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martianarctic · 5 years ago

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Devin’s Playlist -2010s Part 1

This is an unfinished retrospective look at what I listened to during the 2010s. This decade was exceptional for me, as it was the first decade where, for almost all of it, I was not a musician myself.

Being a musician forces you to listen to music like a musician, and being free of that, and able to listen as a listener alone, really made this a spectacular decade for me. I found dozens of incredible albums that were released during the decade, many of which received no significant recognition.

This was a very large project, and I did not finish it. I made it through Retrowave, Shoegaze, and Post punk. If anybody cares, I will finish the entire project, which will add Dreampop (the largest category), Vaporwave, and Dark Ambient.

Retrowave: Retrowave is electronic music that, at first listen, sounds like it may be from the 80s or 90s, mostly because the synths it uses to generate the music are either retro-inspired or literally retro equipment in some of the more extreme cases. It generally features original compositions, often, but not always, is instrumental. Rough vocals would impede the tightness and angularity of the music, so when vocals are used they are often pop produced and highly melodic. This genre gained significant exposure from Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 masterpiece, “Drive”.

Galactic Melt (2011) Com Truise

Electronic artist Com Truise rose to prominence off of this fantastic record, which rallies around the undeniable electro anthem of 2012, “Brokendate”. Starting with some found audio (chopped and screwed found audio becomes a big deal later on in Vaporwave) and then dropping in an absolutely thick beat we’re met with a song that eventually, as layers are dropped on, ends up being meditative, romantic, and melancholy. Emotions to that point, not well associated with dance music, but definitely would come to color the entire decade.

Era Extraña (2011) Neon Indian

Electronic solo bedroom pop was pretty cool at the end of the 00s being pushed hard by guys like Twin Shadow. I am not sure how I got ahold of Neon Indian but this album was, in a lot of ways, the true start of my musical decade. I had not been so excited and enthusiastic about a record since I had retired from making music. It really gives you a new perspective to not feel like you’re in competition with everything and trying to learn from everything- just as a listener, I was enthralled with this entire record.

Visitors (2012) Lazerhawk

I did not get into dark retrowave until after 2013 and thus discovered Lazerhawk and this record after the fact. Visitors is, in my opinion, the best dark retrowave album ever made, more consistent and listenable than competitors such as mega drive or carpenter brut. Also. This album absolutely sticks the landing with the street-strutting powerhouse “Arrival”.

I am the Night (2012) Perturbator

Made famous by soundtracking the indie game hit Hotline Miami (one of the best games of the decade), Perturbator carved a niche for himself with fast, brutal, high energy dark electronic music and absolutely bonkers live shows. Perturbator has a large catalog of content- I am the Night is definitely the starter kit. Starting off with a thick minor chord, a church bell, and a sample of Peter Finch’s speech from “Network” you immediately know what’s in store- dark, dystopian and undeniably French electronic dance music, complete with breathtaking beat breaks, big bass synths, and complex compositions.

Innerworld (2014) Electric Youth

I had mentioned that Drive was a major popularizer of retrowave- and one song in particular, a collaboration between another retrowave artist named College, who created the low fi, catchy bassline for the song “A Real Hero”, and the vocals and lyrics, created by an artist called Electric Youth. Their record, 2014’s “Innerworld”, is one of the best retrowave efforts, with the second track, “Runaway”, even better than the song that made them famous. The pop chorus “Maybe we could just run away for good/cuz we’re both mis understood” soaring over thick, atmospheric synth pads will have you slapping the roof of your car, as you race through the freeways of LA at 3AM.

Atlas (2016) FM-84

Speaking of roof-slapping bangers, “Running in the Night” is probably retrowave’s most popular anthem, boasting one of my absolute favorite vocal performances of the decade. A group claiming rock and roll city San Francisco as their home base (despite being both British), FM-84’s Atlas is absolutely packed with a mixture of the atmospheric instrumental Miami Vice type music suggested by the red and purple setting sun cover as well as vocal driven pop songs such as the single mentioned above.

Hardwired (2018) Mitch Murder

Mitch Murder is a retrowave institution, having made the soundtrack to the viral youtube movie Kung Fury, and also, I suspect, the original music used by twitch personality Dr. Disrespect. However, he almost entirely releases 3-5 song Eps, making it tough to pick out a standout. However that all changed in 2018 with the release of Hardwired, the most accomplished mitch murder release to date. Starting off with the Jan Hammer style “Altered State”, it stays on brand throughout but tells a very unified instrumental story of cyberpunk dystopian adventure. Vangelis-style synths bring in the closer track, “Revision Control”, one of Mitch Murder’s greatest tracks. Evolving through different moods, different scenes, we can imagine the “human” protagonist confronting his cyborg nemesis he has been tasked to execute.

Retrowave Album of the Decade:

Dark All Day (2018) Gunship

As the decade wore on, retro wave slowed down for me. I thought it might be over but- without warning, Gunship, an artist I had listened to but not been completely impressed by, released what is probably the most accomplished album in the genre. Spanning various tempos and musical themes, utilizing several guest vocalists, the scope of “Dark All Day” keeps you listening to the record again and again. This record represents an evolution in a format that was at risk of being just a fad. “Come on lost boys, lets stay alive” over a ripping saxophone lead suggests mere 80s fetishism, but there is more substance than just that. The following track, “When you Grow Up, Your Heart Dies”, takes an upbeat electro jam, and really goes for emotional impact with a series of samples of characters from pop culture saying inspirational things, my favorite being “Everything worth doing is hard” which I think is just Teddy Roosevelt. My favorite track of the record, the slow ballad “Artemis & Parzival”, begins with swooning, Vangelis-style pads and then into guest vocalist Stella Le Page’s gorgeous vocals. This track definitely belongs on anybody’s make out playlist. “Were all gonna die that’s just how it is, there’s no escaping the future, nobody gets what they want in this world, even for you and me” is one of the greatest lyrics of the decade.

Nugaze/Shoegaze-Adjacent: Shoegaze is a genre of music that features highly layered guitar effects (often run through 10 or more effects, creating a signature “vacuum cleaner” sound with a ton of distortion and white noise) and breathy vocals. Relying heavily on the depth of character of the sound, shoegaze guitar tone and production is a major creative point and almost all of these records are self-produced. Vocal themes are usually depression-inspired and lovelorn meditations, the music sounds, to most, dull and dreary, but to some, it speaks deeply to their feelings about the past and future. Shoegaze is often mixed with other guitar genres on this list, from Post Hardcore(Nothing, Title Fight), Black Metal(Deafheaven), and Thrash Metal (Astronoid).

Road Eyes (2010) Amusement Parks on Fire

Around 2010, I was promoted at my job to a new role that would require a bunch of travel. I was not a big fan of riding on airplanes. Also around that time, my brother had moved into my apartment, then out of it, and I only had a few months left on the lease. My favorite shoegaze band of the 2000s, Amusement Parks on Fire, played a gig at 330 Ritch, a club in san Francisco. I had a fantastic time at the show, and particularly loved their new material, which made it onto a record they called Road Eyes. 2 months later I moved out of my apartment in San Francisco and never would go back to living as a single dude.

Anyways, the travelling. The opening and title track to the record came to symbolize change for me. And it also was the song I would listen to every time my plane would take off. It helped me deal with the fear that something might happen- no matter how insignificant the chance – and if it did, while that song was on, it would be okay. Indeed, this was, and I will warn you I am not qualified to treat mental illness, but this actually really made flying much easier for me and it is a ritual I continue to do to this day, whenever possible.

Pipe Dreams(2013), Sway(2014), Feels like You (2019) Whirr

San Francisco nugaze/dronegaze band Whirr, large and complex, problematic, aggressive, are behind some of my favorite music of the decade. Their three album career reflects to me upon the primary feelings of youth: euphoria, anger, and sadness.

Pipe Dreams is a blissful set of jams, meditative, energetic uptempo and with almost totally co-ed vocals. Noisy production casts a hydrocarbon haze over the songs, raw vocal melodies reach out of the fuzz and suck you in. “Junebouvier” and “Toss” capture the euphoric and youthful energy of a summer in San Francisco: starting off with breakups May thru July, and hot hookups until September or October when people settle into relationships. Two hungry eyes emerging from straight-bangs to make eye contact with you, and hold it- the exhilaration of touching somebody new.

Sway, the band’s masterwork, starts off with a heavily muff-distorted major 7th chord suspending us until the massive drums, now a hallmark of the band’s sound, kick off the beat into the opening rocker Press. The band switches up rhythms between drums, guitars, and bass to bring rock and roll-type turnarounds and breaks that really keep you on your toes and engaged. The lead guitar is classic legato shoegaze, using delay to achieve a long, sustained scream. Compositions are key on this record- not following just simple A/B patterns there’s some thought to the structure of the songs and record. “Dry”, in particular, demonstrates some of these ideas. A/B sections, underscored with “Drown me everytime… Dry”, give way to breaks, ethereal echo guitar solos, giving a hint of the powerful ending. A 4 chord progression accented by breathtaking drum fills finaly flourishes into a screaming cymbal-laden guitar finish.

Feels like You, the bands purported final album, starts off with some quiet echo piano. The melancholy major 7 chords the band has leaned on throughout their music are laid bare as we press play on the record. Add guitar. At a little after 90 seconds the band jumps in after with a thick blanket of lonesome self-reflection and chemical depression. The bands penchant for composition remains to the end, with changes keeping you engaged as the noise soothes your heart. “Younger than You” is one of the band’s greatest tracks, starting with an almost Smashing Pumpkins/Silversun Pickups esque clean unison guitar/bass into distorted and layered noise, ending with a drum-guided, rock and roll style outro.

Guilty of Everything (2014) Nothing

One of the things I mention in my preface to this is, for me, the 2010s were the first decade of my life that ended with me not being a musician. And it opened some doors for me, creatively, to be able to hear music and think about it purely as a listener and a person. Something others have frequently described to me, that I had never really done, was just spend an entire weekend listening to an album.

I saw Nothing on KEXP 5 years ago when Guilty of Everything was out and they were on tour. I’ve seen them twice in person since them and bought every one of their records. The weekend that I got Guilty, I was attending a close friend’s sisters wedding, and pretty much was in a hotel room drunk in overcast-as-fuck santa cruz all weekend. And you know what was being played through headphones at practically all times.

Nothing is mostly the musical project of a guy named Dominic Palermo, a punk from the Philly scene that had spent more than a year in prison for a stabbing. He isn’t much of a vocalist or guitarist, but he is a fantastic artist, writer, photographer, and visionary, and the creative force behind what is now a rotating cast of other musicians.

Guilty of Everything is definitely their best record, opening with the massive meditation Hymn to the Pillory, into the definitive single Bent Nail, a perfect marriage of hardcore punk and shoegaze elements, falling apart into the 90mph crash, into a wall, final outro chorus “If you feel like/letting go…” repeated over and over over pure drone guitars, seamlessly flowing into the romantic slow jam “Endlessly” The closing title track is one of the best closers of the decade, perfectly sticking the landing on this brilliant lyric: “My hands are up, I’m on my knees I don’t have a gun, you can search me please. I’ve given up, but you shoot me anyway, I’m guilty of everything. I’m guilty of everything”.

Hyperview (2015) Title Fight

Nothing wasn’t the only Pennsylvanian post-hardcore band to bend their sound a bit shoegaze. Title Fight also sneaks onto this list with their outstanding record Hyperview from 2015. Appealing compositions and melodies combine with harmonized vocals, even some 16 beats on the hats- things we expect from post hardcore, but slowed down and smeared out a bit into the shoegaze aesthetic. My favorite track from the record, “Hypernight”, combines some screamo hype man chorus, math rock inspired guitar and bass lines, and is just all in all one of the most unique tracks to come out of the decade. “I don’t want to see things differently, its what I am taught myself to believe”.

Grandfeathered (2016) Pinkshinyultrablast

I admit that I bounced off of Russian electro-shoegazers Pinkshinyultrablast the first time I listened to them a few years ago. There was just too much going on and I didn’t really have the inclination to jump in and grab on. Operatic female vocals, noisy djenty guitar, shimmery, clean guitar, all swirl together in what is undoubtably a great record for having a tinder date IF, and I say IF, you’re willing to run a musicological acid test on them.

Whether it was listening to a bunch more music, particularly ambient music, or just changing taste now I can’t get enough of this band. They do slam from idea to idea in a song, but it’s a controlled speed- it’s not pleasant to a lot of people, but once you get yourself situated, you’ll wonder how you ever missed this band to begin with, if you’re not one of the people reading this and thinking, naw dude, I got this shit RIGHT AWAY.

The compositions on the record are, in fact, carefully considered and composed, combining noise rock with clean ambience deftly and changing up styles repeatedly throughout each song and the record. Everybody knows we can no longer control dynamics via volume in today’s world of headphone/device listening, ultramaximizing mastering, laptop speakers, etc. So Pinkshinyultrablast controls it with style. This record is definitely the more guitar-driven of the albums from this decade, with their release 2 years later being more electronic and vocal focused.

Slowdive (2017) Slowdive/My Bloody Valentine (2013) mbv

There are two bands that are credited with creating and or popularizing the Shoegaze movement during the late 80s and early 90s. Those bands are My Bloody Valentine, and Slowdive. Both of whom released albums during the 2010s. And frankly, both records are damn good for two bands that have been basically on hiatus for 20 years. Neither has really stood the test of time for me, although I listened to both exhaustively upon release.

The opening tracks of both records are absolutely mesmerizing, this slow, sexy intro is clearly the part of them that became stronger with age. The manic rock energy of their more upbeat tracks however is absent or at least forced, and I think is what keeps these from being really what I’d call strong records. Nevertheless, both albums belong on any shoegazer’s playlists both for the quality of the music as well as the nod to the progenators of the genre we love so much.

Time n Place (2018) Kero Kero Bonito

KKB was already one of the biggest indie rock groups in the world when they released this their second full-length album. Making a big move sound-wise from super squeaky clean hip hop style production to sloppy shoegaze guitars and drums, they alienated a lot of fans with Time n Place, but I don’t see how. For me, coming in for Time n Place and then going back in the catalogue to Bonito Generation, I see it as a very natural progression. As the artists become more confident and mature, it’s natural they should explore some other emotions and moods.

That said I am not the usual KKB fan. Actually at their show in San Francisco in 2018 I was probably in the top 95 percentile of being an old fart. Around me, mostly twentysomethings on the first half decade, casually doing key bumps right on the show floor, something scared old gen Xers like me, still remembering their friend’s divorced dads in cigarette boats they sold for coke in the 80s, are still too paranoid to do. The crowd definitely starting pogo jumping at the chorus to “Only Acting” a grungy, poppy metaphor between acting on stage, and being young and in love.

Right after that, “Flyaway“ is the upbeat shoegazey manic anthem that really got me sucked into the band to begin with. Combining fuzzy guitars that are more reminiscent of Japanese rock bands of the 00s than shoegaze with a crystalline clear melodic vocal line from Sarah, this is the track where I grab a handful of dirt from my dying hill, and say if you don’t like this song, you don’t like the band, the record, or my musical taste.

Miserable Miracles (2018) Pinkshinyultrablast

Reinventing themselves record by record, Pinkshinyultrablast keeps on the cutting edge and doesn’t make a habit of anything. Miserable Miracles is more electronics driven, lead and pad synthesizers bringing in the music with their trademark soaring, operatic vocals. Guitars are present as well, but heavily stretched with cathedral reverb and long delay. A smoother sound than Grandfeathered, but well-poised to issue a majestic, meditative prayer such as “Find your Saint”, my favorite track. Like walking into a Germanic church on Sunday, the vocals rise to the ceiling forcing you to look up at the light breaking in through stained glass synthesizers. At about 100 seconds, all of the pieces drop in together to lift you into wherever it is you are going. “I used to talk- about it” brings the heavenly outro to bear, one of the most powerful musical moments of the decade.

Astronoid (2019) Astronoid

I am part of a few music groups on Facebook, and one of them mentioned this band, calling them “Dream Thrash”- a combination of dreampop and thrash metal. I’d say its more thrashgaze, with heavy effects/djenty guitar and the more whispery vocals than are a hallmark of the shoegaze genre, not the clear pop produced vocals that are the hallmark of dreampop.

That out of the way, this is possibly my favorite record of 2019. The opening track, “A New Color”, brims with energy and hopeful optimism and replaced Road Eyes as my airplane take off song. Right around 3 minutes in, when the plane is airborne and gaining climbing u to cruise, when we’re often breaking through the clouds, comes in possibly my favorite guitar solo of all time. On this record, Astronoid are unquestionably uptempo metal yet somehow at the same time being slow-changing enough to carry the emotional weight of shoegaze. The second track, “Dream in Lines”, is an aggressive, more metal-informed rocker, and the third is a power ballad that absolutely sealed the deal for me in terms of loving this album.

Other high points include the uptempo thrash jam “Breathe” and “Water”. Again infusing the metal, djenty mute strum guitar with soaring vocals and heavy backing harmonics, this record continues again and again to deliver head-banging jams that touch and heal a deep sadness in the soul. “Water” is a darker exploration, starting with a heavy chunky two-guitar & bass instrumental, virtuous breaks, and expansive echo and reverb. The band sounds like they are playing in the middle of an interstellar arena, fists human and alien in the sky.

The album sticks the landing with the penultimate track “Beyond the Scope”. This incredible song starts slowly, but upon reaching a turn, goes double-time as the melody and music climbs in pitch at 100 seconds in. This transition takes us into a greater urgency, with sustained, over-flying guitar notes keeping the harmony rich and complex.

Then, the beat drops out and a single guitar chord rings- “My hands are on my ears/They won’t stop ringing” smashes into your brain and your heart. Then again, the building section- “Feeble-minded/I can not decide/in my world, now I know/there’s no such thing as dying/so leave with a goodbye” and into another build and back to the chorus-

“My hands are on my ears/they won’t stop ringing”. I don’t think any lyric can better express the decade than that. If it were somehow possible for this album to end on this song, it would be at the head of this category.

Everything Starts to Be a Reminder (2019) Echodrone

As a former musician, I have a lot of friends who are musicians. I am very brutally honest about my feelings in music and that can make it awkward to have to comment on a friend’s hard work. Echodrone’s latest record made this very easy- the record is simply amazing. Echodrone’s earlier records bounced off of me a bit, but this one has just the right mixture of drone-drenched empty space, ethereal vocals, emotional anguish and euphoria, and a strong connection to the last 10 years in my mind. The tracks are named after the four seasons, starting with Winter and ending with Autumn. Interestingly, the tracks do not really stand out as being separate in my mind, much like how you cannot easily separate a season from another season in the same year.

“Winter” explodes with an epic, cymbal-laden meditation, that continues to grow and grow and expand, then finally becomes quieter, more melodic, and less drony in the second half of the 18 ½ minute song.

“Spring” features a finger-pick echo guitar interspersed with a beautiful co-ed vocal line guiding us down a pathway of different melodic and harmonic ideas. It then enters into a several-minutes long jammy contemplation that is utterly ecstatic to me- synths layered with effects-laden bass and more echo guitar into a full stop.

The best song on the record, “Summer”, begins with a vocal sample into a more or less straight-ahead rock and roll jam. This gives way to a downtempo effects section, then at right after 4 ½ minutes, gives way to a sound I can only call Olympian in hugeness. Fuzz bass, echoing guitars, and multilayered female vocals create this trance-like atmosphere that is rarefied and deeply marked with potent and everchanging imagery at the same time, like cream on top of coffee.

The sound continues to change and becomes quiet again once again with echo guitars carrying the music through. Back to a rhythmic return at 12 ¾ minutes. A synth flute melody flies over the whispered vocals, complex drum patterns- an opine to the end of life’s summer, the bitter sweetness of being old enough to not be hurt anymore by unlikely things failing to fly.

Shoegaze Album of the Decade:

Sunbather (2013) Deafheaven

A single distorted guitar chord progression holding several notes through the chords for changing harmonics, exploding into double kick and even more guitars, into black metal screaming- this is the unmistakable beginning of Sunbather by San Francisco black metal band Deafheaven.

Due to its downtempo sections, overall distorted and layered production, and emotional scope, this album is loved not just by black metal fans but also by shoegaze fans such as myself. It is a perfect example of a successful crossover- not anticipated or forced in any way by the creators- but it just happens to work on so many different levels.

There are really only four songs on this record, the tracks in between them are much needed interludes. Something all Deafheaven songs do very well is compositioning. These tracks play out, in a way, like classical pieces, with many different sections, transitions, themes, changes, openings, closings, callbacks- it’s so incredibly dense and accomplished that you can listen to this album for weeks on end and still be surprised.

“Dream House” is the blazing opener of the record and puts on display everything we love about every song on here. To make this song the first track is insane, simply because of how over-the-top insanely powerful it is. After a brief interlude of just picked echo guitar, a single chord strum, the entire band comes back in a beat later, and this isn’t even the most emotional part of the song. That’s going to be at 7 minutes, 20 seconds in “I watched/It die!!!” screeches the vocalist as a guitar ostinado plays over the key notes that have been presented throughout the song in brutal crystal clarity. Then at 8 minutes- the vocalist and guitar break down, screaming and double picking guitar notes. It is difficult not to cry at this ending- and this is only the first song on the record.

“Sunbather” is both the title track and the album’s dark heart. Thrumming with a complex beat from the start, the other instruments are layered over this like a tangle of vines across an iron fence. Skillful use of double kick and drum fills keeps the band on target as we get to the breaks and turnarounds. The cymbals and guitars swirl creating complex patterns. Listening to this song from far away with extremely poor speakers would sound like static- similar to how Jupiter looks like a pale gold smear- turn up the volume a little, get a little closer, and you see the rich, threatening complexity of the swirling clouds of music and emotion. The song ends with a slow section about ¾ of the way through the 10 minute piece. An unforgettable echo guitar line plays sparsely over drums- invoking a Cure-like gothic sensibility. Then the band comes back in, playing the same melody and expanding upon it, a lighting bolt magnified to a thousand forks and twists going in all directions. It is the melodies at the end of Sunbather that were stuck in my head, unforgettable, after listening to this record. Unlike Dream House, this song ends on a down note, a question- the rest of the album is to give an answer, and incredibly, you will not be disappointed.

“Vertigo” is the longest song on the record at 14 ½ minutes, a blazing, minor key rocker that is meant to emotionally drag us down as far as we can go after Sunbather. The ending of the song invokes the Beatles “She’s So Heavy” before heading into “Windows” an ambient and spoken word piece featuring a drug deal gone bad- unquestionably a node to The Tenderloin, one of the more drug-laden districts in San Francisco and likely location of the band’s rehearsal studios.

Into “The Pecan Tree”, a song that has an seemingly impossible task: To somehow stick the landing of an extremely powerful and emotional record. We are looking for something coming into this track, but we are not totally sure what it is. We need something, but we can only follow the lights. The song opens up with insane double-kick guitar madness, 2 step rhythm, and then at 1:20 we see a glimpse through the storm, a hole of blue, that we can make it to, if we keep on going. Keep on going. Keep on walking. Smashing, swirling guitars and screams return, our view obstructed. Everything seems to be going at maximum at the end of this first section of the song.

At just after 3 minutes, the sonic assault finally begins to slow down, a march tempo into double kick continuous cymbals, back to march tempo, then, at 4 minutes 19 seconds, only picked echo guitar heralds us into the second section. The star of this section is a piano ostinato combined with the echo guitar, with a second guitar playing playful melodies over it. This is the starry night we can now see that the storm has cleared- this is the most optimistic and life affirming music on the record. A found audio recording of a detuned radio signals the ending of this section.

Eventually, this music fades just before four metal beats brings us to the conclusion- an octave-fingering guitar line and screeching vocal that is in my view one of the most awesome emotional turnarounds that I have ever experienced musically. The remaining outro sums up the entire record- life is big, difficult, unknowable, chaotic. Great albums stick the landing- and this ending does so, with incredible energy, on a record that did not even need it. Sunbather. One of the greatest rock records of all time and one of the very few of those albums to come out now, just about half a century after the 60s.

Post Punk Revivalists: The king of indie rock genres in the 00s, post punk was largely set down at the end of the decade with the major acts of the decade releasing milquetoast or downright laughable fare (are we human, or are we dancer?). However, post punk exploded back onto the scene in 2012 with The Money Store by Death Grips. Some returning groups from the 00s did end up releasing fantastic records, Roma 79 and Daughters being my favorites.

Cardinal Star (2014) Roma 79

I discovered north San Francisco bay area band Roma 79 through their single from the 00s, “Gold”, a sort of heavy, post-punk rocker with a few-thousand views on Youtube. I was very surprised when they reunited and recorded this followup album, which was one of my favorite records of 2014. Featuring a good amount of synth and dreampoppy guitar lines, the main standouts are the vocals and the brilliant drumming, which is a hallmark of great post-punk records of the 00s such as Fever to Tell or Turn On the Bright Lights. The strongest single on the record, “Seventeen”, features a complex drum lines, interlaced with vocals and synths. The song slowly builds up in emotional intensity and drops in layers of vaguely Phil Collins-esque drums and backing vocals, blossoming into a powerful meditative love song. “I’ll wait for it with you.” The final song on the record, is almost an answer to this track, closing the record on a strong point.

You Won’t Get What You Want (2018) Daughters

Daughters is another post-punk band that returned to release a followup nearly 10 years later with 2018’s “You Won’t Get What You Want”. Like all great post punk records, there are a number of characters in this room, and they all can be heard, each having their moments in the spotlight and their moments in the shadows.

One such character is the drums. A crushing combination of live and multitracking effects create a rhythm that provides both the constant heartbeat required by driving rock and roll based music, but also the texture, the complexity, that we seek out in the genre. Lots of tom toms used to keep the beat as opposed to cymbals, practically no hat. Invoking Killing Joke, except when they don’t want to right away, but bring it in later.

Another character is the vocals. Spoken word/sing song type delivery, where the mood and the words and more important than the melody. Lyrics invoke isolation, depression, contraction, abandonment, decline. It would almost be enough with just that, these drums and vocals- but this will also be added by another character, the music. The music seems to be generated mostly by guitar and bass, but there are clearly some synthesizer elements as well, used sparingly and to great effect. I can’t really describe the guitar tone, I would say, it shimmers, but not in an enlightening way. It’s like flashes in the dark, disorienting more than illuminating. The sound is like wood coming off a circular saw. It’s definitely this guitar sound that draws people into this record. All elements are moody, dark, aggressive, but it’s the guitar that really lays down flashes over the blackness.

“Satan in the Wait”, one of the best single tracks on the record, features an off-balance drum beat, carried by toms, and an air-raid siren like guitar sound. A throbbing, distorted bassline in time with the kick drum. At 1:30 in we are given a guitar riff that is beautiful and invoking of a banjo, lending a sensation of urban, southern gothic emotions. Horror film soundtracks come to mind, a combination of unsettling ambience and clear, unforgettable melodies. “Their Bodies are open” the chorus goes, making me think of world-ending events, a transformational death as seen in Arthur C. Clarkes Childhood’s End.

Another of my favorite tracks, “Daughter”, begins with a “bela legosi is dead” kick and snare rim drum beat, possibly electronic, along with a shimmery, surf-rock toned guitar riff. As the song proceeds, more elements are dropped in, and the drums are of particular note here, at 1:23 or so, they drop into a complex beat involving toms, cymbals, and snare. At 2:05 they drop in a clear guitar riff on top of raw noise, building to a climax with the vocal “There’s a war!” At this point, the noise drops out, just a clear guitar riff reminiscent of “Satan in the Wait”, drums coming in at 3:15 or so are particularly impactful.

The final track, “Guest House”, opens on a nearly unbearable sonic assault, the lyrics invoking somebody trapped outside of a bomb shelter during an apocalypse. Once again the gap between unbearable noise and beautiful melody is bridged, as the final dissonant chords give way to deep, harmonic, peaceful orchestra swells.

Post Punk Album of the Decade:

The Money Store (2012) Death Grips

The first time somebody played “Get Got” for me, it was during a really chillwave phase in my music taste and I was completely lost, and didn’t really understand what people saw in Death Grips. I was intrigued enough though, and circled back on some tracks from Exmilitary, their prior record. The more laid back tone and empty space present in tracks such as “Culture Shock” kept me interested enough to give The Money Store another shot a year or so later.

As my interest in chillwave started to fade, and I sought more emotional substance to my music, I returned to the Money Store, and was hooked. Each track is a relentless blast of aggressive drum beats, synthesizer driven melodies, and of course the unmistakable rap vocals of MC Ride.

A strong comparison for me, is between this record, and Joy Division’s second and final record, “Closer”. Relentless beats, but never getting boring, always inventing new rhythms to cast a texture over the musical landscape. Short, fast songs, transitioning from one beat and tempo to the other, never giving you a chance to catch your breath.

The music is highly influenced by hip hop, appearing to be a chopped and cut style, with synthesizers combined with production on the vocals, adding vocals, filter sweeps, reverses, etc- so much energy and craft went into creating what is on its surface very simple music- drums, vocals, and production. Standout track “Hustle Bones” does a fantastic job of expressing what is so great about every song on this record. Everything barely makes sense, but then it all comes together in a singular moment that anybody can nod their head to.

MC Ride’s best is on display in the classic hit, “I’ve Seen Footage”. In his relentless, attacking rap style, he tells us the story of watching gore or wtf videos from reddit or 4chan (or Stile Project if you’re really old like me)- describing what he’s seen, and then underscoring that with the chorus, “I stay noided”- the character Ride creates is deeply anxious and paranoid, while at the same time being insatiable in the quest for knowing more, something I believe is nearly universal to the experience of the internet-informed human, a phenomenon that would later in the decade lead to diseases thought dead brought back by anti-vax movements, and the election of conspiracy theorist and popularizer Donald Trump as president of the united states.

And that’s the formula to each track on Money Store- working around something more or less literal, Ride’s poetry brings us into the dark state the world was only beginning to enter at the start of the decade.

Closing track “Hacker” opens with a recording of Ride, yelling, presumably at a concert “No ins and outs!!! You come out, your shit is GONE”, then into a 4-on the floor dance beat to end the record on an absolute banger. The music, carried by the beat and Ride’s systematic delivery, is left to its own devices, with glitchy, cut-off synth arpeggios, everything getting out of the way of the beat. “Having conversations with your car alarm”, “you speak with us in certain circles, you will be dethroned or detained”, and “Gaga can’t handle this shit” are some of the lyrical gems that Ride has saved for last here, closing out a post punk record that stands alongside Closer or Turn on the Bright Lights as one of the best of all time.

#music postpunk shoegaze retrowave vaporwave ambient darkambient dreampop nothingmusic whirr deafheaven astronoid deathgrips

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borkasaurusrex · 7 years ago

Text

(D·N·C) SEASON 1 | EPISODE 3 | "TESSIE"

"Listen closely, for this assignment could potentially cost you half your grade. You don't want to flunk this class because you weren't listening, do you?"

His eyes grazed the dark classroom, a couple students shaking their head nervously when it came around to them. The room was especially dark, almost as if the lights were dimmed on purpose. Under all those shadows were old wood and vintage decorations, from the peeling wallpaper to an entire shelf full of dusty cobwebs, clearly never used. It smelled, looked, and felt old.

Hell, it was old. Probably.

Just like the teacher. Actually, that's not entirely true - he looked mid-age, if not a little more. He was wearing a gray shirt, a gray tie, a gray smile. He looked pretty average, actually - except for his smooth, almost stupidly bald head.

Like, really bald. Like... King Neptune bald, is what we're talkin' here.

But... uh, anyway, the teacher returned his eyes to the center of the room, muttering, "Good." Before taking a piece of chalk from his desk and writing on the board, it letting out the occasional screech.

A hand raised up from behind, from in his peripheral vision.

"What is it, Mr. Moore?" He didn't even turn around.

"Uh... yeah... so... I kinda got a concussion the other day, Mr. Ahlquist , so uh... I'm not gonna be able to do the paper," Weston said. " Just so you, uh, kno -"

"You've already used that excuse before, Mr. Moore. Try again."

"I... uh... got the flu?"

"Already used that."

"Chicken pox?"

"Next."

"Mad Cow Disease?"

"Give me a break.

"... Uh... butt herpes?"

"One more word out of you and you'll be spending your afternoon in my class," Ahlquist warned, tone stern. "Not. A. Word."

"..."

"... Calculus?"

-~-

RRRRRING!

"- All I'm saying is, if she wasn't the sister of the worst Axe-scented homophobe on the planet... I might be into her," Axel said, "But... well, you can see why that may be a turn-off."

"But... Ax! Didn't you see her bazookas?" Weston asked.

"... Did you mean 'bazongas'? Not... not that I'm listening to your misogynistic toss or anything..." Evanna grumbled.

"No, I meant bazookas. Y'know, like the thing the army uses that blows the shit outta third world countries? That kind of thing."

"You're... going to need to need to be more specific."

Weston laughed, slapping Evanna's back a little too hard, hard enough that she almost dropped her phone. She looked up at him, brows deep and teeth bared like an injured animal. Weston took his hand off her back fast.

"Uh... well... carry on!" He took a big step forward in front of the other two, and kept on walking. Axel and Evanna did the same.

The three teens strolled down one of the many halls of Calcheri Valley High, dozens of students, lockers, and doors of generally the same colors behind them as they made their way down. The air was alive with the slamming of lockers, the bickering and back-and-forth of friends and even the pale blue anti-drug posters (somehow) poorly pinned to the walls. Weston skidded to a stop in the middle of two bathroom doors, right in front of a particularly tall water fountain. Being five foot three... it was going to be a challenge.

"That's okay..." he whispered to himself. "I like a good challenge."

"It's just a water fountain, mate," Evanna said, coming to a stop next to Axel. "Like... hell. It's not even that tall."

"Oh, right, to you it's not 'that tall'. To you. Well... try walking in my shoes for a second here - "

"I can't," she replied. "They wouldn't fit."

" - You don't have a problem getting up there. You don't, because you don't have what I have. This... curse. This painful infliction. I simply wish to take a sweet and savory sip from the heavens above, but to you, a giant with the privilege to match - "

"I'm two inches taller than you!"

"Ah, so you admit it! Two inches. Two! Five centimeters! Eighty... eighty millimeters?"

"Fifty, actually," Axel said, "Fifty millimeters."

"Why don't you get on him then, huh?" Evanna asked, gesturing towards the brunette at her side. "He's, like, a whole foot taller than you, and yet you're not getting on him - "

" - I'm only five foot ten, Evanna, I'm not - "

"Ax isn't taller than me, he's... he's borrowing the inches from a friend," Weston interrupted. "I thought you'd know that."

"... Who would that be, then?"

"Oh, Abraham Lincoln. Duh."

"Oh, of course," Evanna scoffed, crossing her arms. "Silly me."

"I know, right?" Weston agreed, pressing the front of the fountain and taking a couple gulps of the thin stream ahead.

"Oh, speaking of Lincoln... what were you guys going to do for Ahlquist's project?" Axel asked. "Y'know, the project?"

"I was gonna eat it," Weston said, mid-gulp. "You?"

Evanna groaned. "Ugh, of course you were..."

"I was going to use barbecue sauce. I'm not an animal." He winked at her, then returned to his aqua.

"I was going to write about Wilson, considering that, compared to the long-run of racists this country's had in office, he seemed a little... well, less," Evanna said. "What about you?"

"I was going to do it on him too, actually. Not because of the whole non-racist thing but, you know... that is a plus." Axel turned over to Weston, adding, "Who are you going to do, Weston?"

"Probably nobody tonight," Weston replied. "I don't have any condoms, remember? Ran out."

"Weston."

"Just kidding, just kidding... I don't have any idea actually. I don't even know fucking anything 'bout the men and men who've run this shitshow, now that I'm thinking about it..."

"Pschh. Figures," Evanna muttered.

"Hey, it's not my fault that all the shows and stuff 'bout that junk are about as fun as a shitting koala, and even then, the koala would be more fun to look at!" Weston said. "I mean sure, it would... oh, it would be messy... but, hey, beats staring up a bunch of old powder wigged butts or whatever the fuck they - "

"Oh, lookie who we have here!"

Axel gulped. Hard. "Oh, crap in a hat."

Behind the three teens were three teens, though much different than our protagonists. One was huge, a Goliath of a boy with a quiff that would put Brendan Urie to shame. One was a little smaller but still fit, skin as black as his dreads and jacket as white as Nixon. The last, the one in front, was a guy. He was tall, slender, skin pale and his brown hair somehow paler. His lips were almost impossibly thin, like a slit on his face, deep facial creases under his eyes despite not looking much older than the students to his left and right. He grinned, a sort of sinister smile that could only come from a prison warden or schoolyard bully.

It's safe to say he probably wasn't the first.

"I'm surprised, ElRite. I thought you said you weren't coming to CVH this year," the boy asked, his hoarse voice making the words sound extra rough. "You weren't lying, were ya?"

"No, I... I wasn't." Axel cleared his throat, adding, "Things didn't turn out the way I thought and now I get to stay here a for a little longer."

"Oh, fun. We'll have to have to hang out sometime," the guy said, "You know. Catch up."

"Uh, I don't - "

"Weston. Come on, man. I know you're better than this. Why don't you leave these pussies and come back to us, to your real friends? C'mon, dude..." The sunken boy looked over at him, trying to smile reassuringly but only making it look fake. "... don't waste high school with them. Waste it with us."

"You know I can have, like, more than three friends... right, Hazen?" Weston asked.

"Then why'd you stop hanging out with us, West?" One of the kids asked from behind: the dreadlocked one.

"Look, it's... I don't have the time, alright? And, 'sides: even if I wanted to go, my schedule wouldn't allow it," Weston turned back to the leader of the pack, Hazen, saying, "Sorry. I'm busy."

Hazen furrowed his brows, hard. "Busy with what?"

"4:00, wallow in self-pity. 4:30, stare into the abyss. 5:00, solve world hunger... tell no one... 5:30, jazzercise. 6:30, dinner with me (I can't cancel that again)... 7:00, wrestle with my self-loathing... I'm booked. Well, if I bumped self-loathing to 9:00, I'd have time to lay in bed - "

"Forget I asked. Jesus Christ, Weston. You and your Jim Carrey references..." Hazen groaned. "See, West, that's why we need you back. All we got are Jobe and his Big Bang Theory jokes and even then those get stale very, very fast..."

The third boy, the huge one, grinned. "Bazoonga."

"Face it, dude. You're miserable without us," Hazen said. "About as miserable as the sad excuses you can hang out with now on a daily basis, anyway - "

"Why don't you just sod off?"

Hazen turned around, slowly, brows high in surprise. He chuckled deep, asking, "... What did you just say?"

"Sod off?" Evanna repeated. "It's like 'fuck off' but, y'know... more British."

"Seelig, if you want to live through your first year of high school I would suggest you - "

"I what? Ask for mercy? Ask for forgiveness? Pray to the gods above that Hazen Rickman, the most overrated git in the Valley, doesn't smite me down to the depths of Hell with his petty insults and laughable quips? Huh? Is that what you'd suggest?"

The two guys behind Hazen look at him mouths open, eyes wider than their gaw. Hazen looked far less impressed.

"Well..." he thought for a second. Then, he said, "... at least my father's not a drunk."

"... Was that supposed to offend me?" Evanna asked, pitch on the verge of laughing. "Heh. Try again, mate."

"... Uh... at least my mom's not dead!"

"Try again."

"My brother's not a retarded fag!"

"Oh, ouch. The edge."

"Well..." Hazen paused, then said with a wide grin, "... at least I'm not so fucked up in the head I need a therapist.

Evanna locked eyes with him. If she was upset, she certainly didn't show it. "Well, that's debatable."

"Look, Rickman." She stared up at him, deep into his eyes. "I get it. Your daily life is miserable and nobody loves you so you take it out on kids smaller and more vulnerable than you. Well, let me tell you something, tosser. I may be smaller than you but if you think I'm more vulnerable than your crumbling facade of manhood than I've got news for ya: you're the one that needs therapy, mate. Now get the fuck outta my sight."

Hazen's lackeys were more shook than a tree in Autumn, Hazen so surprised he looked like he was going to scream. He cleared his throat, stuttering out "But... but..."

"Go away before you embarrass yourself more. C'mon guys, let's get to class."

Evanna bumped Hazen's shoulder on the way out, knocking him to the side while strutting right between his two friends, both of them backing up quickly to avoid the same. Axel followed closely, avoiding eye contact, while Weston simply shrugged with a grin and tailed behind the two as they all disappeared around a corner only seconds later.

The dreadlocked one looked up at Hazen, expression just a little bit more than concerned. He gulped when he saw his tightly clenched red fist, and asked, "Uh... hey Haze? You okay, dude?"

Hazen locked eyes with him, grinning a weak yet knowing smile. He chuckled under his breath, deep and airy. Waving his hand slightly towards himself, he muttered in a deep tone, "Come on, guys. Let's get to class..."

-~-

" - all I'm saying is that I don't get why you care so much about some trivial proje - "

"By writing - and praising - the works of a racist, even in something as 'trivial' as a school project, you're excusing his actions and pretending he did nothing wrong when, in fact, that couldn't be farther from the bloody truth," Evanna explained. "Do you get it now?"

Axel frowned... but nodded. "Yeah. I guess."

"Good. While I know we're going to have to do more research it is for a better cause. Well, better than glorifying some jizzrag with a hard-on for racism, anywa - "

"I heard hard-on and jizz!" Weston popped his head in from the open door, smiling wide. "What're we doing?!"

"Working on Ahlquist's project," Evanna said. "Unlike you."

"But... but I thought we were...?" Weston grumbled, hanging his head low. "... well, my boner's gone."

"Could you maybe help us out?" Axel asked. "Just a bit? We still need to find a fourth article for citing if you want to help us work on- "

"Work? Ugh."

"You're going to have to do something eventually," Evanna said, "You don't want to fail, do you?"

"Well... I can think of worst things."

"Weston."

"I was just jokin'... ha..." Weston stepped into the door frame, chuckling under his breath. "I would love to do that whole "work excited" thing Ax. What's... what's it for?"

"It's pretty simple, actually," Axel replied. "You basically have to "show" your work for how you got the answers you've gotten. You know, like sharing the link to an article you used or some book you don't know, you just put it in the works cited page so the teacher knows you didn't cheat, or whatever. You don't even need to put all the sources you used, you just have to... just..."

"He's gone, isn't he?"

Evanna didn't even need to check. She groaned. "Big surprise, ain't it?"

"Look, we'll... we'll do it ourselves, alright?" she said, looking up at her project partner. "He wants to throw away his chance of passing this class, well... it's his loss. It doesn't have to be ours too, y'know."

"You're right, Evanna. Thanks."

"'Course I am. Now, let's just get this thing done, aye? Before something even more annoying happens..."

-~-

"Toss the rope, Jobe. Now."

The hugely muscular boy looked down at the coiled bundle of rope in his hands, then back up at Hazen. "Why?"

"Do we really have to go over this again? Really?" Hazen sighed heavily, facepalming himself. "... Fine. But try to fucking listen this time, okay?"

"West has... lost his way. So we, being the amazing friends we are, are gonna help him get back on the "right path" so to speak," he explained, "And so that brings us where...? That's right, it - "

"ElRite's house, right?" the dreadlocked guy asked, patting a nearby window frame. Sure enough, the three teens were outside of the ElRite residence, the evening sun making the pale green house look even paler somehow than usual. They were on the side of the house, away from any doors and windows except for one. But it didn't really matter. They were curtains over it, anyway. "Oh... wait. That was a rhetorical question, wasn't it?"

Hazen glared at him, letting out a small sigh. "At least all of you aren't stupid..."

"As I was saying. Revenge is a dish best served cold most of the time but it doesn't have to be cold. It can be... smokey." He drew out a small spherical object from inside his pocket, like a fusion between a grenade and a GameSphere. "The plan is simple. We use the rope to scale the house and, once on the roof, we drop this little friend of ours down the chimney and get the fuck out of here faster than Cameron's erectile dysfunction. Got it?"

The dreadlocked one, Cameron, sneered. "I get it. Your insult was low, but I get it."

"Heh, literally." Hazen turned to his hugely muscular friend, asking, "What about you, Jobe? Ready?"

Jobe looked down at him, with literally no emotion on his face. "Ready for what?"

"Fucking Jesus, you're useless. You know, whatever, whatever. It doesn't matter. Let's quit this bullshit and focus on what really matters. What we're here for." Hazen grinned, his smile ear-to-ear and so filled of malice it looked positively sinister. "Let's get out friend back."

-~-

"- and I'll be back before you know it."

"You don't gotta go, Ax," Weston said, leaning against the bedroom wall with a CapriSun in hand. "I'll go get it pronto, just... uh... Eve, hold my juice."

"I'd rather not."

"I'm only going to be gone for half an hour, tops," Axel said. "I'll just bike my way to Staples, get some laminated paper and be back before you know it."

"Oh, I know it alright." Weston sniffed dramatically, saying, "How can I live, how can I thrive, without my best friend by my side? What can I do, how can I cope, why should I live without Ax's hope?"

Evanna groaned. "We get it, Dr. Seuss. You can sto - "

"Where can I go? Below or above? How can I leave this place without his juicy love?"

"You can leave Axel," Evanna said, jerking her thumb towards Weston. "He's just being stupid."

"Oh. Okay. I'll, uh, be seeing you then."

"Ditto. Bye."

SLAM!

"Where did he go? Over here, over there? I'll need some relief, maybe in Eve's underwea - "

"OKAY WE'RE STOPPING THIS RIGHT NOW."

-~-

"Alright. Toss me the bomb, Cam."

Cameron craned his head back, looking down at the circular bomb in his hand and up at Hazen. "I've got to throw it to you? All the way up there? What if I miss or something?"

Hazen looked down from far, far up above. He was up on the roof, kneeling on a particularly flat section that barely had enough room for both feet. Even from that far up, his expression looked impatient at best. "If you miss, then this whole operation - and the guy next door - goes up in smoke. So, don't miss. Besides, you won't miss. You were in, like, baseball weren't you?"

"You're thinking of Michaels. I was never in baseball," Cameron said, leaning against a wall-side breaker.

"Yeah you were. You were... fuck. What's it called? The catcher? The..."

"Umpire?"

"Yeah, yeah. The umpire. Wasn't that you?"

"No. That wasn't even Michaels, that was Abe."

"... You sure?" Hazen asked. "I could've sworn that, in eight grade, you were catching the balls or something. Weren't you the guy who threw the baseball into Lucas' drink? I could've sworn that - "

"Dude, that was Sikes."

"No shit? Well, y'know, whatever. Black people all look the same anyway."

"Oh my God, oh my God. I hope you're not being serious."

"Heh, I'm never serious. Unless, y'know, I need to. Like right now." Hazen waved up towards himself, saying, "Enough chatter, we've got to do this now. Throw up the 'nade, Cam/Michaels/Sikes/whatever the fuck your name is..."

"I hate you." Cameron reached his arm back, bracing his arm... but didn't released. "Real quick, dude: you've got everything ready? Rope tight and all?"

Hazen tugged on the rope tied - and literally glued - to his ankle, leading all the wall to a gutter a couple of yards away from the teen. "Yep. Ready to fuck 'em up."

"Cool. Alrighty. Then here, we go - !" He winded his arm up, brought it back and then -

"Fuck dude, there's someone coming!" he cried out, dropping the bomb into the grass below.

"Shit! Who is i - "

"Some fuck on a bike! Quick, hide! Hide!" Cameron sprinted away at high speeds, disappearing around the corner. Jobe slowly followed.

"Wait, don't... don't... fuck." Hazen leaned his head forward, his partners in crime no where to be found. "Well. Guess it's on me now..."

-~-

"So, what do you think?"

Evanna leaned over his shoulder, glancing down at the two page report sprawled out on the computer's cluttered word document. It was messy, formless, littered with more typos than commas, yet...

"It's... not bad," Evanna said. "Sure, could use some polish (definitely use some polish) but... good job, Axel."

"You really think so? Oh, thank God." Axel gave a happy sigh of relief, adding, "When you work on a report like this all by yourself for three hours and without a word processor with an automatic saving system it... it's really a relief it turned out okay."

"Wait... wasn't Weston supposed to help you?"

"Eh... supposed to's the key word there..."

"I... I'm going to go talk to him," Evanna said, leaning up straight. "I could force him to write the introduction, or the works cited page, or something. I'll make sure he doesn't get out doing this the 'Weston Way' again."

"Thanks Evanna. That means a lot."

"Mhmm." She turned her back on the brunette, strolling out of the dim office room but not before adding, "Oh, and for the love of the sodding Maker, Axel, save at some point, okay?"

"Don't worry. I just got one paragraph to go and then, boom. Instant A. Or B."

"C, most likely," Evanna said, her voice disappearing as she walked out the door. "I mean, c'mon. I'm just being realistic."

With a creaky Slam! Axel was by himself, nothing in the study except for him and a computer so old Dumbledore would shit himself.

"Alrighty then. Just... one. More. Paragraph..."

-~-

Around 12:00 a.m. is when the ElRite's little corner of Calcheri Valley gets lots of three things. Lots of wind, lots of dark, and lots and lots of cold.

And by lots of cold, I mean lots.

Which is probably why the now-shaking Hazen Rickman kept leaning his head over and around his corner of the roof, trying to find something - anything - to get back down but... alas. There was none.

He thought about using the rope to shimmy down, but no. It was attached to his sneaker rather... well... permanently. Or as permanently as half a tube of gorilla glue can be, anyway.

Why was the rope glued to his shoe in the first place? Well... he kind of forgot.

But it wasn't important. Definitely not anymore.

The stranded teen grumbledsilently, cursing himself, his friends, everything under his breath. "It's not bad enough that the plan's ruined... oh no, the universe just so happened to decide that I was gonna spend the entire night on top of a fuckin' cold as balls roof. Alone. With a rope glued to my shoe... with a rope glued to my fuckin' shoe..."

"Well... got to get down sometime..." he craned his head, measuring the distance he would have to jump to get to the next corner of the roof. Sure, it's still on the roof, but right next to a window. An open window. "'Sides, what's the worst that could happen?"

Looking down at his feet, and the wobbling guttar below, he made his first step, wide and cautious. It creaked, but didn't give. He gave another step, wider and slightly less careful. No give. Giving a sigh of relief, he lifted his foot to take that third step... when it hit.

No, not his foot. A gust of wind.

A really, really big gust of wind.

Hazen could barely hold in a cry as his foot slid across the metal, his weight practically throwing himself. He tumbled over, falling over twenty feet down. He screamed his head off, letting off every swear in his vocabulary... yet his body didn't go straight down. It was, sure, but the rope attached to his foot jerked him forward, causing the brown haired bully to swing headfirst into the side of the house, straight into the exposed, looming circuit breaker.

"AW SHIIIIIII - !!" Was all that came out of the boy before he flew forward at full speed towards the outstretched electricity box, body tighter than lead as he braced for collision...

-~-

"Aaand, there." Axel smiled, scrolling up his word document. "Now, if I can just print this thing - and save - then I'll be good to - "

He was interrupted by a sudden absolute darkness, his lights flickered out and his computer shut completely down. He knew what happened. He knew, with his body shaking with pain and despair, exactly what fucking just happened.

The power. It went out.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU - !! "

-~-

RRRRRING!

"So, how'd your essay go?"

Weston gave a weak chuckle. "Just... just great."

"Really? How so?"

"I presented that one story I told you guys 'bout yesterday. Y'know, the one about the cyborg ninja and his ball-chucking boyfriend?"

Axel groaned at that. "Ugh, don't remind me... did Ahlquist like it?"

Weston chuckled again, loud and proud. "I have detention for the next two weeks."

"He hated it that much?" Evanna asked, stepping out of the way of a couple of oncoming students.

"Well... uh, you see..." Weston flashed a wide grin, almost whispering, "I drew pictures."

"Say no more, Weston. Please, say no more..."

Evanna and Weston chuckled, the three disappearing around the corner and out of the overcrowded afternoon school hall. Coming in from the exact same corner were three other teens, but pretty much the opposite of before. Cameron and Jobe walked solemnly, the former pushing a wheelchair sat by Hazen Rickman, covered neck to toe in a full body cast that enveloped the boy like a gum wrapper. And, despite that, he was talking the most.

" - fuckin' ElRite..." he grumbled, jittering slightly from the bumps below. "You'd think slipping off the roof and slamming face first into a breaker was bad enough, but nooo... apparently my body didn't like to be jock full of thousands of volts of electricity. Big surprise, huh?"

"Yup," Jobe said. "Surprise."

"Where were you guys, anyway?" Hazen asked, rough and angry. "You never came back for me. Never. Not fucking once."

"Well, after we were spooked... we realized we were kinda hungry too, and went to the Hairy Italian for a quick munch. Natural instincts, you know," Cameron said.

Jobe grinned. "It was Sausage Saturday."

"But hey, dude," Cameron said, "You handled it all pretty well by yourself, 'sides the 'whole shocking your entire skeleton out of your asshole' business, but still."

"... I guess that's true," Hazen said, "I didn't drop the bomb. I didn't do that. I did drop something else, though... myself.

"I mean, I tried to get down safety, I did," he continued, "But with the rope glued to my shoe, it was pretty much... why the fuck did we do that, anyway?"

"We thought it'd... hey, wait a second." Cameron stopped walking, Jobe and Hazen coming to a stop. "Why didn't you just take off your shoe? Y'know, the one with the glue on it."

Hazen looked forward, an intense realization in his eyes equal parts wonderment and fear. "... Why... didn't I... ?"

" - Take the shoe off?" Cameron finished for him. "I could do it for you, if you want."

Hazen glanced at him side-eyes style, a slow creeping smile building on his cheeks. "Well... Cam. That would've been great and all except for the part where you weren't FUCKING THERE!"

Cameron looked down sheepishly, eyebrows scrunched. "I... I thought'd you want a slice of 'za."

"Oh oh oh you thought'd I'd like a slice of 'za? YOU THOUGHT'D I'D LIKE A SLICE OF 'ZA?! YOU KNOW WHAT I WOULD'VE LIKED, CAM? HMM? IS TO HAVE GOTTEN OFF ELREEK'S fUCKING ROOF WITHOUT BEING SHOCKED NINETY-NINE FUCKIN' TIMES LIKE FRANKENSTEIN'S LITTLE FUCKING BITCH! YOU... YOU... THINK, CAM! JUST FUCKING THINK, OKAY?"

"... Does that mean you don't want your slice?"

"DO YOU THINK I WANT THE FUCKING SLICE? DO YA, CAM? DO YA?!"

"... Is that a no?"

#dnc #school shenanigans #circumcision

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sole-cuore-amore-e-droga · 6 years ago

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Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Czech Republic to Eurovision with an unexpected geographical sight name

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Another year, another Czech attempt at a national final that wasn’t televised also BUT this time we got some excitement announcements out of them - even if they were blatantly boring, kind of.

Keep in mind though that I know that the revamp's out, BUT this whole review is just me reviewing the version we all witnessed back when ESCZ hit. The one and only.

So the NF’s here because we saw Mikolas succeed from it the last time (eventhough it’s just a secret internal selection for just the Mikolas’s song and there’s no no denying hihihi), right? And thanks to that we got pseudo-official-but-not-so-official hotel music videos of each contestant’s songs just in case they decide to... like... change it for something different. Like those lyric videos last year. Eventhough they looked so very lowbudget this year, I still liked them to some degree, and eventually I had to witness this one video (set in presumably mostly the living room) where the lead singer confettis all over himself win this year (well not really the video as much as I only got to first hear that song on ESCRadio hahaha). Well, just the lead singer of it. As the buddies were on the other official video (the one I’ll talk about in my revamps update I guess but has anything changed other than the singer singing one of his talking parts?). As a whole the Czech entrants this year are known as Lake Malawi (it exists) and “Friend of a Friend” is their A-game! Let’s listen!

I liked it ever since my first acknowledgence(??) of it through ESCRadio. It reminded me of those happy-clappy 80s synth sounds (eventhough the 80s songs were mostly about gloom and doom), somehow somewhat mixed in with a bit of that ‘modern’ synthpop sound from the British music scene (Years & Years maybe? Nah that’d be too far-fetched). The lyrics, while cheap enough, at least paint a bit of a picture? I don’t think the person in the song was “making love” to his ‘old’ neighbouress back when she was 13, anyway. She’s, afterall, the “friend of a friend”. Who is a friend of a friend. Who is a friend of a friend. Who is a friend of a friend’s COUSIN~

The thing is that some songs out here are enjoyable besides their lyrical content. Or even without the singer’s background (still looking at those who’re shading Sheppard’s family business - shut up and enjoy “Geronimo” in peace, geez!). I, for example, jammed to RiRi’s “S&M” for my lifetime - yes, even since when it got big, and the pop music was being made to sound trashy, and not like something that sounds too somber and ‘foggy’, and with lyrics from r/im14andthisisdeep, and then later slapped on those a e s t h e t i c moodboards with tulips and liquid (of colour blue/red) splashed onto them to make it loof more effective, and placed in front of a yellow background on a white table. I miss late 2000s-early 2010s pop a whole lot, because at least it had fathomable-to-the-ear hits of the time - cheap, fast food, techno melodies with overproduction and lyrics that actually mean something more intimate and grotesque (with sometimes even hinting to the love surface) - that was the shit. Now it’s just drowsy stuff with blurry melodies and lamentings of lost love and devotion in an equally slurry, pathetic, vocal whine. I’m so tired of it. It’s unsettling. Get it off me. And thankfully, none of that invades this small little bubble of Eurovision’s just as of now (unlike the other pathetic musical cliche of nowadays that’s Soundcloud rap - ‘thanks’ a lot USNK). And I guess I shouldn’t be blessed that Lake Malawi brings this “this bangs but the lyrics are... a choice, but it still bangs so idc” back onto Eurovision? Like, come on, we all have had such kinds of songs like those all of that time. From “I Can’t Go On” (a man being a slut for love???) to countless of national final shlocks made by these usual suspects from rent-a-songwriter corner, ESPECIALLY in the 00s, to some of those actual 00s entries that made it - so stupid to sing along to, yet so infectious you can’t drag your earworm out of your ear canals just now. What does “Friend of a Friend” have for itself? Keyboard melody in the 2nd half of the chorus that is easily stuck in MY head, with a female voice (I assume it’s the song’s protagonist’s subject of speech - the neighbourina herself) reassuring that “[she’s] only [his] friend” - not in a “haha I’m friendzoning you forever >:)” way, but “ehhhh there’s truly nothing between us as he says, we’re just friends, not lovers, don’t give me that look” way. Sure it’s believable, sure. It might as well turn out that these neighbours are indeed doing the same thing as in all those local anecdotes where a family’s mother or father has an affair with a next-door neighbour for shits and giggles to move the joke’s plot forward.

So it is, as a whole, a fun little throwback-ish piece of fine and smooth music, accompanied with the lead singer’s ‘British’ ‘accent’ (aha so this is why I get a lot of British radio vibes from this - not to mention, tropical beach ones too for some reason!), some sort of spoken dialogue, energy and the ability to raise you up from your seat the 45875th time you’re actually giving in to all of this. You know you want to, despite this song possibly not being your cup of tea. But I see you, and I look forward to seeing you bopping to this fully in May, no matter if this isn’t Mikolas you’re dealing with anymore, and no camel spaghetti. Ahw yeah!

Approval factor: Although it’s also slowly wearing off me like it already wore off everyone else back then, I’m still giving it one hell of an approval. Yay!

Follow-up factor: I definitely like it more than “Lie to Me” as well. Somewhat. Honestly. Don’t bash me in secret.

Qualification factor: the naysayers are saying this will flop but imo they’re mostly just upset that Barbora didn’t go (even if they were only still upset back in the say), STILL. Ugh can’t they just leave. I am positive about this song’s chances somewhat, just hoping it gets a really memorable and stand out staging and maybe it will escape this hellhole of its semi. Not very confident, just positive. (Also they rocked the Vidbir stage so hard even the uncomfortable question queen Dramala couldn’t not give in the dance, lolz.)

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

Honestly, the best possible thing that came out of this NF was the oh-so-unexpectedly-expected winner choice, and it is like this because, yet again, people couldn’t get over Barbora losing at first, to which I’m like “to be quite honest, you were all into it because that’s the closest thing to Lana del Rey you’d ever get in Eurovision because Lana herself is American and America should NOT set their foot into ESC... besides, she wouldn’t probably do it anyways”. ESCZ wasn’t pretty bad of a NF honestly:

• people actually laughed at the fact every single video of this NF is so low-budget that it looked like it was all filmed in the same hotel room! (in reality I’m just jealous at the slick-ass hotels they’ve had on there, feels like someone’s house more than a hotel actually)

• Pam Rabbit, one of Mikolas’s last year’s backings, brought the second-best NF song this year imo (Barbora for me is likeable but not to THAT degree, lol calm yer tits), as it was a lowkey bop and I can’t not appreciate one!

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(her officially official MV is here but in the spirit of this NF’s, you’re gonna have to subject yourself to this above in order to witness spectacular budget-MVs that happened for this NF especially, come on. Hardly a cool NF without its own little perks!)

• Fine, I’ll bring up Barbora Mochowa too. I gotta say she DOES sound like Queen Bee Lana, same to say on her earlier works which, among them, has one enchanting and haunting forest-like ballad. “True Colors”, her ESCZ entry, is just a pop ballad, which is not THAT bad, it’s just that... did y’all see any more in that song beyond the Lana vocals? Sure sure the melody is pleasant but... did ya?

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(Lord alive, she also has a live video for this song on her channel, which is in fact the ESCZ’s unplugged version video!)

• The ex-ESC entrant jury is back for another year! This time though, the votes of all of the participants in it were all up and public (unlike secrety mcsecret ones from 2018 where I’m not even sure if the Eurojury panel was correct), and most of them were #TeamMalawi or #TeamBarbora... up until AWS (yes AWS are relevant enough for their own panel!), being the “wait do we still have to do Eurovision related things??? it’s sooooo 1 year ago already, let us go goddammit!!” type of participants that they are, totally and utterly half-arsing their own experience in there by 12ing Andrea Holá. The thing is that she’s first alphabetically from the artists so that’s probably the best possible theory why. “GIVE ME A HINT, ANDREA!!!”

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• The best part? The NF itself taking place in the second floor of an abandoned warehouse somewhere in Czech Republic (Czechia go to hell), in the middle of the day, with no live performances, just that video above played in full motion and some random people speaking in between. Silly of them to leak my ideal NF design location if I ever were a Lithuanian HoD. And yes, it was streamed on Facebook, the platform that I can barely play livestreams on my 11-year-old laptop on, while suspiciously enough, it worked for FiK 56... which meant that I was barely able to grasp a screenshot but I managed!

Well of course I didn’t get to watch much but after someone said Lake Malawi (or, in their words, Lake Malala <333) won, I almost believed it until I found out that the show’s still going... and only saw the thing on the projection screen later out of nowhere. IDK who’s hugging who and if that audience on the right are all the participants then I may have an idea but for now IDK. Ahh, relevant video media being projected on projection screens (duh) <33 giving San Marino, Albania’s Powerpoint scoreboards and Belgian 2013 radio NF runs for their money.

I might find mistakes and off-the-wall blabbers in this write-up later but for now I’ll carelessly submit this beauty to Tumblr today and wish the best of luck to Lake Malawi in Tel Aviv! May you qualify for the 2nd year in a row for CZ ^^

#eurovision 2019 #tel aviv 2019 reviews #czech republic 2019 #lake malawi #friend of a friend #czech republic

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entergamingxp · 5 years ago

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Desperados 3 Review — I’m Your Huckleberry

June 12, 2020 11:00 AM EST

Desperados 3 brings the goods in this reimagining of the classic tactics series.

Desperados 3 is a stealth tactics game featuring a memorable cast of Wild West characters. It’s also an oddly titled prequel to a series that started in 2001. It’s also an example of how effective “less-is-more” storytelling can be, even in a genre that usually puts the narrative on the backburner. Most importantly, Desperados 3 is freaking awesome.

Mimimi Games reinvention of a series that was last seen in 2007 is nothing short of spectacular. The way it mixes diverse, lovable characters, gameplay that feels like a top-notch puzzle game, and one of my favorite mechanics in tactics games is astounding. If you’re looking to get into stealth-based tactics games, Desperados 3 is a game you have to check out.

Let’s first talk about the different characters at your disposal. I think most people have probably played or watched someone play an XCOM at this point. Firaxis Games’ 2012 reboot quickly took the world by storm, and rightfully so. That game is a masterclass in turn-based tactics design. But, one of the biggest joys was making the fully customizable troops into your friends and making up your own story.

Desperados 3 is very much not like XCOM in that regard. This game has named characters with their own skills and personalities. That doesn’t make it better or worse, just different. Personally, I loved getting to know each of the five characters in Desperados. Not only are you slowly mastering their skillset, but you’re also learning what makes them tick.

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“Most importantly, Desperados 3 is freaking awesome.”

The main protagonist of the tale is John Cooper. He’s the face of the franchise and wields dual pistols and his trusty knife. Of the five, his skillset is the most “basic,” making him the kind of everyman you can slot into just about any situation.

Joining him on his journey is one Doc McCoy. This hard-boiled doctor also happens to be an expert marksman. His silenced pistol is both the quietest gun and the one with the longest reach. So, if you need to pick off a foe from afar, he’s your man. His medical bag can also be used as a trap that stuns curious guards for a short time.

Next up is Kate O’Hara. This beautiful lady uses both her charm and nearly silent Derringer to murder her foes. She can also disguise herself and then use her feminine wiles to hold a bandit’s attention, while a teammate sneaks by. In my tabletop role-playing group, I usually end up playing a femme fatale, so Kate quickly became my favorite. Her moveset is just so different from the norm, and she really helps in a pinch as the ultimate support character.

Hector was probably my least used character, though I still adore that lovable goof. His two big calls to fame are his bear trap and his shotgun. If you want to methodically thin out a herd of guards without getting spotting, that bear trap will do the job. And, when things get truly hairy, his shotgun makes people die real good.

The final member of your squad is Isabelle. I mentioned above that Kate has a unique skill set, but hers is really nothing compared to Isabelle. She uses voodoo magic to mind control enemies. You can also blow dart two bandits and then anything that happens to one will happen to the other. This allows you to set up some devilishly fun kills.

As you might imagine, the real fun of the gameplay comes from mixing each character’s skills together. So maybe you chain dart two guys with Isabelle, while you’re distracting another with Kate. Then, to keep you safe from a fourth patrolling guard, you kill the darted duo with Doc McCoy. Those kinds of combinations happen all the time in Desperados 3.

And Mimimi Games know this is where the good stuff happens, too. Because of this, they’ve put in a mechanic they call “Showdown” mode to facilitate some inventive and rad gameplay moments. Basically, whenever you want, you can enter a Showdown, and the whole game stops. This lets you queue up actions for every character in your party.

Say you need to get through an area and there are six enemies in your path. There’s no way to pick them off one at a time because all of their vision cones overlap. If you were to sneak in and knife one guy, his partner would see you and all hell would break loose. While you can manage a few big firefights in Desperados 3, stealth is almost always the best option.

These enemies aren’t pushovers, after all. I mean, you’d hardly call the basic fodder Einsteins, but some of the tougher enemies will give you fits. For instance, Kate’s charm doesn’t work on most of the higher level enemies (or any of the women). And the toughest enemy – the “Long Coat” – will take multiple hits to take down by anyone besides Hector. You’ll need to learn how each enemy interacts with your character’s skills if you don’t want everything to go sideways.

When that happens, it’s time for a good old-fashioned Showdown. By using Showdown mode, you can get all five characters to murder a different person at once. If you plan it correctly, everyone dies in climatic bang and you’re free to continue your business.

It’s both extremely useful and incredibly cinematic. It’s a little like the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral scene in Tombstone, except all the bad guys die at once. So, maybe this band of ne’er-do-wells is more effective than those iconic cowboys? Please, no one tell Kurt Russell I said that.

“At one point I murdered three men in slow-mo with a cannon. How can you not love that?”

You might be thinking, “Well, I have five characters to fight with, surely most of these battles are going to become too easy with Showdown mode, right?” And you’d probably be right, but Mimimi Games made such a smart decision by almost never allowing you to fight with a full party.

Each mission forces you into new combinations of characters as members of the team rotate in and out due to lore reasons. In one mission you’re walking the streets of New Orleans with the unlikely trio of Doc McCoy, Kate, and Isabelle. It’s like the Wild West version of Charlie’s Angels and you get to play as Bosley. Or maybe that was just me.

In the next, you might be trying to stop a train with Hector and Kate. You’re constantly kept on your toes up through the final mission. And that finale is an explosion of carnage that ends in one of the more satisfying conclusions I can remember in video games.

At the top, I mentioned that tactics games don’t often seem to place too much emphasis on their story. XCOM, for instance, lets you make your story, which is unquestionably fun, but at the end of the day, the actual narrative is pretty basic.

Before you get too excited, I’ll say that Desperados 3 isn’t breaking new ground in video games or anything. However, it’s very effective in how it tells its tale. Be warned, I’m going to go into some very minor spoilers in the next four paragraphs, so if you want to go in completely blind, just skip down.

Desperados 3’s story is almost like someone took that mostly throwaway sequence at the end of the first Red Dead Redemption where you play as Jack, turned it into a full video game, and then made it good. Listen, I love the first RDR, but Jack Marston is one of my least favorite controllable characters ever. If I ever have to hear his whiny voice yell “Work ya damn nag!” again, I’m not sure what I’ll do.

That said, Jack Marston and John Cooper share somewhat similar redemption quests. Desperados 3 kicks off with John joining his father James (are all video game cowboys required to have a first name that starts with “J”?) on a bounty hunt for a notorious criminal called Frank. Things happen that I won’t get into and James dies. In the present, John is on a mission to track Frank down and kill him for what he did.

Now, on the surface, that’s a fine story. You can spin that yarn and spin it well. Certainly, in the early-goings, I wasn’t thinking this story would hit that hard for me. However, Mimimi does a few things with the narrative that I want to call out. First, they deliver a twist about halfway through that is one of those things I probably should’ve seen coming, but didn’t. And it floored me because it instantly recontextualizes one of the game’s key relationships in a meaningful way.

The other thing is that your first encounter with Frank sets up the idea that anything can happen with one bullet. It might not land for everyone, but the way they wrap that into the final confrontation was phenomenal. It puts this neat little bow on everything and lets the game finish with a satisfying bang. Pun firmly intended.

Usually, at this point in a review, I would tell you some of the problems with the game. Here’s the problem: I can’t really think of many. Sure, the missions are kind of long, but it’s so easy to quickly save and hop out if you need to stop playing.

“And that finale is an explosion of carnage that ends in one of the more satisfying conclusions I can remember in video games.”

I do wonder if the quicksave and quick load functions will feel as snappy on PS4 and Xbox One. But on PC, it feels nearly instantaneous. The game encourages save-scumming, which leads to you finding inventive solutions to its many puzzles. It feels less like save-scumming and that thing your grandma does when she’s solving a puzzle with you on a Sunday. She has her little area that she’s super focused on and will try and retry every puzzle on that table until she finds the one that fits.

You’re not failing, you’re learning!

See, I try to find something bad to say and it just turns into a positive! I haven’t even talked about how great the pre-mission cutscenes are. Nor did I talk about how hilarious some of the environmental kills are. At one point I murdered three men in slow-mo with a cannon. How can you not love that?

“It is, without question, one of the best games I’ve played all year.”

I haven’t mentioned the post-game screen that shows you watch a sped-up replay of the mission. It’s not a feature you need, but rewatching my playthrough at hyperspeed is always a treat. Heck, I also didn’t even tell you about all the extra challenges you unlock once you beat a mission. If you wanted to, you could dive deep into Desperados 3 and play this game for hundreds of hours.

I mean, I’m sitting here at three in the morning finishing up this review so it can get edited before the embargo and all I can think about is hopping back in. Who even needs sleep? I’ll just dream about vision cones and Hector’s luscious head of hair anyways.

I will say, I’m far from the biggest tactics fan out there. I’ve played a fair number of them and ranked Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden as my Game of the Year in 2018. I might’ve lost a few people with that last sentence who think Red Dead Redemption 2 or God of War should hold that crown.

However, it’s important to remember that it’s okay for you to be wrong. It happens to everybody. Maybe you mistake great production values for a great game. Or maybe you love playing objectively bad gameplay because you like well-acted stories. I don’t pretend to know you. I just know your opinion is the wrong one.

Joking aside, I would definitely consider myself a relatively casual tactics fan. So, I would hesitate to say Desperados 3 pushes the genre forward because I honestly don’t know if it does. That said, everything it does, it does incredibly well. Whether you’re looking to hop into stealth tactics for the first time or you’re an old pro, I would wholeheartedly recommend you check out Desperados 3. It is, without question, one of the best games I’ve played all year.

June 12, 2020 11:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/desperados-3-review-im-your-huckleberry/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=desperados-3-review-im-your-huckleberry

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shesjustyoursoulmate-blog · 6 years ago

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May the Best Win (Chapter 7)

NOTE: The characters do not belong to us, except for Charlotte Agreste and Olivie Vereau. WARNING: Contains adult language, not suitable for young children. Enjoy

————————————————————

Realistic Drama

—Well, now! Stop it!— Max told Chloe and Lila. The students had gathered in the school to be able to film their task. However, more than one hour had passed since the dismissal and they had only managed to record a few scenes, all because of the incessant disagreement between Chloé and Lila.

—My clothes must be orange! —protested Lila.

—Come on, obviously a white or cream suit would contrast with the wall.

—I don't give care! I want my outfit to be orange, AND THAT'S IT!

—Look, Lila, it's my duty to make sure everything is done in the best way possible. And the film will be better if the dress is not orange. Capiche?

—The one who acts is me, not you, Chloe, why can't you understand?"

—The orange is best, why can't you get it!

—If you care so much about color, then go Chloe!

—If I go, we're ruined! My father's a judge in the contest!

—Then I'll go!

—Lila, you're going to ruin your qualification!

—And yours too, which is what matters to ME!

—Now, stop it!—shouted Marinette. —I have already made the dress, and it is not any of these colors! Now, Lila, can you wear it?

Lila looked at her contemptuously, but went to the nearest bathroom to change.

When she came back, they were all waiting.

—What is the next scene, Nino?— asked Max.

—Scene number five ~— sang Lila.

—And have you read it?— asked Alya. —Because you didn't know a thing about the previous scenes.

—Well, of course I do. I can tell you that it ends with a kiss between agent Smith and Officer Jones~.

Oh No. This cannot be happening! thought Adrien.

—I did not write that,— said Alya irritably.

—I wrote it. It was a little change. You know, to advance the story— replied Luka.

—What? Did you change my script without telling me?— Asked Alya.

—You mean OUR script. We're both screenwriters— said Luka.

—Why does it matter who wrote that? We have to shoot this, don't we?— emphasized Lila.

—That's right. We only have permission until 6:00— said Max.

Charlotte took Alya apart.

—Lila can't kiss my brother, there's no way!.

—It just doesn't make sense for the story. The emotional journey of the main character...

—Wait—said Charlotte.

She stood in the middle.

—Don't you think we should consult this?— Besides that we didn't plan that scene, it also has nothing to do with the plot. I don't want everyone's grade to be awful— she said.

—I will go with you— said Chloé.

—So will I— replied Alya.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

4:40 pm.

—Well, what now?— Said Lila.

—You know what? We don't have time to wait. We have to film that scene now— Max insisted.

—But what about the girls?— Rose asked.

—Max is right, we have to film it!—cried Olivie.

Maybe Marinette would spend less time with Adrien and more with Luka!

—But, but...—Adrien stammered.

—And in three, in two, in one, action!— shouted Max with no time to lose.

—I'm not afraid of that terrifying thing, officer "whatever your name is." Now, Kiss Me ~-said Lila.

—Cut!— said Chloe entering the room. —Madame Bustier says that if it is not an important scene for the plot should be made by a secondary character.

—That's not fair! I'll talk to her now— said Lila, going out furiously.

—At least Lila went away—remarked Alya.

—And now, who will do the scene?— said Kim desperately.

—I propose Luka and Marinette!—said Olivie.

—NOOO! Hey, that can't happen!—Adrien whisper-shouted to Charlotte.

—What do you want me to do? I'm out of excuses.

—Well, now! Marinette and Luka, here!— ordered Max. —And in three, two, one, action!

—I'm not afraid of the monster!—yelled Marinette.

—That does not guarantee that we will get out alive— said Luka. That's why...— and he got closer. Pink heart-shaped lights invaded the atmosphere while romantic background music could be heard. Adrien, irritated, saw that the responsible for that was nothing more and nothing less than Olivie, who was in charge of lights and music. Marinette and Luka approached, and approached, and approached...

—Cut!—cried Lila, entering the room. —Nobody takes away my role!— shouted Lila to Marinette.

Luka and Olivie could never have hated Lila any more. While Adrien could never have been happier that Lila was there.

—Calm down, Lila, I didn't try anything bad, the others told me to act, I can... WAAAHH!

Marinette stumbled upon one of the wires that allowed the lighting, falling from behind and banging his head against the wall.

—Marinette! You have to go to the infirmary— cried Alya, worried.

—I'll go with her— Adrien offered.

—Of course not, you're the protagonist with me!— cried Lila.

—I will go, then— said Luka.

—Well, now, go, Luka, we must continue— said Max.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Infirmary of François Dupont, 5:01 pm.

—So tell me Marinette, do you like acting?— Luka asked while Marinette was resting and the nurse was gone.

—I think it's a very nice art, but it's definitely not my thing.

—Oh? What makes you say that?

—I'm very shy, and it makes me nervous to think that many people will see me. Besides, I'm super clumsy, I'm likely to fall off the stage and people will throw tomatoes at me.

—Of course not, Marinette! You're super talented, and one of the nicest people I know. You're amazing— Luka opined.

—Oh, Luka, that's very...

—Well, you can go, girl—said the nurse, entering the room, dispelling that moment between the two children. —Come back if you have any trouble.

—Of course, Madame! Thank you— replied Marinette, and set out to return with Luka.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

5:59 pm.

—Well, we're done!— Max exclaimed, relieved that he had finished filming.—Only the editing is missing.

—Good job, everyone!— Said Alya, also relieved.

—Hey Marinette, do you want to grab an ice cream with me? The Gorilla's not picking me up until later. Things from my father's work— suggested Adrien.

—Sure, that's okay by me—replied Marinette.

While they were leaving, Adrien, excited, raised his thumbs to Charlotte, who was doing the impossible to distract his bodyguard.

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Café de la Fontaine, 6:48 pm.

—I can't believe it! Seriously?—asked Marinette as she laughed.

—Yes! And then Père said, 'Charlotte, do you know what food is?' 'Well, yes' she answered. 'Then why are you eating dirt?'

—And you were both 10? Sure?

—Well, yeah, Charlotte was only kind of a silly girl. Well, the thing is, she said, 'It's for a science project.' 'What a foolish project' he answered. She said 'Shut up, dumb old man' and my dad got so angry he didn't let her do what she wanted for a month!

—Wow, Mr Agreste is sure stubborn as heck— said Marinette.

—Tell there was also a time when...

Beep BEEEPP!

The gorilla, tired of Charlotte's excuses, had found Adrien and had to take him home.

—Oops, it looks like they found me. Well, it was nice to spend time with you, My lady ~.

Marinette blushed.

—...WH-What? Um, no, me, no, I'm just Marinette.

—Come on Marinette. You are My lady and my Bugaboo~.

—I am not the lady of anyone, Adrien!— said Marinette laughing, without taking it seriously. —Well, I must go. Au revoir, Adrien!

While Marinette was leaving, Adrien pondered.

Perhaps you are not be my lady now Marinette, he thought, but you will be soon.

#TheMiracuWorkshop #may the best win #miraculousladybug #miraculous ladybug fanfic #adrienette #adrienette fanfic

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