pulled back to reality, where she is soaked and kneeling on her bathroom floor, gasping for breath. A hand is in front of her, holding a showerhead, showing that she had been waterboarded by her own mother. Another detail to notice as she was sinking is that she still reaches out to the flag. It is common one to turn to their beliefs in desperate times, and since Amane was still at such a young age and didn’t have much to rely on, she relies on the same beliefs that hurt her. As she sinks, the “snow” covers her drowning body, a sign that no one saw (or ignored) abuse she was going through.

At the next scene, Amane is seen administering first aid to a wounded cat, and is spotted by two figures, no doubt members of the cult. They then tell this to Amane’s mother, and the poor girl gets tased as soon as she arrives at home. This was a punishment because she interfered with fate, thus violating the first commandment. It is possible that Amane receives different punishments depending on the commandment violated. The balloon that moves away from Amane’s apartment has a symbol with all four colors, encapsulating the commandments.

Amane returns to the spot where she took care of the cat, and only a torn collar and her bloodied handkerchief is found. She eventually realizes that her disobeying these commandments, intentional or not, will only bring her misfortune. Her face is covered in bruises, as she looks up and smiles. The army of Amane’s runs with the same eerie smile, with the flag and mascots symbolizing the four commandments in hand, showing that the brainwashing has been effective. She does the usual pattern with her baton, but in the third sequence, it is stained with blood.

In the scene of the crime, Amane stands over her mother’s dead body, wearing her same outfit from the march. This symbolizes that it was the beliefs taught to her that pushed her to that extent. Additionally, her voice as the song prolongs becomes more aggressive, compared to when she started the song, where she was more soft-spoken.

The lyrics of the song is Amane implying the things taught to her and the punishments she endured for violating them. On the second verse, she can be heard constantly muttering the commandments over and over again in the background, and the following lyrics are one of the phrases that are sung over and over again: “After you cry, repent, and kneel, it’s now your turn to say that hopeless ‘I’m sorry’!” That sentence of apology can often be heard from children who promise they won’t act up ever again.

Title Analysis

The Purge March’s title is written as 粛清マーチ in Japanese and pronounced as Shukusei Māchi. It can be broken down into two parts: the Chinese characters “粛清” and “マーチ”. 

Shukusei is usually written where, when the characters are combined, it would literally mean solemn justice. But in this case, it is written differently (although pronounced the same). The first character stays the same as solemn but the second character “清” means pure, cleanse, or even exorcise. This implies that the beliefs brought upon Amane can be viewed as unjust to some.

Conventions and Conclusion

Songs with an upbeat tempo are often associated or assumed to have wholesome lyrics. Not only does this case defy that stereotype, but The Purge March also mixes in a haunting sense of reality in both the lyrics and the song in the fictional case of Momose Amane. She sings with threats that attack both believers and non-believers alike, because she only knows about the incoming punishment if she doesn’t obey. 

To think that there really are people out there—children, specifically—who experience this lingering fear with their beliefs is incredibly concerning, and even more so with the possibilities that might happen once they are pushed to their limits. I speak from pure experience, and I have chosen this piece of media not only because it is dear to my heart, but because it also reminds us of the reality we are in. It is better to be educated and afraid than to be blissfully ignorant.

[EDIT] Additionally, Amane mentioned in her voice drama that those who run away from trials are the worst kind of people, and in the last scene depicting her murder, droplets of water are trailing outside of the bathroom, showing attempts of escape. The trail ends in the living room, where Amane hovers over the dead body. She really is just trying to live the way she was taught.

[ourpickwickclub]

I hope someone can go in and correct the lyrics on Genius when more people start to hear them because some of that seems incorrect lol

Genius is one of those sites where fans can submit lyrics, right? It’s possible that this isn’t accurate. We’ll find out soon enough when the song is released.

— M

[bi-widower-dads]

bi-widower-dads' February Fic Recs: Canon

Thank you to everyone who submitted recs for us! We've done some sorting and collating, and we've got two posts for you: AUs and Canon-'verse - and a whole load of excellent fic for you to get stuck into while we wait for Barduil Month in April! Without further ado, here are the canon fic recs, featuring tags, links, summaries, and all the reasons why the recommenders think you should give these fics a try!

Header image by mod @piyo-13!

(a note about tags and trigger warnings: tags are selected from those on AO3 as being those that best describe the story for the purposes of this event; trigger warnings are supplied by the recommenders and may not be comprehensive - your mileage may vary. We've tried our best to include Tumblr handles wherever we can, but if we've missed yours out and you want it included, just let us know!)

One-shots

Scenes From a Not-So-Clandestine Romance by MasterofAllImagination / @cutlerbeckettt | G | 3258 words | tags: 5+1 things, so much fluff it's sickening, seriously don't even read this

Summary: As the relationship between Bard and Thranduil grows beyond merely that of two allies, they become proportionately blind to how obvious their displays of affection are to their people. Pretty soon their feelings are an open secret shared among everyone in Mirkwood and Dale-- except the kings themselves. (or, five times someone caught Bard and Thranduil secretly kissing, and the one time they did it in public) What do you love about this fic? The author's completely correct that this is just So Much Fluff. It's great, it's cozy, it's a palate cleanser that makes you go "aww" and giggle a little at how oblivious they are.

We'll lay here for years or for hours by bispecimen | M | 5000 words | tags: canon divergence, different first meeting, animal death, hunting, could be considered canon compliant since it still works w future events, dilf vs dilf parenting techniques, canon-typical violence

Summary: "The leaves were rolling, green and healthy. Swirling around the legs of the Bowman as if they were about to bring some magical creature in his presence. But Bard didn’t feel like anything good was about to be brought in front of his eyes. The stillness of the air was suffused with something nocive. This part was forbidden for a reason. The deeper he went, the longer he stayed. He knew, he knew that." What do you love about this fic? Am possibly biased because I did the art for this, but lovely and lyrical!

but the sun is eclipsed by the moon by RC_McLachlan | G | 5288 words | tags: none

Summary: The Battle of the Five Armies threatened to unmake the world, but The Negotiations of the Three Kings might actually succeed. Or, a short lesson on the lifecycle of dandelions. What do you love about this fic? Great writer I've followed for a long time!

more than words can wield the matter by BiSquared / @scary-grace | M | 5422 words | tags: cultural differences, love letters, miscommunication, accidental marriage, getting together, laws and customs of the eldar are somewhat followed, POV Bard the Bowman, post-BotFA, as canon-compliant as barduil gets

Summary: It might be uncommon, but Bard knows it’s not unheard of for humans to share a single night of passion and part ways in the morning – or if not to part ways, then at least never to meet as lovers again. Apparently it’s unheard of among elves, because the first letter that arrives from Mirkwood, two weeks after the elves’ departure for their forest, is significantly less businesslike than expected. What do you love about this fic? The premise is funny enough that it could have come across as crack, but it creates actual narrative tension and a satisfactorily cathartic ending.

The Well-Worn Path of Words by Ias | T | 10,725 words | tags: letters, slow burn, pining, miscommunication, love confessions, epistolary

Summary: It wasn't so strange that Thranduil would call him a friend. And yet the word seemed to draw them closer like a length of string, binding them together, yet still so fragile. [In which Thranduil and Bard begin writing each other letters over the long winter after the battle.] What do you love about this fic? Fantastic epistolary fic from a great Barduil author!

Multi-chapter (in progress)

Language of the Forest by BaccaratBlack | T | 1,095 words | tags: victorian flower language, sort of unrequited feelings, cultural differences, cultural misunderstandings, courtship, secret admirer

Summary: Bard is perplexed by elven courtship rituals. Thranduil is very determined and unaccustomed to not having his way. What do you love about this fic? Who doesn't like a fic with the themes of courtship, flowers and a "secret" admirer?

Multi-chapter (complete)

A Tale of Love and Longing (as told by Galion) by jotunblood | T | 39,288 words | tags: courtship, secret relationship, developing relationship, sexual tension, light angst, post-BotFA, slow burn, Galion POV, Galion is a good friend

Summary: Galion knew all the almost imperceptible ways joy, anguish, and hate could change his King’s face. He also knew-- Thranduil’s denial be damned-- exactly how he looked when he was pining. What do you love about this fic? We see Thranduil's and Bard's relationship develop through Galion's POV and he's the best BFF/Wing Man a King could ask for.

Blossoming Spring by SlytherinImpala | T | 56,210 words | tags: fluff, post-BotFA, snark, slow burn, healing, friends to lovers, scars, movie canon, first kiss, getting together

Summary: Bard and Thranduil meet again as winter gives way to spring following of the Battle of Five Armies. What do you love about this fic? I love the gentle snarkiness between the 2 characters and how they slowly learn to open up to one another. They feel very in character and when they fall in love it doesn't feel abrupt. Definitely worth a read if you love a gentle Barduil slowburn.

Series

The Kings of the North by Evandar | T | 14,240 words | tags: partial fix-it, interspecies romance, fluff, blind thranduil, self-esteem issues, communication

Summary: There is unease in the north, as old alliances must be rebuilt and leadership learned. Bard is confused, mostly by King Thranduil, and King Fili is determined to be the best king he can be. Sigrid, meanwhile, wishes things could go back to the way they were. What do you love about this fic? This was one of the first series I ever read for barduil and definitely played a huge role in getting me into the ship in the first place!

Boundaries 'Verse by Sir_Nemo | T | 30,967 words | tags: fluff, getting to know each other, getting together, family bonding

Summary: Bard has been working for the elves for years, never actually meeting one, until one day he notices an elf watching him work. The elf becomes a constant in his life, and the two of them slowly start warming up to each other. What do you love about this fic? Bard and Thranduil's personalities really shine through in their conversations, which I feel is a core component of the plot, and makes for a very stable relationship that the story can lean on.

[emo-band-recommendations]

About!

Hello! I'm the owner of this account. You can call me Jamie, Jam, or Emo, or just the blog name. I use they/them pronouns. I have a special interest in emo music and made this blog to share it with others, and to educate other emos about some parts of the scene they might not be aware of! Important note - I am chronically ill and my energy levels vary a lot so I may be a little slow to respond to your ask, but I will get to it as soon as I have the energy!

Info about tags, asks, how I decide if something’s emo, and a quick explanation of the waves of emo below the cut!

Tags: #answered asks - This will be used for any submissions. If you submit an ask anonymously, this is the only tag indicating it was from your recommendation. If you don't submit anonymously I will also tag you at the end of the post. #not a band rec - For answering asks, posting updates, and anything else that is not a band recommendation

Ask Submissions: -If the band is obscure enough that it's going to be difficult to find information on it (i.e. if there isn't a wiki page or in-depth article that I can find with a quick google search), please include links to information! -If it's your personal band and there's not info about it online, indicate that it's yours, and then just give me as much information as you'd like included! -Feel free to submit corrections to posts, just give sources! -If the band you submit is not considered emo, I will most likely answer the ask saying as much. If you want to make a case and can give me a good amount of evidence from the community showing that it is considered emo, I might change my mind. -I will listen to at least a song or two of any band I post about!

How is it determined if a band is emo? Because emo is very subjective, there will always be minor disagreements. Typically, I use isthisbandemo, r/emo, wikipedia, and any news articles or forums I can find talking about it all together to determine what the general consensus on a band is.

If you disagree with something I say, please feel free to reply to a post or submit an ask about it! I will warn you that I do have some communication issues and I do best when things are very literal. Tone tags are appreciated if you're able to use them. If you're overly aggressive or refuse to give any reason other than "well I think they are" I will stop engaging with you. If you have good evidence to back something up, I may change my mind on the matter.

What are the waves of emo? Emo is divided up into 5 waves (or sometimes just 4, because we're still early in 5th wave and it's very difficult to draw a distinction). Here's a quick explanation of each of them: 1st wave - 1985-1991 - Emotional hardcore/emocore. These bands are all still hardcore punk, but with more focus on melody, and lyrics that tend to be about more personal topics ("i'm depressed and my girlfriend broke up with me" as opposed to punk's typical "capitalism fucking sucks you guys"). It originated in DC during the Revolution Summer. Most of the well known bands from this era are either from there or another part of the east coast. 2nd wave - 1992-2001 - Midwest emo, skramz, and the start of emo pop-punk. This is when we see people inspired by emocore start to get further into the melodic side of things while keeping true to the confessional lyrics, creating the subgenre of midwest emo (named for the fact that the scene started in Illinois and then spread around the midwest). We also see screamo, or skramz, develop in San Diego and later parts of the east coast, heavily inspired by emocore and hardcore. The difference is that skramz bands, you guessed it, use a vocal style referred to as screaming (because that's... basically what it is). We also see the start of emo pop-punk, whose origins are quite messy, but are considered part of the scene due to the confessional lyric style and similar punk influences. 3rd wave - 2002-2008 - Emo pop punk, post-hardcore, and metalcore influences - This is the scene most people think of when they hear 'emo'. The genre became mainstream, specifically the pop-punk side of things. It grew less confessional and poppier as bands tried to appeal to wider audiences. Post-hardcore, a more experimental form of hardcore punk, also became closely connected with the scene due to their shared origins and sound. Because metalcore was also getting popular around the same time, you can see its influence in many 3rd wave bands. This is where you'll see probably the most debate around which bands are and aren't emo. 4th wave - 2009-2018ish - Midwest emo revival. This is a straightforward one. Emo pop-punk fell out of mainstream and more people started to move their focus back towards midwest emo, creating a revival movement. While for the most part the sound is incredibly similar to that of 2nd wave's midwest emo, it should be noted that many of these bands had more pop than punk influences. 5th wave - 2018ish-now - all of the genres. This is a very difficult genre to define. Midwest emo is still very, very prevelant, and you can hear at least a little of it in most popular 5th wave bands. Screamo is also gaining traction again. There's a lot more external influence, as we see genres like shoegaze and bedroom pop start to get incorporated into some bands. Alright, that's all for now. If you actually read all of that, thank you! It took me an hour to type this all out.

[scribeofred]

hey. hi. give me some commentary on a section of your writing you’ve always wanted to pick apart 👀

hey hi I see that new pfp. don't think I don't.

but yes! of course! <3 I have, at your behest, selected nines go fast, also known as mechanic!nines. there is, unfortunately, no mechanicing happens in the included excerpt, but that's okay, you know where this is going anyway <3

you said section. I said 😏. ergo, this is long, like 8.5K words long, so go into it armed with snacks and beverages. I'll supply fresh cardamom-cinnamon doughnuts and moroccan mint tea <3

−3.

An anonymous source releases formerly classified documents to the public—documents that detail US Army–overseen android soldier trial runs being conducted in the arctic. The immediate release of these soldiers is demanded by a seething android population, and CyberLife, already one wrong step away from total collapse, has no choice but to comply.

tiny little mostly passive-voice introduction here. I’ve used a lot of passive voice in my writing for a number of years now. still not quite sure why, maybe I’ll figure it out as I analyze this piece. I really do not love that first sentence, it feels like a noun word salad, but it’s something I’ve never tweaked during my various editing-when-I-should-be-drafting passes. always had something else on my mind.

RK900_313248317_87 spends almost six and a half days (561,443 seconds exactly) in the arctic circle before it is granted the status of personhood. It becomes he, and he wouldn’t know what to do with himself, except for two things:

it became clear to me almost immediately that this story was going to take on an Interesting Format: lots of parentheses, lots of lists, something more outline-ish than a strictly prose story in places. I like breaking conventions, so I remain tickled by this styling. Also, “It becomes he, and he wouldn’t know what to do with himself” has such a nice progression, I really love the sound of it, the look of it. one of my high priorities while writing is creating lyrical, smooth-flowing sentences, and I love repetition, which will likely become apparent throughout this piece, or any piece I write tbh.

There is another active android who shares his serial (but not model) number. This is immediately important.

300,291 seconds into his abruptly truncated tour of duty, he interfaced with an M77 and encountered a strange snaggletoothed bit of code that was supposed to balance the tank’s backup electronic targeting system but instead had a fifty percent chance of failing completely when the correct conditions were met. He (then it) corrected the code, submitted an error report and a copy of his applied fix to maintenance, and resumed his preset tasks for the day. This will become relevant later.

“snaggletoothed” is a word I (re)encountered while drafting this scene, and I (re)fell in love with it. fun words ftw. also, “He (then it)” is an immediate repetition payoff, and also reinforces the delineation between machine!nines and deviant!nines. this is also a good paragraph to drill down into the way I prefer to construct my sentences. typically I don’t rely much on opening dependent clauses, although that does vary per narrator voice, and for a character like nines especially I am Highly Conscious of the way he presents information to the reader. there’s a lot of facts, a lot of numbers and statistics, and a lot of general straightforwardness. I’m also conscious of each word’s function within the sentence (though I admittedly haven’t stripped this story to its bare bones either). the last two sentences in the second point in the list read, to my eyes and my ear, with this sort of stabbing effect. this is typical of my writing style in general, but in a story like this, with a narrator nines, the effect is heightened, blacks blacker and whites whiter. telling the reader information is a dangerous game sometimes, and my approach here is just. tell the reader exactly what needs to be said and nothing more.

He is offered and summarily declines a new position with the US Army (salary pending), he complies with the appropriate demilitarization procedures (they take a boning knife to his existence and they carve), he steps foot off Fort Hamilton (for the first and the last time), and he sets himself new directives that are entirely his own:

there’s two layers of subtext happening here. the first layer is the contrast between the information given in the main body of the sentence and the information given in the parentheses, which becomes particularly obvious by the end of the second parenthetical statement. the second layer is the paragraph taken as a whole, especially that first “(salary pending)”, which is a benign two words long and Will read different in the context of the entire paragraph. I love love love how much can be inferred via the simple salary pending, inferences about the state of the world, inferences about the US Army (and thus the USA as a whole), inferences about Nines’s priorities and character. the ping-pong match between the statements resolves in the last set of parentheses and the clause following it: Nines is going to do his own thing, thank you VERY much

Travel to Detroit, Michigan

Find RK800_313248317_53 “Connor”

Discover and execute his purpose

Completing the first objective is easy enough, even though he has to make his way from New York to Detroit primarily on foot. It’s fine. He was constructed to successfully navigate terrain more inhospitable than what he finds in the well-developed northeastern United States even in the middle of winter. It’s actually kind of nice to not be traveling in circles. He discovers he likes linear progression more than he likes circuitous. Probably this knowledge will come in useful, eventually.

“He discovers he likes linear progression more than he likes circuitous” is an example of both repetition and elision. choosing to not repeat something can be just as effective as repetition. even though this story is in present tense, occasionally I do flirt with imparting future knowledge that technically nines shouldn’t know. it’s fine it’s a stylistic choice, it’s not actually an issue; it does, however, contrast against that last sentence, where the two -ly adverbs intentionally create what should be ambiguity but actually isn’t because of the repetition. it’s almost like repetition legitimiz—

Completing the second objective is even easier. It only takes some moderate digital surfing to determine his predecessor’s whereabouts: time evenly split between the Detroit Police Department’s Central Station, one Lieutenant Hank Anderson’s house, and with the Jericho Movement’s core leadership (location randomized). He considers his options and determines the least threatening time to approach them to be just before Connor and the lieutenant finish work. Visiting them at their place of employment is less invasive than at their personal residence and less unpredictable than approaching them on the street.

I rebel against following trends, sometimes, so I’ve eschewed the popular term New Jericho and instead called it my own thing, because I’m Pretentious Like That. I don’t necessarily love the name the Jericho Movement? but it’s good enough for drafting purposes.

He catalogues but does not mind the stares he receives as he is escorted past the security checkpoint and through the bullpen to a pair of desks, one disorganized, one pristine, belonging to one disorganized human and one pristine android.

repetition legitimiz—

<<Ping.

>>Echo reply.

trying to figure out how to format messages between androids (or texts or what have you) can be an iterative process. if this went up on ao3, I’m sure I would have figured out a fancy lil bit of css or html to make it look Cool.

Their LEDs flash yellow in sync, and by the time he’s walked the seventeen steps to the desks, he and Connor have worked out all of the pertinent details they can by themselves. It’s purely for the wide-eyed lieutenant’s sake that he says, “Hello. I am RK900 serial number 313 248 317 - 87, Connor’s successor. You may call me Nines.”

wise writing advice says not to use numbers if you can help it, which. yeah. wise indeed. that said, because android systems are hilariously more powerful than even our modern supercomputers, I’ve taken pains to show how advanced the androids are via contextual clues. connor and nines probably had plenty of time to get to know each other and make jokes and so on tbh, but there’s only so much information I can include without cluttering up each paragraph, so. director’s commentary bonus info! also, I didn’t give nines an actual name here, but I intended to change it by the time I was finished drafting. couldn’t settle on the Right Name, though, so nines he remains.

“Pretty sure I’d rather take the other one,” the lieutenant breathes, looking spooked and unhappy. “Even if he did point a gun at me.”

“There’s no reason to be rude, Hank,” Connor says mildly as he stands. “And certainly not to one of our country’s newest veterans.”

“The hell are you talkin’ about? And where do you think you’re going?”

“To speak to Captain Fowler about bringing Nines on as a second consultant. Don’t worry, we’ll explain everything on the way home.”

“On the— Connor, no, absolutely not, one android in my house is more than enough, don’t you walk away from me—”

Captain Fowler, currently overseeing a woefully understaffed station, begrudgingly agrees to a trial run; Nines and Connor (but mostly Connor) sweet-talk Hank into letting Nines accompany them back to his house; and this is how Nines ends up with what humans call a family. He isn’t quite certain the term applies, especially when he consults the more traditional definitions, but when he and Connor sit cross-legged on the living room floor that night with Sumo’s almost-impossibly fluffy body draped over their knees, their hands pressed together as they interface, data flowing thick and rich between them, he thinks maybe family is something they can grow into if they give it enough time.

He wonders if he likes the idea. Connor certainly does, a brightness to his thoughts entirely unlike the harsh glare of raw sunlight off fresh snow.

>>I see myself in you, and yet I don’t.

<<Disparate objectives means we iterated differently. I was you, once, but now I am not.

Connor makes a meaningless-meaningful sound. He’s copying Hank, who uses wordless interjections liberally. Nines likes this practice.

(not so) secretly this is one of my favorite paragraphs. nines developing his own preferences in addition to the subtext that subtextual communication is both meaningful (but meaningless but still meaningful) and valuable to androids in addition to humans. I’m tickled.

>>Your system, Nines. It’s…

<<They had to remove everything classified.

>>Does it… hurt?

Nines doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how to tell. He shares this with Connor and Connor in turn shares his memories: two-thirds of the way to terminal velocity and then pavement, a bullet between the eyes, a bullet up through the jaw, impaled and heartless, don’t make me shoot, don’t make me shoot, don’t make me shoot—

repetition legiti— somewhere along the way I made the decision to remain vague re: nines’s system issues. this was half because I wasn’t sure exactly what issues I wanted him to have and half because it’s often more fun if I let the reader conjure the trauma themselves.

Fear static pain.

Whiteout.

They soft reboot nearly in sync, Sumo whining into their legs. In a single mirrored movement, Nines and Connor smooth their free hands through Sumo’s shaggy coat, trying to ease the dog’s distress even as their own systems struggle to rebalance.

>>Sorry, I’m so—

<<You didn’t mean—

>>That shouldn’t have—

<<Probably it’s because—

>>Let me—

Diagnostics and tests and error reports and debugging tools and they mutilated you and it doesn’t hurt because it doesn’t hurt like dying and not-doing-the-dying hurts and I can’t fix this, not immediately and that’s okay, you don’t have to and I want to, please, let me help, Nines, please and okay, Connor and thank you, Connor and your stress levels are alarmingly high, Connor, hug Sumo now, Connor.

Painful memories and mild panic attacks aside, it’s a good night. He has a warm place to stay, he has a new brother and a dog, he has objectives to complete starting tomorrow. He isn’t certain if it equals having a purpose, but it’s a start.

“hug Sumo now, Connor” is another favorite line <3 honestly, I love writing panic attacks, and figuring out how to write something equivalent being experienced by two linked digital systems was a fun challenge. their communication is happening so unbelievably fast here, millions—billions—of times faster than a human could possibly read it, and chopping half of their messages in half helps hint, if not fully convey, that rapidity. one of the big challenges with writing these scenes between connor and nines is the fact that, realistically, the two of them wouldn’t be communicating via a single throughline of conversation like the one written above. I’ve knowingly taken extreme liberties in order to craft a readable narrative because I just don’t have the ability to genuinely portray just how broadly AND simultaneously their systems are interacting. it’s fine, this is narrative-driven fiction, I just. one of the most frequent reasons I rolled my eyes while reading dbh fic was when I’d encounter descriptions of android systems that make them less powerful than even our current computers, to say nothing of the computing power that MUST exist in the dbh world in order for androids to function. as a result, I’ve always been highly cognizant of how I’m describing android/computer systems because this is one universe where writing them as potentially overpowered is more realistic than underpowered.

−2.

I decided to format this story in numbered sections. these sections do not function as chapters and instead function as a countdown to zero and then count up to whatever number I deemed suitable to round out the story. yes I used the actual minus symbol and not a hyphen.

Nines spends three days with the DPD and, in order, encounters

An impressively hefty backlog of paperwork and digital files that even Connor hasn’t been able to keep up with due to him and Hank being so busy with android-related crimes,

Detective Gavin Reed (antagonistic, aggressive, unpleasant),

Officer Chris Miller (direct, apologetic, tired),

two dead bodies (one human, one android; murder-suicide),

Chicken Feed (a Connor-determined reward for Hank’s ongoing attempt at sobriety),

a stray dog one-fourteenth of Sumo’s weight and size (Havanese, malnourished, unchipped but friendly),

Connor’s strategic employment of puppy_dog_eyes4.exp (16.22% more effective on Hank than Nines predicted),

Officer Tina Chen cooing over the rescued Havanese before taking on the responsibility of securing its future (Connor says he hopes it’ll be as loved as Sumo is; Nines agrees),

one dead body (android; murdered),

three trespassers and looters (two men, one woman; apprehended in 9.04 seconds),

Detective Ben Collins (personable, talkative, in need of a partner who can handle the more physical aspects of the job; Nines volunteers and is approved),

two dead bodies (androids; self-destructed),

a motor vehicle accident (high-speed rollover, manual-driving mode engaged; human driver pronounced dead at the scene, red ice use detected and likely to blame, autopsy pending),

four dead bodies (two humans, two androids; shot execution style; gang involvement?),

one alleyway brawl between ten people (seven humans, three androids; no casualties),

Detective Collins expressing concern over his wellbeing (minor damage sustained to biocomponent 7344c; self-repair already underway; such concern is unnecessary [but appreciated]),

a high-speed foot pursuit that lasts 8.7 seconds and ends with the suspect in custody (human, red ice found on person, suspected drug dealer),

roughly equal amounts of praise and teasing from his coworkers for his first solo arrest (he was just doing his job; he backs up their kind words and revisits them every 2.334 hours),

three dead bodies (one human, two androids; washed up on the banks of the Detroit River; shot, execution style; gang involvement?),

a high-speed vehicle pursuit that lasts 51.16 seconds and ends in an eighteen-vehicle pileup (five humans deceased, three humans and two android in critical condition, seven humans and four androids with moderate injuries).

the number of times I revised this list as I continued to write the story going forward cannot be calculated using modern instruments. so. many. times. it seems like a simple list of information, but nothing is ever simple when it comes to the inclusion of Actual Numbers. writing cute android boys can be tedious, y’all.

It’s the worst multivehicle accident within Detroit city limits in the last fifteen years.

(This, Nines thinks as he reviews footage of the carnage that’s still happening before his eyes, is wrong.)

(No. It’s not right, and he’s experienced just enough of the world to know that’s not the same thing.)

−1.

It’s happenstance, a convergence of the correct conditions in the correct order that produces a specific result. He and Detective Collins are returning to Central after inspecting a trio of bodies; Connor and Hank are following a couple of car lengths back. A sixth-mile ahead of them, patrol car 972 flips on its lights and begins pursuing a pair of motorcycles that have chosen an incredibly unwise moment to illegally and dangerously pass a transport truck.

The chase begins.

A half-second flurry of messages between him, dispatch, and Connor, and they have permission to act as backup.

“Been a long time since I did one of these,” Detective Collins says, voice grim but hands easy on the wheel as he threads through traffic. “Must not be equipped with those law enforcement override features.”

“Correct,” Nines says, listening to 972’s updates while analyzing the movements of the vehicles ahead of them. His hand hovers over the dashboard. “Should I drive?”

“Nah, I got this. Keep on keeping us in the loop.”

Twenty-nine point eight seconds later Nines watches but can do nothing as a catastrophe takes place before his eyes. With reflexes laughably faster than Detective Collins’s, he overrides their car’s systems and guides them to a safe stop on the inner shoulder of the highway before leaping out and rushing toward the disaster. Connor’s fifteen steps behind him; their human partners are even slower.

Screaming metal, screaming people, bleeding androids and bleeding humans, deep-tissue scans and beats per minute and crush injuries and ruptured blood vessels and shredded thirium lines and sobbing and stuttering and damage and malfunction and screaming and screaming and screaming. Nines and Connor work in fluid tandem, synced—Nines brute forces his way through the wreckage to expose life signs and Connor extracts said life signs with gentle words and gentler hands.

By the time they’ve relocate all victims (living first, deceased second) to a distance suitably removed in order to protect everyone in the event of an explosion, EMS have arrived and are hard at work fighting to save those in critical condition. Connor, Hank, and Detective Collins are lending their hands wherever necessary, and Nines should do the same, wants to the same, but he’s been in parallel reviewing all recorded footage of the accident, and so he makes one last visit to the twisted, heat-and-friction-fused heap of steel and aluminum, copper and glass, silicone and rubber. One car, interior soaked red and blue, is so tightly folded around itself that he has to peel back the dashboard so he can access the physical hardware beneath when it refuses all interface attempts. He pockets one of the redundant backup caches and downloads the same data from every other vehicle involved in the accident before rejoining the meticulously controlled chaos of emergency services and distressed victims and just enough bystanders to add some random variables into the whole mess. Nines scans and swiftly locates Detective Collins’s biorhythms, elevated but not to the point of distress. He pings Connor and gets a please hold back, which is both new and concerning but nothing he can assist with right now, so he reports to the on-site chain of command and allows them to put him to work.

it’s no secret that I do not cleave to the shitty first draft methodology. it works perfectly for some writers! it does not work for me. I am typically fairly set on what details I’m including in any given paragraph by the time I’m finished writing said paragraph, although I will usually lightly tweak things between two and infinite times whenever I reread. I rarely rewrite entire sentences, even more rarely delete sentences outright, because I don’t include throwaway information. there is, right from the get-go, intention behind each clause, each phrase, each word, each punctuation mark. this meticulous methodology has its pitfalls, of course, but one of the biggest upsides is paragraphs like the two above change very little between draft one and draft posted. typically the largest changes I make involve removing or replacing information rendered outdated as I continue to draft. occasionally I do have to smooth out awkward phrasing because done is better than perfect, but if I’m being confused by or tripping over my own phrasing, the reader is going to struggle even more, and that won’t do. revising can be tricky, though, because a pitfall of methodical drafting is the way I link each clause and each sentence together. they’re like a chain, and it’s a labor-intensive, difficult process to add new links. worth it! but definitely not easy.

>>I’m fine, Hank’s fine, we’re just on our way home now.

<<Already?

>>Cole.

<<Ah. Of course. Stay with him, I’ll be there when I can.

“You okay, kid?” Detective Collins asks while walking by, then points to his own temple when Nines merely tilts his head, hands busy holding a thousand-lumen light and a tiny but powerful portable heater so a human paramedic can stabilize another human’s compound fracture. “Your mood ring’s still red. Has been a while now.”

I just revised “while walking by” from the original “as he walked by” because of its ambiguity. it’s established later in the sentence that nines is stationary, but why create a potential moment of confusion for the reader if it can be avoided? especially when the solution is such a simple bit of rewording.

“I’m okay.” He is. Processors busy parsing and organizing a huge influx of new data, when they’re not consumed with saving lives.

“It’s fine if you’re not,” Detective Collins says later, once they’re back in the car, heater cranked to the max. The warmth is nice, although Nines isn’t sure he likes the air blowing across his face and body, but he doesn’t say anything; he isn’t the one who’s shivering. “Okay, that is. Scenes like that can be… well, they can be rough, even if you’ve been doing this job a while. The way you and Connor rushed in there…”

there is So Much information that’s covered in this entire crash sequence, and while I absolutely could have spent more time here, lingering, watching nines and co. do their things, I decided to play around with little time skips. it isn’t obvious right here, but there’s a line later in this numbered section that will give the above passage new context. this is also a good excuse to indulge my fondness for medic!rk units, combined with the many years I spent enmeshed in the thunderbirds fandom, which—there’s an extremely niche crossover that lives in my brain that I’ll probably never talk about again, but. now you know that’s a Thing. point is, reading and writing disaster/emergency scenarios is nothing new, and I’ve settled on a combination of specific, concrete details and relatively unemotional zoomed-out narrative.

“I’m okay,” Nines repeats, because he is. He suffered no significant damage, while there are five confirmed dead and sixteen injured. Seventeen if Hank’s emotional state can be counted as an injury. And it all could have been avoided.

“Mm. Well,” Detective Collins says, openly skeptical as he turns onto Michigan Drive, “you make sure you stay that way. Talk to someone if you need to, yeah?”

Concern, Nines decides, directed toward him, not because of him but rather on his behalf. It’s—nice, to have someone care enough to sincerely express such emotion toward him. He makes sure to tell Detective Collins this before they part ways, and he carefully indexes the memory of Detective Collins’s hand clasping his shoulder. “No thanks needed, kid, if you and your brother can keep Hank even halfway sober after that disaster. He’s been doing so much better, I’d hate to see him relapse. Call me if you need anything.”

this is not a story about hank’s recovery, not really, although there are certainly mentions of it present. ~connor magically makes hank better~ is an exhausting trope at best, but I’ve intentionally not dug into how, exactly, hank’s doing or how his recovery is being accomplished because that’s not the focus of this story. it is, in part, the focus of one of my other wips, and I don’t like covering the same ground twice, thus the ambiguity.

He does not need anything, at least not that Detective Collins can supply, and so he doesn’t call, but the option’s there, and somehow that lightens his system load in a way he can’t quite quantify.

the more time I spent in the dbh fandom, the more dbh fanfic I read, the more resistant I became to mirroring human and android systems when it comes to emotional reactions and manifestations. still, the reader is human, so parallels have to be drawn somewhere, somehow. and, also, even our modern computers run with such complexity that we don’t always understand everything about them, so I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable for an android to not know everything going on in their system all the time, depending on how their consciousness works. but we don’t have time to get into all that.

>>Bathroom.

The priority message arrives while Nines is still on the chilly side of the front door, so it’s no trouble to alter his path to take him down the hall instead of into the kitchen. He is… glad, he thinks, that he did, when he sees his reflection. Human blood, thirium, oil, dirt, coolant, half-melted snow, synthetic skin and even white chassis visible through the rips in his clothing. He looks like one of the causalities. He barely recognizes himself. He feels like he barely recognizes himself.

Because a convergence happened today, and it left people dead and broken, and it triggered upsetting memories for Hank, and it triggered upsetting memories for Nines. Nines, who applied a fix to a single unlikely, conditional problem and then made that fix available to the entire United States Army. Nines, who unwittingly, unthinkingly smoothed the road to a more assured death of whoever ends up on the other side of those targeting systems. Nines, whose hands are coated in the blood of nineteen people and the prospective blood of an incalculable number of people, blood in potentia that cannot be washed away with warm water and soap and a moderate application of friction.

sometimes just straight-up describing an action is fine! sometimes it’s better than just fine and is in fact the best option in scenarios where the focus should be elsewhere. but sometimes saying “he washed his hands” isn’t nearly as effective as that final clause. “a moderate application of friction” is what I would consider a Quintessential Red-Style Phrase™. between all the concrete details, I tend to lean on subtextual descriptions whenever I can get away with them because I like making the reader do at least fifty percent of work of parsing the story.

Nines, who has all the on-board data of every vehicle involved in today’s fatal crash and potentially the time and the resources to eventually compute the flaw in the code and the necessary fix.

and thus we find out what happens when an android is given a guilt complex. whoops. my bad. hilariously, hilariously, all of the story up to this point and beyond is laying the groundwork for something so much simpler and gentler. but the backstory became important enough to write out whole cloth. 8K+ words later…

He carefully places the physical memory cache on the glass shelf beside the mirror. Showers. Dresses in the clean clothing Connor left for him on the painted cabinet by the door. Repockets the cache. Joins Connor and Hank and Sumo in the living room.

<<How is he?

Connor sends a burst of high-density packets, most of which contain data Nines is capable of obtaining himself, but mixed in are Connor’s uniquely calibrated observations of a man he’s had time to study. Hank is more sad than anxious, more tired than angry, more sober than drunk, and that last one is a definitive surprise. Four of the victims were children. All injured, all alive, so far.

Nines sits on the floor beside Connor and Sumo. Filters out the squeak of the basketball shoes coming from the TV and dials up the sensors that most clearly register the life signs of android and human and dog around him. Everything else runs in the background, for a little while.

there’s a post floating around tumblr that talks about the prospective humor of connor filtering out gavin’s voice, without gavin realizing it. delightfully amusing but also totally implausible because gavin’s vocal frequencies overlap at least somewhat with those of basically every other man in the station, and connor would have to be running some truly bonkers frequency-isolation software to mute gavin specifically without losing anyone else’s voice in the process. maybe he could write a program to do that by himself! maybe not. either way, isolating a certain band of frequencies is simple enough even with our current technology, so nines absolutely can mute the obnoxious squeak of shoes on floor. I dislike the sound, thus nines does too.

The game is well into the third quarter and Hank’s glass is still almost half full when he nudges a toe against Nines’s arm and says, “You found yourself a quarter too, huh?”

“No.” Nines holds out the cache he’s been rotating between his fingertips, allows Hank to see the device is more than double the diameter and thickness of an American quarter. He explains its purpose using grade 7 vocabulary.

Hank isn’t stupid. it’s just that nomenclature is a difficult thing to parse if you aren’t In The Know. connor knows this, thus nines knows this, thus I get to write fun sentences like “he explains its purpose using grade 7 vocabulary.” sometimes writing truly is a joy and a delight <3

“Huh.” Most of the brightness in Hank’s eyes comes from the reflection of the TV. He sips from his glass, an absent gesture. “And you have it because…?”

“I intend to correct the error that incited the accident.”

Hank looks—surprised, baffled, angry, heartbroken, intrigued, angry, proud, heartbroken. He drains the glass in one sharp movement and stands. “Yeah. You do that.”

The words taken literally grant permission; the sarcasm and disbelief with which they’re said inverts their meaning into a negative. Nines counts himself fortunate he doesn’t need Hank’s blessing to continue what he’s already started.

Connor buries his fingers in Sumo’s ruff when Hank chooses the bedroom instead of the bottle. >>Grief is complex. And I’m finding it more complex by the day instead of less.

<<You’ll be able to establish a pattern for him eventually.

>>I think, in this case, I’d rather the data set be left incomplete.

Thermal vision allows Nines to see Hank folded in half on the edge of his bed, a soft-hard knot of loss and regret. <<I have to agree.

“a soft-hard knot”—I love using contradictory terms in tandem to create complexity and texture.

Once it’s clear Hank is down for the night, they sync, Nines’s software making use of Connor’s hardware to increase his efficiency as he scans billions of billions of lines of code. Not all the syntax is immediately readable, which leads them briefly down a detour of researching various programming languages, and he catches Connor making a note to further that study another time. Nines agrees, he wants to learn as well, but—later.

While he and Connor are CyberLife’s most and second most advanced models, respectively, they weren’t purpose built to do this kind of work. Their predictive programs aren’t even compatible with the vehicles’ data until they’ve written brand-new translation software to handle code that wasn’t designed to run on androids, and the entire process is slowed by the way their AI engines take up significant resources even with most of the optional subroutines suspended. Skinless, cosmetic breathing terminated, actuators locked in place, scanners dimmed to minimum, they sit and they work until the sun rises and they still have hours and days and weeks of work to go.

I could shorten my sentences. I could. I do, sometimes. a lot of the time I don’t. in this case, even though these sentences are dense, redolent with adjectives and nouns, I kept them long because long sentences can effectively convey the passage of time, in part due to word selection and in part due to the irl time they take to read. admittedly writing dbh fic is a chance to flex a bit of computing knowledge. I deliberately crafted these paragraphs to showcase that while nines and connor are exceptionally powerful, complex computing systems, they have their limits, in terms of both preprogrammed knowledge and processing power. the thing that most dbh fic writers seem to forget is that in the dbh world, androids would not be considered supercomputers. not even close. depending on what kind of back-end architecture cyberlife androids are linked to, they potentially have access to staggering computing power if they need it. if this is the case, I cannot see cyberlife allowing deviants to continue accessing their systems, especially after a public revolution, so I’ve structured this story’s universe around androids operating autonomously, with decidedly finite limits. this is important now, and it will be even more important later.

>>I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want a computer that isn’t myself.

<<It is… not optimal.

>>Understatement. We’ve found more than a dozen potential points of failure, but even when we finish our analyses, we won’t be able to create specific fixes for most of the problems.

<<It’s still a worthwhile pursuit.

>>I never said it wasn’t. I’m just saying this is a problem you won’t be able to solve by yourself.

Connor’s right. This isn’t isolating and then correcting a single string of buggy code—this is a complex web of software and firmware and hardware and mechanical components, one acting upon another upon another upon another, and that’s before factoring in the addition of unpredictable variables such as humans and animals and weather and sundry acts of God. Millions of man-hours backstop the billions of billions of lines of code Nines is now carrying around, and for all of his computing prowess, he cannot force results any faster just because he wants them. It’s—frustrating.

>>I’ll continue helping you, of course, if it’s what you want, but—

<<No. Thank you, Connor. I’ll find another solution.

Except the thought of getting in the car with Connor and Hank makes Nines feel—

Well. It makes him feel. That’s a start.

“Anxious,” Connor supplies aloud when Nines shares this while they’re preparing coffee and breakfast for Hank. The shower turns off, which means there’s a ninety-seven percent chance Hank will emerge from the bathroom within forty-three seconds. “Is it the accident?”

realistically, connor and nines would be having this conversation silently, digitally. even more realistically, this conversation would not be nicely linear the way I’ve written it here, but again, trying to convey that kind of overlapping simultaneous awareness is beyond the scope of this particular work. also, convenience for the reader (and also the writer) sometimes trumps realism.

Yes but no. Nines analyzes himself, tracking the new impulses through his system in real time. His stress levels spike consistently as he reads and rereads his memories of the last three days. He feels… hm. Flustered, self-conscious, embarrassed maybe when he says, “I don’t like dead bodies.” Factoring in last night’s casualties (six now; one of the children died after almost five hours on the operating table), he’s seen enough dead versus living bodies to create a functional data pool.

remember I said that there was a line appearing later that would give the descriptions of the crash and nines’s perception of the events new context? bam.

Connor hesitates the barest fraction of a second—not enough for a human to notice but obvious to Nines. Connor is surprised. He recovers just as rapidly. “Solving this—is it your purpose?”

“I don’t know,” Nines admits as he layers avocado and jalapeño Monterey Jack cheese and tomato and salt and pepper on rye toast. “Likely not in the long term, but it suffices for the short term. I want to do this.”

nines likes to do things In Order, which I appreciate about him, but it does mean I’ve actually had to cut back on a lot of extraneous information. it’s fun information for me! but I am cognizant of the way my writing style can be dense by default, filled with Lots of information. it’s a part of my style, so I don’t eliminate most of it, but sometimes it does feel like Too Much even for me, and thus I trim. the sentence containing hank’s breakfast ingredients is one such sentence that went through multiple iterations of trimming and restructuring.

Connor smiles with his eyes more than his mouth, skin crinkling and creasing in synthetic crow’s-feet. “I’m glad. Yesterday was—bad.” Worse for Hank than for them, or maybe just bad in different ways. “Make sure you talk to Markus and Detective Collins first.”

“Talk to Markus and Ben before what?” Hank asks as he rounds the corner, ruffling a small towel through his hair. He looks tired, but less haggard than Nines predicted based off the data Connor shared. Having them nearby last night helped him.

The prepared mug of coffee has been cooling on the counter and is an optimal 199 degrees Fahrenheit when Nines passes it to Hank. “I’m leaving the DPD.”

if I had unlimited reader/writer bandwidth, I would have included the temperature in parenthetical celsius and kelvin, but at some point I have to start drawing lines. on a related note, I personally use a mishmash of imperial and metric in daily life, but I’ve deliberately used imperial throughout all of my dbh writing due to the setting.

Hank hesitates orders of magnitude longer than Connor did, eyes wide behind the half-dried ends of his hair. He looks at Connor, who’s visibly focused on plating the eggs he’s been frying, and then his shoulders droop, exhaustion and pain cutting shadows across his expression. “Yeah. Well. Can’t say I blame ya. City’s already a mess without that shitshow last night. I, uh, assume you already know what you’re going to do next?”

“Correct. My flight to Austin departs at 1305 hours this afternoon.”

“Austin, huh. Where you’ll be doing…?”

“My part in assisting a team in overhauling the current autonomous driving systems,” Nines says, proud but also anxious. This anxiety is why he doesn’t add I wish to prevent further losses of life as a result of vehicular accidents.

“Right.” Hank flips the towel over his shoulder and snatches the mug from Nines’s hand before turning for his bedroom. “Well. Good luck to you.”

Nines glances at Connor.

>>He doesn’t want to know. Also, someone else leaving him after a fatal crash.

<<Ah. Of course.

“Hank…” Nines starts after him, then pauses when the bedroom door slams shut. He barely has to raise his voice to project through the flimsy barrier. “I’ll be back when I’m finished.”

“Yeah? That’s nice. Go have your fun in the sun or whatever.”

>>Best leave him alone before he stresses himself out of working effectively today.

“Thank you, Hank,” Nines replies, neutrally polite, then returns to Connor, who shrugs as he fills Sumo’s bowl.

>>He’ll settle down again soon enough.

No doubt, but not soon enough to say something genuinely nice to Nines before he leaves. This loss isn’t the same as the mutilations slashed through his code, but neither is it so different.

0.

It might be winter in the northern hemisphere, but the first thing Nines notices about Austin is it’s warm—warmer than Detroit and certainly warmer than the arctic circle. Warmth, he decides as he stares up at the wide, sun-drenched sky, is something he likes.

His conversation with Markus is short, only long enough to contain the appropriate first-meeting pleasantries before Nines informs him of his intentions and asks his questions and Markus puts him in contact with the appropriate members of his swiftly expanding legal team. Because the thing is, as badly as Nines wants to make progress as rapidly as possible, he doesn’t want to undermine what Markus is trying to achieve, so he takes Markus’s goals into account when planning his own actions. Before the plane touches down at Austin–Bergstrom International Airport, he has a framework in place that will prevent him from undermining the Jericho Movement and, instead, will hopefully allow him to assist it. To build instead of destroy. The idea pleases him.

Unlike Hank, Detective Collins is amiable to discussing Nines’s abrupt vocational pivot, and his advice is valuable. (An exact monetary amount is difficult to calculate depending on what factors are appropriate to include, but Nines’s loosest estimate assigns a value in excess of one hundred seventy-three trillion dollars; $173,844,613,176,922.65 exactly in the initial moment of computation, but this figure is already out of date before he can make it mean something to anyone else. This is fine, it isn’t a long-term functional number anyway.)

Never Use Numbers If You Can Get Away With It, I Know I Know I Know, but in this case, I really do want to hammer home just how brain-meltingly expensive enterprise computing actually is. and in this case, the computational aspect is only one facet. keep reading.

“Don’t let 'em exploit you, kid,” Detective Collins tells him, stern but kind, between thank-yous and goodbyes. “What you’re looking to do is huge and probably normally only done by high-flying experts, so make sure they know exactly how much your time’s worth.”

After doing his due diligence researching all related fields, salaries included, Nines decides his time is worth a lot. He’s one of the most advanced androids ever made, and he could just as easily assist other companies with similar problems, and wouldn’t it be a shame if he were to become contractually unavailable starting tomorrow. Yes, he has a bottom line, and no, he has no desire to bankrupt them, that’s the opposite of his goals, he wants to fix the broken parts in the system, not completely sink it.

But he’s also worth hundreds of man-hours, and fair’s fair. He’s just not sure what he’s going to do with the rapidly accumulating money. That’s okay. He doesn’t have to figure it out immediately. New York City to Detroit taught him one foot after the other.

it becomes obvious much later in the text, but the agenda for the early section of this story really is “find a way for nines to make a Lot of money fairly quickly.” an eighteen-vehicle pileup seemed a logical way to achieve this goal. I typically prefer to write things that don’t already exist within a given fandom, at least to my knowledge, so. here we are.

He spends six and a half days in Austin: ninety hours hardwired into a sprawling digital system and sixty-five hours officially off the clock to comply with the recently negotiated local android labor laws. Supervising a system so large is a new kind of challenge, and maybe it’s the deviant in him, but he finds he’s glad for the downtime: to explore, and to negotiate new contracts for once he’s finished here, and to chat with Connor and Hank and Detective Collins and Markus as their respective schedules allow. Hank is less genial than the other three; Nines keeps him in the loop anyway, using simple terms to summarize what he’s been doing. Hank didn’t warn up to Connor overnight even while they worked together day in, day out for weeks; it would be folly to expect Nines to make faster progress in a shorter amount of time while a significant chunk of country separates them. Physical proximity, he’s learning, matters greatly to humans.

as usual, I write stories set in a world where the events of the game happen over weeks, not over a handful of days. the computers might be able to move that fast, but the humans cannot, and would not.

With access to a zettascale system already configured for the task at hand, Nines makes more progress in two minutes than he and Connor made in seven hours. Vehicle-based collision-avoidance systems don’t have AIs nearly as well-rounded as those created by CyberLife, but there are enough inherent similarities that Nines finds he can understand how the other systems operate. This doesn’t lessen the sheer amount of debugging that needs to be done, but it at least removes some of the so-called language barrier. Watching the projected failure percentages tick closer and closer to zero is immensely satisfying in a way disparate, unpredictable police work wasn’t.

not shown: nines standing in a sterile data center the size of walmart, a cable the width of his wrist plugged into the base of his neck, eyes flickering white as he parses data while running his system to the bleeding edge of its limits.

Still, there’s only so much that can be done through exclusively digital models; eventually they have to incorporate physical systems.

Thus: to Germany.

At first Nines finds the switch from pure software to the inclusion of hardware exactly as tedious as he predicted. Their progress slows to a crawl as they iterate different digital builds with different physical vehicles, trying to find ways of disproving what pure mathematics tells them is true, trying to find ways of breaking what they’ve built. Even though they rotate between several groups of vehicles to keep moving as quickly as possible, the inevitable, occasional lag between tests means Nines has time to converse with the people around him if he so chooses, which is why he finds himself invited to an Autobahn party the following Saturday.

After witnessing the damage caused by a cascading error that started in an autonomous driving system, Nines has firsthand data to support why Hank chooses to eschew such systems in favor of his own abilities. These abilities are, without question, more consistently erroneous, but they clearly allow Hank to feel like he has some measure of control over whatever happens. His self-fabricated peace of mind matters more to him than the time he loses each day (sometimes numbering in the hours) while engaging in the act of driving. Considering Hank is of a species that already has such a finite life span, Nines thinks the waste of time is nothing short of catastrophically, criminally hedonistic.

And then comes Saturday.

All CyberLife androids with software released after August 2025 can handle autonomous vehicles in an emergency, and all androids with software released after March 2029 have the ability to take indefinite full manual control over vehicles. Nines (then RK900_313248317_87) has technically briefly taken manual control of an M77 tank, but he’s not allowed to talk about that, so his functional answer to the question “Have you driven before? Y’know, properly?” is “No.”

This answer, he’s told in no uncertain terms, is unacceptable.

it’s probably no secret that I spend a lot of time thinking about word order within my sentences. “end your sentences with a click” is advice that has soaked straight into every fiber of gray matter I possess. the occasional weaker sentence ending is. fine. but I typically do my best to structure my sentences so that the last word impacts, hard. this goes double for the final word of the paragraph. obviously there’s a fine line between ending with a hard-hitting word and contorting the sentence structure to the point of awkward in the attempt to achieve this goal, but I’ve observed that the quality of sentence-ending words is a consistent litmus test to draw lines between good writers and the true uppermost echelon.

A group of ten split between four vehicles: two luxury SUVs, two high-performance sports cars. Nines is one of two androids, the other a nurse-turned-liabilities-expert MC500 named Bluebell that traveled with them from the States, and they sign the same declaration forms as the humans. Progress, Nines thinks as he forwards the information to Markus and Connor, who swiftly relay their mutual delight. Nines saves their responses in his long-term memory and shares the sentiment and a smile with Bluebell.

>>If you enjoy this, we should go HALO jumping after.

He looks the term up and doesn’t understand the appeal, but he replies anyway because he isn’t rude.

<<I’ll keep you informed.

Her smile brightens, warm like the desert is warm, and he wonders.

meet bluebell! she dropped herself right into this story, and I low-key fell in love with her <3 a sweetheart adrenaline junkie. she and north should Never Meet (but they do, to the grief of literally every person in a fifty mile radius).

After two weeks of intense, demanding work, their itinerary for the day is almost laughably simple. Four drivers, four navigators, and two responsibility-free passengers to allow for physical and mental breaks. Everyone swaps roles and sometimes vehicles every fifty kilometers on average to allow for roughly equal distribution of driving time because even though all four vehicles fall under the same performance class, each one promises a unique driving experience. Nines isn’t skeptical, the statistics speak for themselves, but he also doesn’t understand.

And then it’s his first turn in the driver’s seat and he thinks, Oh.

He thinks, I owe Hank an apology.

He thinks, I know what I’m going to buy.

And he does.

(Of course, it isn’t quite that simple, but for once, he postpones immediately attending to the details and instead focuses all of his not-inconsiderable processing power on his first fifty kilometers of speed limit–free road.)

(Bluebell doesn’t have to ask him to go HALO jumping; two miles down the road he offers to take her the next morning. She accepts.)

what we see of road systems and vehicles in dbh indicates there’s a lot of autonomous systems at work. I decided to throw that completely out the window for germany, for both story and personal reasons. the full working title of this story is “that nines-go-fast project a.k.a. give him an m”—m as in the bmw m series. I intentionally didn’t include any specific vehicle brands because trying to come up with names for future vehicles always feels awkward and silly, but the moment my nines became an adrenaline junkie is the moment he found himself behind the wheel of a luxury suv. an suv because he has three rk brothers and all of their silly friends and family to tote around, but in ~style~. you see my vision.

***

we’ve reached the end! not of what’s written, there’s more words drafted, but this commentary has long gotten out of hand, so if you’re reading this, thank you for sticking around to the end! hopefully you’ve gleaned something interesting! if you have any questions, hmu!

[imsogayyippee]

It's definitely not a happy ending, definitely more canon major character death, but Tool "Pushit" feels very Timlex to me, Tim's point of view. (Although, if you're not familiar with the song and look up the lyrics, I don't know how correct they'll be, as it's kind of A Thing that Tool submits slightly incorrect lyrics for their songs versus what they actually sing :/ .)

"I saw the gap again today/While you were begging me to stay/Take care not to make me enter/If I do, we both may disappear"

idk what im gonna say doesn't really make sense but like......... the gap would be alex not being there and "begging me to stay" would be like alex somehow asking him to keep living?? idk ik it doesn't makesense

"I'm slipping back into the gap again/I'm alive when you're touching me"

either tim is falling back into the operator absolutely ruining him, or he's falling into missing everyone who died (in this case, alex)

"Saw that gap again today/While you were begging me to stay/Managed to push myself away/And you, as well, my dear"

Same thing as before, butnnow tim is pretending not to miss alex to not be stuck in the past and feel beter

"Remember I'll always love you/As I claw your fucking throat away/It will end no other way/It will end no other way"

ok. Wow. Oh ok. dies

[fandomanimatic-tournament]

Fandom song animatic tournament: Bracket 2 Side A

I can't decide ([Blank] can't decide) - Scissor Sisters

"I can't decide Whether you should live or die Oh, you'll probably go to heaven Please don't hang your head and cry No wonder why My heart feels dead inside It's cold and hard and petrified Lock the doors and close the blinds We're going for a ride!"

OO is a receiver ([Blank] is a receiver) - Ura Commander-P

Lyrics and translation provided by the Vocaloid Lyrics Fandom Wiki

電波なんです 電波なんです 素晴らしいでしょう 素晴らしいのです 正しいですか 正しいですね 間違いですか 間違いですね 笑ってますか 泣いていますね

English Translation:

"It’s radio waves. It’s radio waves. Perhaps it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. Is that correct? It’s correct. Is it wrong? It’s wrong. Am I laughing? I’m crying."

Remember that we're voting on how Iconic they are for ANIMATICS, not for the song itself. In order to make things fair, the tone and mood of the song should not affect how iconic it is (for example, a serious song should not be considered more iconic than a joke song just because it's serious)

Propaganda and animatic links of the songs under the cut:

I can't decide - Scissor Sisters

Propaganda:

Literally every playful villain ever. You want to use this for enemies to lovers? Do it! Someone who sees crime as a game? Go for it! The instrumental is so silly goofy and the lyrics are so flirtatiously sinister

Scissor Sisters be so funky and this song is so silly and playful (even when it's about deciding on whether or not you should kill someone)

Animatics with the song:

The Adventure Zone

FNAF

Karmaland V

31 Minutos

Danganronpa Kokichi Animatic

The Walten Files

OO is a receiver - Ura Commander-P

Propaganda:

Niche animatic song that is used to depict characters that have a lot of skeletons in their closets! Really neat song with cool lyrics!

It's a really good song to show a character's ongoing deteriorating mental state and how the characters around them are affected/what their feelings are in relation

Animatics with the song:

Hello Chralotte

OMORI

Detroit: Become Human Connor Animatic

Roblox Daybreak

Genshin Impact

Please be cautious and read the title, description and warning cards on the animatic videos if you decide to watch them. If you've got specific triggers I'd recommend even more caution when watching animatics of fandoms you don't know, since sometimes canon-typical themes don't get warnings.

Please keep in mind that I don't know all the media and fandoms of the animatics provided as examples and I don't have the time (nor the will) to research them all. Don't come into my notes or my ask box complaining about them being included, I will simply block you. If a ship animatic included is about an adult and a minor, do tell me and I'll take it out of the post

ALSO keep in mind that I don't know all the artists submitted; in fact, even if I do know them I do not know absolutely nothing about them as people (I do not have twitter nor tiktok) and I could not POSSIBLY have the time to research ALL of the artists' controversies and what came of them so PLEASE don't flood my inbox with the artists' entire crime list.

[zyafics]

Okayyyy, the recent updates are eating, as usual. Thank you for responding to my ask anon about my song reco "Iris" love your response, and I'm happy you see the correlation between Rafe's situation and the song🩷. With the hints about the reasons of why the reader and Rafe brokeup my playlist for hb:l would definitely be full of sad songs after chapter 30+ HAHSHAHHAHAHA.

Since I recommended a song about Rafe's potential pov or feeling during the post-breakup, I might as well recommend the reader's pov during their post-breakup. The song that would fit the reader's post-breakup situation is "Tears Dry On Their Own" by: Amy Winehouse.

"he takes the day"

Another way of saying that, Rafe's, takes the light (daylight) from her life when they decided to breakup. That within the 1st to 2nd weeks of their breakup, the reader's world was all just black and has no light at all to guide her from healing or moving on.

"but i'm grown"

Based on the attitude of the reader in the present timeline, she was atleast able to stand her ground and didn't even bother crawling back to Rafe. The experience(breakup) has matured her and now she can see it all from a different place. She didn't talk about their breakup even though she was given alot of chance to do so during their broadcast. Didn't talk bad about Rafe even though there's alot of hints that he was at fault and thr reason of their breakup, and didn't give the listeners of their broadcast a hint that she wasn't the one at fault but Rafe even if it would lead to her being bullied in atlas and irl (Physical even but our girlboss fought back. AS SHE SHOULD).

She was that strong even if the breakup tore her apart, she stand on her ground and be THAT GIRL. Which is good for her🤌. The rest of the lyrics and the string beat is already self-explanatory. She is the GIRLBOSS.

Additionally: whatever, sof, did I'm sure the song "Wildflower" by: Billie Eilish would fit her and the situation before the breakup happened. The lyrics behind it, and the meaning, it screams "I'm sorry girly, I fvcked up your rs." or "I'm sorry girly, I'm one or main reason behind your breakup."

Anw, I hope you're doing fine and had a great day today. Enjoy the rest of the week and thank you for heart-wrenching and well-written smau and updates🩷. Keep it up, you're doing very well.

-a💋

i'm absolutely loving these analysis with these songs, because this is the type of shit i do when i'm invested in my stories so that means u love hb:l enough to do this!!

and i listen to the song? absolutely correct 100% i'm not even kidding with you, this is exactly reader's response after the breakup. the way it depicts him as someone who "walks away," and how his presence left an effect on her? perfect. the way u r inside my brain i am frightened (but so so extremely proud!!)

lastly, you're actually insane. insane insane insane. because YESTERDAY, when i was coming up with the layout for pt23, i was blasting "wildflower" so loudly because i feel like it best depicted the atmosphere of the scene and when u sent in this inbox, i knew i couldn't answer it UNTIL I POSTED PART 23 THAT'S WHY I WAS SO READY TO!! oh u beautiful mind!!!

again, thank you so so much for submitting this!! i love the music association with the series, and i love how u are able to read through the lines of the series so clearly. i'm doing well, but these next couple of days are going to be rough because i will be studying!!

love u bb 💘

[weather-cluddy]

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO WATCHING MILGRAM (as of the end of the 2nd trial)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Second trial

Official song playlist

2nd trial opening video Notes: Translation analysis

All-Knowing and All-Agony (Instrumental) Notes: Translation analysis (Some corrections: I believe that "I'll turn it around" should be "I have to make you turn around again" and "I'd rather give by taking", "It's better to receive by stealing")

Something interesting about the lyrics is that they contain relatively more kanji than Weakness, which makes the text look less childish, but it's not more advanced kanji. Of the kanji that Haruka uses, the one taught the latest is 降, from Weakness' "I was falling" line. This doesn't take into account the kanji in his own name, as that is generally one of the first things children learn to write regardless of the kanji used. Metamorphosis of the Weak (Text)

Tear Drop (Instrumental) Absolute Zero (Text)

Backdraft (Instrumental) Notes: All the cans read "pressure" in Milgram runes. The QR codes takes you to the voting page. Translation analysis. Baptism of Fire (EN) / Burning in the Welcoming Fire (JP) (Text) Notes: The English title is a reference to the idiom baptism of fire, while the Japanese title references Obon. There's a translation mistake at 2:01, it should say "This is what happens when you get stepped on with those safety boot-like shoes."

It's Not My Fault (Instrumental) Notes: Translation analysis. (Another way to translate the "relieved" line would be to take "shou ga nai" as something like "inevitable" and link it with the previous sentence, resulting in "I was relieved. It's just natural, right?"/"it can be helped that I was relieved, you know?")

Triage (Instrumental) Notes: The names on the cremation niches, color-coded by gender. Translation analysis. Aesculapius (Text) Notes: At 9:14, it should say "selfish" instead of "scientific."

I Love You (Instrumental) Love is [Un]Dead (Text)

Cat (Instrumental) Imposter Boulevard (EN) / Tracks of Deception (JP) (Text) Notes: The word "tracks" in the title is intended to be pronounced the same as "hope."

The Purge March (Instrumental) Notes: Translation analysis. There are several texts onscreen at 1:30: -Translation for the paper at the bottom with a photo -Text with big bold writting at the top: "Accept hardship. Accept trials. God watches over those who overcome them with strength." (Transcription sourced from these comments) -Torn paper. According to Hioki_MG, the long text is likely taken from this medical notice in Nagasaki Hospital. -Colorful pamphlet with mascots: The text is too covered up for full sentences, but the word written in the mascot's colors near the bottom is "happiness" Of blessedness and punishment (EN) / Of Happiness and Revenge and (JP) (Text) Notes: Like with Amane's first trial voice drama, the two words used are pronounced very similarly. The title is read as "Koufuku to Houfuku to"

Double (Instrumental) Notes: Onscreen text translation Neoplasm (Text)

Deep Cover (Instrumental) Notes: Onscreen text translation YONAH (Text)

2nd trial closing video Notes: Jackalope actually uses "dual personality disorder" in 6:21 instead of "multiple personality disorder" like he did on the 2nd trial opening video. Yamanaka said that the last, untranslated line doesn't contain the word "psychopath"

Portal (website version)

The project's official app. It also has a browser version. The first time you go in it'll show a big red screen with a red bar and white text below it; it's asking you whether to log-in or access as a guest. Click the white text. It'll bring up a box asking for your residence, birthday and gender. You don't have to fill them out, simply click the "I accept the term of services" square button at the bottom left and click the bar at the bottom.

Interrogations These are fan-submitted questions to each pair of characters to be answered during their trial periods. The groups are divided by prisoner number, so for example Haruka (prisoner 1) and Yuno (prisoner 2) share a set of questions. The exceptions are Mikoto and Kotoko, who due to productions delays didn't have overlapping judgements in the first two trials. The most complete list is this one which includes both trials but is missing Kotoko and Mikoto's second set. That can be found here in video form, translation courtesy of the Milgram Eng group and edited by ac. It's also in text form in Eng's twitter account. ac's channel also includes translations of the first trial interrogations done by the now-defunct Milgram Fancult group. They can be found in the wiki's interrogation pages as well, in the following format: https://milgram.fandom.com/wiki/Kirisaki_Shidou/Interrogation Lastly, milgrammer also translated some of the early first trial interrogations, up to the Mahiru-Shidou pair.

Timeline The app's timeline shows the last four posts for free, and requires a subscription for the full feed. There are two types of post: in-universe conversations, and comments about a new song from Deco*27 and either Rockwell or Teddyloid. For organizational purposes, the latter can be found in the Interviews and Commentary section. While the conversation are mostly for fluff/character exploration purposes, they do reference specifc events in the series, especially as time goes on. I would suggest to read everything up to Muu's 2022 birthday (July 5) after watching the first trial, then everything else after the second trial. A more authentic but also more complicated order would be to keep track of song release and interrogation dates and read them along with the songs and dramas. For that, I recommend this timeline of important events , as well as this chart of character's birthdays.

In terms of translations, the wiki gathers translations from a variety of sources, mainly rochisama , Maristelina, Tiramisu and Milgram Fancult (though many of the latter's translations were removed around September 2022, they can still be viewed in the page history). As of the time of posting, Rochisama's archive is the most complete translation archive, missing only the Mikoto's 2024 birthday convo (translated here by me), but they do sometimes fall behind on new releases, so feel free to check other sources as well.

Illustrations and Previews For subscribers, the app also offers art made by the staff and extra key animation frames a few days prior to the release of a new song (a few are released to all though the Twitter account), as can be seen in the Contents -> Report-> Advance tabs. Lastly, the day before a song's release, paid members can watch the first minute of it though the app. The song previews can be found here and the illustrations can be viewed here

Novels and Manga There are currently two novels: The Experimental Prison and the Maiden Jailer and Righteous and Justifiable Murder, with the latter being a direct sequel to the former. They're not necessary to understand the plot of the main project, but they share the same setting and may provide hints for future developments.

The Experimental Prison and the Maiden Jailer It was originally released as a novel in the gap between the first and second trials, and latter received a manga adaptation. The manga can be viewed in Japanese here, and a fan translation is available here . There's also a chapter-by-chapter summary based on a machine translation of the original novel.

Righteous and Justifiable Murder Only available in novel form, released mid-way though the second trial. You can read a preview of the first 56 pages here, and a summary of the full novel here.

A complete, human-made translation of both novels is available for those who can provide proof of purchase to Pai the Plushie. Those who preordered the manga or novel also received one of two short stories from the perspective of the main project's Jackalope, Top Secret Experiment Report side W or side S. Side W has spoilers for the main Milgram's second trial, and both reference events from the first and second novels. The translator for the extras requested that I don't link to them directly, but I can say that they can be found on Tumblr.

Minigram A comedy 4koma that's unrelated to the previous two works. It's uploaded on Twitter and Youtube's community tab, with the latter having official translations in the comments. Some fans have edited the official translations directly onto the panels. Merak's Twitter thread is almost complete, missing only the first chapter and the 61st one.

[gloombog]

the modest mouse fans on genius drive me crazy i'm always submitting lyrics corrections that i know without a single doubt are accurate and they always reject them.. there was one lyric that was like. hilariously wrong. and i submitted the same correction for it like 10 times before someone finally approved it. bc i was right.