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tfw-no-tennis · 3 years

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animorphs!!!

ok I read animorphs when I was 10 or 11 I think? and I only read it once, along w/the spinoffs and stuff, and I've always meant to revisit it...SO HERE I AM....

and oh MAN I forgot how good this series is. like I knew it was good but some things from your childhood don't hold up yknow? especially books aimed at younger audiences

but oh boy does animorphs hold up. they're easy to read and perfectly balance the line between dark/adult topics and more kid-friendly lessons. excellent

so yeah I'm loving it so far. I forgot how fast some stuff happens lmao, like I forgot that tobias gets trapped as a bird in the FIRST BOOK

also I just adore how realistically disorganized/confused the animorphs are. like, they got the elevator pitch version of the conflict from elfangor before my mans got eaten, and also they're middle schoolers. of course they’re always just like ‘wtf do we even do’

so like...their plans mostly don't work. and even when planning they run into tons of logistical issues w/morphing, traveling, communicating etc.

and I love how they clearly need to maintain their normal lives as well in order not to raise any suspicion

and I like the little details like them not spending all their time together at school because they didn’t before so that would be suspicious

oh man and I love the different family dynamics in the series. you have jake, whose family seems pretty normal until we find out that tom is a controller, and rachel, whose parents are divorced, and who has to deal w/the complications of that. and then cassie, who is an only child (I like that we have a mix, with rachel and jake having siblings), and of course marco...

iirc marco was one of my favs (if not my fav, but its hard to choose) back in the day, and I forgot how reluctant he was to participate in the animorphs thing...and the fact that he was about to quit the team and then runs into visser 1.....

another fucked up little moment I liked - when they morphed dolphin and marco had to morph back to human bc he gets injured and he was like ‘I cant swim, and my mom drowned, I don't want to die like she did’ I was like oooof

also on that topic I adore how little the animorphs know about how anything works. like they once wondered if there's a limit to how many morphs they can acquire and they were basically like ‘idk guess we’ll find out’

and then when marco got injured as a dolphin and they were like ‘morph back I guess and hopefully you'll be okay?’ like damn luckily that worked

basically these books do The Most Excellent Job showing that these are just kids. like they're literally in jr high which is 90s speak for middle school....they're like 13???? at most???

and the narrative reflects that perfectly!! all of them, even rachel who is pretty much the most gung-ho about fighting and stuff, have nightmares and all these terrible experiences bc they don't have basically any guidance

and even with ax, it’s immediately obvious that he’s also just a kid, even though he’s this deadly alien....

also oh mannnn I love so much how we’re introduced to the andalites as this heroic race and how that slowly changes over the course of the story

like, when elfangor introduces himself as ‘prince’ you assume he’s part of the andalite monarchy - but later we find out that ‘prince’ is a military rank, and the andalites are a lot more militaristic than we would assume at the beginning

its so fantastic how it starts off as a fairly black and white conflict of andalites = good guy aliens and yeerks = bad guy aliens

and you even have some background stuff going on w/the taxxons being controllers by choice, and the hork-bajir being enslaved

but as the story goes on, all of those lines get blurred in different ways...

also ooof the poor hork-bajir. I always felt so bad for them. it’s crazy that even in the first book, the animorphs are killing their enemies - at least I inferred that in book 1, but it becomes way more overt later on...the tough situation of them knowing that the hork-bajir are unwilling hosts but that they’re so dangerous that not killing them could be fatal to the good guys

and ngl this time around I have a lot more sympathy for the yeerks, even tho they don't really deserve it (at least in the early parts of the story where I am rn)

like...they're just these blind helpless slug creatures, but they're also fully sentient and intelligent? like, that's so fucked up. imagine yourself as you are now, but you're just a sensory deprived slug swimming in a pool. that's pretty fucked. and then the fact that the yeerks are biologically made to be parasites...its kinda no wonder that they ended up the way they are (and it also makes stuff like the yeerk peace movement really compelling)

also wow I kinda forgot about all the body horror w/the morphing. like ik that's one of the things that animorphs is known for but like. I forgot how much it happens and how creative the horrifying descriptions are. I love it

and omfg so when I first read this series the ellimist stuff confused me a lot bc I didn't read the books That closely (I mostly wanted to see what would happen next) but I loooove time travel bullshit so I’m really enjoying it so far

even tho tbh I think even if I had paid more attention as a 10 yr old I still would've been confused bc the ellimist stuff is kinda just inherently confusing lmao

ok and I just love the characters,,,I love that the books switch perspectives, and KAA did such a masterful job of portraying differing and realistic reactions to their situation....like, all the animorphs react so differently to their circumstances, but their reactions are all so grounded in realism and also their personalities

like man I love rachel. she was one of my favs as a kid too bc I always loved female characters and she was just so cool. and she still is, and so excellently written too

liiiike the fact that even though she’s so tough and brave, she’s still a kid and has plenty of moments when she’s scared or uncertain...

and I just really like the fact that she out of all of them is the one who’s tough and loves to fight...and the fact that she also unapologetically loves shopping and stuff like that...its about the multifaced characters

just like how marco is the ‘funny guy’ but they make it very clear from the beginning that this is his way of coping w/shit like his family falling apart, and then alien BS

and also marco is really smart? I kinda forgot abt that (sorry marco) but I like that bc that's uncommon to see with ‘funny’ characters

oh mannnn and ax. I love ax. I forgot a whole bunch about the early stuff w/him and how conflicted he was w/keeping secrets from the other animorphs

KAA did such a fantastic job w/ax - he really comes across as the perfect mix of ‘fish out of water alien’ and ‘young teen/tween’ and ‘alien from a strict militaristic society who is in training to become a soldier like his famous older brother’

n that was so sad n fucked up when he called the andalite home world and had to tell everyone (including his parents) that elfangor died, and then the elders or w/e forced ax to take blame for elfangor breaking their laws in order to preserve elfangor’s postmortem reputation, even at the cost of ax’s career/life :(

and man I loved the part where ax is like ‘well, we didn't help the hork-bajir even tho we could have and now they're all enslaved. I'm not letting that happen to the humans’ and the council or w/e is like ‘well you should let it happen, don't interfere’ and ax basically realizes oh shit sometimes adults are wrong

basically I love the conflict there, where the andalites are the ones who gave the yeerks the technology that led to them spreading across the galaxy like a disease, and now fight to stop them due to their guilt, but also refuse to directly help the less advanced species who are being invaded by the yeerks for fear of making a similar mistake like w/the yeerks....

ooooof and the part where ax is like ‘guess I have to go fight visser 3 and die’ :( he’s just a babyyyy

and augh when alloran asks them to kill him....geeeez there’s so much fucked up stuff already and I'm not even in the double digits yet

oh my god and the brutally awful fact that any freed controller will just get tracked down by the yeerks and murdered so the secret invasion stays secret...and the animorphs think that by destroying the kandrona they've freed a bunch of controllers but really they just signed their death warrants - what a catch 22

oh and I love how even early on the yeerks aren't a completely unified force - we have the obvious rivalry w/visser 1 and visser 3, with visser 1 even arranging the animorphs release from visser 3′s prison bc of this, and that yeerk who told ax where to find visser 3 because he was pissed that his yeerk gf got killed by visser 3 - even though the reason she was killed was due to kandrona rationing, which was caused by the animorphs...i love the layers

ok what else. oh yeah I love tobias sm, he was one of my favs as a kid too, his whole story is so deeply tragic but also interesting and we haven't even gotten into all the stuff w/his parents yet

the part where he’s freaking out as a hawk and he’s gonna fly into the windows even tho he knows it’ll probably kill him...christttt

also tobias and rachel are so romance aughhhh

ok also jake - he was never my favorite when I was younger bc I felt like he had Basic Protag Man Syndrome but now I can appreciate his character a lot more. like, he basically got elected the leader and he’s kinda like ‘guess I have to do this now.’ and that of course ends up fucking him up majorly in the long run bc even tho he’s more serious and responsible, he’s still just a kid too

and I loooove the horror of finding out that tom is a controller, and jake having to contend w/the fact that it’s very likely that he’ll have to fight and/or kill his brother someday

also the book where jake gets infested w/a yeerk was one of my favs and still is. so fucked up and interesting. the fact that that yeerk was previously tom’s made it even more fucked, w/the yeerk taunting jake the whole time

and then the yeerk dying in jakes head...so messed up

omg and cassie too. I love cassie. I didn't appreciate her as much when I was younger bc I was a straightforward kid who liked action, and cassie is all about pacifism when possible and compassion, which I love a lot now that I Get it more.

cassie being such a gentle person but still fighting in this fucked up war bc doing nothing would be worse is super compelling. plus the conflicts with her having to figure out where she and humanity fit in the circle of life and whatnot is great

I loved the contrast of her being very aware of how nature works bc of working w/her parents and all these injured animals, but also being so compassionate that it still bothers her to see death and especially participate in it

like her feeling awful about killing the termite queen even tho its ‘just a bug’ and stuff

basically what makes the series great isn't that it’s got all these fucked up moments and horror elements and is overall quite dark - it’s that all of it comes together to make the point that war is hell, and child soldiers are gonna end up traumatized pretty much no matter what happens

it’s a very strong message, and the story never feels like it’s being dark just for the sake of being dark, but rather never letting the reader forget how awful things are

TL;DR: anirmorphs is to the YA genre what hunter x hunter is to the shounen genre

in animorphs, the heroes of the story are kids who get cool powers and get to fight aliens - in any other YA story they would have a bunch of fun adventures and come out on top most/all the time - things might get darker towards the end, but good would prevail. the evil yeerks would be stopped, and the main couples would get married and have kids and live happily ever after.

however, war isn't like that, especially when the soldiers are kids. so instead we get animorphs, and it’s brutally realistic. they barely ever get to enjoy their powers - on the rare occasion that they get to, something usually goes horribly wrong

compare to hxh - it seems like a regular shounen story about kids participating in a fantastical mostly-adult world and being able to match the adults bc they're Special - but as the story wears on it becomes clear that the kids are just very traumatized. this all leads to gon’s berserker collapse in the chimera ant arc, which is led up to masterfully w/a bunch of adults treating gon as an adult even though he’s a child.

essentially the same thing happens in animorphs - with jake being shoved into the leader role and becoming a military general as a kid, which leads to him committing horrific war crimes because he’s been put in a position no child should ever have to be in

similarly, kurapika has what would be a very straightforward revenge plotline in any other story - but this is hxh, so the bad guys aren't just 2-dimensional evil caricatures, and the road to revenge just leads kurapika to ruin. we root for kurapika to win bc they’re a character we like, but it becomes clearer and clearer as the story goes on that getting revenge is not the path kurapika should be taking

nothing is ever as straightforward as we want it to be, basically. and the same applies to animorphs. so many times they're faced with conflicts that seem to have an obvious answer, only for it to be revealed later that the choices they made led to other unforeseen awful consequences

ok i need to stop rambling this is already super long. basically: animorphs good. I’ll probably do another post like this semi-soon as I continue reading (I'm partway thru book 10 now)

#not me doing another liveblog that i probably wont finish #animorphs #lj reads animorphs

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btxtreads · 4 years

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ANOTHER TAG ASHJHJASD

extra long tag game (aka a tmi that no one particularly cares for)

tagged by @txthearteu

tagging @markhyucknorenminchenji @qtsoobin @beomberry @txtdiaries and other people who wanna do it idk

ONE

tell me the first song that made you stan your current fave group and why did your faves attract you so much?

of course, none other than king943 hSJADJSAJHAS. He’s a little secret I’ll let you all in on: the first person I actually noticed in TXT was,,,,,,, Kang Taehyun hSDHJAHJSDAHSA but he wasn’t my bias. I just thought he was cute (also amused me bc my BTS bias was Taehyung and I found a guy named Taehyun cute), but I didn’t stan them then. I started stanning when I saw ONE DREAM.TXT where they talked to BTS and found them really cute and endearing. Looking into them, they were wild, and chaotic and so fun and also i got rEAAAALLY attached to Soobin. So here I am. There u go, my stanning story.

TWO

rule: answer the ten questions and write your own!

what’s your unrealistic goal for life?

becoming a famous actress or singer hJSHADJSA

if you had known that we would be in a global pandemic, what’s one thing that you would’ve done before things shut down (if they have for you)?

Went to a theme park. I miss going to theme parks 🥺

what’s an unconventional thing that you carry around with you when you go out?

hmmm most of the time i just go out with just my phone and money unless I need to bring a bag due to safety concerns/more items needed. So I’d say nothing unconventional.

favourite type of plushies and why?

God do I seem boring hsahsajjsa but i wasn’t too big on plushies. I had a gigantic teddy bear named Justin when I was a kid (it’s a bear with shades that my brother gave me) and I used to buy plushies whenever I’m in disneyland, it’s all in my sister’s reading lounge. The only plushie in my room now is a Mollang doll wearing like a blue shirt/dress, it’s my favorite rn It’s squishyyyy

favourite song right now?

right now, it’s Work It by Sabrina Carpenter.

something that you’ve always wanted to learn?

Dancing (i literally suck. i have no idea how. no joke), Vocal Lessons (had some lessons briefly for like a year but i stopped and want to take some again), music production, acting, hosting

tell a funny story about yourself (or just something that you’ve witnessed)

ok okok so one time in our class groupchat we were talking about class elections for officers. There were muse votes and some people were saying they want me to be the muse but i didnt want to bc i was busy with work. Then they started saying that they want me to be the muse and this guy that i rejected be the escort. while this is happening, i was simping hard for soobin in another chat. anyways, i got everything mixed up and accidentally sent the soobin simp stuff to the class chat and everyone thought i was simping for the classmate i rejected i was so asHAMED.

headphones or speakers? why?

speakers! idk i just like blastic the music loud.

craving any food right now? what are you craving?

anything with cheese

which music streaming platform do you prefer? why?

spotify since its free for me askjjksad someone pays for my subscription lmaooo

😌✌️

questions from cj to me:

android or apple? why?

APPLE because im loyal 😌 and i guess im just used to it so its easier to use for me + all my gadgets at home are mac

words of affirmation or physical affection? why?

I think there should be a good balance of both. The words will have the ability to give you this sense of comfort and satisfaction and you know just overall a peace of mind when you hear the right words??? and physical affection bc sometimes it’s just better to get a hug or a kiss isntead of talking yk? actions speak louder than words sometimes

bean bag or rocking chair? why?

Honestly, this would depend. If I’m reading a book and feeling very vintage with a hot cup of coffee, definitely a rocking chair. If I’m watching TV and basically just chilling I’d go for Bean Bag. I like maintaining the atmosphere.

do you view a half-filled glass as half-full or half-empty or an in-between? why? (go as deep as you can)

I view it as in-between, because there’s always room for improvement. There’s always things to change, and consider, and make better. There’s no such thing as perfect.

If someone were to grant your wish right now, what would it be and why?

Please stop corona right now and let everyone go back to their daily lives and please let me attend a TXT concert bls im begging on my kNEES

if someone were to give you anything you want right now, what would it be and why? (something that can be held)

Give me Soobin I just want to give him a hug. this is valid i can hold him

favorite season and why

Winter! Even if I’ve never experienced snow or winter before, the whole idea of snow is just really fun and endearing to me. One of my bucketlists is to see snow in real life. I think it has to do with the fact that I’ve always been this person to prefer the cold over heat.

what made you enter tumblr?

I’ve always been here! Just not in kpop tumblr. I’ve since deleted my old accounts and shame but i came back to write. It’s always been so stress-relieving to me, to write without any expectations on my back because I’m thinking about grades or a competition. Also Soobin simping is a daily thing and I gotta release it somewhere man

are you happy with where you are in life right now? why or why not?

Yes. I may not be the richest or the prettiest, or smartest or whatever, but I have a good family that loves me. I have good friends that support me and I have TXT and BTS to help me cope when things get overwhelming. I have a job that gives me a little bit of income (it’s not too common for college students here to get jobs like in the US, most of them just focus on acads) and all the means to continue my education amidst the pandemic. So really, I’m grateful for where I am now.

to see the boys in real life but for it to happen only once in your lifetime, or to meet the boys via online fan meeting as many times as you can in your lifetime? why?

Why do you have to do me dirty cj,,,,, prolly online. I may not get to hug them or anything but I get to talk to them still. As may times as I want to. And as a girl whose sanity literally just depends on Soobin giggles rn it’ll be very therapeutic to me to see them and talk to them as much as I could, even just through a screen.

QUESTIONS FROM ME TO YOU:

Cinema or Netflix? Why?

Fire or Rain? Why?

What’s the worst experience you’ve had as a KPOP stan?

How do you handle stress?

Favorite Disney Princess and why?

Which fictional character do you say you relate the most to?

How did you get into KPOP?

What kind of merch you got 👀

Would you date a KPOP idol? What would you do if you do date one? (doesnt have to be your bias, just wanna see what y’all would do)

Would you rather be with someone you love but doesn’t love you back or be with someone that loves yu but you don’t love them back? (Or, as the Filipinos would say, Mahal ko o Mahal Ako)

THREE

rule: bold the statements that apply to you, italicize your aspirations, then tag nine people.

AIR ༉⋆͙̈

i have small hands / i love the night sky / i watch animals and birds when i pass them by / i drink herbal tea / i wake to see the dawn / the smell of dust is comforting / i’m valued for being wise / i prefer books to music / i meditate / i find joy in learning new truths from the world around me

FIRE ༉⋆͙̈

i don’t have straight hair / i like to wear ripped jeans and overalls / i play an organized sport / i love dogs / i am not afraid of adventure / i love to talk to strangers / i always try new foods / i enjoy road trips / summer is my favorite season / my radio is always playing

WATER ༉⋆͙̈

i wear bracelets on my wrists / i love the bustle of the city / i have more than one set of piercings / i read poetry / i love the sound of a thunderstorm / i want to travel the world / i sleep past midday most days / i love simply lit dinners and fluorescent signs / i rewatch kids shows out of nostalgia / i see emotions in colors not words

EARTH ༉⋆͙̈

i wear glasses or contacts / i enjoy doing the laundry / i am a vegetarian or vegan / i have an excellent sense of time / my humor is very cheerful / i am a valued advisor to my friends / i believe in true love / i love this chill of mountain air / i’m always listening to music / i am highly trusted by the people in my life

AETHER ༉⋆͙̈

i go without makeup in my daily life / i make my own artwork / i keep on track of my tasks and time / i always know true north / i see beauty in everything / i can always smell flowers / i smile at everyone i pass by / i always fear history repeating itself / i have recovered from a mental disorder / i can love unconditionally

FOUR

PERSONAL

name: -

nickname: rina

birthday: -

zodiac: gemini

nationality: filipino

languages: english, filipino

gender: female

sexuality: straight

height: 5′2 like 2 years ago, i probably grew like an inch or two

BLOG STUFF

inspiration for muse: --

meaning behind my url: bts and txt fanfics to read hasjhsahj

blog established: ,,,,, i cant remember askjjksdjkdsa but the blog is only a few months old!

followers: 384!!! love yall

FAVORITES

favourite animals: b u n n y y y y y

favourite books: CAMP HALF BLOOD SERIES BY RICK RIORDAN IM ZEUS’ DAUGHTER YALL

favourite colour: black, blue, purple

favourite fictional characters: Percy Jackson, Jaron from Ascendance Trilogy, Chimmy!!! hihi

favourite flower: white roses

favourite scent: coffee

favourite season: winter

RANDOM

average hours of sleep: 3-5 or 8-10.

cats or dogs: dogs because cats scare me

coffee, tea or hot chocolate: coffee!!! especially if it’s iced and sweet

current time: 12:21 AM

dream trip: California. Look I have the visa, pls miss rona. just leave so cali can just let me IN

dream job: actress or singer

hobbies: writing, reading, watching crackvids

hogwarts house: gryffindor

last movie watched: Work It (bc it has sabrina carpenter ahshsahsa i have low standards when we talk about Sabrina)

last song listened to: Helpless - Hamilton OBC

no. of blankets you sleep with: 1

random fact(s): if given the chance again, I would go on a date in high school. Also try to exert more effort in my appearance back then i looked like an honest to god M E S S (tbh i still do but now i have eyebrow liner on) hsajhsajhh

FIVE

10 things I can’t stop listening to (at the moment)

Run Away - TXT

Work It - Sabrina Carpenter

Euphoria - BTS

Song Cry - Yeonjun

Helpless - Hamilton OBC

Satisfied - Hamilton OBC

Journey to the past - Anastasia OBC

Lost in the Woods - Frozen OST

Perfect Song - Sabrina Carpenter

Friends - BTS

#tags #tagging #tagged yet again #sadjkjksdajad #what a mess #im so basic wtf

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maydaymadier · 4 years

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Fannar Playlist Breakdown

idk, I’m procrastinating so I’m gonna explain all the songs on the Fannar playlist

Immigrant Song, Led Zeppelin basically my inspirations are showing here, Fannar’s original concept was ‘Well the MCU writers can do whatever the fuck they want with Loki so so can I’ so I pulled this one from the Thor: Ragnarok soundtrack, on a lesser note “We come from the land of the ice and snow/From the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow/The hammer of the gods/W'ell drive our ships to new lands/To fight the horde, and sing and cry/Valhalla, I am coming!” and he’s literally from a place called The Frozen North

Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen The only family member whose opinion matters to Fannar anymore is his mom. There’s also just the general level of dramatic thinking that happens when grievously injured and believing you’re about to die. “Mama, ooh,/Didn't mean to make you cry,/If I'm not back again this time tomorrow,” is probably about what he was thinking when he was

Bleeding Out, Imagine Dragons bleeding out at the bottom of an abyss, back mangled and painfully aware that he was about to die, a Fannar backstory jam, this one lines up with when Fannar made his warlock pact with Auril

Monster, Lady Gaga He just vibes with this one, I think Fannar would fucking love this song

Judas, Lady Gaga Once again, I just think he vibes with this one, he just vibes with it

Fox on the Run, Sweet OH MAN, this works on multiple counts. Fannar starts off the campaign as a ‘fox on the run’ bc he’s like, a trickster running away, avoiding home, ALSO “I - don't wanna know your name/'Cause you don't look the same/The way you did before/Okay - you think you got a pretty face/But the rest of you is out of place/You looked alright before” works super well bc Fannar literally grew up with a different face, and he lost it bc of backstory so this would be a random person from The Frozen North talking about him.

Surrender, Cheap Trick I don’t know, I think I just got Fannar vibes from it? A family with a really weird, vaguely dysfunctional dynamic? The parents have weird pasts and that’s reflected in the kids? Yeah, that checks out.

Dead and Gone, The Black Keys Early in his pact Fannar, still presumed dead by anyone who’d previously known him, and at his patron’s beck and call “So long/Why you waiting so long?/After every single word is said/I'm feeling dead and gone”

Sinister Kid, The Black Keys Fannar, especially early on, was wildly, blatantly self-destructive, not even trying to hide it. “A sinister kid is a kid who/Runs to meet his maker/A drop dead sprint from the day he's born/Straight into his maker's arms/And that's me, that's me/The boy with the broken halo/That's me, that's me/The devil won't let me be”

The Kids From Yesterday, My Chemical Romance idk, I don’t remember why I originally added this one. But it’s probably just some Fannar-reflecting-on-his-past from time to time

Sleep, My Chemical Romance Admittedly, Fannar’s done some pretty shitty things, but he’s a lot harder on himself than anyone else is, “Undeserving of your sympathy 'Cause there ain't no way that I'm sorry for what I did” so it’s easier to just own it and revel in the idea that he’s a bad person who isn’t sorry than admit to anything.

Once Upon a December, Liz Callaway (Anastasia) BACKSTORY JAM!!!!!! This is like,,,,baby Fannar, his present self is so detached from who he was as a small child that that whole part of his life doesn’t really feel real. He knows it happened, but it’s such a 180 he can’t properly wrap his head around it.

One Way Or Another, Blondie Early on in the campaign he was being tracked down by someone, who later turned out to be his Nana Frostyears (his childhood governess, i guess i’ll call her a governess), tracking him down to bring him home to save the kingdom

Unknown Brother, The Black Keys This is more from his brother Orvar’s perspective, Orvar trying to wrap his head around what happened to his baby brother Fannar as an outsider looking in. “Though I never met you/And we spoke not a word/I'll never forget you/Through stories that I have heard/For you unknown brother/My baby's mother's pained/Because your soul is in heaven/But your memory remains”

Death By Glamour, Toby Fox The ranger (Isorropia) and the druid/DM1 (Thrain) were talking about Fannar amongst themselves and decided that it fit him and I was inclined to agree.

Don’t Stop Me Now, Queen Fannar, a few years post-backstory, come into himself, still an impulsive bastard but he’s having fun now.

Dinner & Diatribes, Hozier Look, I’m sorry but a lot of songs are gonna be on here bc they’re horny and this is one of them. This could be Fannar’s pov, it could be an attractive stranger interested in Fannar’s pov, it could go either way. “Honey, this club here is stuck up/Dinner and diatribes/I knew it from the first look of/The look of mischief in your eyes”

Movement, Hozier yet another Horny Song, but this time a little more, awed by the other person bc when Fannar decides he wants to sleep with someone he goes big or goes home and sets his sights on impressive people......like a dragon “I still watch you when you're groovin'/As if through water from the bottom of a pool/You're movin' without movin'/And when you move, I'm moved”

Blame It On The Girls, MIKA OH BOY this pretty aptly sums up Fannar’s attitude and attitudes abt various family members, this song is just, a perfect summary of Fannar, though I guess it’s more someone describing him as opposed to Fannar saying it himself “Blame it on the girls who know what to do/Blame it on the boys who keep hitting on you/Blame it on your mother for the things she said/Blame it on your father but you know he's dead”

Burning Pile, Mother Mother sometimes Fannar’s bullshit, baggage, and mistakes catch up with him and the easiest thing to do is to torch it. why would he ever actually deal with it fully? “All my troubles on a burning pile/All lit up and I start to smile/If I, catch fire then I change my aim/Throw my troubles at the world again”

cherubim, serpentwithfeet ANOTHER horny song but this is specifically abt someone! There’s a character that I have Fannar paired off with in my canon-compliant writing, Renault, the War King of Ragnas. Who, well, Fannar started off as a consort but then it turned out that he really liked him, and he felt the same way and it’s probably the best romantic relationship of Fannar’s life so he feels a certain level of devotion to Renault. “Boy, every time I worship you/My mouth is filled with honey/Boy, as I build your throne/I feel myself growing”

Savior, St. Vincent [lord farquaad pointing meme] horny, Fannar is more than willing to fill sexual roles for people, fulfill what other people think of him because that’s easier than having his own concrete identity, though he knows it has its limits “You dress me up in a nurse's outfit/It rides and sticks to my thighs and my hips...... Honey, I can't be your savior/Love you to the grave and farther/Honey, I am not your martyr”

Moment’s Silence (Common Tongue), Hozier [lord farquaad pointing meme but deep fried] HORNY Look, Fannar knows what he’s about, and also maybe sometimes he can be horny in an emotional way that makes him a little bit sappy abt the present events “Be thankful some know it lovingly/There the reason comes in the common tongue of your loving me”

Low Lays the Devil, The Veils okay, I originally put this on here bc I think it was a recommended song on a different playlist and i wanted to save it and so i saved it to Fannar’s playlist bc it fit that one best. Overall, just a general allusion to Fannar’s fiendish heritage as a tiefling I suppose and also how he generally likes to hype people up to by proxy hype himself up “High as the heavenly sea/Low lays the devil in me...Come lay your head on my lap/And let your hair fall back/You've got to live with yourself”

Save A Horse (Ride a Cowboy), Big & Rich Okay, I added this jokingly bc I managed to convince myself that Fannar would fucking love this song, absolutely jam out to it while he’s fucking wasted. Also, maybe his type is ‘Cowboy’ and that’s hella valid of him.

Horns, Bryce Fox He’s a tiefling! A tiefling with very prominent horns! He’s gotta learn to take pride in that shit and learn how to think of them as attractive

It’s Hard to Be Humble, Mac Davis Look, Fannar knows how to hype himself up and strut and preen like the peacock he is, being humble is not a part of his persona

Little Lion Man, Mumford & Sons hahahahaha, scratch through Fannar’s exterior deep enough and you’ll easily find someone who was put through a fucking meat grinder and had his identity crumbled into a million jagged bits. He maybe could have been a great wizard, and insightful advisor to his brother when he became king, but instead he was broken and choked on the poison poured into his mind “Tremble for yourself, my man,/You know that you have seen this all before/Tremble little lion man,/You'll never settle any of your scores/Your grace is wasted in your face,/Your boldness stands alone among the wreck/Now learn from your mother or else spend your days biting your own neck”

You’re My Best Friend, Queen I needed a song for Fannar and Isorropia. Isorropia is his best friend (and tbh he considers her to be like a sister, though he doesn’t really expect her to feel the same way) and he feels very strongly about her. He would kill a man for Rope.

Everybody Wants To Rule the World, Tears For Fears A pretty central even in Fannar’s backstory was his trying to take the throne of his home kingdom and he generally cares about being in control of himself and his situation, having no control over what’s happening to him is not a good time

I Don’t Know What We’re Talking About, Ninja Sex Party Okay, there’s a running thing where whenever we’re in a bathhouse or something I’ll just shout out “Fannar disassociates in the bath” which started off as a joke but then I realized Fannar doesn’t like being alone with his thoughts or his body. He didn’t grow up with this tiefling body and as much as he can claim to be comfortable with himself, he can’t always manage to put his money where his mouth is. There was one notable time where Fannar was completely checked out in the baths in this inn in Vulcanica and the party managed to chase a guy down into an alley and fight him, all while Fannar stayed sat in the bath. (See also, this is why Fannar is such a promiscuous character, he’s trying to assert confidence in his body by being overtly sexual)

Catch Me Now I’m Falling, The Kinks Ya boi fell. He notably fell into a massive fucking abyss and it would have killed him had he not made his pact with Auril

Emperor’s New Clothes, Panic! at the Disco Big Fannar vibes, he’s big and dramatic and as someone who grew up among nobility and hated it he knows how to clock fake people who clothe themselves in pretension and importance. Also lowkey speaks to his ambitions to become an archfey himself someday “Sycophants on velvet sofas/Lavish mansions, vintage wine/I am so much more than royal/Snatch your chain and mace your eyes/If it feels good, tastes good/It must be mine/Heroes always get remembered/But you know legends never die”

Don’t Threaten Me With A Good Time, Panic! at the Disco What can I say besides Fannar is a party animal

Somebody To Love, Queen HE’S JUST A BIG DUMB GAY WHO MASKS HIS EMOTIONS BUT DEEP DOWN WOULD REALLY LIKE TO JUST GENUINELY BE LOVED, HE’S GOT PLATONIC LOVE IN THE FORM OF HIS INTER-PARTY FRIENDSHIPS BUT HEY HE’D LIKE SOME ROMANCE TOO PLEASE AND THANKS (SHOUTOUT TO RENAULT)

Viva La Vida, Coldplay More backstory allusion stuff, he was a big dumbass who wanted to rule but his reputation crumbled around him and all of those ambitions became untenable.

#my post #tal plays dnd #fannar #readmore #long post

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advernia · 4 years

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F and M for the ask game? 😊

reply’s late but thank you for asking, anon! happy new year to you! (ﾉ^ヮ^)ﾉ*:・ﾟ

F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

dialogue scenes… (ʃ⌣́,⌣́ƪ) i skimmed the last 10 fics i posted for this, and i think this wins:

“Though the thrones are numerous and never vacant, the crown still remains unworn.”

i think i’m proud of this bc it was one of my favorite results of thinking about different angles to see the black army’s meritocracy system, haha! i’m awfully fond of thinking about stuff like this… anyway, the beauty of the system is that you base worth on skill and ability, rather than other given factors (wealth, bloodline, etc). in-game, the approach is pretty straightforward: it seems that anyone(?) can claim the title of the chosen thirteen, given that the individual can beat the current titleholder in a fair one-on-one fight. it’s still vague to me and tbh i hope there’s more explaining to this, but this seems to be the case presented in ray’s route……

for the person speaking though, rather than seeing the system as something like champions defending their titles, he sees it as a matter of choice - the black army’s thrones are created by the hands of those who wish to be chosen, not the black army creating the thrones for the chosen… and while the crown does go the strongest soldier, does it belong to the strongest throne? no, not necessarily… and why is that? who decides this?

…. the choice falls onto the soldiers of the black army themselves. if the throne of the strongest soldier doesn’t appeal to the majority and is built on lies, is there a reason for an army to support him? if the throne of the weakest soldier is as weak as his body but as strong as his will, is there a reason for an army to support him? if the throne of the king has been built alongside his fellowmen and its foundation is made of his hard work, is there a reason for an army to support him? it goes on and on, and on………

… thrones are made by choice, but ultimately, it is the army that decides - who chooses - whose throne they will and shall serve.

that is because the soldiers - the black army as a whole - form the crown, and if it is left unworn… it means that there’s yet a throne to fascinate them, or there hasn’t been a throne worthy enough yet to serve in their eyes.

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share?

Σ(゜゜) b-b-back burner premises!?!?! got a lot of that…. but two premises have been bugging me for months tho, so here’s one of them!

it’s an ikerev mafia!au, inspired from the game’s actual mafia cards! i saw the posts about them pretty late but still, bless the kind souls who posted those cards bc wOW…. my eyes???????? they have been cleansed + my crops have been watered??????? ( ꒪Д꒪)ノ

i guess it clung to me pretty bad bc 1) i like mafia themes, 2) it reminded me that otomate’s piofiore no banshou is gonna be localized and i’ve been pretty interested in it despite polarizing opinions, and 3) those gacha cards look great???????? i was half expecting cybird to make an event about it lolol!

anyway, here’s my outline about it! excuse the odd formatting, i wrote it to be play-like the day i plotted it out!

…

welcome to cradle, all you ladies and gentlemen gathered here today! here, in this seemingly quaint crescent-shaped city, the citizenry live like they’re dying, so watch your back! always think twice before you act, or else you may end up in a sack!

what’s the reason for that, you ask? well now! you see, here in cradle, families run rampant! and we’re not talking about some happy household kind of family… we’re talking about men, women and children of all ages unafraid to spill blood, if only to protect their families or their families’ interests! are they noble, or simply selfish? are they justified, or simply paranoid? was this for survival, or for profit? all the lines have blurred!

what interests are we talking about, and why exactly has this beautiful city turned this way, you ask? tsk, tsk! you’ll never learn if all you do is question others for answers! so instead, why don’t we look around first? do follow me closely as we observe this place we call cradle, this city that is our stage!

enter stage left!

there goes a raven-haired lad and with him his band of merry men, forming a renegade group that bows down to no family or any other ruling power in cradle (except the government, what model citizens they are!).

it’s been at least three years since the group has entered + made themselves known in cradle, and sometimes the citizens start to think they’re a family, too - they’re the good kind, though!(?) they help the powerless citizens, watch over clueless tourists, assist the government in maintaining order (in their own ways - while they help, they also refuse to be fully bound to the government), and even go as far as keeping tabs on all the families present in cradle!

but why are they here, and why do they do what they do for cradle? it turns out the lad who appears to be their leader is searching for answers about a certain major incident that happened years ago in cradle. not everyone in the group knows about this purpose of his, though - refusing to get the whole group involved in his business, the lad allows only a select few to (grudgingly)assist him in his search for the truth.

one day, things get complicated: unfamiliar men are suddenly after the lad’s head! this was not an unusual occurrence for him or in cradle, but what throws everyone off is that these hitmen are different and dangerous: they’re incredibly skilled, annoyingly hard to brush off, and will do anything to complete their task… and that includes killing themselves off with their own blade / poison / hands once they are defeated / failed their mission.

the lad’s been on the run for three whole months without rest until he finally discovers a lead about his pursuers… deciding that it’s better than nothing, the lad and his trusty men follow this lead… even if it would make things more complicated, because the lead points the way to investigating five certain families in cradle that they’re not too keen in getting involved with at all.

will the lad ever find the answers to both his old and new questions, or will he eventually end up dead? will he ever know why he’s being hunted in the first place and discover who’s after him? where will this lead bring him: who will he meet, who will he trust, what will he do? destiny has quite a lot in store for him and his friends….

enter stage right!

if you cross paths with a beautiful man with hair spun like fine gold threads but with eyes as cold as ice, it would be wise not to offend him - he is the son and the future boss of a highly respectable family in cradle! this family has a long history and is still the leading voice in the council, an organization created by the government that enlists the aid of five special families in maintaining a semblance of balance and order among the many families and powers in cradle (think something like one piece’s shichibukai).

everything is fine and dandy until one day, the son’s father is found dead in cradle’s central square, his mutilated body hung up in the fountain for everyone to see……… naturally, this becomes a very serious issue + hot topic in cradle: who would do such a thing, why a man from the council from all people, and how mad was this person to display a corpse in such a gruesome fashion? so many questions….

but the son has hardly any time to pay attention to such whispers - his family has suffered a grave loss + a blow to their reputation and is now seen as vulnerable, the four other families of the council see an opportunity to claim the power of the leading voice, and there are no leads about his father’s murderer. hardly having any time to mourn, he takes up his father’s mantle and goes about to set things right.

in the short span of four months, he succeeds: he picks his family up again and gives no one any doubt that their family is stable and still not to be underestimated, manages to maintain the position of the leading voice and keeps the greedy hands and prying eyes of the other council members at bay, and also restores the public’s respect for his family.

while he was busy doing all that, he had ordered a handful of his men to search for any clues about his father’s death - it seemed like the search was going nowhere, until one rainy day one of them discover a tattered letter stuffed away haphazardly in an unsuspecting dark alley - it bears the family’s rose seal and a single word is spelt on its surface through messy, bloody fingerprints: jabberwock.

was this some sort of code? did the word actually mean anything to the family, to anyone? was this the name of a family, a person, or the murderer? was this even related to the murder, or a different issue entirely? it’s a pursuit with not much to start with………..

finally, center stage!

enter the algarde, cradle’s “most notorious crime” family. why the quotation marks? simple: despite being a prime suspect in perhaps every crime that happens in cradle, they have never been caught. all evidence against them always happens to be circumstantial and never incriminating enough to pin them to the crime….. how was this even possible????

the algarde is one of the oldest families reigning in cradle, and going against them is a guaranteed swift trip to death. both the government + council have never been able to tame the algarde, nor have they been able to keep proper + regular track of their movements. one thing is really for sure about the algarde, though: once you get directly involved with their business, you might as well start to treasure + be thankful for each day you’re still alive…

their current head is an odd middle-aged man known for his sharp silver eyes - his name is farlan, and he’s really quite charismatic as he is elusive. he’s said to have the whole of cradle dancing on the palm of his hand, but he claims he’s not that influential… what a joke. he’s constantly on the move to find something that amuses him and depending on his mood, the whole of cradle can be subjected to his whims - what a fearsome man!

what role does the algarde family play in this story, you ask? who knows! are they the ones after the lad’s head? do they hold the key to understanding the word jabberwock? better yet - are they responsible for both incidents, or are they shockingly unrelated to them? the plot thickens….

ah, before i forget! you didn’t hear this from me, but it’s said that farlan has a child, of all things! a son or a daughter??? who cares! it’s a joke, a made-up tale on the streets!

………………………………… or is it?

#askdfghjl #i fell asleep while answering this yesTERDAY NYAHA GET REKT #hopefully my answer to question f makes sense??? it sounded better in my head lol #this is one big wall of text aha brick me hi i'm rambly

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madokasoratsugu · 6 years

Text

rain rain go away

[soutaku; AU where Souma is a part time cashier part time piano prodigy, and Takumi is a famous novelist who recently got fucked over by identity theft.

but this fic is about getting caught in the rain and deals with none of that heavy stuff]

a/n: ayyyyyyy back w another au, will i ever fuckin stop.

btw: u might notice i used 'yukihira' instead of 'souma' like i usually do here. this is bc ppl in this au mostly know souma as 'yukihira' so i used that. more details about this au coming soon. maybe. perhaps. idk lmao

ao3 / ffnet

The weather bureau’s cheery mascot mocks Takumi from his phone screen, beaming “a sunny 35°C, don’t forget your sunblock!”.

Takumi despondently looks down at the quickly gathering water at his feet, ears drowning in the sound of rainfall pelting down.

Sunny indeed.

He pockets his phone and hastens his steps; this inclined path was not doing his leather shoes any favours.

Takumi barely bites back a yelp when a gust of wind crashes into him full force. He stumbles back a step, then two, and catches himself just in time to prevent his untimely demise onto the muddy pavement.

His umbrella is not so lucky and snaps cleanly in half, accepting its end swiftly.

During a brief moment of sheer upset, Takumi considers screaming in frustration, but the heavy rain convinces him to start running instead. This doesn’t stop him from glaring at his umbrella in disbelief for the betrayal as he stuffs it into his chest to reduce wind resistance

Speaking of things to protect. Takumi clutches his briefcase closer to his chest, muttering a short curse at how absolutely soaked it felt. Thank god he’d moved on from hand written drafts to thumbdrives and technology. He might just kill himself if the final draft of his book was ruined from something as stupid as faulty weather reporting.

Amidst the storm, Takumi can make out a dimly blinking ‘24/7’ sign. An arm shielding his face from the rain, he sprints as fast as his already burning calves can take him.

The welcome jingle of his apartment’s corner minimart has never sounded more welcoming.

He does suck in a chilled breath when the blast of air conditioning hits his very wet back, however.

Takumi navigates the store with speedy ease, snatching two towels off a rack close to the automated door, and making his way to the register immediately. He slaps it down on the counter along with his briefcase, and he would have apologised for the unnecessarily sour attitude if it wasn’t for the fact that he recognised the redhead behind the counter.

Too many late night trips to the minimart during the past year - whether it be a genuine need for something or just to get a breather from his work - had familiarised Takumi with him.

“Bad day?”

Takumi blinks the water from out his eyes, and smiles tiredly at Yukihira.

“Just the weather.”

And that was true. Takumi had been having the best day of his life, prior to this.

Doujima-sensei had informed him that his comeback debut novel was selling like hotcakes, and its sequel’s draft Takumi had brought today was right on track - just a few chapter revisions and finalising a few administration matters, and off to the printing press it would go.

Then the sudden downpour had started, turning Takumi’s forty minute uphill trek from the cafe back home into a desperate dash.

So now Takumi was left stranded and feeling like an old dishrag in his drenched peacoat and soaked leather shoes. Which, he had thankfully sent for weather proofing. He still had the possible loss of a good coat to mourn, however.

At least his hairdo was still intact. Takumi briefly slides a hand over his slicked back bangs, admiring the gel’s handiwork. Isami always did have a better eye for beauty products.

As Takumi thinks about how this would save him time later, he misses the way Yukihira swallows a little too hard at the movement and slips on the keys of the register.

“It’s really pouring out there, huh?” Yukihira says, quickly ringing up Takumi’s purchases.

“Yeah, I could tell.” Takumi rolls his eyes, and Yukihira responds with a laugh. Takumi pays in exact - he always does, when Yukihira is behind the counter. It’d become a silly little routine that Takumi was trying to see how long he could keep up.

Yukihira has the graciousness to rip open the packaging of one of the towels, handing it to a very grateful Takumi.

Takumi dries his face off first, then quickly wipes his neck. Yukihira leans on the counter with crossed elbows, tilting his head to one side, watching.

“No umbrella?” Yukihira asks.

Takumi wordlessly holds up his broken contraption. Yukihira’s eyes crinkle in a wordless laugh.

“That’s some real bad luck, Takumi. Wanna get another one?” He tilts his head to the other side, where a rack of portable umbrellas are arranged along the side of the wall, next to the newspapers.

“No thanks. I don’t think it’ll do much good now.” Takumi sighs, rubbing his hands in the warm cloth.

“I was gonna ask about a raincoat but it seems your coat is a pretty good rain -coat at this point.” Yukihira grins.

“Ha ha.” Takumi throws the towel in Yukihira’s face, and it smacks him with a satisfyingly wet sound. Yukihira makes a faux dying noise, before removing the towel.

“Then how about some oden? We just got a batch fresh.” Yukihira pushes himself upright, putting the towel into a plastic bag, along with Takumi’s other purchase.

Takumi’s stomach decides to growl in a timely fashion. He flushes beet red, while Yukihira grabs a pair of tongs and sing songs, “Yes it is!”

“Thanks.” Takumi replies, pressing a hand against the warm glass display, where a row of split containers with assortments of ingredients bobbing in hot soup seat behind. “I was thinking of grabbing a snack before - oh shoot , I hope the florists’ is still open.”

“Florist?” Souma looks up for a moment, stirring the soup with the ladle.

“Yeah. I need to pick up a bouquet.” Takumi smiles.

“For?” Souma scoops a hearty amount of soup and carefully pours it into a paper bowl.

“I’m going to a recital later.” Takumi explains. “It’s...an important performance to me, and I wanted to give the pianist something to show that. I mean, not that i’ll be able to hand it to them directly, with how performances generally work. I have a friend who knows them, so they promised to do me this favour.”

Erina had been surprisingly forward about it too. Something about helping Hisako with a few favours a while back, so this would be the least she could do for all the help Takumi had given her wife.

It was an incredibly uplifting offer, especially at a time when Takumi was still trying to brush the whole incident with name fabrications, ghostwriters and Mimasaka off his back.

To be able to thank the person whose music had encouraged Takumi out of his depressive slump was the only reason he had worked so hard to make his next novel a bestseller like it had become.

“That’s sweet. Did you get a good seat? Where is it?” Yukihira says, while handing Takumi his cup of oden. A few wooden skewers have already been stuck into the bowl, and Takumi takes the cup gratefully.

“Mmm. I got one in the middle, row L seat 17.” Takumi lifts a fishcake out, taking a bite. Quickly, he devours at least half of the cup’s contents before speaking again. “So this rain is really a downer. I still have to change, too.”

Yukihira stretches his arms above his head, then twists his torso to look at the clock behind him. “When’s it start?”

“Eight. But someone’s picking me up at six forty, so I have to hurry.” Takumi blows on a piece of radish before taking a bite.

“Eh, there’s still another hour and half, you’ll be fine.” Souma dismissively waves, and a part of Takumi agrees, but the more paranoid half screeches at him from the back of his mind.

“Still.” Takumi jabs at a piece of konnyaku, lifts it out of the cup and frowns at it. “Hey Yukihira, want it?”

“You don’t like konnyaku?” Yukihira asks, though he’s quick to lean over the counter with his mouth open.

“I’ll eat it if I have to.” Takumi says, popping the triangular piece into Souma’s mouth. He tries not to stare at Yukihira’s lips. “But I don’t really like it.”

Yukihira nods, chewing. Meanwhile, Takumi drinks the rest of the soup in one long gulp.

“Okay, i’ve got to go.” Takumi quickly tosses the empty cup into a bin nearby, stuffing his broken umbrella in afterwards. “But first.” He opens his wallet to pay for the oden, and realises a little sadly he doesn’t have change anymore.

He hands Yukihira a ten dollar bill, listening to the clacks of the register as it swings open and the clatter of coins as Yukihira quickly takes out change.

Yukihira’s fingers are warm as they press the coins into Takumi’s chilled palm. Takumi resists the urge to hold the hand a little longer.

“See you around.” Yukihira says, voice somehow softer than usual. Takumi gives in to the momentary urge, and squeezes Yukihira’s hand briefly, before moving his hand to shove the change into his pocket.

Grabbing his briefcase, Takumi flashes Yukihira a smile as the turns to leave. “See you.”

Yukihira raises his hand in goodbye, and smiles brightly back.

“I can’t believe you only arrived half an hour before your own recital!”

Erina’s aggravated voice is only partially blocked, with Yukihira’s childish attempt at covering his ears with both hands.

“I arrived before the performance, it’s fine!” Yukihira tries to reason, and he thinks he hears something in Erina snap when he does.

“Even so - !” Erina extends her arm, smacking Yukihira in the chest with a sheaf of papers. Yukihira recognises the hasty scribbles of musical notes as the one he’d handed to his manager just prior.

“What is the meaning of suddenly adding another piece into the performance? A new one, too!” Erina leafs through the sheets, scanning the piece. “And the title! ‘That feel when you see your crush drenched in the rain ten out of ten’? It’s not even spelt out!”

Her hands are shaking with pure fury now. “Souma, this is your comeback recital! You can’t just keep changing things like this!”

Yukihira blinks quietly. He takes in Erina’s stiff form, her contorted expression, and feels his soften in response. He rubs her head, careful not to mess up her hair too much.

“Thanks for worrying about me, Erina. But it’ll all go okay. If it’s that piece, i’ll be fine.” Yukihira looks off to the side, towards the curtains that part the wings from the stage.

Somewhere beyond that maroon drapery, past the lights and amongst the darkness of the hushed audience, a certain blond will seat, arms full of odd blooms.

Erina heaves out a submissive sigh. “...I know. I’m the one who knows your potential best, after all.” The statement is almost grudging.

Yukihira shoots his original co-debuter a winning grin. Erina returns it with a haughty sniff.

“If you don’t mind me asking, though…,” Erina trails off, waiting for Yukihira’s nod of approval before continuing. “What made you decide to return? After all this time, and everything that happened….” Erina ends off uneasily.

Unconsciously, Yukihira moves his left hand over his right. Then he brings his hands up, spreading his fingers out before him. The scar that runs unevenly down from the joint between his third right finger and fourth and odd splotches of discoloured skin on both hands stare back at him.

The warmth from the brief squeeze before still lingers.

“This is my eulogy to mother.” Yukihira begins softly. “And also,” He shifts his weight onto one foot, so he can peer past the curtains and comb through the audience to mid-row L, seat 17. Upon seeing a familiar blond head, he smiles. “I found my muse again.”

“Does it have anything to do with this book of yours you had me bring?” Erina grabs the book she’d placed earlier on a spare music stand, and thumps it gently against Yukihira’s still outstretched arm.

Yukihira takes it, and thumbs to the very first page.

‘Dedicated to Souma; for gifting me with music that became my reason to try again’

Just then, Shinomiya’s loud, singular clap rings out through the backstage.

“Five minutes before we go on!” He instructs, a loud reminder for any lollygaggers.

Erina immediately reaches out to straighten Yukihira’s lapels, and snatches the book from his hands. She looks him directly in the eyes, all previous playfulness gone.

“Do it for them.”

Yukihira nods, a professional smile pinned to his face.

“Of course.”

And that’s the last thing Yukihira has time to say, before he’s ushered towards the stage and met with stadium lights and the roar of applause once more.

#soutaku #yukihira souma #takumi aldini #nakiri erina #shokugeki no soma #food wars #melon write

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smallblanketfort · 7 years

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what are your gym goals and can you make a beginners guide?

lol i still really feel like a beginner, but ye, i can share some things that have helped me!

i want to bulk up and get myself what puberty didn’t give me Lol. that is, a nice peach, bulking up my arms, keeping my abs defined. also using it to get a handle on mental health, managing anxiety and shifting chemical. so far so gooooood. i’m really happy.

first thing i did about a year ago when i started this was to watch many youtube videos. a lot. of videos. hours worth. it helped me feel like i knew what i was doing as soon as i walked into the gym for the first time. i knew what i was going to do, what to expect. wasn’t wandering around lost. so i suggest whitney simmons, jazmine garcia, nikki blackketter, grace fit uk, and heidi somers, if you’re looking for badass, genuinely lovely women to follow.

i follow their instagrams and youtube and screencap workouts i like. sometimes i do them, sometimes i just incorporate exercises i like into my workout. these are great for a couple reasons. you learn to use machines and you learn good form. i’ve also bought jaz’s flourish strong program and such, and they’re helpful. bodybuilding.com is also a good resource :)

if you hated it one day, it might not be that you hate working out. i discovered a couple weeks ago that working out at 7 am (or just 40 min after i wake up) is the worst possible thing i could do for my body. the time you workout also matters. the best time for me is mid afternoon or evening. depends on your energy levels!

eat a preworkout an hour-45 minutes beforehand. i like to have black tea for caffeine, and either a granola bar or a bit of fruit with peanut butter. even a piece of whole grain bread and peanut butter is good.

wear layers. dude it might be 98 degrees out, but i’m still going in there with leggings, a crop top, and a flannel. this is me and my anxiety and the need to feel covered lol. by the end, i have the flannel tied around my waist, but it’s like a security blanket. keeps me from feeling exposed.

your shoes matter. running shoes = cardio. think cushy, comfy nikes/adidas/whatever. flat soled shoes = weights. think converse, vans, i even end up wearing minnetonkas lol. lifting shoes = lifting. fat soles are 100% find, but some people find that the slightly elevated heal helps. i haven’t gone that far, but it might be an option for you.

take music. also, wear a baseball hat if you really want to keep yourself from everyone else. if anyone watches you, they’re either assholes or they’re gathering inspiration (seriously).

begin with some bodyweight activation/warm up if you’re doing strength training. that is, leg swings to warm up your hips, rolling your wrists and ankles and shoulders. do a few squats, really squeezing your glutes. calf raises. activate your muscles. warm them up. also a good time to use a foam roller.

stretch afterwards! damn it! stretch! so important to avoid injury!

keep track of your workout with an app like myfitnesspal. it helps me keep track of my weights and sets so i know for sure whether or not i’m increasing. also gives you something to do between sets.

take it slow! don’t put too much stock in numbers! so many really strong people still use 5 lbs for some exercises, doesn’t mean anything. speaking of which,

define your goal and work accordingly. fewer reps (1-5), heavier weight = strength mid range reps (6-12), mid range weight = muscle buildingmore reps (15+), lighter weight = enduranceif you’re trying to lose weight, do not forgo strength training. muscles burn calories faster than fat, so you’re going to want to lose fat and gain muscle. since fat is lighter than muscle, you might notice that your weight doesn’t change as much, but that’s cool. likewise, if you’re trying to gain muscle, cardio is also good for building endurance. stairmaster is your boo that will Actually Murder you.when you’re working with weights, it’s a good idea to calculate your max rep. enter what you usually work with, for how many reps you usually work with, and this calculator will tell you your max rep (the max weight you can lift at one rep). why is this important? so i’m someone who doesn’t feel like they succeeded if they don’t go to burnout/have pain. knowing your max rep helps you manage your fatigue. that is, you choose a weight you can manage for 11 reps, but you only do 8, for example. so i like to do 3 sets of 12 reps, so i should be going at about 70-75% of my max one rm.this can help you if you decide to lift heavier and less, or lift lighter and more.you can also combine these concepts. if you want, you can create descending/ascending reps for altered weighted sets. that is, for example, you can increase your weight and decrease your reps with every set, or decrease your weight and increase reps with every set.ALSO. i’d be doing you a disservice if i didn’t mention diet!!! start eating cleaner and according to your goals. for example, if you’re bulking, you need to up your calorie intake, and your protein intake. no matter what your goal is, ffs, don’t use a ~diet~! no! my guy! diets are not sustainable, and we’re trying to build a happy lifestyle here. balance is everything. my coworkers have had success with going sugar free and/or vegetarian (i’m already vegetarian, almost vegan). but those are lifestyle shifts more than anything. they’re making good choices, rather than restricting and cutting out foods. i will say that once you get over the hump, you’ll crave less. gluten free made me cry once a week, but now i dont even crave bread or cake or pasta. this is coming from someone whose favorite foods were always those. same thing with cheese. regardless, get over the hump, build a lifestyle, and MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY. that’s the whole entire point.

end with a light, easy burnout on your focus area. your goal isn’t to make this hard, but just to exhaust the muscle group. so i tend to do bodyweight + 10 lbs on a small movement and just go until i can’t. makes me feel accomplished. THAT BEING SAID. do NOT burn out your body! im sooo sick of this “i vomited at the gym!” mentality. nuuh. don’t hurt your body. be gentle. you don’t need that. when i say burnout, i mean light, easy, and for one muscle, like your glutes. working out until you see stars or throw up isn’t good for you. at all. your body is doing its best. be nice.

workout in splits. this is why building routine is so important. currently, my workout schedule is a little sporadic, so i am there much longer doing a full body workout. however, if you can for sure get there more than twice times a week, make a workout split. the major muscle groups are as followed, with recommended pairings:back + bicepslegs + shoulderschest + tricepsabsthe logic is in the fact that when you work triceps, you’re probably also working your chest in the exercise, so fitting them together makes sense. creating splits helps you isolate the muscle group and really get them done.

rest 👏days👏are👏important👏 consider rest days a part of your split. as in, make. sure. you have rest days scheduled. do not workout every day. nope. your body needs time to rebuild iteself. give it that time.

experiment to keep interest. there are a lot of ways to work a specific muscle group. the easiest example i can give is that i have found i love doing abs on an exercise ball. that is, depending on the way i drape my spine over the sphere of the exercise ball, i can go beyond a full crunch, since my spine is arched, while also receiving support on my crappy spine.

take classes and/or get a trainer. i havent gotten a trainer bc im poor af and would be too anxious at this point Lol. however, i love yoga classes so much. i swear by them. integrating yoga with strength training is a serious aid in terms of mental health, physical stability, and flexibility, which are also important when you’re bulking. so it all cross pollinates and gets my interest hyped! :)

afterwards drink a cup of lukewarm water and eat a protein bar. makes all the difference when you feel like you just died, i promise. alternatively, make a protein shake, drink protein water, however you’re getting protein.

take progress photos every month or so. same place, same poses. i take them in snapchat and use the date filter, bc it’s easy. i suggest dumping them all in a specific folder- and not looking in that folder for quite a while. that way, when you need motivation later on after progress has surely been made, you’ll see the difference. it makes me weepy and i love it even if some months i know nothing has changed. (that’s okay.)

so ye. really all my advice comes from doing research and keeping myself comfy. take it slow! do you! everyone in there is present for the same reason, to better themselves. we all start out sometime, we all have different goals, and we are all making progress. so are you. it’s all good.

#lifting #work out #working out #idk how to tag this lmao #health #anon

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survivorjordanpines · 6 years

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Episode 8: I think I'll call her Vengeance. - Adam

So tonight went well. We didn't have to go to tribal council and Nahte voted out the person I, literally, did not want to meet up with if we swapped again or merged. I don't know Cole, so maybe he's a decent guy, but I've seen and heard some things that were uglie that I just didn't want to deal with. But anyways. This fucking challenge. Honestly, it's like demon music. It's like Satan himself threw up into my ears. UGH.

I know what you're thinking. Adam crushed another redemption challenge? That means it's time for whiny McBitchersons 3 right? Wrong, this episode has been cut short to make room for this heartfelt speech about my love for Andreas: Andreas, Love is like a flower, It only blooms when you're both on redemption and you keep winning together and staying alive and being the only person I talk to right now. And I know I never tell you truthfully how well I'm doing in the challenge but that's only because it's a stupid thing to ask and I'm of course going to lie because although I want you to stay alive too I still want you to only be second best because if for some reason one of the other bitches ever did better than us I still want to stay alive. I had a dream, that one day we would both emerge from the island together, and return to the game we were so wrongfully terminated from. But sometimes you have to wake up from the dream, and realize it's only me or you. And I'm glad it's either one of us, because none of these other weak ass hoes who came to redemption ever deserved it. Like check out these lame fucking scores they all gave. It's like they hardly even tried. The ones that actually tried that is! How many people just straight up quit when they get to redemption? I seen two so far and that shit is funny, it's like you ain't even want it at all! Must be scared or just feelin shitty about being voted out. But bitch we all feel shitty after being voted out! You gotta harness that fury and channel it into your redemption challenges. I'm getting a little off track here, but the point was Andreas is my dude, and while I won't really swear to avenge you because I'm pretty sure the people who voted you out are the friends that I was voted out for having, so it's like if I ever get back I probably won't have much of a choice of who to work with, BUT if given the opportunity I will do right by you, because your chill and friendly and it seems like they did you wrong. So, if I win cool, if you win whatever, that sucks for me but better than someone like Cole winning redemption after just being voted out, cuz this challenge really is anyone's game. So good luck dude. I'm rootin for us

I hate this challenge. There is no way I'm going to be able to discern anything. I know that whoever wins that most useful will probably go the isle. So like I can't wait to get voted out.

This challenge sucks! It is so hard to hear all the different songs. Right now my tribe is very quiet. I hope we have a swap soon so I can have a more active tribe, I haven't talked to anyone one on one in DAYS. Except Drew, he's the only one who seems to make any kind of effort. I'm pretty sure that Regan and Charlotte are aligned but are not saying anything. Why else would they keep trying to be the ones to go to Jordan Island? It is suspicious all right! Lets hope we win immunity so I can do no work for another day :-)

At this point I'm not sure if I'll win. I have a feeling my time is running out. I'm gonna have to do some wicked talking to Adam and see if I can convince him to fall on the sword for me lmao. Doubt it'll happen but you never know. If I can't, then Im gonna give him my idol in the hopes that he can actually do something with it. I'm kind of scared. Redemption Island has always been so good to me... plz dont fuck me over

I feel like I confess too much and I'm going to cringe when I read them back once the season is over. We're about 21 minutes away from the challenge deadline and I just don't know what's going to happen. I think we relied way too heavily on Shazam, but the other tribes are probably going to do the same thing. It's basically going to come down to luck on this one, I think... and who has the more wrong answers to deduct points. Also if Situations isn't that emo song at the beginning, I'm quitting the game right here, right now. No joke.

GOD CAN YOU BELIEVE I FORGOT KAREN WAS EVEN ON THIS TRIBE SINCE SHE CONTRIBUTED ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?? WHAT A FUCKING MOOD.

Okay so update. Adam told me that he has 12 songs and I have 17 and we are waiting for results and IM GOING TO PUKE IM SO NERVOUS FUCK

(this is meant for last round oops, put it in there if u can) im so fucking pissed off bc of this damn tribe, i am so done w them like really? THREE people threw, apparently bc i wasnt able to submit like thats a shitty excuse just say u want me out or that u want ur ass to be immune and get idols i cant wait for the one round that despite them throwing, me david and ryan get good enough scores to win and one of us ends up immune i hope cole’s ass gets kicked on redemption and emma can choke too AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA When! Will! This! Neverending! Marathon! Of! Tribal! Councils! End!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LczLqQWCihg&feature=youtu.be https://youtu.be/qmpGefnZ0RQ TO TOP THIS ALL OFF I WANT TO KEEP EMMA AND LILY DOESNT AND ITS DOWN TO THE FOUR OF US AND IDK WHAT IM GOING TO DO EMMA WHY ARE U SO FUCKING USELESS WWHYHGUIJYHFILUWYSHDFILCKEWHSFLCAWEVC9OIWAREUHRWLSD,U]

I think I'll call her Vengeance. Winning this redemption was bitter sweet. Cuz Andreas was the sweet but I'm still bitter. A lot of good came out of this though, I'll make sure of it. Cuz God has a plan and I intend to implement it. You know I was just being friendly at the beginning for fun. You know we're stuck on this island for the same reason, and it's nice to have someone to discuss the game with. But we just kept winning together! Did you know he's the king of redemption? I had no idea. Apparently the dude won like a ton on 3 different seasons. But what's a king to a God ;) It's sad when you really do the math. Because before it was over he told me he got 17, and I only had 12 so I told him you deserve it. I still had hope, because I had faith in my answers so maybe he had made some mistakes, and if he got 3 wrong I won. Turns out he got 4, so if he had just not even guessed those, he would've still had 13 and won. But oh well. We were talking before about it, because he said he wanted to give it to me if he's leaving cuz otherwise it's null. Chrissa gave it to him, cuz she knew she wouldn't win but girl didn't even try. 2000 points? Pathetic. I mean we totally blew it out of the water but still. Anyway we asked to do results earlier at like 9:30 and Jordan took a bit to process the scores and he told us it was 12-9. And well, I think you know whose was whose. It was kinda funny, cuz he yelled MY IDOL!!! and I was like Quick throw it to me!!! It would have been cute if he did an *action* but I guess he's not about that. But anyway I lied before cuz as we said goodbye I asked him if there was anyone he wanted me to murder for him. It felt like the right thing to do. He told me again that Ari really did him dirty. I was hoping he'd say her cuz if he had said like Ryan or Jess her allies I would've had to straight up lie, but Ari I can work with. Idk if they'll not vote me out or not but I don't really have allies going back in anyway. I'm just gonna wing it. So now I've done whatever the blunt equivalent of pouring one out for him is, and I had Jordan find me a picture of my idol to gaze upon, and it's this cute little crab necklace. And I'm just thinking, I think I'll call her Vengeance.

Alright, so. Tribal's happening soon, and while I am hoping it all works out, a part of me is kinda worried. I know David Robb isn't gonna be going, that's for sure... But I WAS a target, and have been for a little while. Sure, Cole is gone, but Emma might still turn the others against me. I think it's the most logical move, though, because as I said to David earlier... [11:12:07 AM] Lily Owen: So, tbh, here’s my hot take on this [11:12:12 AM] Lily Owen: Emma didn’t contribute [11:12:18 AM] Lily Owen: She threw last round [11:12:22 AM] Lily Owen: Do I need to say it

#supportyourlocaljordanpines

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chevd-blog · 6 years

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My Top 100 Favorite Albums of All Time (Part 7: 5 - 1)

Here they are, finally: my five absolute favorite albums ever!

5. De-Loused in the Comatorium – The Mars Volta (2003)

I received De-Loused in the Comatorium as a present for my 20th birthday, shortly after getting my copy of Frances the Mute. From the day I received it, I listened to it on nearly a daily basis for the next two years. Understand, I never do that with one specific album. It was just so uncommonly good that I couldn’t stop myself from going back for more. And even though I no longer listen to it as frequently, it is still just as good as I remember it. This is the album that I most heavily associate with my time at Ringling College, and with working on projects for my computer animation classes. And believe me, I spent a lot of time on those projects—somewhere in the vicinity of 10 to 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. So to say I quickly became intimately familiar with this album is a bit of an understatement.

De-Loused is a conceptual ode to the band's fallen friend, artist Julio Venegas, who is rendered in the album's narrative as the protagonist, Cerpin Taxt. In short: Cerpin ingests rat poison and falls into a coma, during which he goes on an epic journey of self-discovery in his own mind, with the denizens of his mental landscape being all his own artistic creations. In the end, Cerpin wakes up in his hospital bed in the real world, but his desire to return to his own mental kingdom ultimately drives him to jump from a freeway overpass. Of course, all of this is tricky to discern from the actual lyrics: the Mars Volta's lyrics are notorious for being oblique and abstract, which listeners could easily mistake for being nonsensical if they aren't paying attention and reading between the lines. (Fortunately, sometime after receiving the album, I was able to procure a .pdf of the album's concept in short story format, released by Gold Standard Laboratories; while the writing style was similar, it went a long way toward making the album's lyrics more coherent. And explaining who or what "Moatilliatta" was.)

But of course, while the enigmatic lyrics did hold their own sort of fascination with me, the thing that really hooked me was the musicality. The Mars Volta offered up an eclectic blend of punk, progressive and Latin rock, and De-Loused was the album that got the formula juuuust right—a smoothie of influences ranging from Santana to the Smiths to Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. The intro, "Son et Lumiere", serves as a metaphorical ambulance siren as Cerpin's story begins in situ, then segues into "Inertiatic ESP", with its frenetic waltzing pace, its vintage 70s electric piano riff, and Cedric Bixler-Zavala's repeated wails of "Now I'm lost". As the story progresses to "Drunkship of Lanterns", guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez layers cavernous surf rock licks atop a chugging Latin rhythm, resulting in a track that simultaneously feels haunted and vivified. One of my personal favorites, "Eriatarka", is damn near tantamount to sonic nitrous oxide, with a lilting dreamy melody that never fails to put me into a state of bliss. The album's longest song, "Cicatriz ESP", comes next, starting with a steady rhythm that falls into a serene subterranean pool before exploding into a full-on Latin jazz jam; it was this song that first showed me the true magic behind a well-executed jam session. "This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed" is where the band's post-hardcore roots show through the clearest—a chaotic, fast-paced song that could just as easily have been one of At the Drive-In's more hard-edged offerings, save for its narrative connections to this album. (Also, quick aside: something about the way Cedric's voice sounds while singing "Anonymous, avenge my name" always gives me goosebumps.) And I could go on and on. Ultimately, despite me having some memories and associations tied to it, the main reason De-Loused ended up in my top 5 is simply because of its sheer musicality, which is really impressive. Subsequent Mars Volta albums always made me feel excited, but none of them ever topped this one.

Prime cuts: "Inertiatic ESP", "Drunkship of Lanterns", "Eriatarka", "Cicatriz ESP"

4. Fear of a Blank Planet – Porcupine Tree (2007)

I have cited several albums on this list as being here chiefly because of associations between them and my move to Canada. If that has gotten redundant or boring, well—I apologize, but it was unavoidable. People have big, important, special moments in their lives, and for me, that was one of the biggest, most important, and special-est in mine. It should probably be pretty predictable, then, that my top five contains a few of these, and that they would be the most prominent examples for me. Fear of a Blank Planet falls into this category. This was the second Porcupine Tree album I obtained, after In Absentia. At the time, it was their most recent album, having come out less than nine months earlier. During my first semester at ECUAD, when I had not yet moved my car up from Florida, I have distinct memories of listening to this album in the mornings while walking by the waterfront along False Creek to my classes on Granville Island, with the beautiful downtown Vancouver skyline on the other side of the water. "Anesthetize", being around 17 minutes long, used to go quite a way toward getting me to my destination.

Later, as I came into my own as a fine artist, Fear of a Blank Planet became (along with Riverside's Anno Domini High Definition, as mentioned earlier) a major point of inspiration for my work. One of the most polished works to come out of my time at Emily Carr, and the one that may have been most predictive of my later trajectory as an artist, was a large two-panel painting which I called "Blank Planet", as an homage. The album was a perfect summation of my thematic focus on the prevalence of technology in the 21st Century. If the title seems familiar, it's because it was itself a bit of an appropriation from Public Enemy's 1990 recording Fear of a Black Planet; as Steven Wilson has explained, the album's main drive is addressing the major current issues of technology and alienation, in the same way that Public Enemy had addressed the issue of race relations. In Porcupine Tree's case, the songs specifically describe the experience of younger Millennials, who have come of age never knowing a world without the internet, Ritalin, and constant media bombardment.

The truly astounding thing here is just how palpable the apathy is throughout the entire album, while at the same time being very emotionally affecting. It all begins with the fantastic 9-minute title track, told through the eyes of a detached bipolar adolescent whose claims include "XBox is a god to me", and "my mother is a bitch, my father gave up ever trying to talk to me". The next track, "My Ashes", is a slower, softer song that draws lyrically on the Bret Easton Ellis novel Lunar Park. But of course, it's the aforementioned "Anesthetize", which contains a stellar guest solo from none other than Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson, which truly dominates the album, and demonstrates Porcupine Tree's continued foray into heavy metal. The guest appearances continue with "Way Out of Here", as King Crimson's Robert Fripp contributes ambient soundscapes while the album's tone grows noticeably darker. Finally, the album ends with the electronic droning of "Sleep Together", which I can only describe as resembling what it might sound like if Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails collaborated on a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir". All in all, while In Absentia receives the lion's share of the recognition from Porcupine Tree's discography, it is Fear of a Blank Planet which is my pick for my absolute favorite of their albums.

Prime cuts: "Fear of a Blank Planet", "Anesthetize", "Way Out of Here", "Sleep Together"

3. Silent Alarm – Bloc Party (2005)

So what memory of mine can top moving to Canada? Well, the answer is simple: those first few trips to British Columbia, where I got to meet my friend Laurie in person after over two years of communicating exclusively online. She was one of the biggest reasons I was able to survive my time at Ringling without breaking under the pressure. Through all of the project deadlines and disappointments and the otherwise lacking social life, I always had her, encouraging me to keep going. While the two of us ultimately settled into a very happy and very close platonic relationship, at the time, I have to admit, I was quite infatuated with her. Why wouldn't I be? There was an incident once, during a moment of weakness, where I was considering suicide, and she stopped me by calling my house in Florida at 4 AM. Nobody, save for my parents, had ever cared about me in such a way. And so, in December of 2006, when I finally got the opportunity to visit her and spend time with her, of course I was excited. We chatted in my hotel room, and she showed me her neighborhood, and drove me around Vancouver in her old Pontiac Sunfire. And I remember vividly what was playing on her stereo: her copy of Silent Alarm Remixed. That was my first exposure to Bloc Party.

When I returned to Florida after that first trip, I bought the original version of the album, and it ended up in heavy rotation in my own car stereo for that final semester at Ringling. Admittedly, as I've already mentioned, my first trip to BC did not go quite as smoothly as I had hoped—partially because of the culture shock, and partially because she didn't quite feel the same about me as I did about her. But we remained close friends, and I was willing to try again. When I returned for two weeks the following summer, after my time at Ringling had come to an end, the experience was incredible. No, beyond incredible—they were two of the most important and special weeks in my entire life. That was the trip that finally convinced me to actually commit to moving there. And I suppose Silent Alarm came to symbolize the whole thing for me; it was a new experience for me, one that had been completely unknown, and which represented a new sensibility that didn't really seem to fit my old life in Florida. I was 21, and as "Banquet" put it, I was "becoming adult".

What makes Silent Alarm all the more impressive, beyond just its great significance to me as the background music of the most seismic shift in my life, is its sheer vitality. For a debut album, it really was as tight as it could possibly be. The chemistry of Kele Okereke's thickly-accented Londoner vocals, Russell Lissack's guitar, Gordon Moakes's bass, and Matt Tong's frenetic drumming resulted in an album that felt unusually charged with electricity. Songs like "Banquet", "Helicopter", and "Like Eating Glass" took a page from the punk playbook without getting mired in the usual trappings of punk. I still can recall that Laurie's favorite was the final track, "Compliments", a sparse, gently humming song that ended the album on a very laidback vibe. When I made the remark about diminishing returns with Bloc Party (waaay back when I was talking about #90 on my list, the band's album Four), this is the point from which they were always subsequently diminishing. This is the high-water mark. And in all fairness to the band—it's kind of difficult not to fall into that pattern when your starting point is already so exceptional and vibrant.

Prime cuts: "Banquet", "Helicopter", "Like Eating Glass", "The Price of Gas"

2. Lateralus – Tool (2001)

Lateralus was not my first Tool album. That distinction belongs to their first full-length album, Undertow. But Lateralus was the first one to really speak to me from an elevated plane, even before Ænima. Undertow brought the heaviness— I think of it almost as a lead weight in sonic form— but it honestly didn't sound a whole lot like the progressive mainstay that Tool eventually became, and which I came to love dearly. Early on, as I've already said, no band was quite as fundamental in my musical tastes becoming what they are as Tool was. And this is the album where they really came into their own. If Undertow was a lead weight, Lateralus was a clarifying light.

On the strength of the single "Schism" and its delightfully perplexing music video featuring contortionists in blue-grey body paint, I bought Lateralus the day it was released: May 15, 2001. I was 15 years old. For some time, I nicknamed it the "rain album", because (I kid you not) for the first several months, whenever I would listen to it, by some strange coincidence, it always seemed to bring a storm shortly afterward. I loved everything about it. From the amazing Alex Grey anatomical transparencies in the liner notes, to the strange time signatures and the mystifying lyrics— it grabbed hold of my soul in a way that no other recording has, before or since. From the opening of "The Grudge" to the very last notes of "Triad", and even the bizarre Art Bell radio-show-prank-phone-call-from-Area-51 which constitutes "Faaip De Oiad", Lateralus is an intensely spiritual experience for me. This is my Bible, my Bhagavad Gita. And it has served me well over the years, through the creation of artwork, and studying for exams, and unpleasant dental procedures. (No, seriously, I highly recommend trying this album while pumped full of nitrous oxide. There's nothing like it.)

"Schism" might be what brings you to the show here, but the two-track suite "Parabol/Parabola" is what keeps you listening, with its poignant message about living in the present and not taking the precious gift of life for granted. The album's closing trilogy of "Disposition/Reflection/Triad" offer another high point, with the second song being the main focus. "Reflection" is not only the longest track on the album, but one of its most divinely beautiful as well, with its Hindustani-influenced drumming and sarangi accented by an electronic drone. But of course, the main centerpiece of the album is the title track, "Lateralus", often cited as one of the greatest metal songs of the 21st Century so far. At nearly nine and a half minutes long, the song's true brilliance lies in its vocal delivery and time signature both being structured around the Fibonacci sequence; the lyrics about "spiraling out" are somehow all the more meaningful when woven into a tapestry whose very fabric is literally the arithmetic behind spirals. For someone like me, who absolutely cannot exist without thoughtful, cerebral music, this is the album that I hold as the gold standard for everything else.

Prime cuts: "Schism", "Parabol/Parabola", "Lateralus", "Reflection"

1. Grace for Drowning – Steven Wilson (2011)

And then there was one. Of course the list ends right back where it began back at #100, with a Steven Wilson solo album. His second solo effort is probably not the most popular choice out of his body of work, but I don't care. In my view, it's criminally underrated. It's absolutely, hands down, my favorite album of all time. No additional thought required.

So what's so damn special about Grace for Drowning, that I rank it above even Lateralus? Well, the simple quantity of music is a good place to start. Grace for Drowning is a two-disk set; the first disk contains the majority of the album's tracks, while the second disk is dominated by the monstrous 23-minute behemoth titled "Raider II", as well as a few smaller compositions like "Index" and "Track One". Around the time of the release of Grace for Drowning, Wilson had caused a bit of a stir by mentioning his boredom with continuing to pursue Porcupine Tree's previous heavy metal style, and his unabashed admission that he was listening to much more freeform jazz than hard rock. For some listeners of Porcupine Tree, this was discouraging, particularly because it seemed to telegraph that Steven Wilson really might be serious about being done with his old band. However, in listening to Grace for Drowning, I simply cannot mourn for Porcupine Tree, because Wilson's solo music is every bit as masterfully composed, with quite a bit more freedom to really experiment with new styles without the pressure of preconceived expectations. The end result was not something that pandered to fans, but instead a tremendously courageous and seductive blend of jazz jams and prog rock, with flute and sax sections provided by longtime PT collaborator Theo Travis. It was a true piece of artwork, made all the more miraculous by its emergence amidst a 2010s pop music landscape that is incredibly hostile to such heady endeavors. (*cough* Dubstep. *cough*)

But then, beneath the veneer of long jam sessions and rock guitars, at his heart, Wilson is a master craftsman of pop as well. "Deform to Form a Star" demonstrates this well, as do "No Part of Me" and "Postcard", a sentimental melody that reeks so much of self-deprecating despondency that it might as well be my personal anthem. Meanwhile, Wilson's penchant for creating eerie and subtly unsettling music shines through on "Remainder the Black Dog" and the instrumental "Sectarian", where dramatic choral arrangements and Travis's diabolical saxophone produce some of the album's most stunning moments of tension. "Index" keeps the tension intact on the second disk, with its lyrical content detailing a fastidious collector whose obsession with adding to his collection ventures dangerously close to creepy and stalker-ish.

And then, "Raider II" comes on, and all of the unspoken menace that has been slowly building and bubbling under the surface erupts into full effect. How could it not, in an epic song inspired by Dennis Rader, the notorious Kansan serial killer more commonly known as the BTK Strangler? The intro begins with a simple piano passage on the low end, with a clarinet joining in to add some treble; in between, there are long pauses for several seconds at a time, where it could be said that Wilson is playing the anxious silence itself like an instrument. The vocals begin quietly at around a minute and a half into the song, with the intro going quiet one last time before exploding with full fury just before the three-minute mark. The next four minutes cycle through the verses, a few unexpected death growls, and a beautiful flute solo from Travis. Then there's another short lyrical passage, before the unhinged guitar solo, which segues into a smooth saxophone solo. At eleven minutes in, the guitars return with a vengeance, and then recede again into the reverb, leaving a disquieting stillness in their wake. Out of the silence the song catches its second wind and emerges again with a jangly guitar melody, over which Wilson evokes disturbing metaphors for the serial killer's mentality: "A cat among the crows, I'm raider / The butcher and his prose". Finally, the song winds down with a chaotic ensemble, its ever-increasing tempo finally culminating in a single sustained blast of disorder, with two minutes of slow bass and guitar to pad the ending. And after such a harrowing rollercoaster ride, the album ends gently on the palate cleanser, "Like Dust I Have Cleared from My Eye".

In summary, Grace for Drowning is my favorite album, probably because of the wide emotional range it exemplifies. There are parts of the album that are peaceful and delicate, parts that are achingly sad and wistful, parts that are laidback and mellow, and of course, parts that are incredibly dark and sinister. There is ample expressive complexity and splendor here, for those who can appreciate it. And there is heaviness here, too, in a way that doesn't rely on the metal clichés of Wilson's past. Overall, a phenomenal album, and one that likely won't soon see a challenger for its title as my favorite of all time.

Prime cuts: "No Part of Me", "Postcard", "Remainder the Black Dog", "Raider II"… fuck it, the entire album.

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