#i've been thinking about this all morning and it's just such a banger concept i hate the cw for not thinking about ir

[hoony2k]

what are some tumblr accs u think have the cutest layouts and works???

Hii this is such a fun question :D I really love so many layouts its kinda hard to choose but here's a list of people whose work I read often! I was hesitant about tagging because I kept getting nervous :,)

@bywons : LOVE the layout sm its so pretty!! Everytime I read a new enha post that makes me all mushy and has me kicking my feet I check the url and i'm like ok makes sense. Her work is fr like a hug and i LOVE the layout and colouring of her works <3.

@junityy : Such a creative theme, it's the coolest layout ive seen! It reminds me of a protagonist from a cyberpunk movie or aespa's concept. Plus I enjoy reading her work sm, I loved the 5 love languages with enha, it was SO CUTE 🩷

@neos127 : her theme is so unique and fun! I just love the way she writes for Jake, it's just...so him. All the jake girlies enjoy her work, I twirled my hair reading the spiderman fic T.T her narratives are so creative!!

@wonwayne : banger after banger. I've never seen better characterisation and perfect balance of fluff and angst that gets you so so worried but hits you with immediate comfort.

@lilacnini : layout is so ✨️😍☝️adorable theme, it's so sparkly and neat it reminds me of wjsn concepts ✨️. Her masterlist is the morning newspaper to me, so diverse and fun to read.

@eun-luv : has the prettiest sets/themes. I love going through her blog like its pinterest. It's literally asmr but visual. It's so calming and great for inspiration when you're feeling low.

@hoonvrs : i love her blog's colour scheme and the cat header 🐈‍⬛️. Also the funniest enha writer ever, not kidding. I love her smaus they're so creative and fun! Her fic writing style is so nice, it's so descriptive, expressive and subtly humorous. Noona 🤝 21 century girl

@zreamy : love her theme, the colours remind me of the orange flower album. I have never been the same after reading her work, each work I've read felt like an out of body experience, not kidding. There are so many minute details that come to create something so beautiful, the narratives are so refreshing and realistic- i could write an essay honestly.

@asahicore : such a pretty layout, I love the colours. And her writing style? It's so interactive and memorable, moonlight was INCREDIBLE. It was full of passion, love and tension- i was on my knees with hope they would end up fine TT. I haven't even seen the movie it was based on and now I feel like the movie won't be able to excetute it like her.

#thank you for the ask! #if ure reading this...hii you're amazing and I love your work #hana's letters 💌 #i hope i didn't make anyone uncomfyim so nervousjd

[quatregats]

❄️☔

Milesker galderengatik <33333 I'm putting them under a cut because the first one is very long lol

❄️ Share a snippet from a WIP of your choosing.

(From the Machineries of Empire AU that I was working on a while back; I'm still not entirely set on how I want to do it and how much of the character and tone of each series I want to preserve, but I do quite like this section—the fic itself is based on the part of The Surgeon's Mate where Stephen is going to set out alone to convince his godfather not to work with the French at Grisholm, and I've made up a fake space version of Orpheus and Eurydice which is the story behind the opera and drama discussed here. The rest of the fic is not as good though, I still need to do a lot of editing 😅)

Stephen smiled slightly, meeting his eyes properly for the first time all morning, as they began the gavotte. Jack smiled back, feeling the mist in his eyes clear. He played the first theme, then passed it off to the cello, and they danced around each other, notes intertwining into a warm embrace. Stephen closed his eyes, that crooked smile across his face, and Jack felt the weight lift. He closed his eyes as well, let himself be lost in the music, and for the first time that morning, he felt himself again.

They played the gavotte to the close, and Jack sighed deeply. Stephen's eyes were still closed, and he was still smiling. For a moment they were silent, together, just the two of them, before Stephen lay his bow across the strings again and in a whispered pianissimo began to play the overture of the opera which he'd been humming earlier. It was even more eerily beautiful now, as it gradually crescendoed into being on the warm, low sound of the cello. The whisper grew into a full-throated aria, double-stops providing the harmonies and coloring the notes into unexpected majors and minors. For several minutes Stephen was caught up in the ecstasy of the music, and Jack was just as transfixed. Then the climax burst in and faded away into a million tiny pieces, like a firecracker on a remembrance, and the spell was broken. Stephen sat back, the smile faded, and the coldness returned to his eyes once more.

"Which I've brought your clean uniform, sir," Killick said, poking his head in the room.

"Oh, very good—you can leave it on the table."

He set down his violin and felt his hands shaking again; undid the buttons on the uniform and took it off; put on the new one and managed to button it up. Stephen came over and let down his hair, then began to plait it with his deft, clinical hands. Jack leaned back, tried not to feel overcome with the emotion.

"You know how the story ends, then, if you watched the drama," Stephen said after a moment, and his voice had an odd quality to it.

"Oh, I never watched the drama. Just heard about it, is all."

"Ah." Stephen said, and was silent again.

"How did it end, then? They must have made it in the end—no one would have liked it much, otherwise."

"Mmm," Stephen said, and finished the long braid, then clubbed it. "Perhaps in the drama it did."

☔ Is there a fic concept you have that you'd like to just explain and share because you're not sure you'll ever write it? If so, what is it?

I started a fic that was about Stephen and words and languages and belonging (and titled it De tant romandre fora el món which is a banger title, I'm so sad to be giving that up), but I really, really would need to do a lot more research and also I'd want to speak fluent Irish if I wrote it lol, so I think I'm leaving it for now. I did have about 25 pages of the Atles Lingüístic del Domini Català open at all times while writing it which was very fun, and I'd maybe consider going back to it in perhaps a different way; the central thesis was that although Stephen melds like a chameleon into the languages around him, he never truly feels at home with them, but I'm not entirely sure I agree with it now so perhaps I'd go about it in a different way. I was also going to explore his relationship with his godfather and where exactly his godfather and Stephen himself fit into the politics of the time (mostly inspired by reading Borja de Riquer's Història. Política, societat i cultura dels Països Catalans), and that I think could still be fun, but I'd want to do a more thorough read-through of the books to make sure that I'm not missing any details and that I get the relationship right.

#i have no idea if any of this will make sense if you haven't read the books #(or if you have read them for that matter) #i need to reemerge from my aubreyad rabbithole a bit i guess #thank you for enabling me though <33333 #i'm also about to finish the bend it like beckham fic but i need to edit it and didn't like any of the parts by themselves #perce rambles #The Creative Endeavor and other aubreyad nonsense #scribblings & such

[freetobeeyouandme]

What do y'all think would happen if an angel took a monster as a vessel?

#spn #supernatural #i've been thinking about this all morning and it's just such a banger concept i hate the cw for not thinking about ir #like imagine s6 and dean stays a vamp and then cas rocks up to the final battle with raphael in the michael sword and obliterates him thus #like all the purgatory souls gave cas an upgrade but would one monster body/soul maybe already be enough? #anyway my idea is that it makes cas more invulnerable even to angel blades because if you can't kill the body like this regularly why should #a special blade do the job now? gotta behead that vamp angel or you get nothing #raphael stabs cas with an archangel blade and cas goes 'cool can i keep this?' and stabs raphael with it #civil war not averted but at least the opposition leader is dead

[sailorzakuro]

Okay so I know I haven't been doing Strictly song and dance posts this series but I need to SCREAM about these ones cos IT'S HALLOWEEN so let's just go for it

Sara and Aljaz: Queen of the Night by Whitney Houston (Couple's Choice) - Can't say I know the song I may well do when I hear it but CC I'm interested to see.

Rhys and Nancy: The Eve of the War by Jeff Wayne (Paso Doble) - THIS IS WHY I CAME ON HERE SCREAMING THEY'RE DOING WAR OF THE FUCKING WORLDS do you know something funny I was genuinely listening to this song this morning, and I thought to myself "I hope someone does a Paso or something to this on Strictly idk if I've seen one" AND THEY ARE YEEEEEEEEEES best one not much can beat this I'm sorry I'm listening to it now oh this brings back memories from primary school this is gonna be absolute BOSS.

Judi and Graziano: Physical by Olivia Newton-John (Triple Cha) - Idk what's scary about this apart from some crude joke about Judi's appearance someone with the English flag in their twitter display name is bound to make so let's just move on.

Adam and Katya: Moonlight Sonata by Ludwig Van Beethoven (Viennese Waltz) - I feel like this is one of those songs you know and you know you know but I could not think of what it is, still a nice classical piece of music amongst the funky Halloween songs.

Dan and Nadiya: Rock Lobster by The B-52s (Jive) - AHHH NO COS I JUST THINK OF THAT BIT IN FAMILY GUY oh my god this Halloween week is gonna be an absolute banger I tell you.

John and Johannes: Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival (Quickstep) - OH THAT'S COOL that's a cool song, I think Susanna and Kevin did this in 2013 if I remember correctly but they did a different dance so it'll be cool to see how they do it in quickstep form.

Tilly and Nikita: Spooky Movies by Gary Paxton (Triple Cha) - Again don't know but by the sounds of it we could have a cool scary movie concept you know there's so many monster ghost creature things at Halloween in general where's the respect for the slasher genre I can't go through Halloween without watching Scream 😂. Watch as it's not that now 🙃.

Rose and Giovanni: Shivers by Ed Sheeran (Tango) - I could make a very cruel joke about how Rose is lucky she doesn't have to go through hearing Ed Sheeran all week but instead I'll say Rose tango might be quite cool 😂.

AJ and Kai: Dangerous Woman by Ariana Grande (Viennese Waltz) - Ahh we've hit the modern pop part of Halloween song choices these are always the dullest so hopefully AJ can do really well and bring something out of a ballroom dance to whatever this song is like idk how it's Halloween-y just cos it says dangerous 😂.

Tom and Amy: Highway to Hell by AC/DC (Tango) - CAN I SAY TOM HAS THE COOLEST KIDS THEY MADE HIM DO THIS SONG I wanna spend Christmas at theirs if this is their top pick song for Halloween flipping heck.

And that's it IS IT OBVIOUS WHICH ONE MY FAVOURITE IS WAR OF THE FUCKING WORLDS IF RHYS AND NANCY WENT LAST WEEKEND AND I KNEW THEY WOULD HAVE DONE THIS SONG I WOULD HAVE CRIED

Yet another year of no Spooky Scary Skeletons tho 😭

#strictly come dancing #strictly come dancing 2021

[youspoketome]

My Favorite Albums of 2018

I tried something new this year. All year long, every time I bought a new album I added it to a note on my phone as a list so that I could adjust the order as needed. Some things settled into their order quickly, but a couple spots went down to the wire. Embarrassingly, I was just looking at my 2015 list and six albums on that list were the previous albums by six of the bands on this list, and one was a solo album by the singer of a seventh band listed here. I'm not quite sure what that means in the grand scheme of things. And that seems like a long enough introduction, so here we go!

Murder By Death - THE OTHER SHORE

Honestly, I thought Murder By Death was finished having albums on top of my best of lists. I had been so disappointed in GOOD MORNING, MAGPIE. That album had like two good songs, but the rest was at best forgettable filler and at worst sounded like a parody of themselves. The two albums since then had definitely been better, but still not at the levels of their earlier albums. Enter THE OTHER SHORE: an incredible return to the long form concept album following a story of love and dying planets in a western in space. It's full of catchy hooks without ever being clichè, small character moments and big, world-ending finishes. Best of all, it's got ripping 2-minute long cello solos. This is peak Murder By Death right here.

mewithoutYou - [UNTITLED]

mewithoutYou is another band I've loved for years, but thought was coming off of a weaker album. I enjoyed PALE HORSES (it made my top ten list the year it came out), but it didn't have anything that really grabbed me and made it a necessary part of the mwY canon. [UNTITLED] immediately feels important. It's not the most easily accessable album, but when have mewithoutYou ever been accessable? This is an album that has layers that you can appreciate as you dig down to them on further listens. Over the years mwY's sound has evolved from the heavier hollerin' of [A->B] LIFE and CATCH FOR US THE FOXES to the completely clean and folky IT'S ALL CRAZY... and back again. [UNTITLED] really blends things together by taking the heaviness from early albums and adding them in for flavor rather than building the songs around them, giving the songs depth and intensity. For my money, it's their best album since BROTHER, SISTER. Still waiting on that album/EP collector's edition to ship though, so no pictures.

Gregory Alan Isakov - EVENING MACHINES

I've enjoyed Gregory Alan Isakov's previous albums of folky songs fit for sitting on the front porch at your farm while reading an old book, but whenever I'd see him live my favorite song was always the non-album track "Liars" and I'd always wish he'd record it. That song seemed darker than anything else he'd written and had this slow build to an epic climax that almost gave you chills. He finally did record it on his studio album with the Colorado Symphony in 2016 and then he followed that up with his most eclectic album yet. From the soft and haunting opener "Berth," all the way to the end, EVENING MACHINES expands on what Isakov is willing to do, keeping that same welcoming, mellow feel, but getting there in new ways and with new instruments. "Caves" captures that darkness "Liars" had in a way that is wholly satisfying to me. It feels like he wrote the album I didn't even realize I had been wanting him to write all along.

Emery - EVE

I've always enjoyed Emery, but it wasn't until their last album YOU WERE NEVER ALONE when they broke the album down song by song on a behind the scenes podcast that I fully appreciated them as musicians. Unlike a lot of bands that came out at the same time in the same genre, Emery is a band with multiple members who have actually studied how music works and can point out and name every single time signature and key change in every song. Now with EVE, I've been able to listen to the little details, noticing and appreciating the attention they give to every little part of each song. The way they don't add the screamed vocal at this part of the song because that seems to obvious, so they save it for when it'll be more striking. How they add the harmonies and layer the vocals. Some bands with that kind of background forget how to write a catchy song or what makes a song enjoyable to listen to, but Emery has this ability to perfectly blend this crazy musicianship with honest, straight from the gut songwriting. The end result is an album full of fantastic songs with awesome little parts and details that make it special and stand out.

Thrice - PALMS

For me (and a lot of people, I think) Thrice and Thursday have always been kind of linked. I discovered them at the same time, both on their second albums. They were post-hardcore bands, similar enough sounding to compare to each other and they both started experimenting with their sound on their fourth albums. Then they both announced they were breaking up within a day of each other. The weird thing is when I first discovered them, I preferred Thursday hands down. Then they both released their third albums and cemented my opinions of them, so much so that I decided not to buy Thrice's fourth album when it came out. Man, that was a huge mistake. That fourth album, VHEISSU was the album when Thrice hit their stride, expanding and exploring their sound with each release since then. Each of their post-reunion albums have continued this trend and PALMS might be their best full album yet.

Frank Turner - BE MORE KIND

To be honest, I'm surprised this album is this far down. If you had me rank my expected best albums of the year list at the beginning of the year, Frank Turner with have been number one with a bullet. But BE MORE KIND was not the album I was expecting, and I was a little let down by it. That I'm saying that my number 6 album of the year was a bit of a let down should tell you how highly I think of Frank Turner. It starts off strong with the mellow opener of "Don't Worry" followed by a full on banger in "1933." But the third track "Little Changes" just didn't hit for me. It seemed like Frank Turner dumbed down for the masses. And it's not that it's too poppy; I enjoy myself a good pop song. It's just that the songwriting seems so simple. There are a number of really good songs throughout the rest of the album (like "Blackout"), but the overarching feel for me is that it's too simplistic, there's no depth to any of the songwriting. All that said, it's hard to rag too much on it because how can you bash an album that's sole message is to be kind and positive and to treat other people decently? Maybe it's that message that made him lose his teeth. In summation, I like Frank Turner a lot, even when he's disappointing me.

Smoking Popes - INTO THE AGONY

INTO THE AGONY is the Smoking Popes first album in seven years. They were putting out albums more frequently than that while they were broken up! After being broken up from 1999-2005, the Popes returned with STAY DOWN, which was not the strongest album to come back on. It was mostly a downer and ended up being completely forgettable for me. This time, upon returning from a seven year album cycle with new album they've knocked it out of the park. It's upbeat and catchy, it's slow and meaningful, it features Josh Caterer's soaring vocals, and it's another fantastic entry into the catalog.

Death Cab For Cutie - THANK YOU FOR TODAY

I think Death Cab's existence as a band is better broken up into stages. You've got the pre-TRANSATLANTICISM era, the TRANS/PLANS era, NARROW/CODES, and now KINTSUGI/THANK YOU. TRANS/PLANS is my favorite era. It's where I discovered Death Cab, it's where I spend the most time with them, it's just the best. But after a bit of a dip there for a couple albums (not saying they were bad, it was just a dip), I felt like KINTSUGI was a step back up, and now THANK YOU FOR TODAY continues in the same vein. It's a more electronic/synthy sound than previous eras, which sets it apart from their highest peaks, so you're not just constantly comparing it to something they'll probably never reattain. I really enjoy where this era is taking them.

Alkaline Trio - IS THIS THING CURSED?

This past summer I decided to give Alkaline Trio's AGONY & IRONY a listen for the first time in I don't know how long. Everyone agrees Alkaline Trio used to be good and then got less good, and I agree, but that specific album was for me the low point, mostly because of "Love Love Kiss Kiss." But then this weird thing happened: I really enjoyed it. Even that song, which is still doofy, wasn't as bad as I remembered. I was so bummed out about it at the time, but that album has some really good songs on it. Even at their lowest point, I still really like Alkaline Trio. IS THIS THING CURSED? is a new Alkaline Trio album. It's got Matt songs, it's got Dan songs, it's got one Dan song that kind of too doofy (Little Help?), it strangely has multiple song titles that end in question marks, and it has an acoustic closer featuring Matt's scratchy-voiced wailing. This is another solid Alkaline Trio album.

The Decemberists - I'LL BE YOUR GIRL

Every year at the same time, all of the baseball websites post their top prospects lists, where they rank the upcoming minor league players in all of baseball or on each team individually, so people can get excited about the next wave of baseball All-Stars. In almost all of these lists you've got your top five or six guys who are clearly the best players in that team's minor league system in that order, but then at about number seven they kind of become interchangeable for a while. You could switch prospect #8 with #12 and no one would cause too much of a ruckus because they're all pretty similar at that point. We've reached that point in my best albums list (really, we reached that point with Alkaline Trio). These final couple spots could have also gone to 6666 by Four Fists, 9 by Saves The Day, KIDS SEE GHOSTS, or if I was in the right mood, even the new MXPX or the Matthew Thiessen solo album. What pushed I'LL BE YOUR GIRL across the line was (a) my wife's incredulousness at my mentioning it might not make the cut and (b) the fact that "Once In My Life" and "Everything Is Awful" have full-on been our anthem songs this past month. This is the Decemberists doing what they do. Folky songs about sea monsters, horse gallop rhythms, and cowboy sing-alongs. Throw in some synth lines to keep things fresh and baby, you've got a stew going.