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acciowests · 4 years ago

Note

For the elorcan prompts, could you do something where lorcan has to comfort their children?

I couldn’t think of much other than the classic hurt knee or nightmares so... I offer this instead... Enjoy :)

Dad vs Dinosaur

WORD COUNT: 2085

SUMMARY: Lorcan is already dealing with a crying Marion who has colic, but it doesn't help when Cal and Octavian get into an argument over toys and their favourite dinosaur loses its head. With all three kids now upset and in need of comfort, Lorcan takes up up the job of caring for all three of them while Elide is out and takes them upstairs. Snuggling up with three of his favourite people, he reads their chosen book to hopefully please his young audience and make everything better.

"I know, baby girl," Lorcan cooed, Marion's cries echoing through the living room where he was trying to watch over his two sons, "It's okay, come on, sweet girl."

To their misfortune, the last of their three kids had gotten colic; crying for hours with no valid reason for most days of the week. This had been going on for five weeks now, and Elide, who was still exhausted and recovering from birth, wasn't dealing with it too well. She'd gone for dinner with Aelin and Lysandra, leaving all three husbands to look after their kids. Usually, Lorcan didn't mind, but with Mari like this and Cal and Octavian getting on his last nerves as they argued, yet again, he was beginning to tire.

"Boys," Lorcan sighed, rocking Marion over his shoulder and tapping gently on her back, "Daddy would really appreciate it if you could sit down and play nicely."

They both turned to him, Octavian with a frown and Cal with his eyes puffy and watery. Cal was holding one of their t-rex toys in his chubby hands, Tavy now attempting to grab it from his older brother who simply held it above his head, out of his reach. "But, Dad!" Octavian cried, pointing to Cal, "He won't let me play with Rex."

Changing Marion's position in hopes that a different outlook would please her, he slipped the babe into the crook of his arm, cradling her against his chest but allowing her view to cast out toward her brothers. Even at a couple of months old, Marion already seemed to adore her big brothers.

"Who had it first?" Lorcan asked, knowing that the answer would only please one of them, but that it was the fairest. Whoever told kids "sharing is caring" definitely wasn't preparing them for later life. They didn't have to share their things if they didn't want to. Even if that thing was a toy dinosaur and the person who wanted it was your little brother. And technically, the toy was Cal's, given to him by his Aunt Aelin and Uncle Rowan for his third birthday.

"I did, Daddy," pouted Cal, a chubby fist wiping at his eyes. As he lowered both hands, Octavian pounced. For three years old, the toddler was surprisingly strong, yanking on the toy with all his little might. Cal was ready though, his hand gripping the middle of his toy as Tavy pulled on its head. Lorcan was about to ask Tavy to stop when a piercing crack echoed through the room and suddenly, the toy was in two parts rather than one.

Everything slowed. Tavy looked with wide eyes at the t-rex head and neck in his hand, and Cal blinked, as though not quite believing what had just happened. Lorcan had only a few seconds to lower Marion into her crib and drop to his knees in front of his son before the screams started. Tavy backed up against the sofa, the toy still in his hands as he watched Cal burst out into tears. Lorcan was scooping him up, rubbing at his back and holding him tight to his chest as Cal pressed his wet face into his neck. In the process, Cal had dropped the remainder of the dinosaur, and looking at it now, there was no way for it to be fixed. He let out a sigh, cupping the back of Cal's head and pressing a kiss to his hair, somehow thankful that his son was crying over broken toys and not something more serious.

Lorcan's eyes locked on Octavian's, offering the toddler a gentle smile, "Go to your room, bud. I'll be up in a minute."

It was clear he was holding back tears, his cheeks red and his eyes glossy, but Tavy just nodded, holding the dinosaur head close to his chest as he moved up the stairs. If there was one thing Lorcan was sure of in his parenting, it was that he never got angry with his kids. Well, not quite. He got angry, of course, but he never displayed that anger to them, never shouted or sent them away in a negative manner. Right now, Cal needed space, and if he knew his son as well as he thought he did, Tavy was also better at calming down when he had his own space too. If both he and Elide were here, she would have gone up with him, but he was currently on his own, and his kids would have to take turns having his attention.

"Tavy didn't mean to break Rex, buddy," Lorcan started, pulling back and wiping at the tears on his son's cheek, "He just wanted to play, you know that right?"

Cal hiccuped, his chest heaving with tears as he tried to breathe through them, something Elide and Lorcan had been adamant about teaching them when it came to overwhelming emotions. Cal let out a long breath, his eyelashes dripping and his nose a rosy shade of pink. "I-I know, but I was playing first," he cried, rubbing at his cheek with his own fingers now.

"And that makes you upset, right? That he tried to take away your toy?" Lorcan asked, waiting patiently for the five-year-olds response.

Cal nodded, sniffing heavily, "Yeah, really upset, Dada. And... And now he's b-broken."

Lorcan nodded, tucking a piece of hair behind Cal's ear that was becoming unruly. It was a dark, chocolate brown shade that curled around his cheeks in messy waves. Elide loved playing with it as much as she loved playing with Lorcan's.

"I know, and I'm sorry about that, Tavy is too. Would you forgive him if Daddy tries to get you a new dinosaur? We can get two, one for you and one for Tavs, so there are no disagreements. You can even choose which one," he suggested, taking his son's hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. He would never get over how soft their skin was and how nice it felt.

Cal reached up, letting Lorcan adjust him onto his hip as he stood. Together, they walked over to the sofa, sitting before Marion's cot. Cal began rocking it gently, Marion's cries more like whimpers now. "I think I can forgive him if he says sorry," whispered Cal, his eyes glued to Marion, his other hand fisted in Lorcan's shirt.

"That's very grown-up of you, bud. I'm proud of you," Lorcan smiled, pressing his cheek against Cal's head and swaying. He didn't care if he was five, Cal would always be his baby.

"How about," he whispered, a smirk curling on his cheeks, "You go get your blankie and meet me and Marion back in Tavy's room?"

Cal nodded, jumping up excitedly as though the last ten minutes hadn't happened and rushing off to his room. Lorcan smiled at his son as he went, lifting Marion and cradling her to his chest as he made his way to Octavian's room. Tavy was sat at his window, head in his hands and his favourite plushie in his lap. He immediately noticed the t-rex head resting on the window sill. Lorcan knocked with his knuckles, moving in slowly as Octavian turned, and perched on the end of the bed.

"Hey bud, can Daddy talk to you?" he asked, palm tapping Marion's back again as her cries ever-so-slowly subsided completely.

Octavian had slightly narrowed eyes, but nodded nonetheless, moving to sit next to his father and briefly stroking Mari's head. "Are you mad at me?" he asked, pure curiosity in his voice as his little legs swung against the bed.

"Nope, are you mad at me?" Lorcan offered, knowing Tavy didn't always understand situations like this, that it was sometimes best to ask questions he already knew the answer to, just to make sure they were on the same wavelength. Tavy was like Elide in that way; sometimes Lorcan thought he knew what she was thinking, and other times he was on the completely wrong end of the scale. Like mother like son, he supposed.

Tavy blinked, slowly shaking his head, "No, Dada. I not mad at you. Do you still love me?"

"I love you so much, buddy. Do you understand why Cal might be mad at you though? He still loves you, no matter what, but you're both upset right now and Daddy just wants to help," he explained, watching as Tavy's attention diverted to the bear in his hand. Sometimes, it was easier for him not to make eye contact, and Lorcan was a hundred per cent understanding of that. He knew that emotions were a hard thing for toddlers, and they were even harder when you were looking someone right in the eyes.

Octavian nodded again, this time making his bear nod along with him, "Because I broke Rex... but, I didn't mean to, I promise."

"I know you didn't, but you understand that Rex was Cal's toy and he was playing with it first?" Lorcan asked, smiling as Tavy looked up to him, pressing on his knees to see Marion better. He lowered her, resting her against his chest and facing outwards so Tavy could gently stroke his finger along her cheek.

With a sigh, he nodded, "Yeah, I sorry Daddy, I didn't mean to make Cal cry."

Asking if he could hug him and then proceeding to put his arm around his son as he nodded, Lorcan let Tavy lean into his side, his cheek warm against his arm as Lorcan's fingers tucked around his chest. "Would it be okay if Cal came in here? And we all read a story in your bed, just the four of us?" he asked, hearing Cal's creeping across the landing.

Octavian blinked, "Four?"

Lorcan gave a fake gasp, "Well we can't leave Mari out, can we? Your poor baby sister wants some snuggle time, too."

He giggled, nodding and climbing down from the bed, "Yes, that's okay, but only if I can choose what book we read."

He didn't recall mentioning a book, but he supposed reading a few pages wouldn't hurt anyone. Elide had the best story voices, everyone knew that, but he was more than happy to read to his boys if that's what they wanted. To Marion too, though she didn't exactly understand what he was saying. As Octavian searched through his book box, Cal appeared in the doorway, his blanket wrapped around his back like a cape or a cloak.

"Tavy?" he started, swaying just beyond the threshold, "Can I come in?"

Octavian nodded, not bothering to turn as he pulled out a book that, thankfully, didn't look too thick. As Lorcan moved up to the pillows, leaning against the headboard and sitting in the middle so Tavy and Cal could slide in either side of him, he watched his two sons intently. Tavy had put his book on the mattress beside Lorcan before moving back to the window. Cal plodded in with his blanket, sliding in under the duvet and pressing kisses to Marion's head as she rested in her father's lap. When Tavy turned back, pulling himself up and kneeling on Lorcan's other side, he held out something in his palm, thrusting it toward his brother.

"Here," he whispered, "I sorry."

Cal blinked down at the head of Rex in Octavian's hand. But, with a smile, he took it, pressing a kiss to the dinosaur's nose, "Thank you. I'm sorry I didn't let you play. Daddy said he's gonna get us both dinosaurs, though! So we can play together!"

Octavian's eyes lit up, beaming as he leant back against his pillow, now pulling the duvet up over himself. With one hand, he held his book, and with the other, he took Marion's hand, letting her fist curl around his finger. "Yay," he cheered, "And look, book about dinosaurs!"

Even Marion gurgled at that, her thick lashes blinking curiously as her hands waved, lifting Tavy's hand with her own as she did so. Passing Lorcan the book, Octavian curled properly, his head on Lorcan's arm as he rested as close to Marion as he could get. They had certainly bonded the last few weeks. Cal did the same, his leg hooking over Lorcan's thigh as he settled against his father, a hand on Marion's chest and massaging gently. With nothing left to do, he flipped open the first page, taking a deep breath before starting the tale, his kids warm against him and somewhat content after another long day.

* * *

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kishimoto-did-us-dirty · 4 years ago

Text

Naruto Arts School AU

Reposting bc I love this post and bc I can lol

Character

- major

description

Naruto

-Drums

okie nobody can deny that our main boy over here is a loud soul, however, he can also carry a damn good beat that compliments his band mates’ music really well. Tbh, he sucked at music to begin with and had trouble matching rhythms and listening to his band mates when they played, however he eventually became a really good rhythm maker.

Sasuke

-Guitar (lead)

He’d be assigned to the same band as Naruto, and that’s how they met. This boy is a damn good guitarist y’all, but has attitude problems™, and used to not be able to deal with Naruto’s haphazard beat making, thus perpetuating a rivalry between the two. He constantly feels overshadowed by his elder brother Itachi, a piano major.

Sakura

- Dance

Ya girl fucking demolishes every single dance routine. Initially starting out with a focus on ballet (pre-shippuden in canon), our pink headed queen soon realized that she wasn’t getting the full experience of what it meant to dance. Her point shoes were her loves, however they hurt and nipped in places not just physical. She realized that she didn’t want to be pigeonholed into a genre of which she would be inhibited by standard, and rather to dance so as to forget technical perfection. Thus, what would partner with post-shippuden Sakura in canon, Art School AU Sakura got into hip-hop. And bitch, she goes hard. A lot of the other girls who she used to dance ballet with admire her for her absolutely BODYING her dance routines, but also for never sacrificing her femininity to dance and not taking BS for being a girl who goes so hard in a male-dominated genre. (Some people believe that hip-hop is heavy hitting and a little metaphorically “dark” so to speak, which Sakura is not. So obviously I expect a little disagreement regarding this, however if you look at people like Delaney Glazer or Kaycee Rice, that is how Sakura would dance).

Hinata

- Creative Writing

Shy and bookworm-like, Hinata can write the best poetry, romance and adventure pieces out of all the creative-writing majors. She’s especially good at writing character relationships and development, and has such a subtle sense of intelligent wit in her writing, that if you blinked you would miss it. However should you catch it, you’re sure to chuckle. Her only struggle is that she tends to drag on in important scenes, stretching them against the regular flow of the rest of her writing. Needs validation for her writing through an IV drip.

Kiba

- Drums OR Photography

Drums for obvious reasons (loud and obnoxious), although ruff boi looks good with a camera, too. Great at landscapes and street photography.

Shino

- Creative Writing OR Photography

I could definitely see Shino having fucking beautiful handwriting, and being a beast at writing anything within the sci-fi realm. I could also see him doing some journalism, and writing for the school paper. He’s very good at the logic of his sci-fi books and coming up with logical but enrapturing stories, that intermingle knowledge and mystery. He’s a very specific type of read, however, and may not appeal to all, however if you enjoy anything similar to Star Wars or Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, then Shino is your author. If this doesn’t float your boat, though, try photography-major Shino. He can get the best angles of bugs he sees, and has an extensive portfolio with entomology-related snapshots.

Ino

- Dance

Like Sakura, she, too, began with a focus on ballet, however began to branch out into contemporary ballet a little later than Sakura. This is another reason why Sakura switched her focuses, as she and Ino had always had a fierce rivalry for dieting (ballet dancers are pressured to be as thin as possible) as well as battling for technical perfection when they were ballet focused. As the two grew, Ino focused more so on contemporary, but can certainly do some hip-hop with Sakura every now and then, just as Sakura occasionally takes a contemporary class with her. The two still have a rivalry, however, just not to the previous extent as when they were actively competing against each other. They’re more like sisters.

Shikamaru

- Guitar (bass) OR Creative Writing OR Architecture

Smart boy’s a tricky one. He would either be a bassist, a mystery and historical fiction writer, or, of his school offers it, be great at architecture. Idrk.

Choji

- ermmmmm….. maybe graphic design? Tech theatre (props)? Vocal???

Choji is hARD dwnccnpc (that’s what she said). I could see him behind a computer screen, animating and designing games/covers/posters or whatever. He could also do something in theatre, but I don’t think he would do anything up on stage. Something like props would suit him. He might do something in music, tho???? Can he sing???? Help???

UPDATE: Choji is a band kid. He plays tuba or some shit. Big boy got big lungs.

Tenten

- Dance

Always has been, and always will be a hip-hop dancer. She wanted to be like Tsunade, a legendary dancer and followed in her footsteps, taking up hip-hop. (that’s why Sakura focused on hip-hop, too, because Tsunade mentored her and taught a few of her classes, too). Tenten is fast and can keep up with any beat. Not only is she a great dancer, but she’s also athletic, and does track and field (cross country), football, and softball at another school too, since the arts schools doesn’t offer it. Overall great dancer with styl. She’s really looked up to by some of her underclassmen for her cheery, but badass style and skill.

Lee

- DANCE (hip-hop, too)

It’s sweat. It’s burn. It’s energy. It’s Lee.

Neji

- Violin

First chair violinist in his freshman year for the school’s philharmonic orchestra. He be extra like that.

Gaara

- Guitar (bass)

He had a lonely childhood with neglectful/abusive parents, and rock music really helped him with that. Emo music is emo and often made fun of, but the songs have messages and Gaara related, so self-taught himself the bass guitar to help cope, and bring him closer to the music that salvaged him.

Kankuro

-Art

Specifically sculpting. For obvious reasons.

Temari

- Acting

Girl can make you cry with some of her monologues. Total lead. Has a seriousness in her acting that makes her believable, however can falter on the less-serious roles. She may also double-major in whatever Shikamaru does. And she’s better at it than him.

Itachi

-Piano

Boy could play any etude at age 7. Performed at Carnegie Hall when he was 10. And no, he didn’t pay to play there. The hall invited him. Began composing at 9. Has perfect pitch. Owns international awards. If he’s not at school it’s because he’s traveling to play for crowds. He excels at classical and baroque, however has an ear for romantic, and enjoys playing/composing pieces either written or inspired by romantic pieces. Enjoys Schumann, Debussy, and Tchaikovsky. Hates modern classical music, though. Can only take cinematic pieces composed by people like Williams, however can’t stand Prokofiev at all. He does like modern music, though, so long as it’s outside of the orchestral/classical music realm. He likes R&B. He would have liked to do film with Shisui, particularly producing, however his parents pressure him with piano, so he helps Shisui with student films and projects outside of school (will probably pursue film after graduating, tho).

Shisui

- FILM / VIDEO PRODUCTION

Fight me on this!!! THIS BOY IS SO GOOD AT CINEMATOGRAPHY MY FILMMAKING ASS CAN’T EVEN. AS SOMEONE WHO IS IN LOVE WITH FILMOGRAPHY, TRUST ME, SHISUI HAS IT™. THE IT™. HE’S GOOD AT EVERYTHING. CINEMATOGRAPHY. DIRECTING. SCREENWRITING. GRIP-WORK. EDITING. PRODUCING. HE’S SUCH A FILM NERD TOO, AND WATCHES OLD FILMS ALL THE TIME. HE’S JUST TOO GOOD AT IT. DOES STREET PHOTOGRAPHY TOO. HE’S OVERALL A GENIUS WITH CAMERAS. Does film with Itachi outside of school and teaches him, and the two are overall geniuses at filmography. They want to start their own studio together (they do, and it becomes huge). He becomes a leading director, while Itachi becomes a producer and directs sometimes too.

Sasori, Deidara, and Sai

Guess.

Kakashi

- Saxophone

It’s the only thing that suits him and it suits him so well. Has suave.

Obito (omfg his arms y'all)

- Not to say drums or anything, but…. drums.

Narutard 2.0. But he also dabbles in other areas of music. Like, he can also play guitar and sing. He’s also pretty good at music production. Makes R&B sometimes. He wasn’t always the best musician but proved to be a late bloomer, and really harnessed his potential. Tries to be as suave as Kakashi and his saxophone. He isn’t.

Hashirama

- Vocal

OkaYYYYYY. VOCAL GOD. CAN DO RIFFS AND RUNS AND HAS PERFECT PITCH. ALSO THE SWEETEST GUY??? WAS A CHAMBER SINGER AS A FRESHMAN. EVERYONE LOVES HIM, GOOD BOY ENERGY.

Likes to belt.

Madara

- Piano

Total prodigy, but hates classical music. Once was accompanist to Hashirama for a solo vocal performance and hasn’t been left alone since.

Tobirama

- Viola or Cello

Some sort of string instrument and takes it very seriously. Probably plays cello because violas are violas and that’s lame (if you know, you know). Has almost as many awards as Itachi and Madara, but hates his usual piano accompanist, Izuna.

Izuna

- Piano

Also a piano god. The uchihas breed them. Hates being accompanist for Tobirama. They’re secretly best friends though, don’t tell anyone.

Karin

- Tech Theatre.

Idk why. Probably started out with props and made her way up to TD (technical director) in senior year.

Suigetsu

- Tech Theatre

Fucking hates theatre kids. Assistant TD. Karin hates him.

Jugo

- Visual Art

Paints landscapes and nature. Really good with oils and gouache respectively.

Yamato

- lmao Trumpet.

Met Kakashi since they both play brass, but boy he ain’t got that suave. That’s why he plays trumpet. Lmao he plays the fucking trumpet anjdwcnojdnn.

Rin

- Vocal

Sweetest voice and could also play the acoustic guitar when she sang. Died in a car accident junior year. Kakashi was at the wheel when they got hit by a drunk driver. Obito saw the whole thing.

Kurenai

- Visual Art

Can create dream like paintings that almost seem like illusions.

Asuma

- Cello / guitar

Used to play cello because of his parents, but loves to play guitar. Can sing but his voice is raspy from smoking.

Gai

Who the fuck do you think teaches dance?

Jiraiya

- Guitar (lead)

Used to major in lead guitar. Sucked at first. Probably has a couple, casual Grammy Awards (they’re actually not that hard to be awarded with, The Recording Academy award many people outside of mainstream media. My school has a few). Now teachers as head of the Band department at this school.

Tsunade

-Dance

Legendary dancer. Probably toured with a few famous people. Now teaches. Mentored Sakura, and mentored Ino but for a shorter time.

Orochimaru

- Idk, didgeridoo, or some shit

Definitely a wood wind. Flute maybe??? Teaches now but no one knows what he does. Pedophile. Has a thing for Sasuke.

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365days365movies · 4 years ago

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March 12, 2021: Jason and the Argonauts (Review)

We gotta revitalize the mythology epic film.

I loved this movie...mostly. I’ll get to the “mostly” of it all, but I need to first say that I love the idea of this film. I desperately want more films based (faithfully) on Greek mythology. Please. PLEASE. And I know, I know, Paramount made a Clash of the Titans reboot in 2010, and it was...

...bad. It was really bad. Also probably ended Sam Worthington’s career, because dude VANISHED into the aether of Hollywood after this movie, and its equally bad sequel, Wrath of the Titans. I know, OK? But I still desperately want Greek mythology films.

And yeah, this would be an...OK start, but there’s so much potential! We’ve had Troy to cover Homer’s Iliad, and Troy wasn’t terrible, but we NEED an Odyssey movie, for the love of GOD. Do you know how much goddamn potential there is for an Odyssey movie?

And I’m fully aware of O Brother Where Art Thou, but it’s loosely based on the story at best. We need an Odyssey movie, is all I’m saying. Not just that, though. We need a new movie about Hercules (non-Disney, and NOT starring the Rock), a movie about a normal Greek dude navigating the complex world of the gods, maybe a movie about Theseus or Perseus (again, yes, I know), and, of course, a Jason and the Argonauts movie.

I need this. I need this more than I can express. Oh, and I really want these films to be accurate, not the fast-and-loose approach to mythology that 1963′s film incarnation played. And oh...let’s get to THAT, shall we? Check out Part One and Part Two of the Recap for more on that, if you’d like more details!

Review

Cast and Acting: 9/10

Much to my everlasting surprise, the acting in this film is actually pretty good! Yeah, it’s definitely got that stereotypical 1960s flair, but it actually makes sense for an epic film based on Greek mythology. It all feels very epic, very grand, and the actors definitely help to contribute to that feeling. Up top, of course, you’ve got Todd Armstrong playing the noble Jason...kinda. Yeah, we’ll get to that, but he only played the character physically, while his voice was overdubbed by Tim Turner. Which...yeah, again, more on that later. But Armstrong is backed by some good support, especially Honor Blackman, Laurence Naismith, and Nancy Kovack, whose turn as the future murderer Medea actually shows her potential villainy in her sparse performance. Seriously, I was impressed by her characterization! This movie surprised me in terms of its acting. Although...Nigel Green as Heracles is only OK, and I’m a little chuffed that he only lasted through some of the film. Of course, that harkens to my BIGGEST issue...

Plot and Writing: 7/10

...OK, look, I know in my heart-of-hearts that judging the story of this film, adapted by Beverley Cross and Jan Read, as based on The Argonautica by Appolonius Rhodius, is unfair. It is. I’m aware of this, don’t worry. But that said...it’s not as good as the original story. Or, at the very least, it makes some weird choices that could’ve been changed. I went through the major inaccuracies in my Recap (too much, at that), so I won’t touch on most of that here. BUT, I do have some points to get through. Bear with me (or just skip this section, let’s be honest).

Missing Argonauts: Literally, the only major Argonaut from the story that actually gets to do something is Heracles, and he DOESN’T GET TO BE HERACLES. Dude is the most famous demigod of all time, and he never gets to do anything more than hold open a door and piss of Talos. Yeah. Disappointing as HELL. But that’s not THE WORST of it. Sure, Atalanta can be unused, as she wasn’t in many versions of the myth anyway. But the Wind Brothers? They’re necessary for defeating the Harpies, but they’re nowhere to be seen. Castor and Pollux? Oh, they’re in the movie, and they don’t do ANYTHING. Orpheus? ORPHEUS? YOU DIDN’T INCLUDE ORPHEUS AT ALL? Orpheus is arguably the most important of the Argonauts outside of Jason and Heracles, and he’s just...nonexistent. That’s just patently offensive. You really couldn’t give Harryhausen the chance to make Sirens? That would’ve been amazing! Speaking of them...

Missing and Misplaced Perils: Yeah, OK, this one’s a little unfair, because I don’t think putting Talos in here was a bad idea AT ALL. It’s actually my favorite part of the film, not gonna lie. But yeah, he was present on the return journey, not the journey to Colchis. But OK, whatever. At least we have the Harpies, the Clashing Rocks, the Sirens, the...oh wait. Where are the Sirens? I guess with no Orpheus, there are no Sirens, but...we really should’ve had both in here, come on.

Acastus: Yeah, here’s a weird criticism, but Acastus really was misused in here as well. He was actually one of Jason’s Argonauts, and came back from the journey on good terms with him...until Medea manipulated and tricked his sisters into cutting their father into pieces in order to gain promised immortality and boil those pieces for consumption. Yeah. Medea’s evil as SHIT. But turning Acastus into a heel-turn villain was...unnecessary, I think. Not that bad, though, so I guess this is a nitpick. I guess I would’ve liked to see the group return, and have had Acastus side with Jason against Pelias. I think that would’ve been neat. And speaking of Pelias...

The Ending: WHAT THE FUCK WAS WITH THE ENDING? Really? No conclusion to the story? What happens on the journey back? What happens with Pelias and Jason? Does Jason become King of Thessaly, now that Acastus is dead? Come on, man, what the hell! I HATE how that film ends so much, because there’s just nothing. Jason escapes by jumping off a cliff, the soldiers are still around (and are probably gonna kill the Colchian soldiers out of bloodlust), and Jason and Medea kiss, AND THE MOVIE ENDS. GAAAAAAAH

...Yeah, the plot could use some work, I think. But the worst part is...it’s still not a bad version of the story. Yeah! Despite all of my problems with it, most of the changes narratively make sense, outside of the original Argonautica. So, all things considered, I’m probably being too harsh on this film for personal reasons. What can I say, I love Greek mythology? But, I can still admit that this film is well-plotted out...for what it is.

Directing and Cinematography: 8/10

Is it the most groundbreaking direction by Don Chaffey, or the best cinematography by Wilkie Cooper? Well, no, but it’s still good. There aren’t exactly any amazing and groundbreaking shots here, but I also have no complains about either of these categories. So, yeah, not bad, guys. However...

Production and Art Design: 10/10

...the film still LOOKS fantastic. Because the production, set, and art design of this movie are all fantastic. From the costumes, to the Argo, to the authentic-looking sets, this movie looks great. And, of course...there are the effects by Ray Harryhausen. Which deserves the biggest chef’s kiss I can muster. Some of you may be thinking, “I dunno man, those effects don’t fully hold up.” To which I must remind you, that this film is 57 years old. FIFTY. SEVEN. Look, for the time period, this is groundbreaking, and it honestly looks pretty good today, even with the advent of better technologies. And the fact that these are technically physical objects does make this film look more...well, real, to be honest. It all looks pretty real, in a way. And they’re even pretty well-integrated with the live-action actors, much to my surprise. Gotta say, I love it. Antiquated, maybe, but also authentic. I love it.

Music and Editing: 9/10

Music, done by Bernard Hermann, is stellar and BOOMING. It’s an epic score for an epic story, and I also love it. As for the editing by Maurice Rootes, it’s also pretty great. Except for the sound editing. Yeah, um, the sound-editing for this movie isn’t great. It’s not bad, but it definitely isn’t amazing, especially in the base of dubbing for Jason and Medea. Oh, yeah, she’s dubbed over by Eva Haddon, forgot to mention that. And it’s pretty obvious. It’s a weak point, is what I’m saying.

88%, which might be a little...biased.

I love Greek mythology (he said for the eightieth time), and that may have colored my perception of this film. And yet, I do still really like this movie! It’s a classic film, and I’m looking forward to the other film of it’s caliber coming in a few days!

For the next one, though, I’ll have to do something non-Greek myth based. I mean, to continue the previously established trend...back to Japan for 3 HOURS? Oh...oh shit. I may have to break this next one up.

March 13, 2021: Kwaidan (1965)

#jason and the argonauts #don chaffey #ray harryhausen #todd armstrong #nancy kovack #honor blackman #gary raymond #laurence naismith #greek mythology #argonauts #argonautica #apollonius rhodius #user365 #365 movie challenge #365 movies 365 days #365 Days 365 Movies #365 movies a year #movie review

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janeyre · 3 years ago

Note

for the DW-themed asks! 9, 30, 34, 72!

thank you so much for the questions rini!!

9. who introduced you to doctor who?

technically a family friend when i was like twelve, but she showed my sister and i blink and i was SCARED of it, but my sister (who is younger than me lmao!) thought it was great so she started watching dw and she convinced me to watch some series five with her and i thought it ROCKED so i continued with her on her watch through and then started over with the ninth doctor!

30. who did you used to not like, but now you like?

i didn’t dislike him, per se, but rory always frustrated me when i was younger! he always questioned the doctor, which totally didn’t make sense to me because i was like ‘of he course he knows what’s best! the doctor always does the right thing! why would you question him?’ BUT now i see that rory was the perfect balance to the eleventh doctor. whereas the doctor was secretive and self-important (‘rule one: the doctor always lies’) rory was always altruistic and selfless; whereas the doctor was brash and spontaneous and didnt mind letting people sacrifice themselves for him, rory was thoughtful and made sure everyone was taken care of. he was the PERFECT contrast to the doctor, and in the end all his questioning of the doctor’s methods was what elevated him from just amy’s boyfriend to an important companion who made the doctor better.

34. favorite two-parter?

oh this is TOUGH. heaven sent is one of my favorite dw episodes of all time, and it’s of course only the first half of a two-parter, but hell bent is just aight. hmmmm…..

i’m going to have to go with the empty child/the doctor dances! it was what made me Certain that nine was my doctor, and it’s been my favorite comfort episode(s) ever since i saw it. everybody lives rose!

honorable mention to all of series nine though. while they’re not as delightful as the empty child, all of them are SUCH clever story-telling. the doctor and clara are a duo that i could write essays upon essays about.

72. favorite piece of murray gold music?

oh WOW this is TOUGH. in order to answer this question i took a deep dive of murray gold on spotify and WOW it is impossible to say!!!! so i’ve compiled some favorites:

song for ten: a classic for any ten rose shipper, because WOW

the rueful fate of donna noble: i’m going to be real, after i saw journey’s end for the first time, in all my rewatches i never EVER watched after the rose/tentoo beach scene. i have only seen donna forgetting her memory once almost a decade ago now. but hearing it just now was INSANE. i recognized that song instantly. it unlocked some deep and forbidden emotion in my chest and i immediately pressed pause. so this song is on her because WOW if that isn’t powerful song writing, nothing is!

a good man, an incredible liar: just HEARING this song gets me SO hype. this the ‘twelve has finally figured out how to save the day’ song and hearing the opening notes immediately filled with me with excitement

and finally, clara? and the bad wolf theme: i’m grouping these together because they’re both so expertly sprinkled into their respective episodes. the bad wolf theme has that sense of foreboding and incredible power, and clara? has that sense of wonder tinged with sadness. every time one of these pops up in an episode it’s an immediate whack to the heart. they both so perfectly capture the powerful women they represent, as well.

dw universe questions!

#asks answered #didnt think the murray gold one would be so hard to narrow down but WOW #that man is just. a GENIUS.#doctor who

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stevecanmakeanythingnerdy · 4 years ago

Text

Battle #23

Gaunt: Kryptonite ( Side Gene )

Vs.

The Wipers: Youth of America ( Side One )

Gaunt: Kryptonite ( Side Gene )

Gaunt was a pop punk band formed in Columbus, Ohio, in 1991. The band released five albums and a crap ton of singles before splitting in 1998. Actually 5 albums is a bit of a stretch. Sob Story is really more of an extended EP and clocks in Around 20 minutes, but anyway... yeah the 90s Ohio scene was pretty rock and punk and roll. But at the top of that list was New Bomb Turks and these guys. Really almost compliments to each other. NBT was down and dirty, and Gaunt filled in for the poppier and peppier parts. In fact in the earliest days, they shared members with NBT, but it was short lived. They bounced around a few independent labels and one last album was recorded for Thrill Jockey, entitled Kryptonite, and released in 1996. Kryptonite was released with a metallic lime green cover and contained lyrics about Superman, Lois Lane, and lost love. Over the course of the next year, the band began to drift apart, with Wick recording solo material. The band managed to scrape together one more album for record giant Warner Bros when they came sniffing around after Green Day had made it evident that punk rock sells, but they broke up soon after due to little to no support of it. So in the grand scheme of things, their time was brief, but powerful. And in true punk rock fashion, I don’t think the band really gave a crap about any of it. They just played music and had fun. Unfortunately in 2001, lead singer Jerry Wick was hit and killed by a car while bicycling home. It’s sad too, because he was a great songwriter. “Kryptonite” is the lead tune of course. Blast off into the rock and roll Metropolis of garage punk rock and roll. The very thing that made this band cool is that they weren’t afraid to try different things. This one features piano. “Savior Breath” is not only a great pun but another great song as well. That catchy 3 chord stuff lo-fi blast off! Hell yeah! Certainly not gaunt on the rock (#seewhatididthere). “Hope You’re Happy “ is about as punk rock as you can expect to get. This is what it would sound like if NBT did less yelling and sang more harmonies. Horns and $#!t on this number, again utilizing some new tricks with the old. Not immune to the catchy AF pop punk vibe that Green Day had a stranglehold on in the mid 90s comes “Transistor Sister”. It’s a no brainer but a head banger too. There’s even a video for it! “Bust” follows with the breakneck speedy Gonzalez “bust you in your head!” It’s perfectly placed pauses and fuzzed out guitar will leave you wanting more. The last fast track is “Hand in Pants”. Gaunt never lets up and the backing harmonies prevail. This band had something special. They were a band you could respect. Quick, catchy and no frills. Serious but fun all at once. Hook laden and made to order madness. This and Bricks and Blackouts may be one of their most experimental albums. It’s damn good though. R. I. P. Gaunt. Oh! And Of course there’s a “side Gene”. You have to get a Kiss reference in. (The other side is Paul, duh)

The Wipers: Youth of America ( Side One )

Technically just Wipers, but “The” is often attached. Wipers was a punk rock band formed in Portland, Oregon in 1977 by guitarist Greg Sage, along with drummer Sam Henry and bassist Dave Koupal. The group's tight song structure and use of heavy distortion were hailed as extremely influential by numerous critics and musicians. The band is considered the first Pacific Northwest punk band. Possibly most famous for being both influential to and covered by Nirvana. Greg was interested in music at an early age and has a rather unique perspective on music. His father worked in the broadcast industry so he had access at an early age to a record lathe. He would often study music under the microscope and loved the way it was produced from the record. This gave him a very deep understanding of the way the sound was reproduced. That and Hendrix inspired him to pick up a guitar and the rest is history. Originally they formed just as a recording project. The plan was to record 15 albums in 10 years without touring or promotion. Sage thought that the mystique built from the lack of playing traditional rock 'n' roll would make people listen to their recordings much deeper with only their imagination to go by. He thought it would be easy to avoid press, shows, pictures and interviews. He looked at music as art rather than entertainment; he thought music was personal to the listener rather than a commodity. He is not wrong, but soon shows and touring did happen. Sage has been quoted and remarked on their initial reception: "We weren't even really a punk band. See, we were even farther out in left field than the punk movement because we didn't even wish to be classified, and that was kind of a new territory. ... When we put out Is This Real? ... it definitely did not fit in; none of our records did. Then nine, ten years later people are saying: 'Yeah, it's the punk classic of the '80s'". So this is their second album, and it’s a reaction to the quick short burst of songs all the punk bands were doing in the early 80s. In fact the title track is nearly 10 minutes long! But that’s on the other side. This side contains “Taking too Long” which has highly advanced guitar for a 2nd LP. It’s a serene and peaceful song. Not the BEST Wipers song but still pleasing. “Can This Be” is more the rocking style Wipers fans are used to. Punk elements but wrapped in rock with those fuzz crunch guitars the6 helped stylize. Like a grunge burrito! The dropout bridge and energy are worth the listen alone. For me, the best tune on this side has got to be “Pushing The Extreme”. The Wipers are good at that “haunted melody” sound. You know, kind of creepy sounding but low frequency and underscored by punching bass lines. Accentuated really. I also like the weird phrasing of the word Extreme, it’s partly why Wipers stand out so much. A very loooooooong song though. “When it’s Over” sees Sage showcasing his guitar prowess. Very surfy (another signature of the Wipers sound) and with all of the builds it’s a pretty great piece. Some spoken word but it’s essentially instrumental. These early records have a great cohesion and consistency in their cyclical riffs. Not bad for one of the Northwest’s most influential acts and precursors to the “Seattle sound”.

So it was a real epic battle today of old vs new punk. Well, I guess they’re both old. More like old vs really old? Anyway. Gaunt had a secret weapon on hand, Kryptonite...but will it weaken The Wipers? Gaunt burned 99 calories over 15 minutes and 6 songs. They averaged 16.50 calories burned per song and 6.60 calories burned per minute. They earned 15 out of 18 possible stars. The Wipers tried to engage the youth of America. The Wipers burned 105 calories over 4 songs and 16 minutes. They averaged 26.25 calories burned per song and 6.56 calories burned per minute. They earned 10 out of 12 possible stars. Looks like Gaunt’s Kryptonite worked! They walk away champs today!

Gaunt: “Transistor Sister” (sorry for the piss poor quality but it was the 90s)

https://youtu.be/T7GTSYz1Bmw

#Randomrecordworkoutseasonseven

#Randomrecordworkout

#randomrecordworkout #randomrecordworkoutseason7 #80s #vinyl #80's music #80s music #records #punk #grunge #wipers #greg sage #gaunt #ohio #ohio punk #90s music #90s

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wolfgabe · 5 years ago

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Luigis Mansion 3 review

Now I will make one thing clear right now. I did not grow up with the original Luigis Mansion on Nintendo Gamecube, My introduction to the series came in the form of Dark Moon which then led me to the original LM remake on 3DS. And now I have just finished Luigis Mansion 3 the latest in the trilogy as well as the series return to a full fledged home console. How does it hold up against its predecessors and is this a Hotel worth checking out? Well let’s find out shall we

NOTE This review will primarily be focusing on the main campaign of the game. I won’t be discussing any of the multiplayer modes since I have yet to get into those.

The story begins with Luigi and the rest of the Mario Gang having received an invitation to a 5 star luxury hotel known as the Last Resort and at first everything seems all fine and peaches but in no time at all in a somewhat sickening sense of Deja Vu it turns out the entire thing unsurprisingly was all a ruse perpetrated by Hotel Owner Hellen Gravely as part of a plot by King Boo to capture Luigi and friends. What I can’t help but enjoy in the games opening moments that classic sense of how its plainly obvious to the player something isn’t quite right. Yeah nothing suspicious about the hotel staff wearing creepy masks no sir. Fortunately Luigi manages to escape and inevitably ends up running into Professor E Gadd who ended up meeting a similar fate. From there it becomes a trek upward through the Last Resort to find your missing companions and stop whatever King Boo has planned. Fairly standard stuff for a Mario Story but its serviceable and gets the narrative out nice and clear.

Now onto the gameplay. If you are familiar with Dark Moon much of the combat will be highly familiar to you. You use your strobulb to flash ghosts which stuns them allowing you to vacuum them up. The Dark Light returns as well which pretty much serves the same functions as before One difference to the combat though comes in the form of the slam attack which more or less replaces the Power Surge from Dark Moon. In some ways I actually like this new change as it has applications both as a form of crowd control as well as a puzzle solving tool to an extent more on that in a bit. Another new ability is the burst which is triggered by pressing both shoulder buttons. This is primarily used as another form of crowd management during fights as well as a means to activate certain mechanisms as well as being used in some boss battles to either to dodge attacks or to help expose a bosses weak point. The third new ability is the suction shot which allows you to attach a plunger with a rope to an object which can then be pulled on. Next to the Dark Light the suction shot is probably your biggest puzzle solving tool period. Not only can it be used to destroy objects and furniture when combined with the slam but many of the games bosses practically require it. Don’t be surprised either if you find yourself compulsively firing plungers everywhere just to see what you can grab onto which is often rewarded with you finding more gold or collectibles. The final new skill and probably the most important one at that comes in the form of Gooigi a flubber esque doppleganger of Luigi that can be summoned at any time by pressing in on the right stick. You unlock him not far into the story but once you do this is where the game really starts to open up puzzle wise. Gooigi has a few distinct advantages over Luigi mainly being not effected by spikes and other hazards as well as being able to slip through pipes and metal grates to access new areas. But don’t think you can just use Gooigi all the time as his advantages are offset by a number of key weaknesses chief of which being he doesn’t handle water very well and he has less overall health than Luigi. These are pretty much all the skills you will be using through the whole game although there is one other ability you unlock relatively late in the game but its incredibly situational being only required once with other cases just being to retrieve a few optional collectibles.

Now how bout that Last Resort. The hotel itself is divided up between 17 floors total consisting of 15 main floors and two basement levels Unlike Dark Moon, Luigis Mansion 3 goes back to the single building setup of the first game but its amazing really how Next Level has managed to pack so much variety into a hotel. Initially you will be exploring typical hotel trappings such as state rooms, gift shops, and a dining area. However its not long before the floors start becoming more increasingly outlandish. One floor might have you exploring a medieval castle while in another floor you will be exploring a full fledged film studio to help a ghost director find his prized megaphone before ending up being cast in his own monster movie. Then you have a floor that somehow contains an entire Egyptian Pyramid riddled with booby traps. I could go on and on but I will keep the rest of the floors a secret so I don’t give everything away. Progression itself is relatively straight forward basically involving you traveling to a new floor solving some puzzles and fighting some ghosts before taking down the boss ghost of the area which generally rewards you with the elevator button to the next floor. If there is one niggle I have its that some floors seem somewhat more underutilized than others. Generally floors tend to alternate between being miniature dungeons and dedicated boss arenas. But I will say the more expansive floors really is where the level design really shines in the puzzle department The film studio floor being a major highlight with how you need to figure out the connections and interplay between various film sets. There were quite a few puzzles that actually did end up stumping me for a bit. Luigi’s focus on greater thinking and using your head is a perfect contrast to Mario’s general focus on platforming and action. The amount of interactivity packed into every area is impressive itself with each floor almost feeling like a miniature physics sandbox begging you to suck and smash everything. And your curiosity and rampant destruction is often rewarded with with piles of treasure or one of the floors 6 gems. The physics model is impressive in itself as smaller objects are easily brushed aside while larger items require your Poltergust to budge. It’s quite a treat especially during heated fight scenes with ghosts as you are slamming an enemy around and inadvertently smashing apart the room even more.

And I can’t help but discuss Luigi’s Mansion 3 without talking about the bosses. These are basically the successors to the portrait ghosts from the first Luigi’s Mansion and I will say without a doubt they are probably Luigi’s Mansion 3′s biggest highlight. These aren’t just glorified mini bosses that you have to take down for a key to another room, no these are full fledged bosses with their own fleshed out personalities and strategies. Each one serves as a perfect bookend to cap off their respective floor. A bumbling security guard with a squirt gun, a concert pianist with serious anger issues, a prehistoric caveman. an Egyptian ghost queen, and a trio of magician sisters are just a handful of the spooks you will encounter during your stay. I must admit I was surprised myself how many of the bosses can pose a decent challenge especially if you don’t know what your doing. These aren’t the typical Mario fare of 3 bops on the head and you’re done. Many of the later bosses especially will really test your knowledge and understanding of all your abilities in many cases forcing you to get creative with the tools you have. With one or two exceptions including a somewhat underwhelming final boss, these are probably some of the most memorable bosses I have seen in a Mario series game to date.

And the graphics, hot damn the graphics. The advancements made in graphics technology over the past 20 years has done wonders for video games in terms of presentation and Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a clear testament to that fact. In an age where developers seem to be trying to push more and more for the most realistic graphics possible, here you have companies like Nintendo to remind people that show that cartoon artstyles can really shine on modern hardware. Dark Moon was a wonderful showcase piece for the 3DS both graphically and technically although at times it felt like the game was a bit too much for the system it was made for. Now being free from the shackles of the weaker 3DS hardware has really allowed Next Level Games to go all out on the presentation and it definitely shows. The amount of care and detail packed into every corner of The Last Resort is second to none helping give every floor its own distinct identity. The games opening moments are a real treat with some pretty gorgeous lighting serving to highlight the initial grand opulence of the The Last Resort before the darkness takes over and the hotel reveals its true form. Its at this time the lighting really starts to shine with plenty of instances of dynamic lighting, shadows and reflections. Luigi’s Mansion 3 may lack the buttery smooth framerate of Super Mario Odyssey but I feel the sacrifice in performance has been justified and balanced out perfectly. Some of the performance warts from Dark Moon have also been lanced with the game maintaining a rock solid 30 frames per second throughout. And I can’t talk about graphics without discussing the animation quality. With Dark Moon Next Level was able to demonstrate how one can really highlight Luigi’s bumbling and cowardly personality and here that expressiveness has been cranked up to 11. I cant help but crack a smile seeing Luigi shaking in terror at the presence of ghosts or reacting with surprise every time an elevator button magically flies out of his hand and screws itself into place . The bosses themselves are also a highlight with each one being wonderfully animated which helps highlight their personalities and quirks especially in the numerous cut scenes showing their interactions with Luigi which there are plenty of. I admit at times I couldn’t help but feel it was almost like I was looking at a borderline interactive Pixar movie. Each floor also has a ton of its own exclusive items and assets further cementing each floors sense of depth and identity.

There are also plenty of other little details and easter eggs to enjoy as well such as how you communicate with E Gadd using a modified Virtual Boy complete with a joke about the system’s absolute failure or the amount of pizza boxes that litter Mario’s hotel room. Or how about the fact that the boo and gem locator items you can purchase from E Gadd resemble actual Virtual Boy cartridges. And yes, you can in fact pet Polterpup in this game.

In terms of additional content each floor has 6 gems for you to find plus a Boo that appears once the floor has been cleared. The gems themselves are the source of some of the games strongest puzzles often testing your abilities as well as your awareness of your surroundings. Hunting Boos is relatively similar to how it was in Dark Moon in that you examine the correct object based on the intensity of your controllers vibration then stun the Boo with your Dark Light before slamming it into submission. Both Gems and Boos provide a good incentive to revisit previous floors although the rewards you get for finding them all are relatively underwhelming mainly just being some minor cosmetic items.

To wrap things up there are a few minor gripes I have with the game. For one thing you are unable to remap controller bindings. Now this isn’t a major dealbreaker at all and the controls work fine for the most part but it can make certain actions such as using the dark light awkward since the dark light is mapped to the X button which makes it pretty much impossible to use the light and aim with the right analog stick at the same time. You do have the ability to aim via gyro controls but its mainly limited to just up and down. You can however make things a bit more comfortable by enabling move while poltergusting in the options menu. Some people may also be disappointed by the lack of interconnectedness between floors. Each floor is more or less its own self contained level which means you won’t be encountering any puzzles on one floor that effect the other. There are a few instances during the story when you will be required to revisit a previous floor but they are relatively far and few between. While there are the aforementioned items to purchase from E Gadd they basically amount to gold bones which act as extra lives and Boo and Gem locators which are somewhat pointless since no doubt many people will likely just resort to a guide to find the more obscure Boos and Gems. You will likely feel inclined to avoid spending as much as possible especially since like the first Luigi’s Mansion you are ranked at the end based on how much treasure you found.

On an additional note, I didn’t encounter any major glitches during the game except for a minor bug I ran into where the music suddenly cut out during a boss battle but that was pretty much it.

Ultimately, I find I highly enjoyed my stay in Luigi’s Mansion 3. This is no doubt one of my top picks for Nintendo Game of the Year. It may have taken over a decade but I think Luigi has finally cemented himself firmly and proven he can indeed stand apart from his brother on his own two feet. If you decide to book a stay at The Last Resort you won’t be disappointed. I think its safe to say Next Level Games has cemented itself firmly as one of Nintendo’s top partner studios and I can only imagine what the future holds next for our favorite green underdog.

In the end I would rate Luigis Mansion 3 an 8/9 out of 10

EDIT Just a quick correction but I found the aiming issue can be in fact easily mitigated as the suction shot, strobulb, and dark light can all be activated with the L and R buttons.

#luigis mansion 3 #nintendo #nintendo switch #review #luigi

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soundsof71 · 6 years ago

Video

youtube

TURN IT UP! Joe Walsh with The James Gang, “Walk Away”, 1971

The James Gang was one of those bands that hit so much harder live than on their studio records that it’s almost impossible to believe that they’re the same guys. Their two 1971 albums offer the perfect contrast, Thirds (from whence comes this glorious single), and James Gang In Concert, recorded in May 1971 at Carnegie Hall and released later that year.

I’m surprised the hall was still standing when they were done. It’s the loudest slab of vinyl I’ve ever put on a turntable -- even with the volume turned all the way down, the racket coming straight out of the needle scraping through the grooves unamplified was flat out unbelievable. Very much in keeping with the ethos proclaimed in the liner notes of the previous year’s James Gang Rides Again, “Made Loud To Be Played Loud.”

This performance from Germany’s Beat Club, first aired July 24, 1971, somewhat splits the difference between the civilized, if still loud, studio band, and the utter savages (in a good way!) of James Gang on stage. Surely you’ve already pressed play, and heard Joe Walsh absolutely ROAR into this thing. If all you know of him is what you’ve heard on the radio or with the Eagles, you’re in for an eye-opening, and ear-opening delight.

I had once thought of this song as a pleasant bit of science fiction. The MAN in the song is the one who wants to talk about his feelings and where the relationship is going, while “you just turn your pretty head and walk away.” Riiiight. Because that’s how men are. Just won’t shut up about relationships. ‾\_(ツ)_/‾

Well, maybe Joe really IS that way, because the song sounds pretty damn persuasive, and other than being a little condescending, it’s not especially mean, which automatically sets him above most men of the day.

(1971 was the first great year for a wide swath women artists in classic rock, but women as a lot were alas still not faring well at the hands of male writers. Still aren’t, either, which is a story for another day.)

I actually started rethinking this song when I read what Stevie Nicks had to say about Joe Walsh, who she describes as "the great, great love of my life.”

She said of their breakup: “It nearly killed me. We had to break up or we thought we’d die. We were just too excessive. We were busy superstars and we were doing way too much drugs. We were really, seriously drug addicts. We were a couple on the way to hell.

But there was no closure. It took me years to get over it — if I ever did. It’s very sad but at least we survived.

He was the one I would have married, and that I would probably have changed my life around for a little bit, anyway. Not a lot.

[my note: the fact that she concedes that she’d have changed only a little bit, and only “probably”, suggests that she’s maybe not exaggerating the rest.]

There was no other man for me. I look back at all the men in my life, and there was only one that I can honestly say I could truly have lived with every day for the rest of my life, because there was respect and we loved to do the same things. I was very content with him all the time. That’s only happened once in my life.

This man, if he’d asked me to marry him, I would have. There was nothing more important than Joe Walsh — not my music, not my songs, not anything. He was the great, great love of my life.” (more here)

So on top of being better at relationships and rocking harder than you might have thought, he’s also a terrific technical guitarist, and a hilarious storyteller. I heard him tell a story on the radio in 1988 or so, involving him and George Harrison, that I’ve never seen documented, but I dropped everything I was doing to listen.

I even remember exactly where I was -- in the back room of the bookstore I managed in Washington, DC, way past time to go home, but I didn’t want to miss the end of the story during the long walk to my car.

This is paraphrased, but it’s pretty damn close. I started telling this story to everyone within earshot right away, and you’ll get why.

(btw, I don’t have a picture of Joe and George together, although they shared a stage a time or two. There are quite a few pictures of Joe and Ringo, though -- not only did Joe play in some editions of Ringo’s All-Star Band, they’re married to sisters! Marjorie and Barbara Bach, so yeah, they’re brothers in law.)

Anyway, Joe said that the one piece of advice he gives every guitarist trying to learn the instrument, “Learn to play every song The Beatles ever did, and sound exactly like they did. Doesn’t matter if you hate The Beatles or don’t want to sound anything like them when you’re done, but once you can play everything they played, exactly the way they sounded, you can do anything that it’s possible to do on a guitar.”

Well, there was one song that was vexing him, the very last one that he still couldn’t figure out -- “And Your Bird Can Sing” from Revolver. When he finally got it, he was beside himself. He called up George Harrison to make sure he was home (both fellas were living in Los Angeles at the time), said, “Stay there, I got something you gotta hear!”

He packed up his amps and his guitar, drove over to George’s house, and started setting up. “What is it?” asked George. “Just wait,” replied Joe, and kept setting up.

When Joe finally unleashed a note-perfect “And Your Bird Can Sing”, George fell out of his chair laughing. “How the hell did you do that?” “Well, it took me long enough to figure out,” Joe said, “so I was going to ask YOU how YOU did it.”

George said, “The way *I* did it was John and me playing in unison, and then double-tracked! I can’t figure out how you did it by yourself, even though I just saw you do it!”

Well, Joe was left feeling pretty good about himself, managing to sound like the equivalent of four Beatles guitarists all by himself, if a little exasperated to have spent so much time figuring out something that he should have known better than to try -- but he did it anyway. THAT’s Joe Walsh for ya.

I hope you’ve already hit play AGAIN on that blistering take on 1971′s “Walk Away” up top, because Joe really was killing it that year. There’s more to him than you probably think, too, so if you’re into the heavy guitar thing, you should definitely do some exploring.

Led Zeppelin fans in particular, I’m looking at you. Joe and Jimmy were friends from Jimmy’s days in The Yardbirds, and it was Joe who said, man, you’ve gotta quit monkeying around with that Telecaster. When you’re ready to rock, switch to a Les Paul -- and indeed, Jimmy bought his first Les Paul (known as “#1″) from Joe in 1969, for $1200, which Joe says he flew out to hand-deliver to Jimmy. Says Jimmy, “Joe brought it for me when we played the Fillmore. He insisted I buy it, and he was right."

(btw, nifty pic from Joe’s Twitter feed of him and Jimmy hanging out after LZ’s February 12 show at The Garden in 1975!)

I wouldn’t want to say that Led Zeppelin’s approach to live jamming was necessarily influenced by James Gang, but I’m saying that they were similar and Joe got there first. LOL And seriously, if you dig live Zeppelin, you NEED to know more about live James Gang and early solo Joe.

(More details about #1 than anyone but a gearhead would want here, here, here, and here, but hey, maybe you’re a gearhead!)

To give you a head start for exploring more James Gang and early solo Joe, I’ll add one more video, from 1972, “Turn To Stone” featuring Fanny’s Jean Millington on bass absolutely slaying dragons on this monster. As Joe told Rolling Stone,

"Turn to Stone" was written about the Nixon administration and the Vietnam War and the protesting that was going on and all of that. It's a song about frustration. Also, I attended Kent State. I was at the shootings. That fueled it, too. In those days it felt like the government's priority was not the population. They had an agenda that was about something other than doing what was necessarily good for the country.

A few years later [in 1980], I decided to run for president myself. [Ed. Note: Walsh pledged to make "Life's Been Good" the new national anthem.] I thought it'd be a great idea and I had fun with it. And the reason I did it is because there was, and there continues to be, a very apathetic attitude toward voting. There's a total separation between the federal government and the people. So running for president was an attempt on my part to get people to care enough to go vote. But people just don't bother. And that's why it's not working.

TURN IT UP!

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Oh what the heck, and one more from July 20 1971, from the French TV show Pop2, “The Bomber” (from 1970′s Rides Again) which includes a quick little nod to “Beck’s Bolero” along the way. (Well, technically I suppose, Ravel’s “Bolero”, and indeed, Ravel’s estate made them remove the reference from initial pressings of the album!)

And another note for LZ fans: Joe does some crazy stuff with his bare hands at around 2:30-3:30 going into “Bolero” that Jimmy did with a violin bow. THAT’s Joe Walsh for ya.

TURN IT UP!

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tigerlilynoh · 5 years ago

Text

Almost Got ‘em

Written for the 2019 @spnsummergen. Rating: G Featuring: Original characters, and a couple familiar faces Word Count: 3,143 Warnings: foul language Author's Notes: The prompt was “Early season - demons in hell plotting to take the Winchesters down.” I was immediately inspired by the Batman: The Animated Series episode “Almost Got ‘im.” Summary: Deep in the depths of Hell, a group of demons discuss the two latest pains in their collective ass: Sam and Dean Winchester. Rumor is that the brothers had found the Colt and even killed a demon. Of course, rumors are just big talk— yet a pair of demons patiently listen; their plan is already in action.

Two figures made their way through the halls of the third lowest dungeon in Hell. As they walked the jagged stone walls seemed to close in around them, but their petite, female forms prevented the blade-like rock from tearing at their temporary flesh. Even if they were injured it would be of no importance; they were demons and there was a meeting that they very much wanted to attend.

Both were wearing lean, blonde women who might’ve been mistaken for sisters, but that was the limit of their outward similarity. The slightly older of them wore a gauzy, white dress that, when combined with her delicate steps, gave her the air of a drifting spirit. Her partner was another story. The younger demon’s black combat boots thudded with every step, announcing her presence. Her attire was entirely leather—the cow sort, not human—dyed dark enough to hide spilled blood.

Neither of them said a word as they approached the auxiliary dungeon rumored to be containing an unusual sort of rendezvous. The pair didn’t have anything more to discuss for the moment. They both knew their immediate goals, responsibilities, and when push came to shove, which of them was in charge. They damn well better have known. Between the two of them, they’d spent over a decade putting their respective pieces in order and double-checking their work.

When they reached the unmarked door that they’d heard whispers about, the demon in the white dress pushed it open without hesitation. She stepped through the door with an unassuming demeanor. Her colleague followed her, studying the contents of the chamber with a wary eye.

Inside there were eight lesser demons standing or sitting around a storage room. Three racks had been laid out flat, then pushed together to create an improvised conference table. Five of the occupants were perched on crates of acid, steel nails, and other implements of pain. The remaining three leaned against the far wall, cautiously keeping some distance.

A brutish-looking man with pasty skin, a pronounced brow, and stringy black hair glared at the newcomers from the opposite side of the table. He stared with the intensity of someone who had taken charge—he certainly didn’t hold any noteworthy rank as evidenced by his badly calloused hands that hinted at many decades or centuries of wielding a whip, the shoddy ones meant for working souls.

In a low growl he asked the two women, “What do you want?”

“We heard that this is the place to be if you truly hate the Winchesters,” answered the elder one.

He stared at them for a moment before replying, “Get inside and shut the fucking door.”

The pair entered, closing the door behind them. From the way that everyone turned their attention to a stout demon sitting on a box labeled ‘spiders’ they assumed that it was his turn to speak. The two women settled themselves on a non-technically-iron maiden that was lying along one of the walls as if it were a bench.

The stout demon resumed addressing his audience. “So then I tore the cow apart—six chunks, big ones but still enough to spread around, and some smaller hunks. You don’t want to waste it by piling the whole cow in one corner of the room. You might as well not bother cutting the damn thing up—Anyway, I hung pieces of it throughout the house.” The sound of scuttling inside the box he was sitting on filled the room as he fumed for a moment in anger. “It’s a classic omen! It’s a horror! And the older of the brothers makes a joke about hamburgers!”

“So disrespectful,” muttered a female demon with hollow eyes and frayed white hair. Several demons nodded in agreement with her comment.

“That kind of work takes time,” complained the portly demon. “I’m not a high-caste demon. I can’t just wave my hand and make things move. Do you have any idea how long it takes to cut up a cow? And the first cleaver broke and I had to find a store—”

“Was it a vegetable cleaver?” asked the lean demon with a mangled left arm and long, frizzy brown hair sitting next to him. When he looked up at her face in confusion, she rested her hand on his thigh, then said in a soft voice, “Milmont, sweetie, two kinds of cleavers. Vegetable ones aren’t made for bone.”

“I don’t fucking believe this,” muttered a red-haired demon. He was dressed like Billy Idol but his rosy cheeks undercut the attempt at an edgy look. “Did you fight them or not?”

“I fought them!” Milmont replied indignantly. “I had a knife—”

“Paring or bread?”

“—and I swung at the older one’s neck.”

One of the demons standing in the shadows noted aloud, “Swung means a miss. You got your ass kicked.”

The stoat demon flustered a bit before reluctantly explaining, “He shot me in the chest with rock salt and hit me in the face with his gun—”

“You fell on your ass,” guessed the red-headed demon.

“The younger brother can perform an exorcism really fast,” Milmont said while shifting, jostling the box of spiders.

“You shouldn’t have gone after them,” said the brutish leader of the group. “You’re too weak.”

The stout demon glared as he hissed, “I have every right to go after the prey I choose. I’m allowed to prove myself!” He waved his hand at the rest of the room as he asked, “How many of you have been exorcised by them? If you’re here bitching about the Winchesters on your weekly one-hour break, yeah, I’m guessing they made you look like an idiot too.”

Several of the demons nodded in acknowledgement of the point or murmured agreement. The leader let out a small grumble as he reached into an open crate next to him. He pulled out an unlabeled bottle containing reddish-tawny liquid, then yanked the black cork from it with his teeth. After taking a swig, he handed it to Milmont.

“Corceo.” The stout demon toasted him before having a sip.

“You’re lucky that you were only exorcised,” the hollow-eyed woman told him while reaching out, wordlessly asking for a drink. Milmont passed it to her and she took a sip before continuing. “Rumor has it they possess the Colt.”

“Dajhila, they don’t have the Colt,” replied the demon with the bad arm. “I brawled with them ten days ago and they didn’t shoot me.”

“Maybe you aren’t worth the bullets?” jabbed the rosy-cheeked punk.

With her good hand, she picked a knife up off the ground and stabbed it into the wooden table in front of her, inviting him to fight.

Corceo, the leader, hit the table, drawing everyone’s attention. “Tisha, don’t carve Frey a new asshole. He has plenty already,” he joked, earning a chuckle from one of the demons watching from the wall. “The fact is that they had the gun. They killed Tom.”

“Tom was an idiot,” huffed Frey. “The only reason he wasn’t wading through viscera like the rest of us was because he was Azazel’s son.”

“Apparently he was attacking Sam, and Dean shot him,” Dajhila explained. “There were witnesses.”

Frey shrugged indifferently at Tom’s death. “Silver-spooned nepotist should’ve been the one to get his ass beat before he got shot.”

“I’m fine with the younger Winchester getting that bludgeoning,” interjected Tisha. She snarled, “You know that little shit is a psychic? I was so close to killing them. It took me three weeks to lure them to this abandoned insane asylum. I’d murdered twenty people in there—six hunters came before the brothers finally took the bait. That’s the shit I had to deal with in order to roll out the red carpet for those thick-brained, underwear-model-looking—“

“They aren’t that good looking,” said Milmont.

“They are,” countered Corceo. “Now let her finish or I’ll tear your fucking tongue out.”

Dajhila with the hollow eyes quietly said, “We should’ve kept the talking stick.”

Frey held up the pointy, splintered remains of a blood-stained wooden dowel that had evidently been used to stab someone. The woman shrugged, conceding that it had worked better in theory than in practice. The red-haired demon tossed it aside, grabbed the bottle of alcohol from where it had settled on the table, then gestured to their current storyteller.

Tisha waited a beat to see if anyone would interrupt her before continuing. “I swear on my life, that Sam kid really is a psychic. They knew it was a trap. I’m sitting there with a semi-automatic rifle—I’m not fucking around—and all of a sudden the sprinklers are raining holy water.” Her lips curled downward at the memory as she snarled, “Sam used a megaphone from the parking lot to exorcise me. I only got to see their faces as my cloud was getting dragged back down.”

“Jesus,” exhaled Frey. “A megaphone… and you had a rifle.”

“What weapon did you go after them with?” asked Tisha.

He thought for a moment before finally admitting, “A big rock.” Everyone stared at him for a moment, then burst into laughter, so he added, “Sometimes simple is best. We’re stronger than them and there was a big rock right there that I could throw— It was a tactical decision.”

“With genius thinking like that, it’s no wonder we can’t catch a break against them,” said Corceo.

Dajhila commented, “The only good news is that the dad, John, he died two months ago.”

“John Winchester, hunter savante— That piece of shit finally dropped?” Milmont looked around, eyes wide with excitement. “What did ‘im in?”

“I do not know.” The hollow-eyed woman crossed her bony arms. “Margot, down in processing, says his file is classified, but it is there.”

Frey leaned forward with interest. “File— We got him? Fucker isn’t playing a harp?”

“In the pit as we speak,” she replied smuggly. “Rumor is that Alastair’s working him personally.”

“Alastair?” asked Corceo. “They’re breaking out the Grand Torturer himself for a Winchester?”

Tisha nodded slowly to herself as she put together a few pieces. “Well, he is classified.”

The two women silently observing from their place on the iron maiden exchanged a knowing glance. The one in leather subtly placed her hand on a bulge by her belt that was obscured by her jacket, but the woman in the white dress discreetly shook her head and gestured for her to wait. At the order, the younger demon gave a quick roll of her eyes before relaxing her posture. By the time they’d turned their attention back to the meeting, the conversation had switched back to discussing different methods of pursuing the still-living brothers.

“Dean is a hedonist,” commented Dajhila. “Take a meatsuit with a figure as an hourglass and lay yourself in his path.”

Tisha raised an eyebrow. “You really think he’s going to fall for something like that?”

“He’s young and proud.”

Tisha countered, “He’s a paranoid with low self-esteem—“

“Here we go,” muttered Milmont.

“—You all think they’re heroes out of a fucking Greek epic, but they’re just men—feeble, petty little things—“

“Little,” Frey scoffed. “Have you even seen them?”

Tisha slammed her fist on the table. “They are mortal children, too absorbed by their grief and self-pity—Yes, they are little, but that makes them paranoid, partially-psychic, sneaky cunts who use megaphones.” She paused a moment to look around the table at the others, then said, “And maybe they don’t have it now or maybe I wasn’t worth the bullets, but they know about the Colt. They know how to kill us— Kill, not exorcise.”

After a brief, pensive silence, Milmont asked, “When was the last time you heard of one of us getting killed? Cain going nuts and turning traitor? That was almost 150 years ago—Earth time.”

Corceo nodded. “Half the crew in my dungeon wasn’t even turned back then. The sniveling pups thought we were immortal until they heard the news: the fucking Winchesters killed Tom.”

There was a grumble of shared frustration at the indignity. Humans had managed to kill demons, for the first time in over a century—and the bastards hadn’t even had the decency to stick around long enough to be killed in return.

“We have to stop them,” said Milmont quietly.

Frey scoffed. “Have you been listening or are ya’ as dense as iron?”

“Oh, choke on a ball of blades,” Tisha hissed.

The red-haired demon waved his arms, sarcastically miming fear.

“Save it. The enemy is up there.” Corceo waited to see if anyone would interrupt, then continued. “I’m tired of all this theatrical, solo bullshit. We murder them in their sleep. If they salt the door, we use guns. If they ward the building, burn it down. Fucking drive an oil tanker truck into them—this is war. So how do we find them?”

Milmont replied, “Since their dad died, my denmate, Bahshin, spotted them a few times with another hunter: male, middle-aged, reddish-brown greying hair and beard, baseball cap, one of those grizzled sorts.”

Tisha nodded. “I know the one. His name is Bobby—don’t know the last name. I’ve run into him and his partner a few times. He sticks to the north central U.S. Rural looking, lots of plaid. He had an old truck.”

“Fucking hick hunters,” muttered Frey.

The woman in leather sitting along the wall wordlessly withdrew a small notebook and pen from her pocket, then wrote down, “Margot: soul processing department grunt,” and “Bahshin: den-dweller, has an Earth pass.”

Corceo eyed the two silent newcomers from his place at the table. “Taking notes? Dainty little things like you gonna go gunning for the big bad Winchesters?” He laughed. “Well get in fucking line. You come here, don’t say shit, and crib off our hard work— How close have you come to offing them? What makes you so cocky you’re gonna be the ones to kill the bastards?”

The woman with the notepad gestured to her partner, inviting her to address the challenge. The demon in white stood up and smiled, unconcerned by the hostile attitude of the others in the room.

“We haven’t tried to kill them,” she replied. “And we have a plan, the likes of which history has never seen.”

“Ready to shared with the class?” Frey asked. “What brilliant plan are you two peons gonna try?”

“We’re gonna give them what they really want.”

Corceo’s eyes passed over the two women. “A pair of eager-to-please blondes in suggestive clothes?”

The woman in the white dress corrected him. “The only one we’re eager to please is our lord, Lucifer.”

A few of the demons chuckled at the absurd statement. Lucifer was a fairytale, as much as God and angels were to the humans.

“I’ll bite.” Corceo’s mouth curled into an amused grin, punctuated by the occasional barbed fangs. “What are you gonna give them?”

“We’re gonna make them heroes.”

The demons around the table laughed outright at the reply.

“You’re going to make them heroes? Those hunter bastards know about the Colt. They killed Tom. They’ve been exorcising us.” He placed his hands on the table and stood up, ready to confront them. “The Winchesters aren’t scared of us—not the way they should be. We’re demons. That still means something. So I don’t know what crazy scheme you’re thinking up, but it isn’t happening. They don’t get to be heroes. They die.”

“They’ll die when we—” She gestured to her partner “—say they die.”

“Looks like we have something of a race on our hands.” Cerceo walked up to her and stood so that they were only a few inches apart. A head taller than her, he glared down at her before hissing, “You think you can beat me to them?”

Her eyes turned white, causing his jaw to drop. “Child you’re busy boasting and we’re on step fifteen.” Lilith waved her right hand, locking the door to the room. In a quick backhanding gesture, she threw Corceo against the far wall, then turned to look at her companion. “Ruby.”

Ruby stood up and smiled as she drew her knife from the holster on her belt. She systematically worked her way through the room, killing the others while her partner held them in place with telekinesis. Afterward, she placed the bodies on the table, then rested her palms on the topmost corpse. A few lines of Aramaic later, blue flame engulfed the bodies, destroying the evidence.

While watching the fire, Lilith asked, “Is Meg ready?”

“She’s still running recon on the other children. In terms of pressure points so far: four have lovers, eight of them are close to a parent, and we have a few like Sam where the sibling could be an incentive. As of yesterday, she was watching the stoner with imprinting telepathy to figure out his achilles’ heel.” Ruby wiped her bloody blade on the sleeve of her jacket to clean it while asking, “Did you take care of Crowley?”

“I encouraged several of his aides to let a few deals lapse. Numbers are down. He’s dying to get a big deal.” Lilith looked at her. “The second Dean Winchester’s soul comes across his desk, he’ll sign off on the contract just to get his name on something. The grubby-fingered broker didn’t check the fine print on John; why should the son be any different? I’ll hold Dean’s contract and the moment he bites it, he’ll get expedited delivery to Alastair’s dungeon. No official processing. No gossip—” She gestured to the smoldering remains of the demon who had accidentally outed Margot as a leak in the processing department. “—No mistakes this time.”

Ruby huffed an unamused laugh. “The two of us sure as hell won’t have time to clean up any messes once this show gets rolling. Round one we could afford to have things go a little sideways. Once we pop up on Sam’s radar, that’s it. We’re in, and I’m not coming back downstairs on a fucking milk run.”

“It will all turn out,” Lilith assured her. “Our lord wills his return. He cannot be denied.”

Ruby didn’t reply to the pious statement. Instead she studied the charred racks in front of them. “I know he’s your mentor and we couldn’t have done this without him, but Azazel can’t survive this. You know that, right?”

Lilith nodded. “When he finishes aligning his pawns, he’ll throw the fight. He knows how important it is that Sam’s anger be directed solely at me. That means clearing the field for the next generation of nemeses.”

“Don’t worry,” Ruby placed her hand on her partner’s shoulder. “When I’m done with him, Sam will be foaming at the mouth to kill you.”

“I envy you,” Lilith sighed. “You’ll live to see our lord. It’s going to be beautiful.”

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

If you enjoyed this story, check out my Sam/Ruby Fic Masterlist or my Full Fic Masterlist.

#my fic #spn fic #spn fanfic #spn fanfiction #Supernatural fanfic #supernatural fanfiction #spn #supernatural #spn ruby #ruby #lilith

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years ago

Text

White Open Spaces

For my immigrant family, outdoor recreation was not part of our usual vacation plans. Could learning to camp be the pandemic escape I needed?

Wei Tchou is a Brooklyn-based writer and former non-camper working on a book about her family and the cultural history of ferns.

“I know you can do it,” said Salem, smiling at me with encouraging eyes, even though I didn’t know the first thing about building a campfire. It was meant to be a gesture of sweetness that he wanted me to build a hearth for his younger siblings on our first campout together. But I couldn’t read it as anything but an act of inscrutable emotional terrorism, doled out to a devoted girlfriend whose only crime was being accomodating enough to come on this stupid camping trip in the first place. I covered my face with my hands to hide my tears.

A part of me had hoped I would take to camping as if the woods were my true home all along. Like a captive platypus released back into her highland waterways, my real self would shake off such earthly superficialities as shelter, safety, and lumbar support as I became just another creature of nature, flowers weaving through my hair as sparrows sang overhead. Instead, my first experience of camping found me crying next to a gaping pit of ashes in front of my boyfriend’s family.

My first experience of camping found me crying next to a gaping pit of ashes in front of my boyfriend’s family.

I thought of my Chinese immigrant parents, who would likely shudder at the thought of me sleeping on a dirt floor and getting my vagina so close to the ground while peeing that something might plausibly climb in. My parents did not immigrate to this country for me to have something crawl into my vagina! I thought.

How could I have ever been so delusional as to think that I would tolerate, much less enjoy, a life in the woods, when very little in my 32 years of life has indicated an ease with anything less than the cool breeze of an air-conditioning unit, four bars of LTE, and good Chinese takeout just around the corner?

Minimalist camping, as it turns out, requires a surprising amount of stuff.

The answer to this question is most likely the same as yours “in these unprecedented times,” or ITUT, as a friend of mine likes to refer to the narrowing of life since COVID-19 spread to our coast. I was sick of being cooped up in the city but anxious about making the pandemic worse by contracting it, spreading it, or putting service workers at greater risk with my selfish longing for a cappuccino.

And also, I recently finished a partial manuscript of my book, which is in part a personal history of my interest in ferns. It’s hard not to spend, say, four years of one’s adult life writing about the wonders of ferns and nature without feeling like an abject phony for being suspicious about any immersion in wilderness beyond just, like, looking at it from the car.

So, when Salem’s younger sister, Pearl, and younger brother, Hazel, who are both outdoors enthusiasts, proposed that we all go camping together up in Maine last month, I felt uncharacteristically enthusiastic. Camping! A way to safely spend time with loved ones somewhere other than Zoom. Camping! A way to prove t,hat I could be as much of an expert on ferns as some unkempt white dude in Chacos. If I could learn to camp, it seemed to me, then maybe I could also be free.

Julia Cameron, the author of the cult ’70s-era workbook for creatives The Artist’s Way, would call this confluence of desires with opportunity a synchronicity, which is just a woo-woo term for coincidences that fall in your favor, she asserts, when you thoroughly believe in your art. Back in March, I roped Salem, who was quarantining with me in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and his sister, Pearl, who lives in Maine, into tackling the self-help classic, whose “spiritual path to higher creativity” winds through a tidy 12 weeks — enough time, I reasoned, that the lockdown would be over well before we finished. It was a welcome distraction from the aching distress of watching the daily death toll tick up and washing our hands until they were raw. Our group expanded to include Salem and Pearl’s mother, Betsy (who actually is an artist), Pearl’s partner, Alec (who is an artist, but for ice cream), Pearl’s best friend, Peyton (who works on behalf of environmental justice), and finally Hazel, after he graduated from college over Zoom.

Talk to my family about spending a stretch of time in the woods and they’ll assume you were exiled for doing something very bad, like owning land or refusing to become a doctor.

It alarmed me at first that I was an outsider in my own self-help group — the new girlfriend in a weekly video chat of Salem’s family and friends, and, just as acutely, the only nonwhite person. But I grew close to them as we completed tasks that encouraged our childlike sense of wonder: wandering outside to gather leaves and flowers, collaging our dream lives. One writing exercise asked us to name activities that we wished, as children, we’d had the freedom to try. I found myself absentmindedly listing mountain biking, rock climbing, hiking, and, surprisingly, camping.

What the fuck, I thought, immediately troubled by what appeared to be a repressed desire to become woodsy. In my mind, woodsiness conjured images of beautiful, sunned white people looking inexplicably chic in technical gear and tangled hair, unbothered by the elements — the kind of person whose insouciant athleticism and confidence in using the terms “suffering” and “challenging” interchangeably did not belie a childhood of Suzuki method and Saturday school and the lifelong condition that every decision you make must justify the sacrifices your family made for you to simply be alive.

In my predominantly white Appalachian hometown, I had felt alienated by how casual and insistent people were about outdoor recreation. (Talk to my family about spending a stretch of time in the woods and they’ll assume you were exiled for doing something very bad, like owning land or refusing to become a doctor.) Unlike turning the radio on to learn pop songs or begging your mother to buy you a pair of sweatpants with “JUICY” written on the butt, learning to camp was impossible without someone to show you how. And the only people who might show me how were the same assholes who rejected me, even if I could sing along to every ’N Sync song, unconvincingly shaking my hips in baby-pink terry cloth. Along with how I looked, it was just another obvious way of understanding that no matter what I tried to become, I would never really belong.

Setting up the tent was less puzzle-like than I’d thought.

From left to right: Pearl, PJ the dog, Hazel, and Salem

After I moved to New York City, I was proud to be able to finally reject woodsiness entirely. Here, I found belonging with people who, like me, found “camping people” to be perplexing and objectionable. I left behind the fear of being patronized for simply wanting to sleep in a bed with central air blowing on my face for the rest of my life. It was devastating to have to admit to myself, and then to my Artist’s Way group, that I had always secretly dreamed of seeing myself out there in the wilderness — tending a fire and drinking a tin cup of coffee in the foggy, crisp morning — strong enough to shoulder a pack over rough, pastoral terrain.

Call it another synchronicity that after Salem and I met on Tinder (an app that literally runs on synchronicities), we discovered that we were from two towns hugging opposite sides of the same Appalachian mountain range. Yet Salem had grown up camping, even if he had later diverged from his woodsy siblings, fleeing the mountains for the city. As we drove north for our camping adventure, I contemplated the cruel joke that now, as an adult, I was off to assimilate to the white hobby I’d rejected with fierce vehemence all of my life, with my white boyfriend and his white family who were from the same white part of the country I’d spent my entire life attempting to escape.

Our lakeside campsite was beautiful, if car-accessible.

Any self-worth I’d managed to cling to evaporated as soon as Salem, Pearl, Hazel, and I — in preparation for our trip — walked into a camping store, whose floor was marked all over in blue tape to indicate where customers might stand to stay six feet apart. In part, my insecurity had to do with the fact that I’d poisoned myself the day before eating dried apricots, forgetting that apricots are a stone fruit, which I am allergic to. (Another synchronicity?) But really it was my intimidation about entering a store that said it was for camping, yet seemed only to sell racks and racks of long metal thingies and neon fabric bags attached to larger neon fabric bags. All the products were puzzles to solve, rather than recognizable pieces of equipment — a tent, for instance, that I might look at and think, Wow, that’s a great tent! My reluctance to touch things in stores since the pandemic began only made the process worse. Like, I knew I needed to buy a sleeping bag but felt stupid trying to choose one by staring as hard as I could at various lumpy sacks of nylon.

If the allure of camping evokes a certain rugged minimalism, the reality is strikingly fussy.

Sensing my panic, Pearl asked if I’d like to go take a look at tin cups in the cooking section, and I was relieved. I know food, I know cooking, I thought, puffing out my chest as we walked. But to my bewilderment, anything I might recognize in a kitchen was again abstracted to pieces of plastic, or sinister-looking canisters of gas and gadgets that promised to boil water in under 30 seconds (but, why!).

“Wei, look,” Pearl said, as I stared into the abyss of a collapsible plastic bowl. Grinning, she presented me with an enamel tin cup printed with a graphic of a lantern, and I sighed in recognition as she placed it in my hands. For drinking coffee out of! So sturdy! So cute! I thought. It was $20 and I threw it greedily into my basket — had it been $200, I still would have wanted it, for its familiarity, for its having the decency of looking like exactly what it was.

Shopping for camping supplies was triggering — and expensive.

If the allure of camping evokes a certain rugged minimalism, the reality is strikingly fussy. You need a lot of stuff; the stuff is very expensive, and without experience, it’s hard to figure out what kind of stuff you’re even going to need. And none of it is going to make you feel woodsy, really — mostly it will just make you feel broke, staring at a two-foot-long receipt, registering that you’ve blown $650 in less than half an hour on the bare minimum of supplies.

It can make you furious to think about, especially during a pandemic when there are few options to escape the city, and the one that seems easy and cheap and safe turns out to be so psychologically and financially demanding that I, for one, would have given up upon entry at the store if I wouldn’t have felt even worse to let Salem and his siblings down.

I was still fuming about all of this when Salem suggested we camp out in Pearl’s backyard to test out our new equipment. Though I was feeling defeated, I followed along as he pulled out tent rods and began assembling them over a plastic tarp. I found that assembly was surprisingly intuitive — not puzzle-like at all — and before long, we were straightening out another piece of tarp over a modular mesh structure. We took turns staking its corners into the dirt, and in spite of myself, I couldn’t help but feel proud, admiring the neat little orange tent before us.

That night, I fell asleep in my new sleeping bag listening to rain drum the fabric over my head. All of my frustrations unexpectedly melted into a sweet, peaceful feeling that this small space, with its sounds and its funny mesh pockets and zippers, was mine. I was suddenly a child overcome by wonder, the anxieties and paranoia of the past few months dissipating as I observed little spiders scurrying in from the rain under the fly. They parachuted around on their silks as Salem snored softly, far away already in a distant dream.

Dinner was a delicious hodgepodge.

Our campsite was situated on a farm nestling an ocean bay — salt breezes rolled through the open windows of our car as we puttered along a long path of RVs, campers, and tents. The first thing I noticed was that very few people were wearing masks — we’d all been required to prove we’d been tested for COVID-19 before we booked. I marveled at the fact that it was the first time in almost half a year that it seemed okay to observe the noses and mouths of so many strangers, going about their days uninterrupted by obsessive ritual sanitization of their bodies and possessions.

The next thing I noticed was that I didn’t have to carry anything more than a few feet from car to campsite, which, by the way, presided over a spectacular waterfront view, no walking necessary. It turns out there are degrees of camping, folks — a fact I was a little mad to find out. There was even an organic ice cream stand on the premises (which did, for the record, observe social-distancing protocols) where Pearl, Hazel, and I would circle back later to share a cup of s’mores-flavored ice cream, studded generously with marshmallow fluff and graham cracker crumbles.

Have camping people selfishly stoked the conspiracy that you have to strap on 50 pounds of gear and scale K2 every time you go camping to keep non-campers from their delicious ice cream stands? I contemplated this as we drew closer to our site, but my attention was drawn toward several figures playing on a swing set.

“Asians,” I whispered urgently, pointing them out through my window.

One privilege of being a journalist is the shamelessness with which I feel I can approach strangers, and Asian strangers in particular, to ask about their experiences, because, well, it’s my job. After we set up our tents, Hazel humored me by coming along as I stalked across the field toward several preteens at the campsite’s playground.

“I’m going to wait over here,” Hazel told me, stopping tentatively by the swing set, as I approached two of the older kids, introduced myself as a writer, and asked if I could chat with them.

I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of pride and relief in registering that the most beautiful campsite of all was made by the only nonwhite people I’d seen.

“So, like, I’ve only seen white people out here,” I told them, trying to make my eyes smiley rather than threatening above my mask. They giggled and looked at each other. “Are you guys from around here?” I asked.

“We’re from Brooklyn,” they said, and I laughed, because of course they were. They told me that they normally vacationed in Japan this time of year, to visit family, but given the pandemic they had to stay in the States. Camping was popular in Japan, too, they said, pointing in the direction of their campsite, which featured an impossibly chic yurt flanked by a large shade sail. I knew just by glancing at their complicated-looking pour-over device that they were drinking excellent coffee.

I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of pride and relief in registering that the most beautiful campsite of all was made by the only nonwhite people I’d seen, and Asian Americans to boot. By then, Hazel was making his way up to me, and I waved at him gleefully as I introduced him to the kids.

“Our parents are Asian, too!” one of them told us cheerfully.

“We’re Asian, dummy,” the other responded, rolling his eyes. “So obviously that means our parents are Asian, too.”

“I mean, not necessarily,” I said, trying to be helpful. “You could be adopted!”

“Yeah, we could be adopted,” the other said, blowing a raspberry at his friend. Hazel and I grinned conspiratorially as we hurried back to fill Pearl in on what we learned about the Asians, taking turns recounting the details.

I’ve never built a campfire in my life.

Later, we all drank sake out of our tin cups as we watched the sun set pink over the bay at low tide — clam diggers worked their way through the glistening mud as the siblings told me stories about growing up together, their disastrous road trips, the pets they had loved. As dusk settled, we hurried back to make dinner, at which point my pleasant, dreamy mood was shattered as Salem heartlessly attempted to press me into building that fire — the one on which our comfort and dinner depended.

“Oh no, oh my god! Wei! You’re getting so upset!” he said, as soon as I hid my face with my hands. He pulled me into a hug.

“Wei,” Pearl said gently from the fire pit, using the same tone she had at the camping store to coax me out of my manic state, and I wiped my face on my sleeves and crept down next to her as she explained how to start with pine needles, leaning larger and larger sticks over the fire as it grew. “People like to say there’s a right way to do it, but there isn’t,” she said, swatting Hazel away as he tried to offer commentary. She leaned in to blow on the fire, and the embers lit up with her breath.

Soon the fire was crackling and the siblings jumped into cooking, enthusiastically clashing about what they wanted to eat and how best to make it. Hazel established himself as the gourmand, dressing a steak with rosemary and butter and showing me how to gauge its doneness by pressing on different parts of my fist. Pearl roasted a hot dog on a stick while Salem fussed over an aluminum packet of potatoes and mushrooms. As they cooked, they debated new ways to construct a s’more — wrapping the entire thing in foil to place on the grate, dumping the chocolate and marshmallow in a pan to approximate something like s’more fondue.

At that moment, there was no better hot dog in the entire world than the one dripping with butter and ashes in my hands.

Listening to the siblings bicker and tease each other about their different ways of cooking, eating, and being, I was encouraged to find my own way, too, to see my camping ignorance as an opportunity to do exactly as I felt. (I’d even discovered, by then, that, just a little hike away, there was a cabin of gloriously pristine bathroom stalls, for those of us with overactive vaginal imaginations.)

I ventured to throw a hot dog and a bun on the grate. When they were both black with char, Hazel doused them in butter for me. I hate it when people say that food tastes better when you’re camping, as if there is glory in deprivation, but at that moment, there was no better hot dog in the entire world than the one dripping with butter and ashes in my hands.

Without a doubt, the best hot dog I’ve ever eaten

Maybe I’m a camping person after all.

The next day, Salem and I decided that we would camp one more night on our way home to Brooklyn. We stopped midway to have lunch with some friends, who graciously took our elaborate order, in advance, for what I like to call salad sandwiches — tomato, cucumber, sprouts, onion, avocado, cheddar, dill pickle, and mayonnaise on seven-grain bread. After picnicking and horsing around in a river all afternoon, the thought of setting up a tent again started to feel arduous.

“We could just drive straight home to Brooklyn,” Salem suggested, as I merged onto the freeway. I told him no — I was a camping person now, and that meant I needed to camp. Who even was I anymore, without the sun on my face and a patch of grass to curl up on?

We often talk about assimilation as if it were a one-way street, but it isn’t. It shouldn’t be.

We grew quiet, and I reflected on our past few days, on his family, on him. I thought back to earlier in the year, during some big fight, when I’d shouted at him to stop treating me like I was white, fed up with what I felt was his disinterest in my individual experience, while simultaneously seeing that I hadn’t exactly shared the reality of that experience freely, for fear that he would reject me like the camping people of my youth.

Until that fight, I had too often conflated belonging with acceptance. I thought that in order to be accepted, I needed to keep my nonwhite perspective from my white boyfriend and his white family. That I needed to face the wilderness unafraid to be taken seriously as a nature writer. That I needed to camp like “camping people” — like white people — in order to camp at all. But I grow more certain each day that my fixation with belonging only ever backfires. If I’m not honest about who I am, how can anyone figure out how to accept me in the first place?

Salem listened when I fussed at him about not being white, and I got a little braver every day about expressing the ways that I am different from him rather than the same. And now, a year into dating, his brother tags along when I feel moved to approach strangers at swing sets just because they are Asian, even if it makes him nervous. And his sister has identified how to tell when I’m so embarrassed I want to die, as well as the exact tone of voice that will calm me down. We often talk about assimilation as if it were a one-way street, but it isn’t. It shouldn’t be.

I glanced at Salem as he stared into his phone and struggled to remember what I thought of him when we first met. Now, when I look at his face I feel the collapse of distance, the familiarity of a kind of home that you can’t buy, or drive to, or set up with tent poles.

“Hey,” I said. He looked at me. “You were right. Let’s go back to Brooklyn.”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3g9eaKo https://ift.tt/3g9Uypl

For my immigrant family, outdoor recreation was not part of our usual vacation plans. Could learning to camp be the pandemic escape I needed?

Wei Tchou is a Brooklyn-based writer and former non-camper working on a book about her family and the cultural history of ferns.

My first experience of camping found me crying next to a gaping pit of ashes in front of my boyfriend’s family.

Minimalist camping, as it turns out, requires a surprising amount of stuff.

Talk to my family about spending a stretch of time in the woods and they’ll assume you were exiled for doing something very bad, like owning land or refusing to become a doctor.

Setting up the tent was less puzzle-like than I’d thought.

From left to right: Pearl, PJ the dog, Hazel, and Salem

Our lakeside campsite was beautiful, if car-accessible.

If the allure of camping evokes a certain rugged minimalism, the reality is strikingly fussy.

Shopping for camping supplies was triggering — and expensive.

Dinner was a delicious hodgepodge.

“Asians,” I whispered urgently, pointing them out through my window.

“I’m going to wait over here,” Hazel told me, stopping tentatively by the swing set, as I approached two of the older kids, introduced myself as a writer, and asked if I could chat with them.

I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of pride and relief in registering that the most beautiful campsite of all was made by the only nonwhite people I’d seen.

“Our parents are Asian, too!” one of them told us cheerfully.

“We’re Asian, dummy,” the other responded, rolling his eyes. “So obviously that means our parents are Asian, too.”

“I mean, not necessarily,” I said, trying to be helpful. “You could be adopted!”

I’ve never built a campfire in my life.

“Oh no, oh my god! Wei! You’re getting so upset!” he said, as soon as I hid my face with my hands. He pulled me into a hug.

At that moment, there was no better hot dog in the entire world than the one dripping with butter and ashes in my hands.

Without a doubt, the best hot dog I’ve ever eaten

Maybe I’m a camping person after all.

We often talk about assimilation as if it were a one-way street, but it isn’t. It shouldn’t be.

“Hey,” I said. He looked at me. “You were right. Let’s go back to Brooklyn.”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3g9eaKo via Blogger https://ift.tt/3iZAVC3

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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offbeatmusicuk · 5 years ago

Text

Albums Of 2019

Here we go again. Another pretty strong year. Full disclosure I haven’t had as much time to listen to these albums this year as usual so my mind may be changed (possibly immediately) but here’s my list as it stands at the mo.

Before that though... an honourable mention of an album which I decided wasn’t eligible for the list because technically it’s a soundtrack album, even though it sounds like a new album from the band, and a strong addition to their discography....

Biffy Clyro “Balance, Not Symmetry”

And now the bonus 30 albums that didn’t quite make the top 50 but couldn’t go unmentioned.

Lindsay Schoolcraft / Sigrid / Talla 2XLC / Ladytron / The Anix / While She Sleeps / Calva Louise / HANA / Ivy Crown / Lacuna Coil / Hante. / Puppy / Stanton Warriors / Moonlight Haze / Perfect Son

Idiot Pilot / Port Noir / Above & Beyond / Eat Your Heart Out / Potty Mouth / Lupa J / Papa Roach / Starkill / IAMWARFACE / The Anix / MC Lars & Mega Ran / Snow Ghosts / J Majik / Estiva / GIRLI

And now the big five-oh

50.

Dinosaur Pile-Up “Celebrity Mansions”

Dinosaur Pile-Up have been gaining praise for their 4th album, and it’s not hard to see why. Spikey, catchy rock and punk, about touring the USA, some sounding like Foo Fighters’ heavier moments. Fun stuff.

49. Foals “Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 1″

The experimental indie band released 2 albums in 2019, both parts of the same project, and though Part 2 certainly has merit, and a few cracking tracks, Part 1 is the more consistent, full of varied and surprising music.

48. Forever Still “Breathe In Colours”

The Danish hard rockers fronted by Maja Shining, deliver their 2nd album of aggressive, melodic rock and alternative metal.

https://foreverstill.bandcamp.com/album/breathe-in-colours

47. Cold Kingdom “Into The Black Sky”

Debut album from the Minneapolis hard rockers, their first release with new singer Elissa Pearson.

https://coldkingdom.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-black-sky

46. Hatchie “Keepsake”

Aussie Hatchie brings us her debut album of shoegaze-y, shimmery, dreamy, electronic indie-pop. One to float away with.

https://hatchie.bandcamp.com/album/keepsake

45. UNKLE “The Road Part II / Lost Highway”

A serious case of double album syndrome with this one. Disc 1, aside from a weak cover of a terrible song as its last track, is absolutely amazing, and if it was released like that it would be top 10 for sure. But the whole thing has to be considered and disc 2, though far from bad, is just a bit dull, especially comparatively.

44. Doll Skin “Love Is Dead And We Killed Her”

The ladies from Phoenix are back with their new album, once again a great collection of catchy, upbeat, alternative rock and punk.

43.

Only Shadows “Brothers”

Epic, catchy indie rock. They are very American sounding but they come from Nuneaton. Good stuff though.

42. Driftmoon “Remember The Night”

Though it is a live recording of a DJ set, Driftmoon insists that this is his third artist album. Fair enough - it is all his music, though there are many collabs and his remix of John O’Callaghan & Audrey Gallagher’s classic “Big Sky”, but aside from an instrumental version of a track that featured on his last album “Invictus” it’s all previously unreleased. He wanted to switch it up and make the ‘live performance’ the first way these tracks were heard. And like many a DJ set, more often than an album, the biggest and best tracks are in the last third of the album, and there are some mammoth tunes here.

41.

The High Priest “Dream American”

Formerly of excellent bands Diphonia, Global Police Force and Dark Science, The High Priest continues his solo journey with his new album. And it’s a good ‘un. His website describes it best - “Dark brooding sonic rock music and atmospheric soundscapes”. Class.

40. Feeder “Tallulah”

Feeder’s tenth album continues their run of quality records. It’s no wild departure, but you’ll like it if you’re a fan. “Fear Of Flying” stands up against many of their classic tunes.

39. Furious Monkey House “Love, Scum & Dust”

Spanish indie-rock young-uns Furious Monkey House release their 2nd album. And it’s an excellent collection of catchy upbeat tunes, mostly in English but with some native Spanish in there too. Great stuff.

38. Nemesea “White Flag”

5th album from the Dutch band. They’ve moved through symphonic metal and gothic rock in their career, and this album includes a handful of the best songs they’ve ever done.

https://nemesea.bandcamp.com/album/white-flag

37. Fever 333 “Strength In Numb333rs”

Agressive rap-metal, with massive riffs and huge melodic choruses. Touches of electronics and Trap are dotted throughout. Sounds like the middle ground between Rage Against The Machine and early Linkin Park.

36.

The Dark Element “Songs The Night Sings”

Former Nightwish vocalist Anette Olzon and her Dark Element partner Jani Liimatainen deliver their second album, and it’s another quality, catchy collection of symphonic metal tunes.

35. New Years Day “Unbreakable”

Huge, jittery riffage, paired with pop style songwriting and melodies, with powerful vocals. Reminiscent of “Blood” era In This Moment, but less sleazy.

34. Blood Red Shoes “Get Tragic”

Blood Red Shoes bring a new sound with their 5th album. More electronic, almost synth-pop, but still with a rock band at the core. Some of their most original and catchy tunes yet are included here.

33. Maraton “Meta”

The Bandcamp page describes this album perfectly - “MARATON pushes the boundaries between pop music and progressive rock, mixing machine like drums and roaring bass groundwork with shimmering guitars, ethereal keys and sacral vocal performance. The band has sought to create a style of music which combines the rhythmic heaviness from bands such as Mars Volta with the pop aesthetics of Muse.” Check them out.

https://maratonofnorway.bandcamp.com/releases

32. Ankor “White Dragon”

Accessible metal with a prog sensibility, the melodies are catchy, but musically it will keep you guessing throughout.

31.

Liquid “Spacemonkey”

Old school hardcore rave stylings from scene legend Liquid on his 3rd artist album. A breakbeat bounty.

30. As December Falls “As December Falls”

Straight to the point, catchy pop-punk from this Nottingham four-piece on their debut album. Fans of early Paramore, early Tonight Alive or We Are The In Crowd etc would do well to check this lot out.

29. Blink-182 “Nine”

2016′s “California”, the first album to feature Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba replacing original member Tom DeLonge, was a huge return to form for the band, and “Nine” continues the revitalised Blink with another massive collection of pop-punk tunes. They broaden their sound palette here too with sampled drum loops and heavier riffs in places.

28. Rebecca Lou “Bleed”

There’s a shoegaze-esque vibe to the production on this collection of raw, catchy, rock ‘n’ roll tunes from Denmark, and it gives just the edge of uniqueness that makes this album special.

https://rebeccalou.bandcamp.com/album/bleed

27. Sleep Token “Sundowning”

On paper Sleep Token, a mysterious, masked unit of unnamed musicians, who worship an ancient deity called “Sleep”, would make you think they made incredibly sinister black or doom metal. But that isn’t the case. There is a metal heaviness and some mountainous riffs, but only in parts - often kicking in as songs build to their climax. For the most part though they are bewitching soundscapes, often minimal, with huge melodic vocals, and electronic touches. Worship.

26. Within Temptation “Resist”

Less orchestras, more electronic touches and more influence from other styles of modern music, but still unmistakably a Within Temptation album, “Resist” brings the band back from the brink after some serious writers’ block almost ended them. Bombastic and revitalised.

25. Solarstone “...--”

The final part of Solarstone’s “One” album trilogy is once again an epic journey through his ‘pure trance’ sound.

24. We Are The Catalyst “Ephemeral”

Third album from the alternative-metal Swedes, full of huge choruses. Fans of accessible metal with melodic female vocals should check this out.

https://watcofficial.bandcamp.com/album/ephemeral

23. Lamb “The Secret Of Letting Go”

Five years on from their last, Lamb unleash their 7th album. Ethereal, magical, and special, as they do so well.

22. Polynation “Igneous”

A cinematic, sweeping, atmospheric album, blending many facets of dance music, ambient, techno, IDM. A wordless, groove laden, goosebump inducing journey.

21. Grum “Deep State”

Grum’s much delayed second album finally lands on Anjunabeats. It’s a kinetic mix of sounds incorporating trance, progressive and deep house elements, and creates some huge anthems. In particular the incredible “Stay”.

20. False Advertising “Brainfreeze”

Mancunian grunge / noise-pop trio deliver a fizzing album of 90s influenced rock. Cracking, energetic tunes throughout.

https://falseadvertising.bandcamp.com/album/brainfreeze

19. Cold Blue “Winter”

Slowly but surely building his status and honing his craft over the last decade or so, and in recent years gaining a reputation as one of the best producers in the trance scene, German Tobias Schuh finally unleashes his debut album. It is an epic, progressive journey through uplifting trance, slowly building and revealing its treasures, avoiding being too formulaic and predictable. One to get lost in.

18. R+ “The Last Summer”

Rollo returns, with a little help from his sister Dido, and long time production partner and Faithless teammate Sister Bliss, giving us a blissful, Balearic sounding album. The whole thing sounds like a love letter to Ibiza. Lovely.

17. Pumarosa “Devastation”

Pumarosa deliver their moody second album. A bit more electronic (with elements of trip-hop and drum & bass seeping in), a bit darker, still brilliantly adventurous. A very exciting band.

16. Luttrell “Into Clouds”

I’ve been following Eric Luttrell’s superb, progressive blend of deep house and melodic techno for a couple of years, and now he unleashes his debut album. It doesn’t disappoint. Widescreen, beautiful, upbeat, catchy and excellently produced.

15. The Beautiful Monument “I’m The Reaper”

The Aussie quartet deliver their second impressive long player. Huge riffs, huge drums, huge melodies, in their blend of post-hardcore, pop-punk and metal.

https://tbmofficial.bandcamp.com/album/im-the-reaper

14. The Thrillseekers present Hydra “Altered State”

Despite releasing his first music in 1999, and releasing a steady stream of singles since, Steve Helstrip only delivered his debut album as The Thrillseekers in 2016. For this, his 2nd opus, he's decided to release under his Hydra alias. And what a beauty it is. Mostly instrumental, apart from a new reworking of The Thrillseekers classic "The Last Time" with vocals from Fisher, it is a masterclass in sublime, chilled, Balearic trance. Reminiscent of the first couple of Chicane albums, and makes you feel like you are blissed out on a beautiful, sunny beach.

https://thethrillseekers.bandcamp.com/album/altered-state

13. Jimmy Eat World “Surviving”

"Surviving" is Jimmy Eat World's 10th album. There are little touches of an expansion to their sound, but if you are familiar with their brand of American rock, then you'll know pretty much what to expect. This is undoubtedly a Jimmy Eat World album. It is, however, a very, very good one. One of the strongest they've ever done in my opinion, probably only with "Bleed American" as any kind of competition.

12. Age Of Rampage “Empire City”

Age Of Rampage deliver a plethora of breakbeat stompers on their debut album. Their love for acts like The Prodigy would be evident even without the first track sampling a Keith Flint interview, but the old school is delivered with relish here. If you love 90s breakbeat acts such as The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method, Freestylers etc, this is a very worthy listen. Such a shame Russian breakbeat label Criminal Tribe don't do physical releases.

https://criminaltribeltd.bandcamp.com/album/age-of-rampage-empire-city-ctr035-18032019

11. Hands Off Gretel “I Want The World”

Hands Off Gretel are an effervescent blend of punk and grunge, led by the fierce Lauren Tate. A love of 90s rock is evident. "I Want The World", their 2nd album, is packed full of killer tunes.

10. Dido “Still On My Mind”

I’ve loved Dido’s voice since the early days of Faithless, so when she started releasing her own music I’ve always liked it to varying degrees (loved some of it, some of it a bit meh). This is her best album since “No Angel” in my opinion. It’s chilled, ethereal, and rather beautiful, and has been one of my most listened to albums in 2019. The title track is absolutely one of my favourite tracks of the year. I’m surprised it is top 10, but it had to be.

9. Wislov “Madness From Paradise”

Kniteforce Records and their sister labels have been a driving force in the old-school hardcore (or ‘rave’ as many early 90s compilations would call it) revival. Most of their releases are new music, just done in the old style, with fresh touches. Wislov is one of, if not the, greatest talent in this scene, and after a bunch of EPs and a slew of great tunes, this debut album is unleashed. And it’s a cracker. If you love that old-school sound you will find much to love here.

8. HÆLOS “Any Random Kindness”

Mesmerising, utterly beautiful, electronic tunes, with lush vocals. Picking up where their 2016 debut album “Full Circle” left off, but stepping up a notch. There is a heavy rave influence, but this is definitely made for the post-party, the comedown, the chill out time, the blissed out euphoria after the full on euphoria. Every time I hear this album I discover something new, and love it more. Wonderful.

7. Yonaka “Don’t Wait ‘Til Tomorrow”

Yonaka may veer to the poppier end of alternative-rock, but they know how to write a hell of a tune. Many of them in fact. 11 feature here on their debut album, released after a string of quality EPs and singles got them some exposure over the last couple of years. Hooks aplenty, huge choruses, riffs and electronics.

6. Anavae “45″

Fans of Anavae have been waiting a long time for this. The debut album many thought may never come. 8 years on from their debut single and 7 years after their debut EP “Into The Aether”, and following a bunch of EPs and singles in the interim, it is finally here. And I’m sure very few will be left disappointed. Rebecca Need-Menear and Jamie Finch deliver a typically varied alternative-rock album, veering at times into poppier territory, and others into moody trip-hop-esque tracks. Other times they stick to simple, yet epic, rock tunes like on the massive “High”. If you don’t know this band, check them out.

5. Dream State “Primrose Path”

Dream State progress in sound and technical ability with each release. From 2015′s debut EP “Consequences”, through last year’s excellent “Recovery” EP to this, their debut album. And it’s a pretty epic affair. Chunky riffs, pounding drumming, powerful vocals (both in aggressive and melodic turns from CJ Gilpin) with a massive, widescreen feel to the production. The Welsh 4-piece are often classed as post-hardcore, but that is far too limiting a description for a band with such obvious ambition. Class.

youtube

4. Machineheart “People Change”

Lush, shimmery, ethereal alt pop from this L.A. quartet fronted by the fabulous vocals of Stevie Scott. A cracking album from start to finish but a particular mention goes to upbeat (almost breakbeat styled) track "Overgrown" which is one of the best tracks I've heard all year. If you like bands like London Grammar or HÆLOS, give this album a spin.

youtube

3. Black Futures “Never Not Nothing”

Black Futures are a genre meshing riot. They've been called "Anarchic Electro Psych Punk Noise", "industrial noise-punk" and label themselves as "Future Punk". They have the sensibilities of a punk band and a dance band simultaneously. There's Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream guesting, as is rapper P.O.S. More than once have they been described as a mix of Death From Above 1979 & The Chemical Brothers. It's a future party, a post-apocalyptic riot. Give it a listen.

youtube

2. Dallas Kalevala “Dallas Kalevala”

Dallas Kalevala hail from Finland and have been called fierce subarctic pop music. Whether they called themselves this I'm not sure. What it sounds like to me is a brilliant, varied pop album, slightly camp, with fantastic electronic production and some full on pounding dance beats. 9 brilliantly written tracks, that all sound different, but somehow sound like they come from the same band and belong together. There is a feeling Dallas Kalevala would be somewhat polarising. There's no way they'll be everyone's cup of tea (which suggests they are doing something right), but those that get them will love them a whole lot.

youtube

1. The Chemical Brothers “No Geography”

To make their 9th album The Chemical Brothers returned to the equipment they used to make their first two albums. And though "No Geography" doesn't sound like "Exit Planet Dust" or "Dig Your Own Hole", it feels like them. Consequently it is arguably their best album since them, but it is definitely their best since 2002's "Come With Us". It feels a bit old school, but also fresh and new. Tracks flow into each other seamlessly making the album feel like a complete body of work rather than a collection of tracks, and it is utterly brilliant throughout. Joyous.

youtube

Well there you go. I’ll leave you with the following, for your listening pleasure:

Spotify playlist - a countdown of the top 50 (50-1), minus a couple of things that aren’t on Spotify.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/05F3PPwKO7NkwpD4eTJBiP?si=O8bO2JYDSqa3Kz-SzQ8D4Q

And a YouTube playlist counting down 50-1, but a completely different tracklist to the Spotify playlist (and different vids for the top 5 than are embedded here).

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSWMYBJKcPo0tJGbPDFw8QAdZlb1BWj3H

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familiaanteomnia · 6 years ago

Note

all the things for the get to know the mun meme !

¯\_(ツ)_/¯: do you have any tumblr friends? if so, who are they?: A few? I guess it’s a loaded topic cause I’m not sure what qualifies/who is like ‘oh yeah that idiot over there’s my friend’. Naming names seems extreme. But I bet the guilty parties know who they are. 2 of which have literally put up with me for years now.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°): relationship status?: Single, an fool with no dating savvy. Consider testing my luck on apps for lols occasionally though.

ಠ_ಠ: what is your biggest pet peeve?: There’s a few but I’m generally pretty too chill. Like if somebody’s doing something I find annoying generally I’m like ‘-’

(ಥ_ಥ): finish this: i hate it when…: I hate it when people think they’re opted out of being gross, or hateful just because they’re lgbt+. That popular posters in fandoms tend to be all ‘wow I’m Woke’ but fill the tags with gross content. And I should get paid for it because wow then I’d be able to live a great life, donate to good causes,etc.

Like the sheer amount of times I literally have seen ‘I’m a wlw so its fine if I really sexualize mlms, trans men’ is- scary. Not to mention the ones who are all ‘I mean but like is the f slur really that bad?’. Like basically can people respect each other??? Or could I at least make money for their gross behavior- to at least like fund people’s transitions,etc.

ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ: what is your favorite animal?: I have to pick.. Beta fish; emotionally speaking fish mean a lot to me. Otherwise I like cats, dogs, eucalyptus parrots.

(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜): who is someone you can tell everything to?: Nobody, I’m not good at human interaction/feel very limited in confiding because a fair amount of everything around me’s so messed up and I’ve hurt people even vaguely mentioning it cause it’s like ‘oh shit that’s messed up’.

(づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ: are you a hugger?: Depends. Like I’d totally love hugs if I was initiating them/certain people and same with just like sprawling across a lap like ‘look I’m cuuute fight me’. Because I’m touch starved; somebody give me basic affection. I’d like to be but also I’ve had hugs, touch used as manipulation tactics. Not in the way people would think either.

Like then other factors but I take comfort in one armed hugs where possible. But goal ideally at some point I’m certainly going to be like ‘I offer and receive affection fight me- platonically especially screw ‘traditional’ nonsense’

(╯°□°)╯︵ ʞooqǝɔɐɟ: besides tumblr, do you have any other social media?: Depends what classifies. I’ve got a newish fb for my future. Meaning to start i.nsta up for real (I like taking dumb pics even if I don’t have a fancy camera available/phone camera that’s decent). Then just like various this or that. Meaning to start up a yt. Got d.iscord though I rarely use it.

﴾͡๏̯͡๏﴿?: how old are you?: Almost 19 which like honestly given I’ve had to be the adult in rooms, most my life and things- feels more like going on late twenties. Plus nobody ever interacts with me like ‘oh wow you’re not that old’ because of it. Though I certainly look 19 most likely cause I got hormonally screwed for now.

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻: what are your thoughts on school?: Education, learning and growing is important. However there is plenty flaws in the system at times. But most of all I hate the attitude society can have about it, about ‘drop outs’ . There’s this assumption I’m never going to live any sort of life, that I must have stopped attending for stupid reasons. Cause high school is easy, online school too right? There’s that option.

That I can’t learn things, cause if you’re not in school/with some stupid piece of paper saying ‘you tested well congrats’ you’re adverse to learning. Not educated. Like I had lost my ability to even pass, or do anything. Mentally I was in a whole sort of other hell that nobody should ever know. I’ve got literal amnesia from how depressed I was. That while being told to absorb new information, trying but I couldn’t was hell.

The terrifying thought of the crowded graduation ceremony, hearing the name that made my skin crawl and yet another dumb piece of paper with that printed on it? Didn’t help. I think it can be lovely, that people certainly need to learn things and have that. That I admire people who pull through it/willingly go through intensive college,etc. Personally I’ll do my ged when I’m in a better place, or something but I chose life/hope to get better then and I still am putting getting better first.

| (• ◡•)| (❍ᴥ❍ʋ): favorite tv show?: I have too many tbh. S.hadowhunters, T.ua, Tales Of The C.ity *the new n.etflix show*, n.bc’s Constantine, Faking I.t, F.ringe, s.yfy’s Almost H.uman, B.elieve *whatever network did it*, just to name a few.

(ง'̀-‘́)ง: are you okay?: Not really- working on it though so like it’s whatever

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*: ･ﾟ✧: sexual orientation?: I’d jokingly say complicated but.. Gay, asexual. I really really like guys and well details aren’t necessary in the latter department but the sexy isn’t appealing to me. It’s just like ‘meh’ literally.

┬┴┬┴┤(･_├┬┴┬┴: are you a people person or a loner?: Loner, though I’m also a people person want to be/tend to be by accident? Supposedly I have an attractive personality. I’ve always had people, kids just chat at me even if I didn’t know them,etc. I can be sitting grumpily in a corner and an old lady is like ‘do you perhaps know the time’ instead of to anybody else. Etc. Honestly it’s a ? type of situation/answer. But I do best with myself/prefer my mediocre company to like challenging my anxiety,etc for sure.

ლ(ಠ益ಠლ): do you have any siblings?: Two brothers, one sister. And I’m the second oldest but truthfully basically the eldest. Really complicated relationships. The eldest, I actually literally refuse to interact with most the time. Because of all the abuse and stuff that happened. Like even after apologizing, supposedly feeling bad- still screws me over at times.

ಠ╭╮ಠ: have you ever self harmed?: Big time, I’m clean now for the most part because I mean technically anything harmful to you done purposely,etc counts as it… But like yeah for years it was terrible and sometimes I still get the urges,etc. Like I’m recovered generally to a point it’s like ‘oh wow I don’t know how long its been since I was doing that, when I last did it’.

(づ￣ ³￣)づ: have you ever been in love?: Well that version of thinking you are when you’re young. Or trying to convince yourself that you are. So I guess. But on the other hand not really.

(☞ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞: would you rather be hugged by a bunny or kissed by a doe?: Hugged by a bunny, I mean both sound adorable but I’ve had a bunny rest its head on my knee before so like that speaks for itself.

(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻: how do you let your anger out?: I usually don’t? Like whats a coping mechanism for 100? I’ve seen too much anger issues so generally, also being soft spoken I really don’t act. Venting into the void be it a mental health app, or some blog usually does the trick. Or listening to music, writing it into poems,etc.

ᕙ(⇀‸��‶)ᕗ: are you active?: Not really, I want to be/for the right reasons at some point for sure. For now it’s usually sporadic like ‘eh I guess I can do a few things health! yay!’

ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ♪: what are your favorite band(s)/artist(s)?: Sooo many… C.OIN, Mother M.other, W.eareskydive, Seth C.orbin, M.allrat, L D.evine, The L.umineers, L.IGHTS, A.nna Clendening, B.astille, The R.egrettes, A.JR, F.LETCHER, W.rabel, G.erard Way/M.CR. Cavetown. Ryan A.rmdor. T.ransviolet. E.DEN. Classic rock artists… the list goes on for ages.

（╯°□°）╯︵(\ .o.)\: who is your least favorite person?: Real life? Online? Celebrities? Can’t pick, don’t feel can single just 1 person out regardless/bit cruel to have somebody top that list alone.

♥‿♥: tell us about your crush!: uwu I don’t have one currently

◔̯◔: what time is it?: 8:54 PM

◕‿◕: what is your guilty pleasure?: Frosting with pretzels? Lots of salt. Junk food. Dancing around like an idiot to music.

◔ ⌣ ◔: are you a virgin?: Okay so I don’t quite believe in all the ‘virgin’ ‘first this or that’ nonsense cause like? Not going to go there but what is the clarification honestly… But yeah I’ve not done anything with anybody. Or kissed somebody just yet and that’s okay. Hell with the sexual crap it’s like bliss for me because also people can be so uneducated,etc like phew no worries for me in that department.

#thesunisalonetoo #long post cw #general cw #♥ i can’t breathe. 》 mun post #(Whelp this is- informative about me I guess- I'm only semi anxious about that...)#(I'm a human person clearly)

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sapphiraice · 7 years ago

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1-100!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tell me everything >;3c

/dies

Under the cut because 100 is a lot.

1. What is your middle name? Rose. I was named for my maternal grandma.

2. How old are you? 20. I keep wanting to say 21 because of how close my birthday is lol

3. When is your birthday? September 25th

4. What is your zodiac sign? Libra

5. What is your favorite color? sapphire blue (or blues in general)

6. What’s your lucky number? 13? My favorite number’s four, so I guess four.

7. Do you have any pets? A male dog named Teddy.

8. Where are you from? North Dakota, in the USA :3

9. How tall are you? 5′6″

10. What shoe size are you? 9 wide, although most shoe stores don’t carry wide, so I wear 9 ½.

11. How many pairs of shoes do you own? 5, but I’m thinking of getting rid of a couple.

12. What was your last dream about? I dreamed that my family was having a reunion and everyone was telling me that I don’t matter and my problems were nothing and I haven’t been through anything that should qualify me for the various issues that I have. They all sat around a table eating food and I had to sit on the floor next to the table and cry. Coincidentally, I woke up crying.

13. What talents do you have? Being a consistent failure. I pick up animal body language very quickly. I tend to learn most things fairly quickly.

14. Are you psychic in any way? My mom thinks I am because it makes her feel good about herself for having made me. When I was little I did a tarot card reading that predicted my mom’s various financial statuses and my cousin getting an abusive boyfriend, I suppose.

15. Favorite song? I usually can’t decide these things, as they’re very ‘in-the-moment’. I like the songs from Three Days Grace from before they changed lead singers pretty consistently.

16. Favorite movie? Kiki’s Delivery Service. I will never not want to see that movie.

17. Who would be your ideal partner? Like someone I know? Not sure. For qualities, I could try to name a few, but I’ll just go with someone who is willing to work through my paranoia until I realize that they actually do care about me and I don’t have to maintain some kind of air of perfection to avoid abandonment.

18. Do you want children? No. Never.

19. Do you want a church wedding? Depends who I’m getting married to.

20. Are you religious? I was raised Lutheran, and would like to find a church eventually if possible.

21. Have you ever been to the hospital? Aside from regular checkups, I’ve been there for two surgeries, an allergy test, and the emergency room for my foot.

22. Have you ever gotten in trouble with the law? Not exactly. My aunt let me borrow her car, and a policeman pulled up to me in the college parking lot to inform me that the tags were seven years out of date, the car insurance/title was different than the license plate, and the license plate itself was the wrong one (which is a pretty bad felony). I explained my situation and instead of arresting me he believed me (thank goodness) and told me to just not drive the car anymore.

23. Have you ever met any celebrities? No, but my mom cleaned a set for a film featuring Shia LaBeouf. Close enough for me.

24. Baths or showers? Showers. Having to lay in my own dirty bath water makes me feel like I didn’t actually get clean.

25. What color socks are you wearing? Dark gray knee-highs with 3 white stripes at the top.

26. Have you ever been famous? Depends on the scale of fame. In my school I was generally well known for being intelligent, in my county I had a brief moment of fame for making it to the state Spelling Bee, etc.

27. Would you like to be a big celebrity? No.

28. What type of music do you like? I’m not picky. I have a soft spot for musical soundtracks, rock/metal, and classical instrument covers of various genres.

29. Have you ever been skinny dipping? No but I want to.

30. How many pillows do you sleep with? Two and a bunch of stuffed animals.

31. What position do you usually sleep in? On my back or sides. Occasionally my legs & arms will take on various awkward-looking positions.

32. How big is your house? I currently live in a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment.

33. What do you typically have for breakfast? Nothing, or toast with peanut butter and honey.

34. Have you ever fired a gun? Multiple guns, multiple times.

35. Have you ever tried archery? My bow and arrows are in the closet.

36. Favorite clean word? Defenestration.

37. Favorite swear word? I typically don’t swear. Maybe silly variations on traditional swears? Like mcfuckin

38. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep? Close to 48 hours.

39. Do you have any scars? I have 4 scars.

40. Have you ever had a secret admirer? If I have, they’re still very much a secret.

41. Are you a good liar? Yes, but it takes effort that I’m not willing to make.

42. Are you a good judge of character? I can be, but I’m not infallible.

43. Can you do any other accents than your own? No.

44. Do you have a strong accent? Not particularly, although people from other areas can probably pick up on it.

45. What is your favorite accent? *ahem* South Korean. >.> followed closely by Irish, although I don’t recall the exact dialect.

46. What is your personality type? If you mean MBTI, I’m most likely an INXP (I waffle between the T and F pretty frequently).

47. What is your most expensive piece of clothing? I don’t do expensive, but I have an old prom dress that I never wear that technically qualifies.

48. Can you curl your tongue? No.

49. Are you an innie or an outie? innie

50. Left or right handed? right

51. Are you scared of spiders? No but they have startled me on occasion.

52. Favorite food? Blueberries and pumpkin (and all their variants).

53. Favorite foreign food? I’m only counting foreign food as what I’ve eaten in foreign countries. I don’t know what it’s called, but in Greece I had this awesome hotdish/lasagna-type thing. I had gotten the non-vegetarian version, and I was able to try the vegetarian version, and they were both great!

54. Are you a clean or messy person? messy 100%

55. Most used phrase? “at this point”, or some other phrase that’s more of a local colloquialism (I asked my sister and she said “owo”)

56. Most used word? It’s probably “hecc” at this point. *stares* (omg I didn’t even realized I said ‘at this point’ lol)

57. How long does it take for you to get ready? 15 minutes to an hour and a half

58. Do you have much of an ego? No.

59. Do you suck or bite lollipops? No matter how hard I try to just suck, I always end up biting them.

60. Do you talk to yourself? Yeah.

61. Do you sing to yourself? I used to.

62. Are you a good singer? My voice is too weak for me to carry a tune consistently.

63. Biggest fear? Abandonment or failure

64. Are you a gossip? I’ll listen but I won’t participate unless I have a reasonable explanation to add.

65. Best dramatic movie you’ve seen? I don’t remember any dramas I may have watched.

66. Do you like long or short hair? I like the ways I can style long hair.

67. Can you name all 50 states of America? Given enough time and motivation.

68. Favorite school subject? Science

69. Extrovert or introvert? Introvert

70. Have you ever been scuba diving? No but I want to.

71. What makes you nervous? Social situations, mostly

72. Are you scared of the dark? I’m not afraid of the dark, but only what it could be hiding.

73. Do you correct people when they make a mistake? I used to do that a lot, but now it’s a bit rarer or I’ll do it in a joking way.

74. Are you ticklish? No one has found my ticklish spots.

75. Have you ever started a rumor? No.

76. Have you ever been in a position of authority? Junior high class vice president.

77. Have you ever drank underage? I’ve sipped beer (nasty), champagne, a white wine, and maybe a few other things.

78. Have you ever done drugs? No and I don’t want to.

79. Who was your first real crush? A boy in the same high school grade as me.

80. How many piercings do you have? Two; one on each ear lobe

81. Can you roll your Rs? No. It makes speaking Spanish difficult.

82. How fast can you type? I’m inconsistent so it varies from 65-75 wpm.

83. How fast can you run? Average to below average speed, maybe.

84. What color is your hair? Used to be blue. It’s a dark blonde now.

85. What color are your eyes? Blue, although they’ve been known to change shades or look gray or green.

86. What are you allergic to? All deciduous trees/pollen, all non-fruit-bearing plants, all non-fruit-bearing bushes, horses, cows, maybe some other farm animals, cats, pollen, dust, hay fever, ceclor/cefaclor.

87. Do you keep a journal? I used to. I still have it, and plan to start it up again soon.

88. What do your parents do? My dad is dead, my mom runs a cleaning business.

89. Do you like your age? Sure? I don’t dislike it.

90. What makes you angry? Anything/anyone who is/has threatened people I care about. People who abuse animals.

91. Do you like your own name? Yep

92. Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they? No.

93. Do you want a boy or a girl for a child? No.

94. What are your strengths? Do I have any? I can’t think of any right now.

95. What are your weaknesses? My fear of abandonment makes me a jealous person. I have crippling insecurity. I can’t resist sugary foods. I lose motivation quickly. I’m indecisive. etc

96. How did you get your name? My mom came across it and was pretty much like “Oh, that’s cool. If I give birth to a daughter I’ll name her this.”

97. Were your ancestors royalty? I read that at least 70% of the American population containing West European DNA is related to one of the kings of England, so probably.

98. Do you have any scars? This is a repeat question, so I’ll say their locations. One’s on my left shin, another’s on the back of my left hand, a third’s on my left wrist, and the fourth’s on my left thumb. While inspecting my left thumb I found a fifth scar that I forgot to mention, so there’s also that. :/

99. Color of your bedspread? Blue

100. Color of your room? White (boring, but it is an apartment)

#Ask Meme Answers #casualpastelgay #man that was a lot

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kishimoto-did-us-dirty · 6 years ago

Text

Naruto Arts School AU

Character

- major

description

Naruto

-Drums

Sasuke

-Guitar (lead)

Sakura

- Dance

Hinata

- Creative Writing

Kiba

- Drums OR Photography

Drums for obvious reasons (loud and obnoxious), although ruff boi looks good with a camera, too. Great at landscapes and street photography.

Shino

- Creative Writing OR Photography

Ino

- Dance

Shikamaru

- Guitar (bass) OR Creative Writing OR Architecture

Smart boy’s a tricky one. He would either be a bassist, a mystery and historical fiction writer, or, of his school offers it, be great at architecture. Idrk.

Choji

- ermmmmm….. maybe graphic design? Tech theatre (props)? Vocal???

Tenten

- Dance

Lee

- DANCE (hip-hop, too)

It’s sweat. It’s burn. It’s energy. It’s Lee.

Neji

- Violin

First chair violinist in his freshman year for the school’s philharmonic orchestra. He be extra like that.

Gaara

- Guitar (bass)

Kankuro

-Art

Specifically sculpting. For obvious reasons.

Temari

- Acting

Itachi

-Piano

Shisui

- FILM / VIDEO PRODUCTION

Sasori, Deidara, and Sai

Guess.

Kakashi

- Saxophone

It’s the only thing that suits him and it suits him so well. Has suave.

Obito (omfg his arms y'all)

- Not to say drums or anything, but…. drums.

Hashirama

- Vocal

OkaYYYYYY. VOCAL GOD. CAN DO RIFFS AND RUNS AND HAS PERFECT PITCH. ALSO THE SWEETEST GUY??? WAS A CHAMBER SINGER AS A FRESHMAN. EVERYONE LOVES HIM, GOOD BOY ENERGY.

Likes to belt.

Madara

- Piano

Total prodigy, but hates classical music. Once was accompanist to Hashirama for a solo vocal performance and hasn’t been left alone since.

Tobirama

- Viola or Cello

Izuna

- Piano

Also a piano god. The uchihas breed them. Hates being accompanist for Tobirama. They’re secretly best friends though, don’t tell anyone.

Karin

- Tech Theatre.

Idk why. Probably started out with props and made her way up to TD (technical director) in senior year.

Suigetsu

- Tech Theatre

Fucking hates theatre kids (I feel that (I used to be one so don’t come at me)). Assistant TD. Karin hates him.

Jugo

- Visual Art

Paints landscapes and nature. Really good with oils and gouache respectively.

Yamato

- lmao Trumpet.

Met Kakashi since they both play brass, but boy he ain’t got that suave. That’s why he plays trumpet. Lmao he plays the fucking trumpet anjdwcnojdnn.

Rin

- Vocal

Sweetest voice and could also play the acoustic guitar when she sang. Died in a car accident junior year. Kakashi was at the wheel when they got hit by a drunk driver. Obito saw the whole thing.

Kurenai

- Visual Art

Can create dream like paintings that almost seem like illusions.

Asuma

- Cello / guitar

Used to play cello because of his parents, but loves to play guitar. Can sing but his voice is raspy from smoking.

Gai

Who the fuck do you think teaches dance?

Jiraiya

- Guitar (lead)

Tsunade

-Dance

Legendary dancer. Probably toured with a few famous people. Now teachers. Mentored Sakura, and mentored Ino but for a shorter time.

Orochimaru

- Idk, didgeridoo, or some shit

Definitely a wood wind. Flute maybe??? Teaches now but no one knows what he does. Pedophile. Has a thing for Sasuke.

And that’s that!! Feel free to send in more requests!! Tell me what you think~

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