#which is an interesting day. ive found it really useful to track my moods and my personal development from one 2/14 to the next

[yo9urt]

auuuauauauagh

[spikeinthepunch]

Penrose: Dawning- the dev blog

Okay well my game has been up for a few days now, and the Jam is over so yeah, why not give a massive blog about it and the development and characters and feelings etc.

again this was quite a feat for me, so to say. as small as the game is. ive been struggling a ton for years and years, so the process and experience has stuck with me for the last month.

The personal

If you have followed and read some of my posts from the last month youd probably seen me talking about having seen a neurophysiologist-- my appointments for that were happening for quite a while before this month but this month was the end of it. Aside from it clearly being a huge stressor in general, it was also a huge eye opener to my problems. Which yeah, include my ability to Make Things. Not art- but everything else. The listening & reading comprehension, math and memory I tested on being really really bad. And it was great to understand that now! but having decided to take on the Jam was a lot and well, even though on one hand i felt good that I knew my issues.... it didn't mean i solved my issues. Now i was just way more away of them.

So, I tried my hardest I think because I knew I'd always give up on this stuff. And well, my mood meds were still kinda helping. I think there was a different kind of determination despite the upset that some of those tests caused me. Still, I faced a lot of anxiety, frusteration, and upsetting feelings in the process because of how hard it was for me to learn even the smallest things. I won't go super hard on that-- I just want to appreciate the small community of Narrat for being able to help and clarify my confusion even if I'd often say to myself "ugh, that was such a simple thing! i shouldnt need to get it clarified two times over!" etc etc.

still despite the variety of emotions i faced i came out of this really thinking 'wow i actually made something' because literally all these years i have never realized a larger project due to my issues. so for that i can be happy.

The development

the process of making this game was interesting because obvious i had never put my assumptions about the best way to develop to the test. i could think all the while "ill do this first, this second etc" but until you start making it you may realize you gotta do something else!

the fact this was only a month long didnt really give me much time to figure out better ways to develop, it i was already a ways into it. so i came out realizing what i could do diffferent. one thing for sure is i know i couldnt start with art. its just not possible in general to predict the art i would need clearly, because even if i were to write a lot, i felt that making dialog branches was much easier while i was coding because i never knew how far i would want them to go.

but also, in terms of writing- i already write a lot and i kinda have my mental process. getting that to work with the game was tough, and while i liked how i wrote for this game, i feel like it faltered in the sense that writing so many bits of it entirely away from each other had my struggling to make sure i felt connected. like, writing on one huge document allows me to easily refer back and having it all together makes it flow well in my head. but having them scattered around code was hard for me to track and i was never sure if it all felt like it connected up well. i also think in general if i wrote most of the important chunks- stuff not incredibly reliant on branches/choices- that i probably would have written waaaay more too. its just a format of writing that is natural.

there isnt too much as i did in the game coding wise so i dont have too many comments on development process. but i know i would like to make games in narrat that use the typical features found in games like DE (as the engine was inspired by), like stats/skills and maybe inventory depending on the thing.

The story & design

i dont plan to explain the story in detail here (a lot of secret context it on my discord) and i have talked loads about trying to write the themes its tackled.

the main thing about it is just that i have never properly realized Penrose and well. I was facing a creative block this last month which caused more struggles. But it was harder with art- mostly design. coming up with a design is harder in a block than reading a thing that says "draw a series of houses". thinking up something new is not easy. and my head also gets very stuck up in "if you design this and draw it, you can never change it".

Eden was pulled from my old unused RP character, Eden Creature, and so i was able to base her off something already. even so making anything at all was hard- even for Mick who already existed. I really didnt want her and Eden to revert back into my old style because its just no me anymore but at the same time i do want to get something unique for this story. Dawning does not reflect what I want exactly. I like what i managed to do esp in working with my time constraints. but, its not something i want to keep doing going forward.

the story was WAY more condensed than i thought it would be and its because i didnt really realize how quickly approaching the deadline was compared to my work. but at the same time i am glad it was? i was quite ambitious with how big i wanted this "proof of concept" to be, to where i definitely probably would have gotten farther in the plot and realized i had no clue exactly what I wanted.

because i do have a general idea of this story but not like. enough. and so shortening the story hugely for this demo was actually a good thing because i would have had to write a lot more and also probably wouldnt have been able to explain lore well enough because of how little i understood my own world. and when youre creative blocked its incredibly hard trying to development of that world too.

conclusion

i mentioned it breifly in a blog post but tbh the most scary part is having it hit that i am nervous has to how people will take my characters. not in a criticism kinda way but just the idea that people just wont really 'get' them. and even just the idea that my OCs have been "presented to the world" in some sense. i do stuff in my own little space all the time and never think about what it would really be like to put a game on itch.io or even like publish a proper animation on youtube or publish a book or something. its different and its weird because i have always thought to myself that i want people to see my OCs! but then i put it up in a place where it likely will be seen and I am afraid of that.

its probably for it being a first time. and also i need to learn confidence in this kind of work i was so into thinking i could never truly make because of my issues. this was still like, very very hard to do mentally etc and i feel very exhausted. but i really dont want this to be the first and last time i try and make something.

[guessknee]

about me !

aka me nerding out about things i like

Video Games !

the aesthetics, soundtracks, art, landscapes, everything about video games i love. i love playing jrpgs, visual novels and rhythm games. i love watching streams of all types of games though!

currently into watching apex legends, league of legends, valorant, csgo (on occasion), breath of the wild, and some older jrpgs.

i have a goal of beating one major game a month! i love playing games but i often buy too many at once and then play one while forgetting about the others. i dont know if anyone else has that problem so i made a system (gonna get really nerdy for a second) where i track video game releases im interested in for each of my consoles and i pick one game from each month to play and hopefully beat and one game to buy a collectors edition for (if available).

recently completed games

dec-feb

god of war ragnarok

crisis core reunion

one piece odyssey (almost complete 80% of the way done)

games im excited to play soon

the persona ports (jan release)

fire emblem engage (jan release)

octopath traveler 2 (feb release) - collectors edition preorder!

theatrhythm final bar (feb release)

kirbys return to dreamland (feb release)

story of seasons (jan release)

mobile games im playing

twisted wonderland

ensemble stars

genshin impact (on and off)

consoles i own (i have a weird thing with clue consoles and handhelds - i never realized i always bought blue ones till a about a year ago maybe its because i loved sonic as a kid...)

ps5

ps4

ps2

switch (animal crossing)

psp (light blue)

ps vita (light blue/white)

wii (i never use it)

ds

2ds (blue)

dsi (light blue)

Anime / Manga !

i love anime and manga. ive grown up with it ever since i was around 5. i would stay up on saturday nights till 7 am when inuyasha would start playing on adult swim. if i was ever too tired i would record the episode on our dvr and would watch it after getting home from kindergarten. crazy age to watch inuyasha but i always found it so cool.

also grew up on naruto. i am such a naruto nerd i have rewatched the og and shippuden so many times i can tell people which episode events happened, i can sing the openings in order, i can name most characters, etc. the naruto brainrot is bad. same thing with bleach and dragonball z. the new bleach has me so hyped i loved watching every episode made me want to rewatch the main series but i have no time so i just watch small clips here and there.

i love just about every genre of anime tbh. sports animes (baki, hajime no ippo, kengan asura, one outs, eyeshield 21, etc). idol animes (idolish 7, tsukiuta, tsukipro, etc). shounen, mystery, shoujo, literally everything. i have to be in a certain mood to watch mech animes but whenever one comes out that catches my eye i put all my energy into watching it. i think the only genre i dont enjoy much is isekai, i used to like them but new ones come out too often i cant keep up.

currently watching

one piece (caught up)

blue lock

buddy daddies

monster

vinland saga s2

trigun stampede

yowapeda limit break

tokyo revengers s2

Cars !

my day to day guilty pleasure is cars. i love cars. they are cool, go fast, go stutututu, whine, be loud, have cool lights, i love everything about a good car.

i have a brz! bought it myself and it is my pride adn joy. it is one of my favorite cars and when i bought it in november i literally cried. I drive manual and its so fun to me! i want to learn how to drift but im a bit nervous because i dont want to accidentally mess up anything in my car.

Reading !

i love books i love reading. i love fiction, sci-fi, philosophy, nonfiction, fanfiction, everything. I was never into books like harry potter and anything with too many magical elements in them but always loved horror and more mystery thriller books.

i have been dying to buy more physical books to add to my mini library in my room but theres a few books on my backlog i need to complete before i do that.

i also have a slowly growing manga collection that i desperately need to add to.

i read all day all night on my phone but the feeling of flipping real pages is so satisfying and having the weight of a book in my bag is just so nice.

Music !

not to toot my own horn but my spotify wrapped minutes is always 140k+. i listen to music all day everyday. while doing homework, reading, driving, working, in class (pay attention dont be like me), watching stuff it doesnt matter. i have a terrible habit of getting bored of something very easily so i always multitask and need 20 things happening at the same time so music is amazing at keeping me focused.

i love 'underground archive', rnb, krnb, jpop, citypop, lofi, rap, edm, literally a whole lot of stuff. i dont like pop that much ive grown to realize same with country, i can listen to it but only if someone else wants to.

thats it! literally my whole being in a post.

[morganaspendragonss]

holly's august extravaganza day 26: slowly becoming lovers

for sonia (@pragmaticoptimist34)! i have to confess something - i got so caught up in writing this that i actually forgot to include either of the other two prompts you sent me 🙈 i hope you like it anyway!

second confession - it was supposed to be longer and then it kind of got away from me so i had to draw a line somewhere oops

thanks to @ravens-words, @cosmiicmalex, @halsteadmarchs and liz (sorry, i don't know your tumblr!) for enabling me and to @noxsoulmate for beta'ing!

ao3 | 2.9k | falling in love, fluff, tiny, tiny hint of hurt/comfort, soft tarlos, set between s1 and s2

Things don’t get fixed overnight. They agree to give them a shot, but that doesn’t change the fact that TK is still reeling from his break-up and overdose, nor that Carlos is still hesitant and afraid of pushing too hard at once.

But, slowly, they get to know each other. And, slowly, they start to fall in love.

i. food preferences

“You have to be joking.”

“It tastes like soap, Carlos!”

Carlos groans and drops his head into his hands, shaking his head at this latest revelation from his boyfriend. His boyfriend, who has just made his life—or at least his cooking—a hell of a lot more complicated. “My mamá would have a fit if she could hear you now.”

He almost regrets the words as TK’s eyes alight with interest; he’s been dancing around the topic of his parents for a while now, but it’s not like he can deny what he said. His mom would be having a fit, or possibly attempting to kill TK with a wooden spoon, if she found out that Carlos’s boyfriend was not only a gringo, but one who hates coriander.

“I swear, you won’t even taste it when it’s mixed into the food,” he tries, because coriander is a staple of his cooking, and he can’t even fathom not using it.

But TK just levels him with a firm look. “Yes, I will, Carlos. I’ll always taste it.”

Carlos rolls his eyes at his boyfriend’s theatrics, but sighs, relenting. “Fine. I suppose I can—” He doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence, as TK throws his arms around him and plants a noisy kiss on his cheek.

“Thanks, babe,” he says, grinning cheekily.

“Yeah, yeah,” Carlos grumbles, but he can’t help but smile.

There’s very little, he’s finding, that he wouldn’t do for TK.

ii. nicknames

It slips out by accident one day.

“TK,” Carlos groans, followed by a gasp as TK moves just right, sending sparks of pleasure down his spine. “TK, Ty—”

TK instantly freezes on top of him and Carlos’s eyes open, concern rising in him as he takes in the pensive look on his boyfriend’s face.

“What’s wrong?”

“I…” TK shakes his head and forces a smile. “It’s nothing. I’m good, I promise.” He ducks down to kiss Carlos again, but the mood is all wrong, and Carlos gently pushes him back, raising an eyebrow. TK holds out a moment longer, then sighs and rolls away, staring up at the ceiling. “It’s stupid.”

Carlos tuts, reaching over to brush a hand through TK’s hair. “Bet you $20 it’s not.”

“Hope you have $20 then, Reyes,” TK says wryly. He looks over at Carlos and sighs again, biting his lip. “It’s just… You called me Ty.”

“Oh.” Carlos’s eyes widen and he props himself up on an elbow. “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking; it won’t happen again—”

TK presses a finger against his lips, cutting him off abruptly. He smiles softly, then removes his finger and caresses Carlos’s cheek. “It’s okay,” he says. “More than okay, actually. I… I’ve always hated my name, but, I don’t know, I guess it sounded right? Like, when you said it? I think I’d kill anyone else who tried, but I really liked it coming from you.”

“Are you sure? You’re not just saying that because—”

Carlos is again cut off, this time by TK’s lips on his. TK moves so that he’s straddling Carlos again, hands pressed against his chest. “I’m sure,” he whispers, a grin playing at his mouth. “Now, weren’t we in the middle of something?”

iii. religion

Christmas sneaks up on him that year. Between helping the city recovering from the solar storm, work in general, the pandemic, and building his relationship with TK, Carlos has completely lost track of the months, until it’s a week before the date and he has nothing planned.

Really, it’s never been a big deal for him; he and his family used to attend mass and make an event out of it when he was a kid, but now he’s an adult, he’s often working, and he hasn’t been to church regularly since he was a teenager. But this year is different. This year, he’ll be spending it with TK, their first Christmas together, and he wants to make it special.

But he’s left it too late—nothing he orders online will arrive in time, the shops are becoming a nightmare, and he honestly has no clue where to even start. So Carlos resigns himself to another quiet Christmas, frustration and disappointment welling in him at the thought of telling his boyfriend.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out one night over dinner, the thought having been gnawing at him for days.

TK raises a brow. “For?”

“Christmas,” Carlos sighs, looking down into his stew. “It’s our first one together and I had all these plans, and then I just sort of… I didn’t forget! But things have been so crazy, and—”

He’s cut off when TK lays a hand on his. When Carlos looks up at him, TK seems to be fighting back laughter, which is confusing at best and potentially mildly insulting at worst.

“Babe,” TK says, grinning, “it’s okay. You might not believe me, but I forgot too. Christmas wasn’t really a thing growing up—my mom’s Jewish, so I used to celebrate Hanukkah on the years I stayed with her, and Dad was working more often than not. I don’t care, I promise.”

Carlos blinks. “You’re Jewish?” Surely he would know if… But they’ve never discussed religion before, and Carlos had kind of assumed TK had the same ideals as him about the church. In hindsight that was stupid and presumptuous, and Carlos can’t quite believe he’d do something like that. An apology is on the tip of his tongue, but TK just shrugs, going back to his stew.

“Half,” he says. “I don’t really practice anymore but I still keep the beliefs with me, if that makes sense?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it does.”

TK smiles at him, and Carlos suddenly realises that this holiday season will be special after all, even if they don’t celebrate anything. Because he’s with TK, which is the most special thing in the world.

iv. how they sleep

Carlos has been sleeping alone for a long time. He’s had a couple of short-term boyfriends and the odd hook-up here and there, but he’s never had someone else in his bed regularly—certainly not regularly enough to get used to it.

TK was hesitant at first to stay over, but once he started to be more comfortable, it was almost a given that they’d be sleeping together whenever their shifts allowed.

And it had been an adjustment.

TK had warned him he tended to move around and be clingy in his sleep, but Carlos hadn’t quite understood what that meant, until now. He is, essentially, trapped under TK, his arms pinned to his sides and one leg thrown over his hip. TK’s head is pillowed on Carlos’s shoulder and his breath is fanning in soft puffs over his skin.

The only way he can move is if he wakes TK up, and there’s no way Carlos is going to do that. His boyfriend looks so peaceful, and Carlos is more than happy to be clung onto like a koala to a branch if it keeps that expression on his face.

In fact, he thinks he can get used to this very easily.

v. pda

In private, their days are filled with gentle touches and stolen kisses. Carlos will be cooking breakfast and TK will slip his arms around him, kissing the back of his neck. TK will be doing one chore or another and Carlos will brush a hand over his back or gently nudge him as he walks past.

But in public, it’s a whole other story.

It’s almost reflexive, the way TK reaches for Carlos’s hand as they’re walking down the street. It’s something they do all the time at home, and even with their friends, but this time, Carlos immediately tenses, seemingly automatically pulling his hand away.

“You okay?” he asks, frowning.

Carlos takes a deep breath, then obviously plasters on a smile, retaking TK’s hand—and TK can feel the tension in the gesture. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not.” TK gently lets go of Carlos and smiles reassuringly up at him. “It’s okay if you’re not comfortable with touching in public.”

“I’m sorry, I just—”

“You have nothing to be sorry for. This is all on me; I should have asked.”

“But—”

“But, nothing.” He carefully bumps their soldiers together. “You’re entitled to your boundaries, I’m just sorry for overstepping. Tell me next time, please?”

Carlos hesitates, but nods, a gentle press of their arms a silent acknowledgment of agreement and understanding.

vi. scars

Carlos, TK has noticed, likes to pay extra attention to his bullet scar. Whether it’s pressing a gentle kiss over it when they’re in bed, or brushing it with his fingers when wrapping an arm around him, it happens too often for TK to believe it’s anything but intentional.

He doesn’t understand it at first.

Then he discovers Carlos’s own scars.

“What’s this?” he asks, tracing over the thick raised scarring on Carlos’s side. It stretches along the curve of his waist and round his back, and TK has no idea how he hasn’t noticed it before.

Carlos cranes his neck, letting out a hum when he sees what TK’s looking at. His head flops back down on the pillow and he closes his eyes, absently stroking up and down TK’s sides.

“It was...three years ago, maybe?” he says. “I got stabbed on a call. They told me it was pretty touch-and-go for a while, but they fixed me up and I was back at work in a month.”

His eyes are still closed, body completely relaxed, but TK can’t take his eyes off the scar. He reaches up to his own scar, and he gets it.

Carlos’s eyes crack open. “TK?”

“I’m good,” TK murmurs. He breaks his gaze from Carlos’s abdomen and smiles at him. “We both are.”

And if, after that day, Carlos notices him paying more attention to that scar, he doesn’t say anything.

vii. penguin or panda

“You’re out of your mind!”

In Carlos’s defence, a zoo date had seemed like a good idea. He knows TK loves animals, and he himself grew up around them, so in theory, a trip to Austin Zoo should have been the perfect time to get to know each other better while enjoying the day.

Turns out, TK has some very strong opinions on animals, and is willing to budge for absolutely no-one.

“I can’t believe you think penguins are cuter than pandas! I mean, look at them, Carlos!” He gestures emphatically to the panda enclosure, where one is napping on a log. It’s pretty cute, Carlos has to admit, but…

He shrugs. “But remember when the penguins were all huddling together?”

TK makes a noise of outrage, and Carlos has to laugh, then some more at the wounded pout he gets for it. “Is this really a thing for you?” he asks. “Like, is this going to be the dealbreaker for us?”

TK folds his arms and levels him with a stern look. “That depends,” he says. “Meerkats or koalas?”

And, just because he knows it will rile TK up more, Carlos grins and answers, “Meerkats.”

(They don’t break-up over it, but Carlos isn’t so sure that TK will be forgiving him any time soon.)

viii. special interests

“Say you could go back to a moment in history, but only once,” TK says, out of the blue, breaking the comfortable silence of the front room. Carlos stops carding his fingers through TK’s hair and looks down at him, curious. “Where would you go?”

Carlos opens his mouth, but TK doesn’t give him a second to answer. “Is it cliché if I said I’d go to Stonewall? I mean, I’d really like to see dinosaurs in the flesh, or—oh! I was, like, obsessed with pirates as a kid; I thought they were the coolest things ever, and I pretty much idolised Anne Bonny. But I’m pretty sure I’d die immediately if I went to either of those places, so…”

He trails off, a blush rising on his cheeks. “Sorry, I’m boring you.”

“No!” Carlos rushes to say. “No, you’re not. I love history, I just… What makes you ask?”

“It’s something we got into at the station earlier. Mateo brought it up first, I think?”

Carlos hums, pursing his lips in thought. “I guess…” He sighs and shakes his head. “It’s too hard. There’s so many places I’d want to go and people I’d want to meet.”

“But if you had to pick?” TK pushes, sitting upright and looking at Carlos with interest.

“I really want to meet Eleanor of Aquitaine, but if I could only go to one place…” He hesitates and thinks it over some more, but then his eyes catch on the masks hanging along the stairway, and he’s sure. “Tenochtitlan, but before Cortés arrived. It was a whole society, and I just think it would be so cool to see it up close and to know what it was like first-hand. I mean, I’ve read a lot of books, but we don’t have much from the Mexica people, a lot is from the conquerors, and—”

Carlos stops and huffs a laugh. “Now I’m the one boring you,” he says, but TK shakes his head, eyes bright.

“Tell me more.”

ix. coffee order

TK accepts the coffee without even thinking about it, even taking a sip before he realises he never told Carlos what his order was. He curses himself but resolves to drink it anyway; TK isn’t too much of a coffee snob, and he’s certainly not going to reject anything his boyfriend brings him.

He takes a second sip, and he’s so caught up in making a mental note to tell Carlos next time that it takes a minute for the taste to register. And…

It’s his order.

He looks sharply up at Carlos, who is smiling into his own coffee—therefore dispelling any notion of this being an insanely good guess. “How did you know?” he asks, bewildered.

The tips of Carlos’s ears turn pink, but the smile doesn’t leave his face as he looks up at TK. “Our first real date,” he says. “You mentioned that this was your go-to order.”

And TK can’t do anything but stare, because their first date was weeks ago, and Carlos still remembered, and it’s just…

He thinks—no, he knows—he’s falling in love.

x. fears

“Weirdest fears, go.”

TK has to laugh at the perplexed look Carlos sends him at the question, the straw of his boba hanging out of his mouth. Now that they’ve figured a sort of rhythm out between them, they decided to try the boba place again—there have been no emergencies or disasters so far, so TK is counting it as a win.

“Come on,” he continues. “Last time we were here, you said we barely knew each other—which was true—so now we’re going to fix it.”

Carlos’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “By telling each other our weirdest fears?”

“Exactly!” TK grins. “I’ll go first if you’re too chicken. Mine is slicing my hands open or cutting some fingers off with ice skates.”

“What?” Carlos breathes, disbelief all over his face. “I’ve never been ice skating but I’m pretty sure your hands aren’t supposed to go anywhere near the blades.”

“I didn’t say it was rational.” TK sips his boba, raising an eyebrow at Carlos. “Your turn.”

Carlos swallows, suddenly very interested in the table. “I, uh. When I was a kid, my Tía Lucy had a snake get into her pipes. She only discovered it when she went to the toilet one morning and it was just...sitting there in the bowl. I was terrified for years that the same would happen to us, and it’s kind of become a reflex to check.”

“Oh my god.” TK can’t help but burst out laughing, even though he feels bad for it as Carlos covers his face with his hands. “I’m sorry, I know it’s a real thing for you, I just…”

But Carlos’s shoulders are shaking too and, bizarrely, TK really does feel closer to him now.

It’s a good feeling.

xi. long-term commitments

Carlos is surprised when TK is the one to bring it up first.

“Do you ever think about the future?” he asks one day, head in Carlos’s lap, staring up at the ceiling.

Carlos pauses the show he’s technically supposed to be watching and quirks an eyebrow at his boyfriend. “Sure,” he says. “What about the future exactly?”

TK hesitates, and his voice comes out a lot quieter when he next speaks. “Like…” He sighs, a small flush rising on his cheeks. “The future. Our future. Us. Maybe...marriage, or…”

He trails off, practically whispering by the end of it. His gaze has shifted from the ceiling to the frozen TV screen and he’s chewing on his bottom lip, body stiff with tension. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Forget about it.”

But Carlos is learning to read TK, and he knows he was looking for reassurance. “I mean, yeah,” he says. “I think about it. Do you?”

TK stares up at him, wonder in his eyes. “After New York, I thought… But yeah. Yeah, I do.”

They share a smile as they lock eyes, and Carlos knows that they’re on the same page here. That, distant though they may be, both of them can hear wedding bells in their future.

[ignorancelive]

FINALLY DOING ALL MY TAG GAMES AAAA  IM SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG TO DO THESE

@whitedeadflower​ |  pick my favourite albums for bill clinton to enjoy

not necessarily my favorites but i always pick the same 5 albums for these so i just put 4 albums i like a lot and have been listening to more recently <3

@opossuwu​ | 15 questions

1. What is the first song you remember hearing?

english songs: either learn to fly by foo fighters or human by the killers, i really cannot remember which one but it was around the same time im pretty sure

spanish songs: ALL the songs on/by rebelde, my sister was super into it when i was a baby so i heard so many of their songs right as i was learning to become a human

2. What is the first band you got into?

mmmmmmm probably one direction? if we’re not counting rebelde lol

3. Do you collect music on any physical format?

i collect almost all cds i know and like on CD and have recently started buying vinyl but i think im only going to get albums i really like on it since its more expensive

4. What is your favourite piece of music-related memorabilia/merchandise?

SO many things. i really like my nirvana and red hot chili peppers shirts because they make me feel cute! im also IN LOVE with the in utero angel sticker i bought on redbubble that has a transparent border so its JUST the angel, i stuck it on my record player and i love it so so much

5. What is your favourite concert you've been to?

i have not been to a concert yet :/ i went to a little student festival thing my university hosted for us and saw hunny + hayley kiyoko which was pretty neat

6. If you could see one artist (or band) who is no longer alive in concert, who would it be?

nirvana :(

7. Have you met any musicians?

i went to a cd signing for little mix when i was like 12-13 ish but thats the closest ive gotten lol

8. What is your go-to song/album when feeling sad?

i actually have a playlist of comfort songs to listen to when im sad, but i think the song i most consistently go to is encore by red hot chili peppers

9. What is your go-to song/album when feeling happy?

this one depends. probably hump de bump also by rhcp cause it SLAPS and always puts me in a better mood than when i started

10. What is one music-related documentary you love?

EYE only watched a few minutes of funky monks but im sure if i sat down to watch it now id love it. this is the worst question to ask me because i watch a ton of interviews on youtube so i cant even remember which ones were legit docus as opposed to just youtube vids so this question is gonna be basically unanswered. i do want to watch bob and the monster though

11. What is one concert DVD that you love?

i listen to it more as an album on spotify than watch it but Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged is so good

12. Do you prefer listening to playlists or full albums?

usually playlists! but occasionally ill play the albums i have on my player

13. Do you tend to listen to albums in order or on shuffle?

in order, shuffling them is rare

14. What is your favourite deep cut song by your favourite artist?

favorite artist is rhcp and honestly im? not fully sure. quixoticelixer slaps. and i like almost every song on im with you. but i think im gonna have to go with storm in a teacup cause i checked its streams and its not that popular </3

15. What is your favorite CD/vinyl/cassette that you own in terms of packaging?

THIS ONES SO HARD I LOVE PACKAGING DESIGNS. i love how rhcp’s im with you disc looks like because it has the track list on it but it doesnt look bad like other discs who do that do. booklet design i love vices and virtues by panic at the disco and american idiot by green day. idk what this would fall under but i also love how stadium arcadium’s booklet is held in the case and how when you take it out you see a picture of the band. and there are too many albums whose art i love so i cannot elaborate on that without making this 5xs longer lmao

@garbanz0​ & @dailywilliams​​ | top 5 songs ive had on repeat recently

according to spotify’s on repeat playlist:

but also according to my last.fm:

so basically red hot chili peppers own my ass

@badhe4d​ , @garbanz0​ , & @catts-world​ | 10 songs you like, each by a different artist

uhhhhhhhhhhh

1. Monarchy of Roses - RHCP 

2. Back and Forth - Foo Fighters

3. Heart of Glass - Blondie

4. Omission - John Frusciante and Josh Klinghoffer

5. Dance with Me - Sir, Please

6. Henrietta - The Fratellis

7. Breed - Nirvana

8. Mary - The Happy Fits

9. Girls and Boys - Blur

10. It’s All So Incredibly Loud - Glass Animals

@psychoticbreak​ |  suppose you’re being sent to a deserted island for the rest of your life, and you can only choose 10 records to bring with you and those are the only albums you can listen to for the remainder of your life; what albums are they

oh GOD ok

1. in utero - nirvana

2. stadium arcadium - RHCP

3. nothing personal - all time low

4. red - taylor swift

5. after laughter - paramore

6. wasting light - foo fighters

7. im with you + im beside you if you count them as the same album - RHCP

8. so wrong its right - all time low

9. american idiot - green day

10. inside of emptiness - john frusciante

@mark-hoppuss​ |  shuffle my playlist and list the first ten songs that come up

1. New Invention - I Don’t Know How But They Found Me

2. Thanks to You - All Time Low

3. Por Que Me Haces Llorar? - Juan Gabriel 

4. Torture Me - Red Hot Chili Peppers

5. Speak Now - Taylor Swift

6. Prayer of the Refugee - Rise Against

7. Going Away to College - blink-182

8. Time-Bomb - All Time Low

9. DNA. - Kendrick Lamar

10. Heaven is a Place on Earth - Belinda Carlisle

@frafru1​ , @whitedeadflower​ , & @psychoticbreak​ | make a playlist with the letters of my name

Lithium by Nirvana

Universally Speaking by RHCP

Pool by Paramore

Eye Opener by Dot Hacker

@badhe4d​ |  post my lock screen, the last song I listened to and the last picture I saved on my phone

friends name blocked out but. an interesting screenshot. yes i have flea’s tweet notifs on and use twitter for absolutely nothing else. yes i have email notifs on 

if screenshots count:

if they DONT count and you mean purely just saving:

my icon and boyfriend <3

@badhe4d​ | 7 questions to get to know me better

three ships: not romantically because i dont believe in shipping irl people but i love everyone in rhcp’s gay polycule energy. specifically john and anthony in the 80s. romantically tho mickey and ian in shameless. i dont think i have a third one? me and my bisexual mutuals <3

last song: i shuffled a ton of songs and skipped for some of these tags but before those i was listening to the album weird kids by we are the in crowd as a tbt, specifically the song manners

last movie: inside by bo burnham but if you dont count that, hereditary 

currently watching: it is very difficult for me to watch shows so im currently just watching youtube lol

currently reading: nothing. i cannot read :( bc of attention issues not bc im illiterate

currently consuming: banana bread :3

currently craving: RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS RELEASE YOUR FUCKING ALBUM CHALLENGE

@the-replacemints​​ |  top 10 favorite debut albums

NOT in order. also it took way too long to come up with this list lol

1. Concentrate - The Happy Fits

2. So Wrong It’s Right - All Time Low

3. SOUR - Olivia Rodrigo

4. Strange Desire - Bleachers

5. RAZZMATAZZ - I Dont Know How But They Found Me

6. Hot Fuss - The Killers

7. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

8. Bleach - Nirvana

9. Costello Music - The Fratellis

10. WALK THE MOON - Walk The Moon

because theres so many of these im not gonna tag people for each individual prompt but if you tagged me in one of these i tag you in whichever ones you wanna do <3

[danideservedbetter]

Day 7, 8, 9, and 10 / Elaboration

Hey y’all! I said yesterday I would elaborate a little more on what my doctor’s visit yesterday told me, and here I am to do just that! I meant to yesterday, honestly, but by the time I got home my medicine had worn off and that wasn’t looking very likely 😅😅 But regardless!!! Here is what my results look like and honestly? These things probably have been affecting my sleeping disorder to a degree I’d previously disregarded without detailed info I’ve gotten from these tests.

Full write up under the cut!

—I got two major tests done, blood work and a genetics test. Back in my hometown the nurses couldn’t even figure out how to open the damn swab, but technology here managed to map out my entire DNA sequence which is utterly NUTS to me.

—My body is deficient in almost every important vitamin known to mankind, which makes sense because my diet is not… the best 😅 So, I started on several (SEVERAL) supplements to start out.

—I say start out because it’s very likely that I’ll be taking vitamin C and some liver enzyme through an IV once a month. A younger me might’ve thought something like this was scary, but at this point I’m so desperate to be healthy that getting nutrients drip fed into my system for them to work quicker sounds just fine to me.

—Other than that it’s normal lifestyle stuff. Eat more fruits and vegetables (I’ve been eating olives by the can for like days and I intend to buy fresh fruit packets for breakfast whenever I can afford them) as well as staying more active— which I DEFINITELY have been since I moved closer to New Orleans, in Louisiana proper where my dad lives.

But enough of the boring medicinal stuff. I’m sure you guys are much more interested in the whys— is there a reason my hypersomnia is so bad? Is there a deeper explanation than “lack of vitamins bad and you should feel bad”?

Well, yeah. YES. The genetics test revealed a metric fuckton to say the least 😂😂😂 but the most important was what kinds of diseases I’m predisposed to or how my body can process certain types of hormones/enzymes/proteins. Things like why caffeine won’t work for me (my body processes it very fast but not very thoroughly) or my metabolism being the strongest recorded genotype (which is why it’s been so hard to gain weight). Below, I’ll go into detail about stuff my new general doctor’s in-office geneticist (I still can’t believe that’s a thing I’m typing) has revealed about my disorder.

Naturally, this is specific to me because of my parents and our family lines. Maybe if you see info pertinent to yourself, looking into genetic mapping may be a good idea for you?

We are pretty confident that I have Idiopathic Hypersomnia. The reason for this is that a tiny link has been found between individuals who contracted mononucleosis in their childhood and adolescence and individuals who fell within the sleep cycles indicating IH. Now, IH will be genetic sometimes, but considering I’ve tracked my disorder to starting around 14, the same year I contracted Mono, the coincidence definitely doesn’t seem like… well, a coincidence. My blood test shows that I do in fact have the antibodies in my system, and they’re doing something… odd.

The geneticist found some “active” antibodies. Well, not some, really 😅 Basically, she’s surmised that these antibodies have a hair-trigger response and can react to any given environmental factor (stress, hunger, etc.) to the point where they activate as if they think they’re **fighting off a virus that’s been out of my system for ten years.** Of course this takes up an inordinate amount of energy, which is her hypothesis as to why my hypersomnia is so random and varies in intensity. The goal for this summer is flushing these antibodies out of my system.

My previous neurologist tried out a couple stimulants and then shit insurance prevented me from trying any others. So I’m stuck on something traditionally prescribed for adhd. A narcotic. *However* since my body is severely dysfunctional in general, the way I describe it is I basically have to induce a high to stay awake and function normally. We want to eventually get me off of these kinds of drugs, of course, since prolonged exposure weakens their effects and they’re highly addictive.

Another in credibly interesting thing we found is that I'm lacking in three major hormones. However, it's not because I don't produce them. I've never identified with symptoms of depression (anxiety, certainly, but not depression) yet for most of my life my childhood general practitioner insisted I had it. Well, the geneticist found that while I'm lacking in serotonin, dopamine, and melatonin, which yes are the two major mood enhancers and then the hormone that induces sleep, it's not because I can't produce them. It's because my neural transmitters are so damaged from a less-than-good diet and years of exhaustion that they simply can't process them. Just as the antibodies can have a hair-trigger response to environmental factors, so too can these processors. Simple things like a good meal, my high from my stimulants, or even micro dopamine shots from getting things done can activate the transmitters. Another thing on the docket for the summer is fixing these permanently with treatments of vitamins and supplements.

My stimulants have caused appetite issues, unfortunately, and that plus Covid at the beginning of this year caused me to get down to my lowest recorded weight ever, 94 pounds, which I haven't weighed since before I hit my final growth spurt way back in middle school. My dad does physical labor (he's a contractor who frames houses in the humid heat of the Deep South lol) so he's used to feeling tired. When he caught Covid, he said that he'd never felt as tired, drained, or out of it in his entire life. He never gets sick and hardly goes to the doctor and NEVER takes off work because of health, but in his last few weeks before full recovery he had to take off early multiple times. He was floored when he described the brain fog and exhaustion and I told him that I had no idea I even had Covid, because I just thought it was my disorder acting up. It was only when my grandmother started feeling tired that we got tested and we tested positive.

All that said, we think that there's hope for a future for me. She said that while there's no cure for IH, the cause that I have may can be mitigated by changes in exercise, diet, routine, and medication,to the point where I may mitigate symptoms of my disorder entirely. I'm still setting up appointments with a new neurologist here in the city, though, because technology is of course more advanced here.

And again, taking all of this into consideration, while it was looking likelier by the day, we've both agreed that I'll be here in the city 'til New Years. Which means no school this semester, but if I can go back in spring at more than 20% functionality and maybe succeed, I'm perfectly fine having to remain on break.

However, another good update: I weigh 103 pounds! I'm steadily gaining weight-- which means the other medication, the one for my appetite, is working as it should and as long as I stay on-track I should reach my goal of 120 by the end of the year as well.

So, yeah! That's what it's looking like. I have another appointment to go more in depth with the results tomorrow, but for now I'm planning out my week since I decided to let myself rest all last week. I'd love to finish helping out for our current podfic, ACTUALLY start the damn 100 Theme Challenge (LOL), finish betaing something that's been on hold for months, properly reconnect with our discord, catch up on all the media I fell behind on, clean my damn room, and establish a budget for this week on what I can buy. A more specific plan for today will follow, but til then, I hope this gives everyone some insight on what I'm looking at and how I'm gonna try to fix it.

Xoxo

Dani

[kannra21]

Daisuzu one shot 💴💗

Suzue is angry for the first time and Daisuke needs to keep up with her bad mood the entire morning. How is he handling it?

~o0o~

This was supposed to be a positive morning for Suzue because Daisuke told her yesterday that he's going to take a day off just to catch up on his time with her and she was so enthusiastic about it that one simple thing as perid cramps decided on ruining her instantly. It was early in the day, 7:15h so to speak, and she was already in shock and fed up with the entire situation. And as if this wasn't troublesome enough; she wasn't able to find any medications in her drawer. She checked in the nightstand, closet, shelves, counter. Nothing, she couldn't find anything and the pain in her stomach was becoming more and more unbearable.

She couldn't leave the palace this instant because she needed to take care of Daisuke first. She entered his room writhing a little because of how much it hurted her. She already hated everything about this day and everything around her, she became more stressed and more emotional. She tried to wake him up gently at first but when he didn't react on her attempts right away, she took the glass from his nightstand and showed it back somewhat forcefully, making a loud thud. Daisuke jumped a little from how startled it made him and Suzue greeted him with annoyed look on her face.

"Butler already informed me about the breakfast. You're free to come down and join." She handed him certain clothes without asking for approval "You can also put these on. I'll be waiting for you once you're ready."

Suzue turned around and left without putting much of a conversation between them. Daisuke noticed how stiff she looked but concluded that she probably "woke up on the wrong side of the bed" and therefore didn't want to ask further about it. Still, it wasn't like Suzue to be this irritated in the morning since he always got used to her friendly greetings and a big smile on her face. He got himself dressed and went downstairs where an elegant spacious dining room was located.

A classic British breakfast was served, 7:30h, the pair was sitting at the dark wooden table with magnificent displays of gold plate from George IV's enormous collection and enjoyed their meal. If you were just a mere visitor to their household you probably wouldn't notice such things, but Daisuke was perfectly aware of Suzue's unnerved behavior. She cut her meal quite frustrated and she even criticized the lack of flavor in it. And although she wasn't showing it as much, her dissatisfaction was present and she became angry, much to Daisuke's surprise. Daisuke grew worried because, for him, the meal tasted just fine and as much as he wanted to hold himself back from further antagonizing her when she already felt bad enough, he couldn't ignore it and he needed to interfere. He didn't have the heart to ignore her like this.

"Suzue. Did you sleep well last night?"

"Of course I did. What kind of question is that supposed to be?"

Ouch that hurt. Daisuke would usually feel offended by such an act but this was Suzue he was talking to so he decided to be stubborn.

"I don't know. If someone upset you in any way you're free to tell me and I'll take care of them personally."

"Daisuke-sama, with all due respect I'm not feeling especially obligated as of today's date to worry much about when I'm supposed to be free to do something or not. I am a person, I have feelings, and I'll decide on doing things when I'm feeling like doing them. I'm not asking for anyone's permission to express my free will."

Suzue took her plate, handed it to butler and left the room.

For the first time in a long time Daisuke felt broken. It's funny because he usually never paid attention to other people or their unnecessary outbursts of emotions which he always found uncomfortable and incredibly impractical, but then again, this was Suzue he was talking to and he became seriously worried about her.

Whenever he wanted to check on her she made an annoyed expression and whenever he tried to start a conversation with her she ended it quickly.

"That video you wanted to show me the other day-"

"I changed my mind. It wouldn't be as entertaining for you because you never find anything funny anyways. I wonder what satisfies you anymore."

Another low blow and Daisuke felt like crumbling. Although he decided that he'll wait for her until she calms down. Or not? He wasn't used to her lack of attention and he enjoyed it so much while it lasted. Suzue was usually the clingy one in their relationship but today the roles were switched and he wanted to bring the old smiling Suzue back.

"What do you say about watching your favorite series together?"

"I watched it yesterday, today is the rerun."

"I brought you some fashion magazines I thought you might like."

"Thank you, I'll check them later."

"Would you like to check these new gadget parts I found with HEUSC? He couldn't estimate the quality of the product so I'm asking for your opinion."

"I'm not interested as of now, I'll search them when I have the time."

"Would you like some tea in your favorite kitty cup?"

Suzue put down whatever she was reading at the moment and looked at him with serious expression on her face.

"I'm perfectly capable of making tea for myself. I'm sorry Daisuke-sama, but why are you being like that?"

"Like what?"

"The way you're being, you're unusually clingy today and I didn't even ask for any of it. Why are you giving me such a hard time? I need a break."

Suzue was about to climb the stairs which led to her bedroom.

"I'm sorry." Daisuke said quietly and Suzue instantly stopped on her tracks. She never heard him talk like this before and it broke her heart. She could feel his hurt and regret and she wondered how it came to all of this.

Daisuke continued "I took a day off with the intent of spending more time with you and although I'm really bad at showing what I feel when expressing myself most of the time, the idea of being with you after so long made me feel genuinely happy. I'm sorry if it sounds self-centered or selfish, I'm always talking about me and my feelings when I never considered asking other people about their own. I always pre-determined what others should be doing without giving it that much thought about their opinions before coming up with my own decisions. And no matter how much I try I'm always screwing it up, I'm a terrible person."

When he looked up at Suzue he wasn't expecting her to cry and he became alarmed.

"Y-you're not a terrible person. Please never say that again. It's me, I'm the one who screwed everything. M-my stomachache won't subdue and I didn't take my painkillers."

...

"Oh."

Daisuke came up to her on the stairs and picked her up bridal style. Suzue squeaked a little.

"W-what are you doing?"

"I'm taking you to my room because I know where the stuff I'm looking for is placed. But I can always take you to yours if you tell me where you're keeping things."

"I-I don't mind your room.."

Daisuke smirked at her.

"DON'T GIVE ME THAT FACE MR.!!"

"Okay okay, jesus." he kissed her forehead and pushed the door with his leg.

Once he placed her on the bed, he tucked her in a bunch of pillows and blankets and gave her the phone.

"I'm sorry to say this but please wait for me 20min or so, I'll try to come back as soon as possible."

With this said, Daisuke disappeared into the hallways and left Suzue alone with her thoughts. She knew that Daisuke gave her the phone to entertain herself but right now she couldn't think of anything else but the thing that just happened between them and the way she mistreated him this entire time. The guilt squeezed her heart and worsened her stomach pain.

Daisuke, on the other hand, mentally panicked because he didn't know what to do right now. He never had a sister and his mother died and he absolutely didn't have the slightest idea on what to do. He did his research with HEUSC, he talked to butlers and once he grasped the concept of it, he drew his Bentley Continental GT *maniac style like he always did* to the nearest store and bought

✨💴 EVERYTHING 💴✨ *fu-gou ke-i-ji song playing in the background*. Even the cashier lady couldn't believe that a man could look this badass while buying half of the aisle lmao.

Daisuke returned on time with butlers helping him carry everything and Suzue looked surprised upon seeing so many bags being brought into her room.

Daisuke approached her with a bag of his own and squatted next to her.

"Here we have pain killers, snacks, napkins, hygiene products, essential oils, I even bought heating pads and massage pillows. I didn't know whether you'd prefer Twinings or Yorkshire so I bought them both-"

"You bought the companies?!"

"I bought the tea."

Suzue sighed in relief.

"And I bought cocoa, chocolate and double-layered socks to keep you warm."

"What's the package at the bottom of the bag?"

"Oh.. it's nothing."

"Daisuke-sama you're terrible at lying."

"Alright. It's something that I bought just in case."

He took the package out and Suzue blushed.

...

"I'm.. not implying anything it's just to make you feel better. If you want you can use me as well.."

".. Thank you."

The blush couldn't leave both of their faces so Daisuke put everything aside and headed towards the doors.

"I'm going to make Earl grey because it goes well with chocolate. I'll be right back."

With this said, he left the room and Suzue squeaked in her hands.

Did he.. seriously just thought about the things she assumed he did? He really considered it for her own sake..

When he returned he placed the painkillers, cup of tea and chocolate box on the nightstand before joining her on the other side of the bed. He searched Claire Luvcat and they watched Cream Heroes together. Suzue smiled so much upon looking at the screen showing her beautiful kittens. Daisuke made her smile again and it made him proud.

"Which one is your favorite?"

"Oh" Suzue was taken by surprise "I like Lulu because he's funny and cute."

"Should I buy him?"

Suzue just laughed sweetly "No it's her cat, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't put her cat on sale for any money in this world. Besides, the cat would be really sad when separated from her owner. It's where he belongs, they're practically inseparable."

"Like you and me?"

Suzue squeaked again and Daisuke smiled.

"Mr. Coco reminds me of Furry Elise a lot. I like him, they'd have a nice litter."

"Thinking of becoming a breeder?" Suzue teased him.

"Not really, although it brings good money. Somewhere around ¥158.386,50 for a kitten."

"Seriously?!"

"Yes if the parents are two purebred cats. Coco is a British longhair and Furry Elise is Maine Coon. Besides, you'll get too attached and wouldn't allow me to separate them from you so it's a losing game."

Suzue laughed fondly "It's true, sometimes money can't buy everything."

Daisuke hugged her closer to himself and kissed her head.

"Daisuke-sama.."

"Hm?"

"I wanted to apologize for everything I told you early in the morning. I didn't mean it, the things I said were not true and it was reckless of me to even address you with such disrespect. You were trying to make me feel better this entire time and everything I did in return was rejecting your every attempt. I'm so sorry for offending you like this."

Daisuke turned her face gently towards his own and made her look him in the eyes.

"You'd never offend me, Suzue. There's no way in millions years that you'd be able to do things like this, because you're kindhearted and overall a beautiful person. Remember that."

Suzue looked at him with so much adoration in her eyes.

"Besides, you're right. I'm not the one to decide what people should do with themselves and by not doing anything for you when you needed me the most, I'd feel like I'm letting you down and you definitely didn't deserve that. In fact, you deserve so much better and I'd like to live up to your expectations, if you let me."

"I do. I just hope that I didn't ruin your plans for today."

"This is exactly how I wanted it to spend, together with you."

Maybe he didn't deserve her but Daisuke promised himself to make sure that Suzue feels appreciated every single day.

@daisuzuship @innovativestruggles @narcopharmacist @unholysoggytea @riaymei @ieatcrumbs @cow-goes-oof @matchabucks @bluegleeful @levi-is-heicho @kakooshi @kokorokai @darknessrxse @fluffyyagiza @geniusmeemee @sungmnnnn @koalarin @alstroemerie @petiamaximoff38 @hellohellokookie @marialenikiforov @milcyuw

Smtng short but sweet. Hope you like it! 💞

[neo-shitty]

toffee!

hehe glad i could make you laugh, oooh that sounds awesome! yeah id love to be tagged it sounds great :)

YES the differences are so fucking weird. like, they do know they're the same age right? i feel like its just an exagguration of how much the persons role in the group matters, like we see chan being held up as such a mature, old leader while jungkook who is literally the same age, is still babied etc. like enha hyung line is basically the same age (if a bit younger) as chenle and jisung but somehow the rules are different?? as you point out, still legal but still bizarre. hehe yeah, i mean where else are we going to rant? quora lol. mmm, hopefully more people can just write less smut abt people who are barely adults

ah, no prob it didnt take long. yeah i think thats right (i keep forgetting you know my url lol) mmhmm :( i think if that happened irl there would be some major trauma going on. knock wood it never happens to you or me lol (/hj)

hehe same! oooh glad Redemption For Cheese was realised! yess we cant rllycomplain that theyve written/produced too much good music lol. yeah, ive dragged him into being a stay so *dusts hands off* mission accomplished. mmm yeah, they tend to have a certain vibe but tbh it couldve worked if they were any other group but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ahh ur one step ahead of me on the stages of listening to ssick i think, still not convinced but thats okay! hehe, it had to be said. yesss the itch in the back of my brain is very satisfied by sorry i love you, felixs vocals deserve to be appreciated! (side note i feel like hes trying to sing more like his speaking voice, sorta husky, but tbh i wouldnt be mad if he sang like in glow, his sweet honey vocals made my life lol. but i think ive heard him say he doesnt like singing like that cos it makes his normal voice less husky, so what can you do)

> YES SOMEONE SAID IT. seungmin rap KING, he sped thru that rap like it was nothing, he deserves more rap lines. i do like how they gave minho some melodic rap lines this comeback, my guy deserved to show off those skills that made him not be eliminated (flashbacks to stay collectively wanting to murder jyp) and we already know changbin can sing, my man murdered masked singer. hyunjin can obviously sing as can jisung and felix, and i want to hear chan rap more! i feel like he started as part of 3racha (as a rap unit not producing) and then just became a vocalist (which im fine with, but it could be nice to hear him flex his rapping skills) and was partially replaced by hyunjin. anywayyy

back to album talk. lmaooo sad music to twerk to PERFECTLY describes silent cry. yes secret secret is and will always be, a masterpiece. hehe glad i could make you laugh :) i just felt like they have similar vibes. putting off skz stuff bc of not having time to cry IS the kpop stan life summarised. oh my beloved track, red lights. ahh thats okay, we can have different opinions, but by god the lyrics are *chefs kiss*. *banging on table* TWISTED AU TWISTED AU TWISTED AU. yess id love to see ur take on it! sdfghjkl it would have been glorious

no no! not stupid, just able to predict my brainwaves. ooooh thats so cool! makes me want to go there (wherever there is lol) yeah the waves are pretty good here, but none of my familys a surfer, so we dont rlly enjoy the full potential lol. YES moving on to gone away, it is indeed a heartwrenching track, but the vocals and the bloody key change? makes me want to brave being sad just to listen to it. mmm yeah, good point :( i feel like ive just gotten used to overthinking so much so that it doesnt matter what mood im in, ill do it anyway, so might as well just do what i feel like doing anyway.

yeah i think ur right! it is quite comforting knowing that all the tracks will get the love they deserve. i feel like also people assume kpop is just one genre which is utter bs. there are so many different vibes and feels and songs, i couldnt get into kpop (of which i thought only the bright cheerful present day bts stuff existed smh) until i heard gods menu so... idk where i was going with this but yeah. :)

YES FUCK YG, theyre literally on the brink of being kicked out of the big three and they are holding their salvation hostage without letting them do ANYTHING. idek what thought process goes thru their minds but arghhh its so infuriating. yess lisa's cb will be awesome but ot4 is the gold standard here.

hehe, glad u could get to this point. no no! u dont sound like a cult member at all lol yeah, i loooove some of their songs but the whole 23 members thing is getting to me. thats prob a common problem with nctzens but what can i say? im a simple girl with a limit to how many korean boys i can give my money to. atm im just trying to get into ateez and finish memorising enhypen's faces. also kard is kinda sucking me into their fandom atm, as well as eric name lol. ah what can you do? ooh thats good!

hehe i love it too! its exactly like online penpals, that was rlly well put. aww ty! hmm im okay, recovering from a bad case of rsv so thats fun. im doing okay mentally, starting therapy soon (after having to convince my mother that its not just smth i can brush off). physically i wont go into, basically i should be doing stretches to help but they dont completely fix it so my lazy ass doesnt do them, plus i got told recently im going to be stuck with this condition for the rest of my life so thats fun! ah, before you type smth dw abt me ill be fine. the weather atm is cloudy but warm, its been raining on and off today which is good for the garden. uhh i just finished reading sunburnt veils and im in the middle of prom theory which is rlly good. ummm ive got a concert tonight? that i may or may not be able to sing in (bc of the whole rsv thingo) and uhhhh idk. my dog is cute? im drinking tea rn? ive got a school dance coming up?

wbu? hows ur day going, how are you? whats the weather like on ur end? done anything interesting lately? found smth that makes you rlly happy? just any random thing youve been dying to tell someone?

no no! dont apologise, i love these exchanges. i think im happy to continue them for a long time :) on the other hand, if you get tired of them, feel free to just not answer at any time. goodness gracious this was a long ask haha hope it isnt too annoying

<3 w.a. 🐺

sorry it took me a bit to reply, i was fixing my theme ;n;

yeah, i figured it was because of the roles too. my friends and i still get taken aback when 3rd gen idols are the same age as 4th gen ones. in my head it doesn't add up sometimes. PLS THE RANT AT QUORA SKJDK tbh tho it's just going to be normalized as the years pass? esp that the boys are growing older and the amount of explicit fics will just increase. i might have to start blocking tags.

i had to look up the previous ask to remember what we were talking about xd i hope the events in champagne problems never happens to anyone. realistically, it probably happens a lot. damn i really won't wish that pain on anyone. dragging your brother into being a stay i whEEZED JFKSA additional noeasy music enthusiast o.o and ALL I CAN SAY WITH YOU GUSHING ABT FELIX IS AHA WHIPPEEEED OML can't blame you tho, i also want to hear felix sing more in other shades (if that makes sense HAHA) i really hope they'll do the role exchange in the next comeback :( or like in the near future bc i know they can do it :( the day i hear seungmin rapping it i will respectfully pass away. minho was given more lines this comeback thank fUCK i could rmb my irl being vocal abt her frustration. i don't get why minho barely has center time/lines in title tracks??? like the line distribution in the past eras just made me ???? if seventeen can balance lines with 13 members why cant a group of 8 do the same? moving on. i haven't watched the stray kids show simply bc i don't want to cry HAJS but i've seen clips. imagine if skz debuted without minho and felix?!?!? i rmb another irl catching bias feels towards changbin bc of the masked singer only to find out that the man's a rapper. i love how skz's vocals were highlighted this comeback :c there were a lot of mellow tracks! i find it cute when chan sings/raps bc it gets kinda obvious that he's a foreigner? the accent (im not even sure if it's the accent) it just shows. "putting off skz stuff bc of not having time to cry IS the kpop stan life summarised." CORRECT.

abt the twisted au o.O i'll inquire my irl if she wants to write it or not. if she doesn't want to, i'll do it. i miss writing twisted aus <3___<3 and i also miss going to the beach with my friends :' ) but it's starting to get cold here and i don't think i'll be able to enjoy the beach as much as i would if i went beaching in the summer. so maybe next summer? gone away really has an sm-ballad vibe. the thing about skz being a self-producing group, their songs don't sound like typical jype songs? and i just appreciate that bc in all honesty im not a fan of jyp groups at all. PLS the overthinking. i wish i could mute overthinking.

anyone who assumes kpop is just one genre obv hasn't listened to a single track. if kpop was just one genre why do i like some tracks more than the others??? oh you've only recently become a kpop stan? tbh im not a fan of the bright songs of bts either. i liked their older ones *chefs kiss* really matched high school vibes. yg has good artists and they're just wasting the talent ~.~ that strategy they have will get tiring eventually. people will stop waiting on blackpink and move on to newer more active groups ://

HAHAHAH yeah the 23 members is pretty overwhelming! it was the reason i didn't bother stanning before quarantine started. i don't regret stanning tho, met my ult bias in that group <3___<3 i don't really purchase albums unless i like the tracks xd ohhh getting into ateez just in time for the comeback! let me know what you think about them! i was fond of them at some point but grew out of it. good luck with memorizing enhypen! it took me a while to distinguish to people there XD i haven't checked out kard yet but chan plays their songs during lives and they're sexc hype music me likey *u*

i had to look up rsv im sorry. i'm glad you're recovering! please rest more and don't stress yourself out. bro i wish i could go to therapy too bc i have weird issues i can't justify and i need a professional to tell me what's the reason behind it. stuck with what condition btw? what happened? i'm sorry in case i just forgot. yesterday was a bit rainy for me too :(( it's not the type of rainy that makes me anxious so B) oh concert! good luck and i hope you'll be able to sing but i also don't think it's best for you rn :c what's your dog's breed? and yes i just finished drinking tea too. AAAAA i miss school dances :(( the last one i was supposed to have was cancelled bc of covid.

i was less productive today and i'm teetering between being mentally stable and becoming a hermit again. i'm anxious with a lot of things atm so like : D not the best state. today it was a bit sunny but not hot hot which was nice. i changed my theme today bc i couldn't wait for sept. 1st. and no i haven't found anything that makes me happy HAHAHA shit like that's hard to identify. don't have anything to say too, i'm just thinking about why i'm procrastinating too much atm T_T and i'm listening to this rap song atm and one of the rappers sounded like han.

it isn't annoying! i enjoy the long exchanges but i do admit it takes me awhile to type down a reply. so if i get more busy, it'll prolly take a bit longer for me to reply.

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2020

You know, when I finished my latest list and realised every decade had the same pattern and that we were slowly going towards a series of great years for pop, I didn’t realise how good that year would be.

What’s at the top? Am I boringly predictable because I already said I loved that song all the way back in January 2020? Let’s find out.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will probably be stuff in French somewhere on this post. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

So. Uh. How was your 2020?

Mine was actually surprisingly good, considering. I’m lucky enough to have a job that I can partially do from home, and I was extremely paranoid from the get-go and nobody got sick under this roof so far. Turns out I’m even better at my job from home and I got permission to work from home one day per week even after the health crisis is over! My first name was also finally officially approved and I can’t tell you how happy I feel about that. I almost feel bad to have had such a good year considering the circumstances. I feel like an asshole just because I’m happy, haha.

The only frustrating part was that I was supposed to see Hatari in concert in Paris in early April which, as you can guess, was cancelled. I’m not too mad about it though, since their tour was called “Europe will crumble” and the message saying the tour was cancelled started with “since Europe is actually crumbling due to Covid-19″ and that’s hysterical.

Good or interesting albums that came out in 2020 now, let’s see.

Nightwish released Human/Nature, which was a huge letdown compared to their previous album, but I will relisten to it at some point to make sure I wasn’t just in a bad mood that day.

The Birthday Massacre released Diamonds, which might be their weakest album since their debut, but contained some real gems (I listened to The Last Goodbye on a loop, it floored me. Flashback and Enter are also very good).

The 1975 released Notes On A Conditional Form, and let’s be real, it’s a f█cking mess. You could cut half the tracks and end up with an excellent album, but as it is it’s like, yes, a collection of notes ; however there’s some truely excellent shit on it (see unelligible songs).

Thanks to a friend on a discord server I was exposed to Dorian Electra’s music and I haven’t been quite the same ever since. I’m so happy to be alive to see other enbies making such great music with an insanely good aesthetic surrounding it and asking so many interesting questions about gender. Also the arc the ‘gentleman’ character goes through over the course of the entire tracklist of the 2020 My Agenda album is absolutely hilarious, don’t @ me.

I also discovered 100 Gecs this year. Why are most of you guys saying it’s unlistenable garbage. It’s just as abrasive and over the top as industrial music is, but with none of the edginess or drama. I love it. What the hell. But yeah Tree of Clues was released this year. Good.

Speaking of industrial, in March 2020 Nine Inch Nails were like “hey remember when we released Ghosts I-IV a decade ago entirely for free and how amazing that was? Well we’re all in lockdown and bored as hell so here’s Ghosts V-VI and it’s also free. Enjoy” and I f█cking died instantly. And it’s even better than I-IV. What the hell was that year

Jonsi released Shiver. It’s strange and highly experimental. I’m pretty sure it’s a good thing I was into hyperpop this year, otherwise going from his previous material straight to this album would have been brutal.

Yadda yadda yadda After Hours by the Weeknd good yadda yadda.

I’ve joked about that already but if you had told me in 2019 that 2020 would have fires, a pandemic, riots, monoliths appearing and disappearing, and also a super good Machine Gun Kelly album, guess which part I would have found the most ridiculous. But yeah uh. Tickets to my Downfall good

So uh this year I tried to listen to some hyperpop and liked it a lot, and I also dipped my toes timidly into screamo and listened to Svalbard, who released When I Die this year, and the entire album was a very beautiful, very intricately decorated punch to the face. It sounds like God Is An Astronaut except with a shit ton of yelling. I love it. Open Wound is my favorite track on it.

But no, despite all of this, my album of the year was from a band I had never even heard about before that year, called Spanish Love Songs. The album is titled Brave Faces Everyone and it’s line after line after line of extremely relatable generational angst but yelled with complete sincerity and it’s so propulsive and energetic you can’t help but feel both exhausted and ready to fight the entire universe. I don’t know how it works, but it’s incredible. The entire album is wonderfully brutal, so it’s kind of difficult to pick my favorite songs on it, but Beachfront Property and the title track stand out.

Unelligible songs, now, and there’s, uh, quite a few of them too so I’m also gonna use bullet points. Good lord this post is gonna be long.

First, let me say I have literally no idea why Midnight Sky by Miley Cyrus wasn’t a bigger hit. It’s not on the year-end US top 100 and it feels extremely wrong. Would have made it to #4 on this list otherwise.

I still entertain the vague hope that stuff from Machine Gun Kelly will chart higher in 2021 but I doubt it will happen so I might as well tackle it now and say that Bloody Valentine and especially Forget Me Too are both excellent and that it’s a shame radios aren’t playing them more often.

Heaven by the late Avicii featuring Coldplay should have charted in 2019 and still didn’t chart in 2020 and that’s a real shame.

If the world was a bit less unfair, Lovesick Girls by Blackpink would have been a hit rather than the awful Ice Cream.

One day I will stop complaining about my bafflement concerning the lack of mainstream pop charts success of The 1975. Today is not that day. I just love how they keep making songs about extremely awkward relationships full of weird details, and I haven’t grown tired of that yet. So yeah If You’re Too Shy is about a guy who’s crush is asking him to get naked on Skype in his hotel room and he’s, uh, not too sure about that idea.

And Me & You Together is about a guy who never finds the right moment to tell his best friend he’s in love with her, and he manages to do so at the end and it’s cute as hell. My fave part is “I'm sorry that I'm kinda queer / It's not as weird as it appears / It's 'cause my body doesn't stop me (Stop me) / Oh, it's okay, lots of people think I'm gay / But we're friends, so it's cool, why would it not be?”. Relatable as f█ck.

And now for an international hit that should have been bigger in the US and/or in my country but wasn’t: Head & Heart by Joel Corry and MNEK.

I’ve heard Nos Célébrations by Indochine extremely often on French radio for months now so I was very surprised to see that it didn’t crack the local year-end list. What happened.

I can finally hear the appeal of Bring Me The Horizon. It took me ages. And also Death Stranding. The song Ludens isn’t in the game per say, but it’s among the ones you can pick to broadcast briefly when people drive by your constructions, and long story short it's been living rent-free in my head for months now.

Phew.

It’s time for a round of Honorable Mentions for elligible songs, containing a couple of guilty pleasures, which is saying something considering the kind of shit I put on some of my previous lists.

Ne Reviens Pas (Gradur et Heuss l’Enfoiré) - Heuss is a French artist that kept baffling me while making my lists for the previous years, and I was like “??? ok, that’s it then, I guess I’m getting too old to get what teenagers find funny”. This one worked for me, though. And the music video doesn’t hurt. Really dumb and really fun.

Adore You (Harry Styles) - Perfectly good little pop song, very pleasant to listen to, never outstayed its welcome for me.

Mood (24kGoldn) - This doesn’t sound like a very good relationship, my dude, but that’s still a super pleasant song.

WAP (Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion) - This song is absolutely hilarious and I will hear no argument from any of you.

Control (Zoe Wees) - Was clearly a hit here. Should have been even bigger though. What a powerful but comfy voice. If I had better taste it would be on the list.

Hot Girl Bummer (Blackbear) - I. Uh. Listen. I keep saying I have bad taste and nobody believes me. Do you believe me now. But yeah. “F█ck you, and you, and you~, I hate your friends and they hate me too” is gonna pop in my head every single time someone is being a jerk anywhere near me now. It’s been happening all year already. Someone trashed my documents at work? Someone isn’t wearing a mask in public? That guy has filled his car with rolls of toilet paper? Brain goes “F█ck you, and you, and you~”. Every. Single. Time.

Come & Go (Juice WRLD & Marshmello ) - Damn, that’s a pretty good little song. I’ve seen plenty of people saying it’s ruined by the drop, but may I remind you I’m the person who loves Blue by Eiffel 65 with all my heart. If the song was ramping up consistently until the end instead of ending like that, it would have made the list, definitely.

And now, the actual list. This one actually feels pretty solid, I genuinely like everything on it, there’s no filler here for once.

10 - The Box (Roddy Rich)

US: #3 / FR: #23

Now this is a weird case, because for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why this song was so popular and I was completely neutral about it. Then, one morning in September, my mental jukebox (which always, always puts a song on a loop in my head when I wake up) decided to play it. And I was like oh wow?? I never noticed the atmosphere in that song before? It’s so great. And that hook too. Let’s listen to it.

So yeah, I don’t know what happened. It just clicked one day and everything fell into place, I guess.

9 - Alane (Wes & Robin Shulz)

US: Not on the list / FR: #93

Come on. You can’t do a remake of one of my previous #1 songs and let it chart in 2020. That’s cheating. Even with this subpar drop, I have to put it on the list, now.

I’ve already said my piece about the original, so I’m just going to send you back to my 1997 list.

8 - Kings and Queens (Ava Max)

US: Not on the list / FR: #76

[BBC documentary voice] After Lady Gaga decided to make piano balads and left her musical niche vacant, Ava Max quickly took her place as the top predator pop diva. Even after Lady Gaga was re-introduced to her natural habitat in 2020, she still hasn’t fully recovered in Europe, where Ava Max still reigns supreme on the charts -

(tldr I think it’s hilarious that this isn’t on the US Billboard while Lady Gaga isn’t on the French year-end top 100)

7 - Roses (Saint Jhn & Imanbek)

US: #19 / FR: #3

What an earworm. It doesn’t even bother trying to have an intro or an outro, so it loops almost perfectly. It’s like entering a party that started long before you arrived, and it will go on long after you leave it to go back home. Kind of hypnotic in a way.

And yes, my mental jukebox was very fond of using it to wake me up this year, so this is another song that’s here almost solely because of that.

6 - Physical (Dua Lipa)

US: Not on the list / FR: #69 (hehehe)

“Hey I’m not that old” says the guy who’s definitely a sucker for this kind of retro throwback that was so popular this year. Oh well.

I don’t have anything interesting to say about this one, though. Apart from the fact that everyone seems to have a different fave song on that album. Guess that’s quality for you.

5 - Rain on Me (Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande)

US: #48 / FR: Not on the list

That is far from being Lady Gaga’s best song, but it was a joy to listen to everytime it was on the radio anyway. Also Ariana Grande has surprisingly good chemistry with Gaga! This year was full of strange duets mostly made for commercial reasons, and this one isn’t an exception, but unlike a lot of them, it really, really works.

4 - Dynamite (BTS)

US: #38 / FR: Not on the list

I’m still not 100% sold on k-pop even if a ton of it sounds super good, but come on. Even if some bits of this song (especially the beginning of the second chorus) sound a bit like they were made on autopilot, it still sounds just as happy and fun several months after I first heard it and I never got tired of it. That’s quality. You hear it and you can’t help but tap your feet and smile.

Actually, I’m sure there’s people somewhere that don’t smile when they hear this song. And they must be avoided at all costs.

3 - Godzilla (Eminem ft Juice WRLD)

US: #62 / FR: Not on the list

What are you doing so high on this list, old man. Why are you still here in the year 2020. I thought we left you in the previous decade. Who gave you the right.

I’m gonna tell you who did, and it’s actually Juice WRLD. Because that chorus is incredible, and like a lot of people I’m pissed off because the guy died super young and this shit shouldn’t happen to anybody. No, his early material wasn’t great, but I’m sorry I’m gonna say it again: have you heard this damn chorus? It’s suspenseful and dark, it’s got this lowkey menacing quality, it’s an earworm and a half, and it’s more convincing in like six lines than Eminem’s own flexing is in the entire song.

The beat is extremely good as well, and the flow, obviously, impressive. The weakest link is Eminem’s writing, which is as usual full of puns and weird wordplay, except here a lot of it isn’t great, and that last ultra fast part at the end is technically impressive but it also drives the song up a cliff and stops it dead in its tracks once it’s over. But frankly the lines fly by so fast it’s difficult to be too annoyed by them.

Can I sincerely put this extremely flawed song so high on my list? A better question would be “did I spend hours trying to learn how to sing this shit without choking on my own spit?”. The answer is yes. To both.

2 - Heartless (The Weeknd)

US: #28 / FR: Not on the list

I’ve said it on my 2015 and 2016 lists already, but just for the record I’ll say it again: it took me ages to like The Weeknd, mostly because I found most of his songs fairly boring, or disliked the lyrics, or both. Also I never really liked the general vibe of his “sexy” songs like The Hills, they felt dark but in an unpleasant creepy way. Felt like miserable hedonism, if that makes sense.

So, because I’m a person with extremely consistent and logical tastes, here’s the exact same shit he was making before, except that this time I absolutely adore it.

What is he doing differently that makes the whole After Hours album click for me whereas almost all of his previous material failed to do so? Is it the energy? Is it the reverb? Is it the fact that the narrator sounds properly unhinged and, frankly, scared to be spiralling out of control? Why are the colors so beautiful yet full of anxiety? Why is that bridge so fantastic? How can you make your voice look like a glowstick in the dark?

I give up. I have no clue. At least I’m done talking about-

Oh.

1 - Blinding Lights (The Weeknd)

US: #1 / FR: #1 (listen sometimes something’s just that good, ok)

Surprise. Or not.

Wow, look at that, Johannes has put this year’s number one pop song at number one on their personal playlist. The audacity. The edge. What a hot take.

I discovered that song when it first came out at the end of 2019 and I adored it instantly. And I was so scared it wouldn’t be a hit. Which means I’m a f█cking dumbass considering it ended up breaking all sorts of records in 2020. But what can I say, overplay can be a blessing when you love a song that much.

Like every single song I put at number one on one of my lists, I will draw this one at some point and you will understand how incredibly satisfying it is to listen to a song called Blinding Lights, talking about city lights looking blurry when you’re driving at night, while looking itself like a bunch of blurry city lights passing by super fast. Perfect in every way.

Also it sounds exactly like A-ha, and that never hurts.

See you next year! Pretty sure it will be even better music-wise.

[thesimonkshow]

My thoughts on Folklore

This is about to be a long ass Taylor Swift post, so strap in for the ride.

I along with many others were going about their business (looking at Adam Driver gifs) before my phone alerted me to the notification that Taylor Swift was releasing her eighth studio album Folklore the very next day. Chaos everywhere, my sleep schedule went out the window as I went into the Swifties tag to see how everyone else was dealing with this news. So I eagerly awaited 2PM (Australian time) for the album to drop and after a few listens (sleep got the better of me through my first listen due to my previous sleep schedule), I eventually picked out some album highlights.

The 1 - I love how freely she’s cussing on the album (a point that will be reitriated throughout), and I know Gossip tabloids and casuals will be shooketh because they’d think Taylor & Mr. Alwyn have ‘broken up’ due to Taylor’s personable lyrics but this gave me Better Man vibes. Remember when the Bridge said ‘You might have bern The One if you were a Better Man’ and this is basically that without the angsty fire.

Cardigan - I LOVE how Alternative Folk fits Taylor’s voice, it sounds like she’s telling us a story and we are entrapsed by her. It also works perfectly with the love triangle songs, which I had to understand a bit through a few listens.

The Last Great American Dynasty - The moment I saw this track, I knew it would be epic. I pictured her taking the piss out of the Trump family, but what I got was an awesome song about the woman who owned Taylor’s Rhode Island house and the antics she got up to. I love the descriptors she used when describing the weddings and the party’s Rebekah & Bill had and especially the bridge of antics Rebekah got up to later in her time. The ‘And then it was bought by me.’ Part of the bridge, I love a good twist!

Exile - OH MY LORD. When I saw Skinny Love Bon Iver on this album, I knew this would be something and low and behold it was. The concept of the man in exile in her intro caught my attention but seeing it up close and personal was amazing. The vocals interlaced with each other was perfection, especially as Taylor responds to Bon Iver. I really connected it to the struggles of Seth Rollins in the latter half of 2019, how he seemed to be exiled from the WWE, how his initial opponent Kevin Owens was having his flaws disregarded to drag Seth down, the ‘Always Keep Fighting’ shirt that he wore (raising money for mental health chairties) adding insult to injury for Seth, who had even briefly deactivated his twitter to clear his headspace following attacks/death threats from a fellow wrestler’s fan base. ‘I gave you every sign’ rings true here, the man was struggling and no one seemed to care.

My Tears Ricochet - My WWE ass was happy to see another Wrestler reference after The Man. So this was an interesting look, but I got another story that intrigued me, a man having been involved in a tumultous connection with the songs narrator showing up to her funeral to save face. Listeners drew parraells with the recent Masters drbarkle with Scott Borchetta, head of Big Machine Records with whom Taylor was once signed to, and I have to say it’s a good perspective to take.

Mirrorball - This one took a while but I ended up loving the fact she could sing from a Mirrorball’s perspective and still make an epic song. I loved the part about always fitting in with the crowd because at functions/discos where mirrorballs are used, the lights will change to fit the mood and being a reflective surface, Mirrorballs will reflect the colour change.

Seven - This was a nice ditty about a past friend Taylor once had. I really loved the line ‘Please picture me in the weeds before I learned Civility’ it gives a more sophisticated parraell to Never Grow Up.

August - This is the second in the love triangle songs, and I loved the storytelling aspect as Taylor paints the picture of an affair that Summer Nights would quake in it’s boots if it heard about it. She sweeps up the adience in the Mistresses POV, showcasing the sweetness of love and the sting of toxcisity.

This is me trying - Where are those who said Taylor Swift plays the victim in her songs? Because this is for them. Taylor states in this her regrets of wasted potential, broken relationships etc. at the end of the day no matter how many awards she has, records she breaks, or money she possesses, Taylor Alison Swift is a human being, and we should give her boundries to grow and flourish.

Illicit Affairs - This track title also intrigued me, and whilst it does what the title says, and discusses the highs and lows of the secret passions of mismatched lovers, the second verse & bridge stood out to me the most. The way Taylor’s voice went up on him in the line ‘Leave the perfume on the shelf that you picked out just for him.’ Drew my attention as she later did the same thing on the word high, this had to mean something. And given that we don’t know the narrators gender, this could also be a song about a closeted gay man who’s found love but is struggling to accept this relationship. Whereas the bridge reminded me a lot of the Adam & Hannah breakup in Season 4 of Girls in the episode Sit In where Hannah denounces Adam’s nickname of kid, which he had called her by since the first season, with the episode before that showing her heartbroken that Adam has gotten a new girlfriend behind her back and thus turns into a mess locked in her apartment for a day and two nights. it was a heartbreaking part of the show, one that shifted it into a new era for better or for worse, and the entirety of this reasonated with me.

Invisible String - Around this point was where melotonin kicked in for me on my first listen, so I’ve heard this less than the other songs, but I love how it discusses her relationship with Joe & how for better or for worse, he is hers. It continued the theme with them on Lover of not having a great picturesque love, but having ups and downs like any couple.

Mad Woman - The calmer sister of The Man, she won’t throw big production and actions around, she can take you down with words alone. The track stings brutally as Taylor takes down sexism as it exists in our world today, and even sadly paints a visual of how it must have been for women back in the day fighting for equal rights. ‘Does a scorpion sting when fighging back?’ Line was annother connection, as I was reminded of Vanessa Ives from Penny Dreadful and how the animal symbology that stuck with her was a scorpion, used to great effect in the Season 2 finale in a confrontation with Lucifer’s makeshift doll of her. The chorus line ‘And you’ll poke the bear till her claws come out, and you’ll find something to wrap your noose around’ stuck with me on my listens, and really shows how men will strike and then run away saying ‘it’s a joke, she’s hysterical’ etc. the part about women loving to hunt witches also reminded me of a Doctor Who episode called ‘The Witchers’ and also reminded some listeners of how Demi Lovato took Scooter Braun’s side in the Licencing debarkle, in fact in the first part of the bridge, the song also has a double meaning. It’s also about the state of affairs following Taylor’s songs being stolen from her. The part in the bridge about the wives knowing about their Spinster husbands having affairs and not wanting to show their anger for fear of being outcast like the titular woman is angsty but so lyrically genius.

Epiphany - I had to listen to this a couple of times but once I realised what it was about, I was in shock. This is about her Grandfather Dean who she mentioned in the intro who fought in a war. The song paints the war setting with the helmet, the flesh wound and the rifle within the first few words, and I especially loved the line ‘And some things we don’t speak of.’ because it talked about how some soldiers develop PTSD from their experiences, yet don’t want to discuss them for fear of being perceived as weak. Also the outro beat sounds like a radar scanning for a plane, and the beat of the drum sounds like bombs exploding, really adds to the War theme.

Betty - This is the final track in the love triangle story as it tells the story of James as he fights to earn back Betty’s love after he has an affair with Inez. The eventual pitfalls of Illicit Affairs have come for Inez which causes her to tell Betty of their affair, which is a nice link. This songs gives a classic Greese/Christine/Cheesy 80s Film meets Trixie Mattel vibe which I loved. I also loved the callbacks to August & Cardigan, along with the casual F bomb droppings.

Peace - This is another sweet love song for Joe which calls back to Cruel Summer, Cornelia Street & Dancing With Our Hands Tied as Taylor struggles with the connection she has established with Joe, and contemplates escaping, but eventually knows she’ll stay. How the entire world will be on them, but she’ll be by his side through it all. Similar to Invisible String but different all at once and a perfect penultimate track to lead to the last song.

Hoax - The sweetness brings us to the double edged sword of a closing track. Giving a shattering realisation that love can be tricky at times, the references to Call It What You Want ‘I am ash from your fire’, The Archer ‘You know the hero died so what’s the movie for?’ & ... So It Goes ‘You knew you won so what’s the point of keeping score’. Taylor loves Joe so much that when they fight it’s as painful as when she became Pop Culture Enemy #1 back in 2016. But no matter what, she says herself ‘Don’t want no other shade of blue but you. No other sadness in this world would do’ relationships are always painful, there is no happy endings all round, but there is still love to be found.

All in all this is an incredible album & @taylorswift you have created magic and I hope you know that myself & all the Swifties are so proud of you for flexing your writing skill and crafting such a stunning album.

[richmond-rex]

🌹🌹 - If I’m not too late!

Oh, you’re definitely not late! I was here thinking to myself which excerpt I could post without giving too many spoilers away, and I remember I wrote the first chapter of a character study about Cardinal Beaufort on the days before my thesis’ viva—I needed to decompress and I couldn’t possibly try to write my usual fics and characters because nothing would come out right. But I had no emotional attachment to Henry Winchester whatsoever besides a mere curiosity and for once I wanted the challenge of writing a devious, cunning character. The fic is entitled Four Kings, Five Scenes and each chapter was supposed to portray the cardinal during four different reigns: King Richard II (ch 1), King Henry IV (ch 2), King Henry V (ch 3), King Henry VI (ch 4) and King Henry VI again (ch 5). Obviously, I realised that no one would want to read this story lol. It really was the stress of the moment that made me write the first chapter. Well, since I’m not going to publish it anywhere and the chapter is fairly small compared to my usual chapter length (5k or more), you can read it here below the cut! Tagging @nuingiliath because she might be interested as well.

OLD TEMPLE, HOLBORN

Late September 1398

“Tell me what I ought to do, brother.”

Henry Beaufort, newly-appointed Bishop of Lincoln, rolled the episcopal ring on his finger—amethyst flaring under the sunlight—and let out an exasperated, long-held sigh. He could see its tracking ascendence in the air, the way the dust specks caught in the sunbeam would spiral and dance. Though old as its very name suggested, Old Temple was still one of the finest episcopal houses in London, bought for the exclusive use of the bishops of Lincoln after the Knights Templar decided to move within the borders of the City. A dusty residence it might be, but it was still one of the various privileges acquired after Henry’s consecration, or perhaps more importantly, his legitimisation. Everything was coming together, and yet, all hung at the brink of destruction.

“You are the eldest of us, John,” Lincoln replied, voice softening. “It is for you to lead us once Father is gone.”

His brother turned from the arched window, face twisting into a frown. He looked lost, utterly and completely lost, the tip of his red chaperon thrown over one shoulder as if the very fabric was trapping him in place or threatening to coil around his neck and squeeze out his breath.

“You’re the family’s clergyman.” He entreated, stepping closer. “Tell me, brother. What would God have me do?”

It was Lincoln’s turn to frown. By then the morning had given way to noon and the bishop had just finished donning his purple robes, a gold-threaded stole hanging from either side of his neck. It was almost time for Lincoln to resume his administrative duties concerning his diocese—let not anyone claim Henry Beaufort had earned his mitre by bribery and favouritism. He ran a hand along his tonsured head—he still had to send for his zucchetto hat to be brought to him—and paused in that pensive state, partially choosing what to say and partially assessing when he should schedule another shaving.

“God would have you love your brother—” He clasped his hands before his stomach, magnanimously. “—and obey your king.”

It was the first opportunity the two Beauforts had to discuss Bolingbroke’s banishment from the kingdom. It was an urgent matter: Henry Bolingbroke was Duke of Hereford and Earl of Derby, and—that was the most important piece of information—their father’s rightful heir. He was to inherit the large possessions and prodigious fortune that belonged to the Duke of Lancaster, the richest man in the realm—or so it had seemed, at least until the moment King Richard sent him into exile. The king had not mentioned his Lancastrian inheritance but as all invisible things, it still had its own weight, it still cast its own shadow. Lancaster himself was no less worried for the omission of the matter. It hung heavily, unresolved, in the air. 

His brother John, lately elevated from his earldom of Somerset to the marquessate of Dorset, resumed his speech after a brief moment of consideration.

“I say Bolingbroke is a good Christian, brother. He has vowed to defend the faithful and I know he means well and true.” 

John would know, the two of them had gone crusading together. While John, Bolingbroke and Swynford were bonding over tournaments and military expeditions, young Henry had his head buried deep in manuscripts and missals. For a time it had been a fancy of Henry’s to imagine himself a Knight Templar fighting for the kingdom of Christ in the Holy Land: the armour, the tabard and the red cross, entire armies under his command as a Grand Master. A child’s fancy, yes, for the Templars were no more—yet there Lincoln stood, at the very place those brothers had once called home. There was a rightness to it, a taste he could feel at the very tip of his tongue. Lancaster might have arranged for the trio of brothers to be admitted into the Confraternity at Lincoln’s Cathedral but it was he—Henry Beaufort—the one chosen to command the entire diocese now. 

His brother John didn’t even seem to notice his state of reminiscence. He kept talking, his words coming to Lincoln’s ears in all of their ardour again.

“—I didn’t speak for Uncle Gloucester at the time and now it weighs on my conscience! Worse, brother, I condemned him! I called for his very arrest!”

“Woodstock was a traitor of the realm.” The bishop deadpanned. “It was your duty as a peer to call for his arrest. You know that as well as I d—”

A boy holding his purple zucchetto was just about to enter the room. The bishop dismissed him with a sharp turn of his head, shooed him away with a glare and a quick motion of his hand. The boy scurried away, his hurried steps echoing on the flagstones. Lincoln frowned, pressed his lips into a thin line: his own brusqueness had displeased him. He should be nobler in his actions, loftier, gentler even, a true shepherd of Christ. As he turned, he saw John had already stepped back to the window. Once again, he didn’t seem to have noticed any commotion around him.

“Be as it may, this time is different.” John restarted. “Our brother has done no wrong against the king. There is only one explanation for this—” John stopped short before he went further, checking himself at the very last minute. He didn’t utter the word, but it hovered just above them, somewhere over their heads. Retribution. Vengeance for the time Bolingbroke joined the Lords Appellant and rebelled against cousin Richard. One by one those rebels had been crushed.

The glass panels tinted his brother’s face with green, spots of red covered his face as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. Shocking blue, poisonous red, a liquid green so fresh one could almost drink. 

“It was cruel to make him fight Mowbray to the death, but there was still honour in it. There’s no honour to be found in exile.” He closed his eyes. “He has six children, Henry.”

This time the bishop’s reply was swift. “Father will take care of them. As will we if it comes to such an end. We shall support the family as we always have.”

John, still looking very much disheartened, acceded with a small nod. “You know,” he smiled weakly, eyes growing distant like a far-away ship. “I used to look up to him when I was little. All I ever wanted was to be like Bolingbroke, a true son of Lancaster.”

The sensation was familiar to the bishop himself, only his brother still seem to hold to that boyish memory as his heart’s truest wish, even now that his aspirations were supported by law: standing there at the bishop’s residence, John was dressed in Lancaster blue and white, their father’s SS livery collar hung over his shoulders, the S-shaped links crafted in pure gold and held closely together. 

A sting of bittersweetness washed over the bishop. What if… what if the king had Bolingbroke attainted? Surely, King Richard was unpredictable those days—no one had been quite able to placate his moods ever since Queen Anne had died—but if the king did attaint their brother, neither he nor his children would be authorised to inherit Lancaster’s lands and title. Perhaps… perhaps King Richard would choose to pass them over to Lancaster’s next legitimate male heir, in that case, his brother John himself.

“Dear brother, why do you choose to dwell in such sorrowful thoughts? Father loves you best.”

John turned to him sharply. “You cannot know such a thing!”

Oh, the plain irony of watching his brother’s face turned into a scowl that mirrored exactly the one their father was famous to possess! John had Lancaster’s same strong nose, as did the bishop himself, yet now at his anger, his brother had turned into the very picture of John of Gaunt. It was oftentimes that natural children would have their sire’s face if not his name, as if it was an underhanded way of nature to compensate for their social ostracism.

“He does.” The bishop repeated in a firm voice. He clasped his hands, a position that gave him reassurance in difficult situations. “Recall that Father has done everything in his power to make us his true children. He appealed to Parliament and His Holiness the Pope Himself, he moved mountains to secure our charts of legitimisation. All this time, he has extensively defended our cause to the king. Now, that same king has banished his heir from the land and the Duke of Lancaster poses no resistance. Why do you think that is?”

It was not exactly true, but it was what his brother needed to hear. Lancaster had, in fact, negotiated with the king to the best of his abilities, a piece of information that the bishop suspected his brother John knew already. The Marquess of Dorset was, after all, well-placed within cousin Richard’s circle. A more credible point against the bishop’s claim would be, however, that the Duke of Lancaster rarely ever showed his true emotions, fatherly or otherwise. It would be impossible to say whom he loved best.

“If Father will not risk his head over this matter, John—John, my beloved John! Heed my words now. You should not risk your own!”

John looked at him with such heaviness it bore into the bishop’s own soul. Henry walked over to his brother and placed a hand on his shoulder. 

“You have a good heart, John. It is loyal and true and it bears testament to your character, but it will get you killed. Remember who gave you your earldom of Somerset, who made you marquess of Dorset, knight of the Garter, who married you to that illustrious lady, the king’s own niece. He who appointed you as Constable of Dover—”

“—Warden of the Cinq Ports, Admiral of the Fleet in the North and West, Lieutenant in Aquitaine, I know, I know!” John took a long breath. “I know. The king, our cousin.”

King Richard himself had fastened the earl’s belt during John’s girding; the king himself had draped the velvet cloak across John’s shoulders. The ceremony had been clear enough: the earl’s power derived from his authority and his authority alone.

The bishop retrieved his hand from his brother’s shoulder slowly, pulled it back inch by inch until it was safely resting against its twin counterpart, flat against his stomach. 

“Father has been unwell. When the Lord deems time to call him to His side again, who will look after us? Remember our brother Tom, so young and not yet a peer. Remember Joan and her children. Remember Mother.”

“No. No, brother, you speak true.” John conceded with a nod. “I can’t endanger your safety nor leave any of you unprotected. I cannot defy the king.”

There was resolution on his face, yet there was sadness as well. The bishop still sought a way of soothing his brother’s heart. “Let me be the one to speak for our brother. Cousin Richard already knows I’ve had my whole diocese pray for him. I stand safer as a prelate than you do as a courtier.”

In a second, his brother gripped his shoulder, displaced the stole hung around the bishop’s neck with a heartiness that surprised him. As though they were mere, simple children again, John smiled in truth at last.

“You have always been the wisest of us, brother. Yet,” He looked down,chuckled. “Yet sometimes I still remember that boy who vowed to God he would become pope.”

Bishop Beaufort felt his lips quirk up—a genuine, delicious thrill elicited by the memory—and so, accordingly, he lowered his eyelids in modesty. “All wisdom comes from our Holy Mother, the Church. All grace from God the Lord Almighty and His Son, Christ the Holy Lamb.” His prelate answer given, he glanced up again. “Sometimes I caught myself thinking of that boy as well, dear John, yet times have changed.”

John raised an eyebrow, apparently befuddled. “Have they?” 

“Yes,” The bishop replied, no longer speaking of the ambitions held for a long time inside his heart. “If for the better or for the worse, only the future will tell.”

_______________________ *notes: it’s said that John Beaufort, while still suporting Richard II at the time of Bolingbroke’s invasion, might have played a double game. When he was captured by his brother’s forces and the Percys called for his execution, Henry IV is supposed to have said: “I beseech you do him no harm, for he is my brother, and has always been my friend; see the letter he sent to me in France.” Henry IV later made John Beaufort his Lord Chamberlain.

Henry Beaufort remained close to his brother John up until his last breath. The bishop stayed by his side at St Katherine’s hospital while he was dying. Henry was made executor of John’s will, a mark of deep trust, if not also affection the brothers had for each other. It may explain why Cardinal Beaufort vouched for his nephews, his brother’s children, so fiercely in the coming decades.

[shinneth]

Do you listen to music when writing?

Well, that’s a bit of an interesting story.

Prior to writing Steven Universe stories, I absolutely could not listen to music of any kind while writing. Even if was just lowkey instrumental/ambiance, for some reason it ALWAYS triggered my mind to imagine other stuff, which made writing all but impossible for me as long as there was noise around. 

So for 85-90% of my writing career, that answer would be a hard no.

When I started working on Gem Ascension, suddenly that changed. I still can’t listen to music where there’s actual singing involved (unless it’s just really subdued or aesthetic choir noises), but I found myself better able to write whenever I had some scene-appropriate BGM playing. Usually from video games.

There’s a few wonderful souls on Youtube whose entire channels involve posting BGM tracks of all sorts of different series (seen it with games, anime, and wrestling tunes at least) - in 30-minute loops. 

This is immensely helpful for me, as I write huge amounts of content and thus tend to be stuck in a scene for a good while. And my momentum would be broken up big time if the track ran out at its original time and shifted to something that completely throws the mood off. Having the tracks extended to 30 minutes makes that much of a difference to me.

I’m really not sure why now I’m able to listen to at least some form of music while writing when I spent nearly 2 decades not being able to do it at all. But there you go.

I’ve gone through MANY tracks from many different games, anime, and wrestling themes throughout my tenure of writing my Gem Ascension continuity, but I’ll say my go-tos are largely due in part to the tracks of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross (by Yasunori Mitsuda). 

Best of that pack for writing: Corridors of Time, Mystery of the Forest, Undersea Palace, Silent Light, Chronopolis (my default Homeworld scene music), Star-Stealing Girl, Death Volcano, and Edge of Death.

David Wise’s music was also just as much-used and essential to my progress. Choice tracks include:

Fear Factory, Aquatic Ambiance, Life in the Mines, Northern Hemispheres, Treetop Rock, Crocodile Cacophony, Forest Interlude, Flight of the Zinger, Mining Melancholy, Hot-Head Bop, Hot-Top Volcano, Jungle Falls, Darkmoon Caverns,

Koji Kondo gets an honorable mention, because Dire, Dire Docks was a VERY often-used one for me. As did Koopa’s Road, Mario Kart 64′s version of Rainbow Road, Inside the Deku Tree, Forest Temple, Spirit Temple, Water Temple, Last End, Ikana Valley, and Stone Tower Temple (+ Inverted Version).

Super Mario Galaxy has an OST made for epic Steven Universe fics where off-world stuff is the focus. Buoy Base Galaxy, Space Junk Galaxy, Pipe Interior, and Ghostly Galaxy just to name a few.

And of course, I often used some choice Nobuo Uematsu classics from Final Fantasy. And also the Final Fantasy games after he stopped composing for them. Anxious Heart, FF7′s Main Theme, On That Day 5 Years Ago, Life Stream, Chasing the Black-Caped Man, Who Am I, Shinra Army Wages a Full-Scale Attack, If You Open Your Heart, The Birth of God…

Stevidot scenes often had me using Tifa’s Theme and Serah’s Theme - Memory (the latter very shamefully).

I remember spamming New Bodhum for the scenes at the Crystal Temple/Steven’s house. Surprisingly the singing didn’t throw me off here.

Same can be said for Historia Crux and Plains of Eternity.

And yes, I have used tracks from Final Fantasies IV, V, VI, VIII, IX, X, and so on. But I’d be here all day listing those.

Hilariously, I recall special songs I had playing in 30-minute chunks as I neared the end of GA Act III: Super Mario World’s Ending Theme, Super Mario 64′s Staff Roll, Chrono Trigger’s To Far Away Times, Sonic the Hedgehog 3′s Credits, Sonic CD’s Sonic Boom (Ending Version) (one of the few exceptions where songs with singing didn’t throw me off)…

But the very last track that played as I finished the original Gem Ascension trilogy? 

To the Moon - from Ducktales Remastered. Though honestly, I was cycling between that, the original version, and this amazing orchestral fan remix.

…. I didn’t expect that answer to be nearly as complex as it became. Uh, enjoy the music selection that inspired GA, I guess? :P

[jamiefairfaxisntcool]

/mu/core album review | Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

/mu/core album review #1

this week on /mu/core album review, we look at:

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Ah yes, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. The album that’s mostly known as either, “that one weird album from the 90s,” or, “/mu/ basic bitch meme music.” If you’re anywhere past a casual music fan, you have most-likely heard some songs off this project, if not the whole thing, doubly so if you’re into 90s culture, Indie, or any sort of Art-Rock or Folk movements. As I type this, the most popular YouTube rip of the album has about 4.3 million views, a playlist separating each track stands at 500,000 views, and the title track has a remarkable 40,733,956 plays on Spotify. Holy shit, to put that into perspective: AV Club writes that, “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea was originally slated to sell about 7,000 copies,” that’s roughly 5,819 times the predicted sales numbers of the album on just that song. This also means that this song has been listened to for approximately 131,163,338 minutes, a total of around 131,163,299 more minutes than the actual album length. Humanity has spent a collective 249 years listening to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Oh, and that’s just the title track.

If I couldn’t spell it out so clearly there, this album is fucking outrageously popular.

Even if you haven’t heard any material off the LP, this album is memed pretty heavily in the music corners of the internet. I don’t think I can find a single music meme page or forum that hasn’t jumped upon the ITAOTS or NMH bandwagon.

At this current point in time, ITAOTS has became a permanent resident in the zeitgeist of internet music culture. NMH, and by extension, it’s creator, Jeff Mangum have been elevated to a cult of personality status. The band and this project are accompanied by a never-ending choir: 15-25 year old sad white boys who cry while sing-screeching about semen and Anne Frank and poorly play open chords on their detuned Ibanez acoustics.

It’s oddly beautiful.

The album is so deceptively simple, so creatively cryptic and has all the elements of a slog faux-folk fest filled with whining that would bore me to so many tears that they could rival the sad boy indie kids who lose their e-girls to their more socially active explore-page bait counterparts. To a person not familiar with it, ITAOTS could look like an over hyped, masturbatory depression tape. It looks boring. It looks like it should be boring.

If it should be boring, then why have I only listened to it and absolutely nothing else for the last two days?

This isn’t a joke, I revisited the album of course to refresh myself before sitting down and writing this review. I kept listening, over the course of a school day, in-between production and songwriting sets, while playing games, and as I write this, I just finished my eighth spin of the record. Before those last two days, I had only listened to the album probably twice. 

I remember listening to it back in seventh grade and not particularly disliking it. I was really into Yes and a lot of other Prog and Psych bands, but I wasn’t particularly impressed with the almost yuppie voice that Jeff had used on the record compared to vocal beasts like Freddie Mercury, Bowie, and Jon Anderson. Later on, I listened in freshman year, and I appreciated it much more, and had a few songs come up in my shuffle play, but thought nothing much of it.

Now, war had changed.

part 1: i’m the fucking carrot king

As I plopped down in my computer chair, my window crackled and banged like a distant firecracker with the smack of heavy rains on a Summer afternoon. I placed my headphones firmly atop my ears, closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair. I heard the opening chords of The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1 and tried not just to hear the instrumentation, but also pay attention to the lyrical content of Mr. Mangum.

When you were young, you were the king of carrot flowers And how you built a tower tumbling through the trees In holy rattlesnakes that fell all around your feet

Okay, so what the fuck is actually happening here?

Upon my listens, I inferred that Jeff is speaking to another party here, most likely a female love interest, in what seemingly starts in a nostalgic tone. This sounds almost like a picturesque, coming-of-age, Americana film. Maybe one starring Molly Ringwald and River Phoenix, with a surprise cameo from someone famous back then like Jack Nicholson. Maybe John Candy, with a John Hughes script. Everything would have those faded out, classic colors, a hearkened back era. Quickly, by halfway through the first act, the tone shifts. A darker mood, a stark, grim reminder that life wasn’t always sunny and shinning in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

And your mom would stick a fork right into daddy's shoulder And dad would throw the garbage all across the floor As we would lay and learn what each other's bodies were for

The Mang informs us of a horrific family life, specifically about what seems to be his dad’s, stepmom’s, and stepsister’s interpersonal relationships. The lines are obvious and straightforward, the life of our protagonist was rife with unhealthy familial and sexual relationships, and a sense of love and sweetness was not found there. Keep that in mind when thinking about later songs such as Oh Comely.

After the somber intro of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1, we reach my personal least favorite track on the album: The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 2 and 3.

Look, I know the meme. “I LOOOOOOOOOVE JESUUUS CHUHRIEEEIISSSSTT,” and all that shit. I’m not even worked up about that line in particular, I just dislike Pt. 3. It’s the weakest of the upbeat songs on the album, with the weird yodel-screech voice that Gumman performs with really takes me out of the experience, which sucks because the buildup and atmosphere of Pt. 2 felt pretty amazing. Luckily, Pt. 3 is fairly short, so we don’t have to worry about it too much.

part 2: earth angel’s thesis

The title track for this album is one of the best songs on this album, no fucking contest. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Oh Comely, The Fool, and Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2 are top contenders when discussing this album. If you like the faster, fuzzier, upbeat songs you could probably substitute The Fool for Holland, 1945.

The title track has a familiar sounding chord progression and we can hear Gum from Jet Set Radio’s saccharine but yelp-y voice belt out from atop the mountains his undying love and admiration for... Anne Frank?

What a beautiful face I have found in this place That is circling all round the sun What a beautiful dream That could flash on the screen In a blink of an eye and be gone from me

In the first verse, Geoff mentions meeting or viewing a beautiful person on this fleeting rock circling round the Sun. He also matches this with the idea that it’s truly futile for him to chase after this beauty, as it is only a dream that could escape him when he awakes. El Jefé has actually mentioned that some of his surrealist lyrics are derived from dreams. Perhaps these lines could imply a more literal dream fading? I don’t exactly know, all I know is what I interpreted.

The instrumentation of this piece is nothing straying from NMH’s usual repertoire: Mandrake on Guitar and Vocals, Scott Spillane on the Horns, Robert Schneider on Bass and Production, Julian Koster playing... something. What is he playing? Wait, give me a second.

He’s playing the Singing Saw? I thought it was like, a Theremin. What the fuck is a Singing Saw?

Oh.

Okay sure, you can play that, however the fuck you do that.

And finally we have Jeremy Barnes on Drums.

The personnel handle the music with a light, bouncy feeling, and the tone and timbre remind me of a faded, old, seaside town on the east coast. Another thing to mention is that the chord progression is G-Em-C-D; I-vi-IV-V. A funny thing I noticed is that this song shares a chord progression with tons of songs from the 50’s and early 60’s, which adds to the waning Americana feeling, but it more specifically shares that progression with Earth Angel by The Penguins. In the 80’s film, Back To The Future, Marvin Berry covers the song with his band for the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance where Marty’s dad and mom have to dance to ensure that the future stays intact. There’s no further real connection, but I thought that was kinda cool to mention.

After looking through the lyrics for In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, I will admit, as a brainlet Two-Headed Boy Pt. 1 eluded me. Patrolling through Genius and some other reviews, I guess the consensus about this track was that it was about Anne Frank again? Manta Jeff’s cryptic lyricism continues to fool me. Besides the lyrics, this track mostly remains a piece of really good filler.

part 3: stop the military occupation of my brainwaves

The Fool is amazing, anyone who says it’s filler is wrong. I know I might anger some people by literally implying that Two-Headed Boy Pt. 1 was filler, but seriously The Fool just makes me a feel a way. My brain creates a scene reminiscent of a depressing diesel-punk Les Misérables. Even though Scotch Spillage’s fantastic piece for horns is beautifully imperfect, it lacks lyrical content and is short and length. So, let’s instead talk about Holland, 1945.

This awesome, uptempo, almost punk-like piece of fuzzy brass is groovy son. It’s probably the song you could show someone not familiar with this project and they’d be like, “Oh, is this Cake? Why is the lead singer singing so high now?”

Holland, 1945 is a song that you can just listen for the instrumentation. Holland, 1945 is a song that promotes peace and love. There’s so many great things I can say about Holland, 1945. How it’s theme is so perfectly fitting for today’s political climate, how it manages to blend these psychedelic and bluesy timbres with a fast and loud sound and how well it continued the semi-conceptual narrative of Joff’s admiration and love for... Anne Frank.

Okay, fuck it, I have to say it. It’s bothered me ever since I discovered it.

Why Anne Frank? Like, I know why Anne Frank, but I mean like, why, y’know? I’ll say I admire Anne Frank, she was trying her best to live a normal life in a terrifying time to be alive, but I never wanted to fuck her. xxJeffxx’s mentions of Anne kind of make me raise an eyebrow. Especially because the album’s not just about her either. When he gets sexual, it’s difficult to determine whether he is mentioning a third party or Anne, which would be pretty weird, as she was 15 when she died and Heff was 28 when he wrote this. Maybe this is just some patrician music shit that I’m too plebeian to understand, like heated toilet seats or drinking for fun rather than to drown the pain. Maybe I haven’t sat down and watched enough flowery-squarespace-sponsored-lofi-hip-hop-muzak-using-pretentious video essayists to understand it, but what do I know.

part 4: the proletariat cries

To wrap on the second half of the album, this is the half that I cried in.

Communist Daughter is a good song, but with how short it is, it left me wanting more. This track is one of the few that actually features a soft-spoken Jeffen, and its open and dark but dreamy atmosphere left my jaw agape. The mountaintops weren’t the only thing stained.

Oh Comely, Oh Comely. Oh Comely is a song that deserves its own review. The lyrical chops of The Mangum Magnum are on full display as he belts somber, brutal verse after verse, with plenty of juxtaposition between sickening, sexual and vile situations alongside a description of a sweet, innocent young girl, just trying to survive with a guitar by her side. This beautiful, lovely girl gets taken advantage by someone, some people, perhaps even Yeff himself, only seen as an easy lay, a whore, like the ones her father visits often. He disgustingly describes semen in the garden, and her making miracles with her mouth, but I didn’t get a tone similar to so many songs about “sexual-empowerment.” The song is about self-deprecating depression leading to her being used, perhaps even abused. A situation all too real, too close to many of us. As I type this, I don’t know what to think. A woman should of course have individual sexual freedom, but this song doesn’t describe that. It describes trauma, emotional, psychological trauma. Meaningless sex, a rotten smell, staining the flower of a woman, all of this language that could be simply described as gross. This isn’t a happy song about fucking bitches. This song is about how a girl wanted to play music, pluck vines and was taken advantage of, reduced to her roots, and deflowered. Fuck. I wish I could save her. In some sort of time machine.

Two-Headed Boy could refer to a number of things. I have a head canon. This girl, Comely, is being used by the Two-Headed Boy for sexual favors. The Two-Headed Boy then “repays” her in friendship and music, playing their silly little songs. On the surface, Comely assumes the Two-Headed Boy trusts her and cares for her, but really all he wants is sex. Comely, living in a broken home and without a proper male figure in their life, is conned by the Two-Headed Boy, and just wants to live a normal life. Comely is trapped. She’s living in a place that is surrounded by the texture of scum and she knows it, she just can’t call upon the strength to leave. She’s trapped in a home, a ghetto, wanting to live a normal life, but she’s been placed here by the Two-Headed Boy, who knew her mother and father were broken, and she would be too. The Two-Headed Boy broke in, claimed to be her friend, and supports her, before defiling her. Comely was pretty, bright, and intelligent. She was just in a bad situation.

Comely was Anne Frank.

Not to say that they were literally one in the same, but I mean J. Mangum (private eye) is comparing two children, ripped from their lives by this awful world, and intertwining them, blurring the lines.

Who’s the Two-Headed Boy? As I said, it could be a number of people. Nazis, Peter van Pels, hell, even Jeff Manga himself could be the Two-Headed Boy. It doesn’t matter as long as we realize the relationship between oppressed and oppressor.

There is a glimmer of hope for Comely though. Read the closing words from Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2:

Two headed boy, she is all you could need She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires And retire to sheets safe and clean But don't hate her when she gets up to leave

Comely and the Two-Headed Boy split away from each other. Comely leaves the Two-Headed Boy, and the narrator says not to hate her when she leaves. On a deeper level, this could be an introspective Jeff Mangum relating on his past. I don’t really know.

outro

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

9/10

What did you think? Was I way off the mark, or do you agree? What should I have covered? What did you like, what did you dislike, I’m all ears. Leave a follow and a like if you liked it and I’ll see you on Wednesday.

[onepunchmiss]

OPM s2e3 Live Blog

“The Hunt Begins”

Ok I had 3 screenshots leaked to me before seeing the episode, but only one of them was spoiler-y in that I wasn’t sure if we’d get that far in the episode. And of course not only did I not leave work early, but had to stay an hour late. So without further delay, I’m hoppin to it. Reminder, I’m watching each episode as someone who is caught up with both the manga and web comic.

Alright, off the bat we’re getting the Charanko expulsion over with. I wasn’t expecting that, but it makes sense- it’s a good hook to lead with and set up the Garou issue before actually getting into Garou destroying everyone.

BTW I am Still not over the opening theme- nope it still gets me both visually and musically. (I definitely was not listening to the song on repeat at work all day. nope. what kind of nerd would do that definitely not me hahaaaaaa)

I like that Charanko doesn’t bat an eye that The Worlds Strongest Man King is there, or Blizzard of Hell, he’s just like ‘ah they’re multiplying.’ Fuckin kek. Saitama oh sweetheart, “Silver Fang” may be cool but to us you’ll always be the One Punch Man oh dear my heart

oh OH YES Guys you have no idea how excited I am for this fight?? I know Tank Top Master isn’t really popular but like I’m a gym rat so I’ve got a soft spot for him and Superalloy. Guys, in the databook his favorite things are chicken breasts and protein. Also I mean hes actually a decent guy too, but----- Anyway, wasn’t too hard finding Garou, was it Charanko?

Oh, oh right. Let me clarify I’m excited to see TTM get some screen time. Also to watch trash son (aka Garou) kick some ass. I’m, I’m not excited about him kicking Mumen’s ass specifically. This is gonna hurt.

(garou scary face)

His faces literally make me shout WOAH at my screen ok thanks scary trash son. Ah, lookit the tanktopper army!! Fukkin Tank Top Mask is there to I’m- yes, just yes.

YES. MY BRO MY MAN KICK SOME ASS. Garou’s little ‘nani??’ omfg perfect.WAIT the little ‘haha~~’ THAT was perfect. I also need to point out here that in the manga Garou has a lot of crazy faces, like his expressions are very extra, (another way he’s a foil to Saitama, hah) but seeing them actually in motion speaking is borderline uncanny valley? They’ve creeped me out twice already and he’s been on screen for like 20 seconds? I mean i guess he IS going for the scary-monster thing, so uh, good job u freeky trash man you.

Oh, Tiger and Black Hole, I only missed you a little bit.

BOMB. ITS BOMB. YES. AAAHHH. I MEAN I KNEW HE WAS GOING TO SHOW UP IN THE EPISODE BUT IM STILL? HYPED??

Man the Garou music is really intense, holy shit. If I’m not mistaken something at least similar played when he was fighting at the HQ last episode. Honestly, I hope it’s not gonna be this sounding track every time garou gets in a fight. Cause, y’know, ge gets in a lot of those. It’s only been twice now and it’s still during establishing character moments so it passes, but I really really hope they switch it up or it will lose it’s epic feel.

Oh, there he goes with his creepy faces.

FUCK Mumen You FOOL. Also, how did you take that hit so well??? Tiger and Black hole are right for once. Oh you fools. Oh you fools. Stop it’s gonna get worse. ITS GONNA GET WORSE stOP TalKInG

Wait did Garou actually fake walk away in the manga?? I don’t remember that??? Gotta double check myself there cause that threw me off like? Garou??

Garou: 50% Uncanney Faces, 50% Badass

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand back to the freeky faces. Also, TTM’s “KUSO!!”

oh.

oh god.

The sound as he repeatedly bashes Mumen’s skull into the concrete. REPEATEDLY. my stomach. This fight is a rollercoaster of hype and pain oh no

Here have this screnecap so you can suffer, too

I must say, watching Garou fight otherwise is an absolute joy. The rest of this scene was so dynamic. I loved the way just glided through everyone and bounced around so fluidly. Keeping the water stream fist throughout it was also visually really pleasing. I need more. Give me more Garou fights, this is AMAZING. And that put us about half way through the episode like I predicted, which means I have no idea at what scene the episode will end.

“He’s here” Oh that was funny. Was that filler? I dont remember that either good shit good shit

YES IT THE 

B A N A N A T I M E  

TTM: “At least say I put up a good fight!!” Oh sweetheart I love you and appreciate you you did great

OH MY FUCK OH MY GOD OH FUCK GOOD OH FUCK SHIT FUCK

Oh shit that was a cool gag, how the newspaper flew past and garou just appeared. also. The most beautiful friendship is about to start and oh my god I’m so excited. Ok really I won’t lie- I would have been SCREAMING at Tareo on the screen if the didn’t just lead with Zombieman’s face in the catalog. I live for that pout. And his eyebrow is quirked like the heck u lookin at just. F. I’ve exhausted all my energy screaming at that. I’m so sorry.

Wait wait they still showed the side of his face again guys I’ve got it so bad for that 2D man help

I’ve waited so long for this scene. OH MY FUCK the little leg bob guys someone gif it NOW.  I love both of them so much. Also, Tareo’s voice is adorable. Watching that kid go through some shit is gonna be heart wrenching. FFF Anyway, it looks like we are getting GoldenBall and Spring Mustachio this episode? I was torn either way if we’d see that much. huh.

Oohhh Shit Sea King and Melzalgald! Wassup flashbacks?? Oh my gosh Saitama looks so excited I think thats the happiest we’ve seen him in a long time? No wonder he takes an interest in martial arts! AH! The ticket! The ticket! The tournament ticket!! I know a bunch of people considered the tournament filler and found it annoying, but I’m so excited for it!! Like, it seriously gave me a whole new respect for Lightning Max and Snek, I can’t wait to see those boys get the spotlight for a second again!

OMFG What is this jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-- wtf I am Cackling?? Oh my fuck its still going this is Peak Comedy 

AH! I missed them! And I wish the screen wasn’t so dark, but otherwise SEE WHAT I MEAN? Shit watching Garou move is fun as hell, even if he’s barely moving. Also, is that legit bullet fire sound effects? I also love that those two get drinks together regularly enough that Spring knew something was up when GB wasn’t there. So good so good.

Garou: “Ding ding ding”          Me: glorious you bastard

Question, what the fuck is that sword made of that it shoots rainbows for miles? Is it the power of gay? I mean I personally don’t ship Spring and GB buuuuuuuuuuuuuut…………………………….

OH IM SO DISAPPOINTED GAROU DIDNT JUST FLIP US ALL OFF JUST A THUMBS DOWN CMON I WAS EXCITED FOR THAT I FEEL RIPPED OFF. Also there’s that music again, but it didn’t play the whole time thank goodness.

“Here comes the fan service to your screen” amirite?

Eh at least I got the satisfaction of watching the sleezeball get decked in the face. The brunette’s face when he asked for a kiss on the cheek is SUCH  a MOOD. And oh fuck the ‘relax its for peace” Those two girls are the real stars of this episode I love them.

Obligatory “YES”ing at the screen rn hold on

OH FUCK GAROUS REACTION IS PRICELESS

Hey wait. HEY WAIT ARE THEY GONNA SHOW MY TRASH SON WAKING UP IN THE TRASH WHERE HE BELONGS??? THAT’S VERY IMPORTANT VERY

THE POST CREDIT SCENE. Genos I love you never change. Just. look at this precious boy. And the voice acting is perfect. I’m glad they ended on a humorous note this time. Gold.

IN SUMMARY: I honestly don’t feel like I have much to say or reflect on. I just really loved this episode. Favorite one yet. I mean of course I’m going to like it more as the story kicks the fuck up, but I genuinely had zero complaints, and actively enjoyed watching the animation.

Warning for next week btw, I’m going to be out of the country and also not really near civilization, so I probably won’t have wifi, so theres a good chance I wont be able to blog next week’s episode till I get back. Which I’m actually pissed about. because 

WE ARE GOING TO GET TO SEE METAL BAE KICK SOME MONSTER ASS AND IVE WAITED SO MANY YEARS TO SEE HIS STUPID DELINQUENT FACE IN ACTION FUCK MY TIMING MAN IM BOTH EXCITED AND PISSED of all the weeks I had to live in the wilderness UHG. Bet your ass I’m going to TRY MY DAMNDEST  to get internet next Tuesday.

I’ll hopefully see yall next week, thanks for reading!

[shidiand]

How do you imagine Tenco's Story ending in your head?

that is a GREAT but UNEXPECTED QUESTION freshlybaked "spider" bread and i'm really happy to have the opportunity to try and answer this ageless question that has burned within all of us in the tenco's story iv waiting room community since 2013. it is an incredible coincidence (or is it? 👀) that i was just talking to Risa about tenco's this (edit: yesterday) morning so i am extra double super in the mood to talk about Tenco's Story today. so excellent of a coincidence is this that i am tempted to refer you to them in case you wanted to hear their thoughts on the matter that would probably turn out super cool, but that is neither here nor there; let us talk Tenco's Story.

i of course must mention my unadvertised and modestly detailed commentary on tenco's i-iii at https://shidiand.tumblr.com/tencos, presenting slightly interesting facts in an unwieldy and difficult-to-use format, but as it dates back to june 2017, i want to take some time to understand my feelings about the series once more.

tenco's story is a series that has a lot of meaning to me.

i took on my current name of shidiand in november of 2013. i was still in 11th grade at the time, 4th year of high school, and a very socially isolated person. i should say i was introduced to touhou in 7th grade, 2010, so i was still working through a 3 years-strong phase of trying to simultaneously both find an outlet for and bottle up an endless wellspring of awkward weeaboo-gamer nerd energy at the time.

i had my first real foray onto the internet in 2010, tried out twitter, followed some RPers and other people who had Cool Touhou Usernames. didn't really go anywhere. i had maybe 50 followers, i dont really know the count but it was definitely a) double digits and b) pretty low. didn't know what to tweet about. didn't know how to hit it off with others. i think there was basically maybe only 3 other people i ever properly interacted with. oh shit i was playing league of legends at the time. oh my god. i really did play league of .. oh my god. let's move on.

aw shit im super digressing amn't i. well.

this is just how it goes when i write essays on tumblr.com.

i'm afraid you're just along for the ride at this point so please do your best to enjoy it.

i got kind of tired of twitter at the time because i didnt know what to do with it. didnt know how to interact with people and didnt find the people i was following interesting, so i ghosted on out of there by the end of 2012. didnt deactivate it until like 2015 but at that point that was just burning away my dark history. anyways. november 2013.

--im taking a lot of time here trawling through old files on my computer, my tumblr blog, notification emails still lying around in my gmail inbox from twitter, the dropbox i didn't actually use but it had several tenco's story pictures on it but i deleted them so this was useless, ... to trace the timeline of this story and im really seeing a lot of remnants of dark history here you know? did you know i wrote a letter to a girl i had a crush on valentine's day 2014, slipped it into her locker, and anxiously hung around nearby at lunchtime to see how she reacted at lunchtime? i certainly didn't, or at least i made darn ass sure to forget about this incredible virgin incident and not remember it, ever, until i came across the records of it that i thoughtfully preserved for the me of 5 years later today. ok well now i have to read the letter to see if it was as bad as it just sounded there brb

ok so the good news is that it was actually very focused on being positive and full of admiration for the cool things she did instead of being a confession letter so i am very glad i was able to be a respectful chad 5 years ago, but the bad news is that the jokes, the actual sentences i put together. oh my god. but i mean. well. at least i got the spirit. its certainly a step up from this other person in my grade, WEEABOO ANDREW, YOU MAY RECALL THIS STORY AND HIS NAME FROM PREVIOUS STORYTIMES, THE MAN THE MYTH THE LEGEND who came to school on halloween once cosplaying kirito from sword art online and got very possessive about people asking if they could hold his black replica plastic sword, and probably worse, dropped a "will you be my girlfriend" letter into the locker of my homie and fellow trombonist samantha, who was a little bit nerdy, hung out with the anime-likers who were actually sociable and fun to be around so you can imagine why weeaboo andrew was into her, which had i) a direct quotation from SAO chapter 16.5 (origin of the famous "glopping noise" line), and ii) a condom. jesus christ. i dont want to talk about this any more. next topic.

i also put this drawing of iku nagae and her skarmory (actually an albinoss from 18 DRAGONS) on the other side of the letter because it was the coolest thing i could think of drawing at the time. and i completely agree with 2014 me because it IS super fucking cool. hell fuckin yeah

https://shidiand.tumblr.com/post/76301993387/iku-nagae-ft-that-thing-that-supposedly-is-a

alright that was a fun little trip down memory lane but lets get back on track. november 2013. i started anew as shidiand. still awkward, still learning how to express myself and looking for my place among others. i followed some touhou bloggers, hung around r/touhou a lot as well. in december i got my first tablet for christmas, a wacom bamboo splash. i still use this thing! the usb cable disconnects if you bump it so i have to find just the perfect position to sit in whenever i want to draw, but its served me well. anyways. i was just starting to play around with digital art but i remember, probably just before new years, for some reason i wanted to find out more about tenshi hinanawi (i don't remember why. tenshi wasn't even one of my favourite characters at the time) so i went googling and right there on zerochan i found this:

https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=23525572

this was during my dark souls phase so i just went BANANAS at the sight of this. this was literally the coolest image i had ever seen in my internet life. That image alone made me want to draw in hopes that I could make something as cool as that someday.

it wasn't immediately after but i soon discovered tenco's story, and it was love. kannnu was my very first artistic inspiration, and for a long time, my only one. i absolutely idolized them at the time. since then, ive found other artists to look up to, in a more healthy manner, but to this day i still look up to kannnu, still admire their work a lot.

i played around with drawing, followed the lives of people on tumblr, started reading touhou fanfiction, made a new twitter. i met a lot of new people along the way. some people i havent stuck with, some i cut ties with, and some people i still keep in contact with today. over those long 5 years of being shidiand, i found a name (i used to use shidian and then shid, but someone called me shidi once and i realized that was a lot better), how to reach out to others, how to express myself, places that i could feel included in. this is why i owe a blood debt to evelyn, who permitted me to kneel at her throne and was like "yea ok you can join my discord server u seem cool". evelyn, if you were confused by me ominously mentioning this blood debt/blood oath in a tumblr reply 1-2 years ago, this is the context. those 5 years were like a coming of age of sorts, that i never had when i was in high school.

and my love for tenco's story, that inspired me to draw that day, has been with me since almost the very beginning of my time as shidiand. from the beginning, i have always encouraged people to READ TENCO'S STORY, like the kin of those who cry PLAY MELTY or WATCH SYMPHOGEAR. i think my very first sidebar description was something akin to a prayer, written in very choral language, hoping for the day tenco's story iv was completed, ..., "meanwhile, furious shitposting". kannnu's work, finding delight in whatever they chose to draw, has been at my side, all along. my true mentor, my guiding moonlight...

so that's why i still to this day love tenco's story so much.

let's talk about tenco's story.

tenco's story is a story told through single pictures. the plot is vague, and details are sparse. dialogue is rare. we only know what has happened; we seldom know why. furthermore, there are many gaps between scenes that the reader is left to fill in for themselves; we see only snapshots that form an hazy outline of the events that occurred, and must imagine the rest. motivations and explanations fail me. but even with a barebones plot, tenco's story has themes, and if nothing else, those have to be carried through.

the main theme, of course, is journey and travel, but there are also other ideas, too. i actually think they start to change as the series goes on:

book i, where tenshi runs away from home, is about striking out on your own. it's a very fun and unpredictable journey, together with a friend.

book ii, where tenshi and iku are separated, forces tenshi to find and rely on companions of her own even more. but they do so, and they are able overcome hardships, and there is food and festival.

book iii marks a climax, reasserting tenshi's goal of finding the sword of hisou. i feel like the journey shifts from a travel (visiting) to a path forwards (making your way through). perhaps this is just something i get from knowing the locations from dark souls (Anor Londo, New Londo Ruins, the Great Hollow), but the locations start to give more of a sense of verticality, like they're emphasizing tenshi's climb to the summit. the hardships and enemies are the greatest they've been yet, and right when they near the top, tenshi and iku start to bleed. the book ends on an uncertain note.

if i had to describe the type of journey and travel that tenshi and iku undertake, there's this sense of wonder at discovering new places, wandering from vista to vista in delight, but also a sense of conquering, making it through a difficult patch. the sequence from pages 2-44 to 2-51, taken together, convey this sense of overcoming the best. it's one of my favourite parts. again, although the tone definitely starts to lean towards struggle in book iii, i think tenco's sense of wonder really is the heart of the series. there's no map of the world, no predicting where tenshi and iku will end up next. and through their travels, though they come across many enemies, they also find friends -- places of refuge, places full of life, people who will look after them for a few days, companions who will stay with them for the rest of the journey. at the end of book iii, we see a long haired tenshi with purple hair being impaled by the sword of hisou (3-33, see also this extra illustration that risa pointed out to me http://sinnnkai.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-195.html), and regular short haired tenshi continuing on her journey (3-42). if we ignore the out-of-story images where tenshi has the sword of hisou, tenshi has actually only ever used her sunlight blade (2-24, 3-26, etc), so i think that the long haired tenshi on 3-33 is a different person altogether. (if i had to guess, she might be the purple haired woman in the top left of https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=35443328 as we have never seen that woman appear anywhere.) she probably has something to do with the flashbacks at the end of book ii and she might somehow be short-haired tenshi at the same time, but this is just speculation.

however, in 3-43, tenshi's hair is rather blue, so i don't know if this is the purple haired woman or not. if it is, tenshi is probably still fine and closing in on the summit, but if it isn't, then it's very worrying to see a picture of tenshi without any of her companions. it's very ominous.

meanwhile, iku, while climbing the red carpeted corridor, is stabbed, and disappears for a few pages. there's a black page, a shot of a shrine that strongly resembles the hakurei shrine, and a picture of iku standing behind someone in a tux, with the line "In the past, I was saved by the lady I was serving, you see?". and then iku wakes up in a field of flowers.

i think what this scene makes clear is a theme that has continued to appear and reappear throughout every book of "being saved, being aided by someone's kindness".

i think another theme that is implied and has to be addressed by this story of running away from home is "return". something im imagining is that the reason tenshi makes finding the sword of hisou her goal is because she wants to have something to prove herself with, to vindicate her when she comes home. but i don't think she needs to prove anything, and i ultimately think that she would be happier spending the rest of her life exploring.

so i think this should be what happens in the ending.

open on iku's journey, and give her a long sequence of travel without seeing tenshi. underline her newfound resolve. she climbs to the summit with albinoss, and finds the rest of tenshi's companions fallen. and in the last room is sword of hisou tenshi, who has lost herself, and it comes down to iku to bring her back. after a difficult battle, when both of them are on their last legs, iku is unable to stand any longer. but at this moment tenshi sees her companions struggling to get back up and reach her, and that's what brings her to her senses. and iku gets to see how many friends tenshi's been able to make on her own, and they finally and properly reunite. together, tenshi and iku carry each other out of the last room.

i don't think it's necessary to return to heaven. as a conclusion, dedicate some time to tenshi and iku travelling together. they're on their way back, revisiting old friends who helped them along the way, enjoying the journey. their last stop is the house of the elderly nawis (1-42). tenshi shows off the sword of hisou; she decided to keep it not as a trophy to show her family but as proof of the bonds of her companions. surrounded by friends, tenshi and iku decide to part ways with each other, knowing that the other will be alright. iku drifts among the clouds once more, and tenshi sets off for the horizon.

that's the plot that i'd write/just wrote. i don't really expect tenco's story iv to ever come out, though. i mentioned my first sidebar description earlier in this essay, but of course, you can see that it's been changed. 2 years ago, i read my hopeful prayer once more and was struck with a terrible melancholy, so now it reads this: "having come to terms with the fact that tenco's story iv will never be released, i can still live, knowing that the spirit of the journey will live on through kannnu's original works [...] meanwhile, furious shitposting".

on one level, tenco's story is a story, but in the process of following it, i came to think of the work itself as a journey too. you can constantly see kannnu's improvement between and even within each book. they have always drawn whatever they liked; what plot matters in the face of "I wanted to draw a beautiful sky." "I wanted to draw a fantastic battle." "I wanted to draw Dark Souls and Monster Hunter and Pokemon and Brave Fencer Musashi and Bokura no Taiyou and Touhou."

its not really kannnu's style to go back and tie up old ends. they just draw whatever makes them happy. so as i watch them continue to draw beautiful places and fantastic creatures, new characters heading out on journeys of their own or just enjoying their everyday lives, it's as if tenco's story never ended. the limits and consistency of that world ignored, and a new one springs up; in a way, the world of tenco's, which had such thin boundaries, just gets bigger.

but even so, having said all that, i still see them draw that short-haired tenshi from time to time. it makes me happy to see them remember tenco's story with such fondness. often crossing over with orion or roar or elweiss, you can see tenshi on another journey.

[jessefferguson]

My Double Life: 5 Years And Going

It’s been a LONG TIME since I wrote one of these, so I figured now was as good a point as any.

Words, spoken out loud, are funny. They can mean very different things.

Try this one:

I am still here.

and

I am still here.

Both of those are the best summary I can think of for how I feel today since today, May 21, is the 5th anniversary of when I was diagnosed with cancer. Five years ago, I sat in a sweltering doctors office in Washington, D.C. as he told me the results of my first biopsy. Five years later, I still have it.

After 5 years, I have two conflicting emotions: I’m still here (thank God) and I’m still (only) here. Five years later, not much has really changed but, also, everything has.

Over the 5 years, I’ve sort of lived a double life – that of a cancer patient and that of a political operative. Sometimes they overlap but, more often than not, they’re separate worlds.

By my best count, over the 5 years, I’ve had 4 surgeries, 33 days of radiation, upwards of 60 rounds of either chemotherapy or targeted therapy, about 75 blood tests, and 150 doctors’ appointments. And over the same 5 years, I’ve worked on 191 television ads, 311 polls, thousands of press releases and speeches, spent over $100 million (of other people’s money), and sent over 40,000 of my own tweets.

I continue to believe the same thing I did – and wrote about - 5 years ago, there are three keys to getting through this sort of thing: (1) Your family and friends; (2) Doctors who are the best; (3) Doing something with your time that you love to do. Even on the worst days of work, the fact that I was doing the work I wanted to do made it that much more possible to fight a disease I did not want to deal with.

WHAT’S THE LATEST WITH ME

I’m living and working from Brooklyn, still. I decided to stay here after the Clinton campaign ended rather than move back to D.C. for a bunch of reasons – closer to my doctors at Sloan Kettering and further from Trump at the WH. Both sounded like good ideas.

For just under a year, I’ve been on a clinical trail and it’s getting some pretty good results. It’s a targeted therapy drug and I’m one of the first to apply it to my unique disease. It’s unlikely to result in me being “cured” or “cancer free” but it’s definitely shrunk the disease in my skin tissue and throughout my head, neck and chest. It’s also brought down the swelling. The swelling issues are far from gone, but they’re better. The best case is that it continues shrinking things; the next best case is it stops anything from getting worse again. Either way, it’s turned my condition to a chronic one, for now. I’ll take it.

Every three weeks I do the same routine. I book a someone to come clean my house for that morning and I take a car down to Sloan Kettering.  I take a blood test. The doctor and I talk about medical stuff for a few minutes and politics for a few minutes and then he sends me for treatment. He’s not from America and has a healthy interest in all the crazy things in our politics.

It takes them about 2 hours to prepare the drug, so I have found a corner in the hospital that is usually empty for work — open the laptop, put on the head set and get to work. It’s my own cancer-center-based mobile-office. I have edited TV scripts and polls, held conference calls, did a radio interview and even convinced a donor to contribute – all from a table in a hospital waiting room. Last week’s discussion was about the placement of a media buy. It’s amazing what you can pull of when people don’t really know where you are.

The drug I’m on is an easy one – targeted therapy. It’s like a smart bomb of chemo that only goes to the cells that have the disease. The worst part is the IV, which I barely notice anymore and after 30 minutes, I’m out. On the road home to a clean house with the mild side effect of an uneasy stomach for a few days. Compared to the other drugs I’ve been on, this is like a piece of cake took a walk in a park.

How long will I stay on it? No clue. But it has made this condition chronic. If you offered me a deal today — get this treatment every 3 weeks for 30 minutes and the disease stays under control, I’d sign in a minute. I’d sign it for the next 10 years. For now, I’ll stay on it unless or until it stops working – then I’ll try something else.

WHAT HAPPENED SINCE 2016

As you may remember from my last blog post, just before election 2016, I had spent the previous 6 months working while dealing with the return of my disease.

On election night 2016, I did venture out. It wasn’t something I did often but I wanted to be with the team that night at the Javits Center in Manhattan. I could, now, try to pretend that I had doubts about the outcome of that night to try to make myself look extra smart, but that would be bullshit. I didn’t; I thought we’d win.

The beginning of that afternoon and evening were great. We were monitoring voting and doing the work we needed to do and I was also seeing some good friends who I had been away from while I worked the last few months from home.

Then, the results started and the mood changed. My heart started to sink, but I kept hoping. Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and others poured in. We knew we needed to hold Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to make it work.

While we waited for those results, I got up to go to the bathroom. As I stood at the urinal, a friend who had better sense for numbers and data than I do, approached the stall next to me. We looked at each other with the same forlorn look of despair as if our confidence was waning. He said “I just looked at the latest data from Michigan; it’s gone.”  And with that, I found out we had lost in a way befitting the occasion -- standing at a urinal.  

Whether you believe we lost because of a mission from Russia or a miss in Michigan, or any other reason, one thing was clear: we lost the electoral college. It was over. And while I stared at my peers and colleagues – friends who had hired me and  friends who I had hired – I couldn’t stop thinking, “What’s next?”

Despite what you might see or hear, the group who I worked with on that campaign were some of the smartest, most talented and most committed people I’ve ever had the privilege to work with. As I stared at all of them, I wonder what was next for them. As I thought about it more, I worried what was next for me.  

At one point, I wandered away and ended up sitting in the middle of the massive loading dock in the Javits Center with 4 senior staff from the campaign. There where shipping boxes, fork lifts, and one table with a few plastic chairs in the middle. We all just kind of stared at each other. Someone would say something about what we should do or what we should say and we’d all agree but, for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you today what anyone said.  

As the night ended, I was one of the last ones to leave. I’m not really sure why, I just couldn’t. I kept finding someone else to talk to. I was trying to be a bit of team cheerleader – as best as was possible at that moment.  

At around 4:30am that night, I left the Javits center along side two reporters I had gotten to know. We walked for a bit and then they got into cabs and drove off. I just started walking. And walking. I was thinking about what had happened and what it meant for the country. And, if I’m honest, what it meant for me. I had cancer and had just devoted two years of my life to trying to win the presidency – and had failed. I just kept thinking, maybe even crying a bit, and walking.

When I looked up, it was 6 am and the sun was rising. I had walked from the Javits Center at 36th street down almost to the World Trade Center. Much like I did while wandering around the streets of Washington on May 21, 2013, I had done lots of thinking. But now it was November 9, 2016, and it was time to go back to work. I took a cab home, slept for a few hours, and opened my laptop.

WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING SINCE

Since the campaign ended in 2016, I’ve been “consulting.” I’m still not sure what “consulting” means but it’s what I’m doing. I’m working on my own for a variety of political projects on a variety of important issues, trying to lend my experience to things where I think I can do something interesting and make a difference in the insane moment we’re in right now.

My work has ranged from the fight over the tax plan and some new digital campaign innovations, to a new polling project and an advertising campaign and others. It’s all kept me busy and kept my mind going – in the fight and doing what I love to do. The work is good cause it’s meaningful, it’s the work I want to be doing, and the variety of projects appeals to my attention-span-of-a-fruit-fly-nature.

It’s also allowed me to speak up a bit more about what I think, which has been quite a change. For the last 15+ years, I’ve always represented someone else – the DCCC Chairman, Secretary Clinton, etc. Now I’m speaking more and writing more in my own voice.

I still feel somewhat like a hermit. I live and work in my Brooklyn apartment. I get out more now than I used to, but, nothing like I did when I was healthy. When you’ve been dealing with this as long as I have, you start to lose track of what looking, feeling and being normal would be like. I get to the deli almost every morning and they know to make my eggs and have my iced coffee ready. Others around know me too. Life is easy and that’s important for me right now. One of these days, I’ll be up for making it harder again – but not yet.

THE HEALTH CARE ISSUE

The first project I took on was to help some friends with the coalition fighting the Obamacare repeal legislation. It’s been a hard-waged battle over the last 16 months to improve health care for people instead of letting it get dismantled.

But it’s also been the first time my double lives overlapped a bit. When the Affordable Care Act passed Congress, I was at my office near capitol hill, celebrating with everyone else. But it didn’t really mean anything to me. It was a good thing, but it wasn’t personal.

Seven years later, when repeal of it failed – repeal that would undercut protections for people with pre-existing conditions like I have – it was a very different moment. In fact, when the first repeal plan was pulled from the House floor, I was actually sitting at Sloan Kettering getting my chemo. I was on the phone talking with someone working with me while in the  hospital room getting treated as a news alert came across my computer screen.

I don’t often invoke my own personal health care situation while working on the issue because it shouldn’t be about me. I’m fortunate and would be able to get the care I needed if I had to. But sitting there at age 37, with an IV bag dripping a toxic chemical designed to keep me alive into my arm, I certainly had a different perspective than I had 8 years earlier as an otherwise-healthy, overweight 29 year old who saw passage of the ACA as a good reason to go to the bar and celebrate.

FIVE YEARS AND COUNTING

Once and a while I think about what I could be doing if I was fully healthy. I get sad. Maybe I get mad. As I approach 38 years old at the end of this year, more and more of my friends are having their first or second child and I’m forced to think if my life would be different if I hadn’t gotten this diagnosis five years ago. For sure, it would be. But, in the end, you play the cards your dealt and make damn well sure it’s a game you enjoy. You could win big or you could lose your shirt, but either outcome has to be worth it.

Five years ago I was diagnosed with a disease that probably should have killed me. Five years later, I’m still here. When I put it that way, it actually brings a smile to my face. I know talking about having cancer isn’t something that normally is joyful but being able to do what I love while living with the disease sure beats the alternative.