#explanation in the readmore

[en-djinn]

yt playlist link

i do character playlists a lot coz i find them very fun and it gets me to find new stuff in genres im not as familiar with, since i like to match the genre to the char. tho im a picky person w music so some chars i just cannot make playlists for. luckily all the chars i tend to like feel very similar to my own tastes. anyway, that is to say-

this one is a MESS tonally and in range of genre but everything felt right and i think that honestly fits with adam anyway. i wanted to get some of his melancholy, his suicidal thoughts, his messianic symbolism, his struggle with identity, and the freedom that comes with letting go and becoming magus. theres something about the way he can only truly be happy if hes dead/in soulworld or become the magus that kinda speaks to me.

i split it into two halves, one for warlock and one for magus. i wanted the first half, warlock, to be a little more distant and soft. somber. and then get more energetic/aggressive as it goes to magus, who should be full of strange whimsical sounding songs with that aggressive undertone. luckily thats something thts very easy for me to find as it overlaps with my own music tastes entirely (though i had to resist adding fleshgod apocalypse coz i feel that their symphonic death metal fits SO good. i might do another magus playlist later filled with my own indulgences. which means all (mostly black, obviously) metal. i also had to resist adding vrazorth but if u are interested in experimental/avant garde metal i HIGHLY recommend checking out their album 'emergence', they call it cosmic black metal and it sounds awesome). unfortunately im also a huge fan of 40k and i was THIS close to putting smth off the darktide ost on it too. (warp traveller or embrace of the chaos cult specifically but honestly 40k stuff just Fits for it regardless. the mix of weird out of place sounds and the choirs and stuff. listen to the mechanicus ost if u havent already btw its an Experience). also anyone who knows me will know yes i WAS fighting the urge to add the 21m long experimental track "I" by meshuggah. that thing calls to me like the green goblin mask. if u have the time i also recommend it. it was only out of sympathy for the listeners who will most likely not be into that genre that i abstained. the warlock side was a little harder for me since i was torn between going with my own tastes entirely (metalcore/emo and jungle) and going with what i think actually fits him as a character (prog rock). ive listened to prog rock before but im not super knowledgeable on it and i only tend to like the stuff that starts to overlap with industrial or more aggressive sounds. i knew i had to add king crimson and luckily i HAVE listened to a lot of their stuff before, tho not the entire discography so there might be something better fitting from them but i liked the tone of the one i ended up choosing. i also wanted to add macroblank to the warlock side but i dont use spotify and they only upload entire albums to youtube, not individual songs. either way. it sure ended up with not much prog rock. but i adore the soft floaty sort of sounds for him so i couldnt resist adding more of that.

and ive had people ask me before 'why not just add everything onto ur playlists' and the reason is i much prefer making smaller highly curated ones. it makes me think about it harder and rly consider Why something deserves to be on there.

so yeah. i just wanted this one to be weird and abstract. its my favourite thing about adam. and about jim starlin's art and writing. he occupies the same space in my brain as american mcgee's alice.

i dont normally write stuff like this coz i hate explaining myself, but i thought id give it a try this time. i could go over why i added every song but that feels a little overkill and i dont think i have that much more to say anyway. unless someone asks specifically. also i have some ideas for a more upbeat 80s-2000s pop quillock playlist for later when i get rly inspired. i love music, man.

anyway heres the full playlist as text:

Goldfrapp - Utopia

Sengoku Cyber: Fujimaru Jigokuhen OST - Winner Takes All

Nelward - The Sum of All Our Sirens

Queens of the Stone Age - My God Is The Sun

King Crimson - Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With

Troldhaugen - Catoptric Contortions

Polkadot Cadaver - A Wolf in Jesus Skin

Nine Inch Nails - The Becoming

Carpenter Brut - Leather Terror

Behemoth - Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer

and heres the png of the repeating bg. tried to clean it up a little.

[mumblesplash]

part 2!!!! [read part one here]

transcript below the cut arranged into stanzas to help show where the rhymes are:

“that’s why they brought gem in? as a failsafe?” as a pawn. we were told to point her at whoever we need gone

“gem won’t hurt her allies. …yet.” the curse she carries will it’s had its eye on her since she lost the other eye she was specially selected for her hunting skill it’s quite the high honor. “wow. how generous.” we try

think about it: why does almost no one fight the curse? “given how fast scott killed skizz last season, i can guess.” [“any pain you spare your friends, you’ll have to suffer worse”?] it’s designed to shut down higher reasoning with stress

[johnbleepingzoidberg]

Traveled and unwound my own truth

I've laid my head on the rock of youth

Catch My Fall

pt. 2 of my Rebel Yell perfectworld project i decided to challenge myself with for some reason - pt 1.

SOOOOO i guess this one can be interpreted one of two ways--

post-canon, in which Lysandre is coping with his guilt over the events of XY and is relying on Sycamore to help him through it OR

pre-canon, and Lysandre is crumbling under the pressure of trying to right the world but never feeling as though he's doing enough to halt its corruption (this is what i intended initially but then i realized it can def also be seen as post-canon)

either way, Lysandre has metaphorical blood on his hands from the weight of it all and relies on Sycamore to keep him upright and supported-- whether in their case that's healthy or toxic codependency is up to you, but i'm leading towards the latter for this one :)

some wips as always... there were many, many different directions i could've taken this one and it took me a long time to settle on a final idea but i felt like i shouldnt overcomplicate it or id never finish it LOL (so i figured i'd just overcomplicate it with stupid glitchy effects and weird experimental messy shading instead ASJHFDJ but hey that'll keep all these pieces cohesive yk)

(im planning on putting these altogether in one post once i've finished them all, in the album's song order....fingers crossed they all look good together. they probably wont and i'll probs end up recoloring some of them lmaoooo)

[hexjulia]

i was looking for a way to learn russian not because i have any reason to or expectation of ever becoming fluent but because i have insomnia and need challenges to occupy myself with at night without those things having anything to do with anything i try during the day.

ok now i feel like an annoying cooking blog giving an essentially unrelated story before the recipe, but this motivation probably determines what i look for in language learning resources: no organisation necessary on my part. accessible online. capable of keeping me entertained while half-asleep.

found this!

"The "textbook" for Ме́жду на́ми is this website. It is a free resource that requires no special password or registration. It provides the story line, vocabulary, grammatical explanations and cultural context that will guide your study of Russian. You will also use a set of printed workbooks called Ра́бота в аудито́рии (Classroom Activities) and Дома́шние зада́ния (Homework Assignments).

The program is organized into nine уроки (units). Each one starts with a list of goals so that you know what you will be learning to do in Russian. You should plan on checking yourself regularly against these goals as you work through the material. They will help you keep track of what you know well, and the areas in which you might need some additional work. Each unit divided into three ча́сти (parts), with each часть (part) sharing common thematic and grammatical content. These parts are divided into episodes that advance the ongoing story line and provide new vocabulary, grammar and cultural information. Each episode begins with a текст (text), which you should plan to read multiple times. Listening to the audio, looking at the illustrations, and checking the mouse-over glosses for words and phrases that may be hard to figure out from context will aid your understanding of the text. If you cannot recall the meaning of a word you have seen before, you can look it up by checking the Слова́рь (Dictionary).

After reading and listening to the text several times, you should move onto the Вы всё по́няли (Did You Get All of Тhat?) section, which provides comprehension questions with automatic feedback to help you to check your understanding of the text and to learn new vocabulary. These activities are crucial preparation for the in-class work, which is designed to help you use this new vocabulary and to examine new grammatical constructions.

As you work with the classroom activities, you will read and re-read the Немно́го о языке́ (A Bit About Language) section, which contains information about Russian grammar and usage encountered in the episode. Be sure to make use of the activities with automatic feedback to see if you have understood the new concepts being presented.

[something-about-sunflowers]

What is it about smokers that makes them the least considerate people in the entire fucking world? And I'm including people who vape and people who smoke pot tbh.

(Preemptive 'if this doesn't apply to you then leave me the fuck alone about it, I'm not talking about you but also it probably does apply to you in one way or another and you should do better about that')

My mom doesn't like to go places in my car because I don't want her to smoke in it. She doesn't like to go to the grocery in my car because I won't let her smoke in it. Our regular grocery is MAYBE a 5 minute drive with high traffic.

Everyone I know who vapes does it without a single care for where they are. They do not bother to ask if they CAN do so, they do it until they are told not to. And then they still try to sneak it when they think they can get away with it. They do not care if they blow their vape directly in your face.

When I was a teenager my mom was out of work for a while. My parents were separated and I lived with my mom*. We had such little money on one occasion that, when I happened to have maybe 10$ because a friend lent it to me, I got some mcdonald's for dinner. My mom was mad I used the money for food instead of buying her cigarettes. We had next to NOTHING to eat in the house.

(*Believe it or not this was still preferable to living with my dad.)

Every person I know who smokes pot doesn't give half a rat's ass that it smells fucking RANCID to people who don't. When I was in school there were kids who came by my group's lunch table and would just light up a joint like nobody minded. I minded. The smell was bad enough but the smoke itself ALSO FUCKS WITH OTHER PEOPLE'S LUNGS. SOME PEOPLE HAVE SHITTY LUNGS. They literally only stopped because one of the people in my group wound up pregnant and asked them not to because it could affect her baby. She STILL had to ask them to stop several times.

As a kid I got bullied because all of my clothes smelled like smoke. I had chronic bronchitis and if it wasn't directly caused by my parent's smoking it certainly was exacerbated by it. I have been burned on at least three separate occasions by three separate people's cigarettes because they didn't care enough to pay attention to where they were waving it around.

I already know I have shitty parents and that is a contributing factor to some of this but it still stands that OTHER people in my life are like this too. Everyone I have ever met who smokes or vapes has been like this one way or another. It is infuriating.

[cryptocism]

i actually have no clue if anyones asked this before, but what color were six's eyes before he replaced them?

yellow! same as Bart Thad and Four, as seen in the pages of Teen Titans (2003) issue #98

Thad Four and Six are all in the "blond hair yellow eyes" camp. (Five could be in there too but I like to draw his eyes as more brown than yellow)

[magic-is-something-we-create]

so ive been out and about today a lot and got home quite late and when i got back and started writing for the day i had a really fun/fucked up realization about the current dynamic between ember and their sister autumn

back in this post i mentioned that autumn has kept herself pretty Willfully Ignorant of the Plot this whole time. she's a college student she doesn't need any other existential dread in her life right

well

that also means she doesn't know THE single most important development in ember's life.

WHEN EMBER TELLS HER "yeah uh I'm a [REDACTED]" HER IMMEDIATE RESPONSE IS "oh you've started hallucinating. I'm used to delusions from nimbus but you should go see a doctor about those maybe" and it's SO funny and also SO heartbreaking. because if anyone else had given her that news it'd be fine. but no. ember had to trip and break their nose and then say The Thing and now we're here

*[REDACTED] = a Prophet. aka the magic that's been dead for a thousand years (supposedly) that's UNDERSTANDABLY!!!!! easy to mistake from the outside for psychosis.

[run-muse-dot-exe]

So how did you and Nanashi meet, Fuyumi?

"Ah, well... um..."

"I was at a... really low point. Things at home were... I mean, they seemed better for a minute, Dad was starting to really put in the effort to be around... but I was deluding myself. Shoto had gone to live at the dorms, Natsuo was barely coming home, and whenever they were back, things were... tense."

"I had started chatting with someone on social media, said she was from the area and we should-- y'know, um, hit the town? She liked partying, and tried introducing me to-- guys--"

"T-that part isn't important--! W-we just-- started hanging out a lot, without the guys, and it started turning into-- something more... Except that, um... it turned out she... Planted a bug to try to get dirt on Dad, that she was a villain, even associated with the League, and I... I blamed myself."

"Things just got worse and worse-- L-long story short, I... tried to hurt myself. Went so far as to call her, t-to ask if any of it was... real. She even tried to talk me down-- Once she found out I was fine, that her side lied to her by telling her I was gone, she kinda... snapped. And, um... k-kidnapped me...?"

Inhale. Exhale.

"Dad hunted her down, with a couple other heroes. He was so angry, a-and I'd seen him mad before, but never like that. I had to... step in. They kept her locked up for a good long while after all of-- that-- B-but eventually, they allowed house arrest where Dad and I could keep an eye on her. More to protect her from her father than anything--"

"Oh, w-whoops-- That part also isn't important! Forget I said anything, haha--!"

[toerrishumansodont]

OK, Im gonna make a new blog to put my dumb oc drawings & posts on, so if thats been something you've at all been interested in, u can follow me over at @evilevilevilevilnotevilevilagain

I have GOT to get myself off of instagram, so im gonna TRY and make a commitment to post on the blog instead when the urge overtakes me.

Also maybe like, share writing & music inspo & just have somewhere to ramble abt ocs/story ideas cus I don't really have anyone to torment with it to such a degree. And unfortunately I just think abt it far too often,,,,

(also was wondering if maybe making a fresh blog would be better than bloating this one w all the super old followers n all that...... wud maybe make me less embarrassed v_v; its cringe when youre an almost 30yo adult doing this silly shit, n theres people seeing it who arent in the same boat,, but its also hard to make it into anything more substantial than just the sillies in my own void..... )

(...so maybe if its a specific space carved out just for that with similarly minded people, itd feel less discouraging...)

[prismit]

spent way too long trying to translate the concept of "pride month" to some version of r'lyehian for a dumb terraria thing i might not even make

i ended up with "s'uhnehyeorr'eyar" in case anyone was wondering (just "ehyeorr'e" for "pride")

so, according to this guide:

s'uhn = pact ehye = cohesion/integrity orr'e = soul/spirit -yar = time of

i think "ehyeorr'e" would roughly mean "spirit of integrity," as in the idea of one staying true to themself no matter what. so that feels like a fitting way to refer to "pride."

adding "s'uhn" to the beginning to make "s'uhnehyeorr'e" changes it to what i'd interpret as meaning "unity between spirits of integrity," so that could be used to mean "lgbt+ community"

and finally, the "yar" at the end for "s'uhnehyeorr'eyar" makes it something like "time of unity between spirits of integrity." hence, "pride month!"

[nameless-brand]

What weapon do you like if you had to choose?

So I had the fortune of testing a wide variety of cold weapons because of my association with Spring Chant. And I think my preferences lie with a Crescent Moon Spade.

A chan(2)zhang(4) is a pole weapon that has a flat spade-like blade on one end and a half-crescent moon blade on the other. The half-crescent moon is inverted contrary to expectations so that the convex end is attached to the rod, leaving the concave end open. Note that the blades of a traditional Crescent Moon Spade are not meant to be sharpened.

It is known as a Monk's Spade / Shaolin spade because Buddhist monks would carry these weapons back then to protect themselves against bandits, but it also served an additional purpose. The spade portion is actually meant to bury corpses found on the road, while the half-crescent moon portion is meant to non-lethally subdue wild animals by positioning the crescent over an animal's neck and keep them at bay that way.

From my practice, I prefer heavier weapons to lighter weapons; it's why I wield a staff during my normal martial practice as opposed to a bat or equivalent-bian . And I do like how the origins of the weapon came about, which I suppose is perfect for a mostly-pacifist like me. Broken bones are just as good a way to end a fight if someone intends harm on you.

I once considered a zhanmajian, a large anti-calvary double-edged blade. But in the end, I know that if I connected well with one of those, there won't be much left to piece together. Its name translates to "horse beheading blade" for a reason.

--

On a side note, for martial art movie enthusiasts, the Crescent Moon Spade does make a brief appearance in one of the more modern classics, but most people probably don't realize it because its appearance was so brief.

In the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) attempts to use a heavy version of the Monk's Spade against Jen Yu (Zhang Ziyi) in their fight. However, Shu Lien comically falls backwards in the middle of her swing because the spade portion was much too heavy. The weapon gets immediately discarded in favor of a single rod bian. Haha.

[svngraced]

M.arvel Elanor still has the scars around her neck, though covered by a thick choker. her fiery mutant powers manifested during an attempt on her life after witnessing something she shouldn't have.

they sliced her throat open, left her bleeding out and choking on her own blood on the floor. if she hadn't held her own throat closed until help arrived, she would have died that day. however, the people who attacked her hadn't left unscathed, she had burned her hand prints into the face and chest of the person who attacked her, scaring them and their accomplices off instead of finishing her off.

it was easy to find the people responsible because the burns pointed them out rather obviously, unfortunately Elanor was seen as dangerous herself and ordered to leave the hospital as soon as they'd stitched her throat back together.

life after her powers were unleashed was difficult after that day.

[fingertipsmp3]

I’ve been watching a lot of paranormal documentaries lately and decided to write out all the experiences I’ve had that I can’t adequately explain. Will add a cut because I feel some of these stories could get long, also, if I have theories about what could’ve happened I’ll add them.

First experience: when I was 5 or 6 years old (no older than 6 because we moved out of the house this happened in when I was 6), I was in bed trying to go to sleep when I suddenly heard a lot of voices in my head, overlapping, like someone had put on many radios all tuned to different stations. I don’t remember hearing music and I couldn’t make out any words, although I specifically remember several of the voices sounded angry and were shouting, which really scared me.

I ran to get my mum and tried to explain to her what was happening to me, but the craziest thing about this was, I couldn’t hear myself or her talking. Real sounds that were happening around me were drowned out by the cacophony in my head. My mum tried to comfort me as best she could and came back to my room with me, sitting with me until I fell asleep. I remember the voices continuing for a long period of time, which felt like ages to my child’s mind but was probably no longer than half an hour ultimately. I cried myself to sleep and when I woke up, the voices were gone. They’ve never returned, thank god.

Theories: my mum thinks it was a migraine, but I don’t really get them and have never had auditory hallucinations to this extent while experiencing one. I think it could either have been an auditory hallucination the likes of which I’ve never experienced before or since, or a one-off non-epileptic seizure. (I do experience short auditory hallucinations when I’m about to fall asleep, but they’re never more than 1-2 words or a sequence of music maybe 10 seconds long.) I remember at the time honestly feeling like someone had tuned me in to a frequency where I was hearing the thoughts of every human on earth.

Second experience: My dad died in May 2007. The song All Summer Long by Kid Rock came out in October 2007 on an album, and was released as a single in March 2008. But me and my dad used to listen to this song together in his car no later than the summer of 2004. I don’t have a good explanation for how this came to be. My dad used to drive me to my swimming lessons, which stopped when I was about 8 years old, and I always asked him to play “the Sweet Home Alabama” song. He knew this wasn’t the song by Lynyrd Skynyrd but the song by Kid Rock, because I really liked the lyric “singing Sweet Home Alabama all summer long”.

My dad couldn’t seem to play this song on demand, so I don’t think we had it on tape, but it seems like it was fairly consistently on the radio, because we listened to it at least 3 or 4 times. My dad wasn’t a Kid Rock fan at all, he was a classic rock n’ roll guy; he wouldn’t have owned a Kid Rock album or single. One thing I do find kind of interesting is that listening to this song again, I remember the melody being a bit different, faster, and being sung by a different voice. But it’s a Kid Rock original, not a cover, so I don’t know how that could be.

Theories: All Summer Long is a cover, and the original is lost to time. Or, I’m misremembering, but I swear to god I’m not. My mum asked if we could’ve been hearing Sweet Home Alabama instead, but I was adamant that when my dad put on that song I said “no! Not that one!” So I knew the difference. For me, this is classic Mandela Effect, or a timeslip involving the radio. Maybe even a dimensional thing, I don’t know. I wish someone with a good memory had been in the car with me and my dad, but it was just us.

Third experience: Now this is the one even my card-carrying skeptic mum can’t explain. When I was 13 I was in grief counselling for my dad’s death. My counsellor concluded that a lack of closure, the fact I hadn’t been able to say goodbye, was a pretty big point of agony for me, so he came up with the idea for me and my mum to go to the crematorium where we’d scattered my dad’s ashes and let some balloons go with a message for him. (I know now that balloon releases are a really bad idea for the environment, but I didn’t know that at the time.)

We did it that same day. We didn’t tie a message to the balloons but when I let them go, I thought “I miss you. I love you” or something along those lines. The crematorium has pretty big grounds, not just a memorial garden but a large field and many trees. We’d walked all the way across that field to get to the tree we’d scattered my dad’s ashes near. It was a nice day, the grass was bright green, freshly cut. I mention this because when we turned around to walk back (we’d only been standing at the tree for two minutes or less), the field before us was absolutely blanketed with white feathers. You couldn’t not notice, they were everywhere. It was something neither me nor my mum could explain. How could the feathers have fallen without getting on either of us? How could they have fallen in the first place? We’d have noticed, say, a seagull massacre going on right above our heads. It was like they didn’t fall, they just appeared.

Theories: yeah, I have nothing. My mum said “message received and understood”. I think my dad sent them.

Smaller incidents:

My grandma taught me to knit when I was 10, about a year later, she bought me my own pair of knitting needles, my first pair I wouldn’t be borrowing from her. I was really happy with them and wanted to cast on right away, but when I set them down, they disappeared. Not right before my eyes, but I swear I left the room for about ten seconds to get yarn and they were gone. We tore the house apart looking for them. My grandma has a very small house and she keeps it extremely clean and tidy, yet those needles have never shown up. Not even when the carpeting in the room I lost them in was replaced. I don’t know what happened here. If a house spirit has my 3.5mm navy blue plastic needles, I want them back.

Used to smell my dad’s cigar smoke and aftershave all around my childhood home and occasionally hear his footsteps on the stairs for years after he died. It stopped when I was around 16.

From the ages of 12-13 whenever I was alone in the house I’d hear scratching and banging sounds and footsteps. It terrified me. It was only when I was alone. I genuinely thought I was being targeted by a demon (having recently watched Paranormal Activity probably didn’t help.) When my mum told me the only person associated with our house who’d died was my dad, it all seemed to stop. It was like it stopped because I wasn’t scared of it anymore. It makes me wonder if I somehow created the phenomena with my mind. Teen girl telekinesis?

[just-cat-owner-things]

Siblings divided

Note re: outdoors - they are our barn cats for the rats in the barn, no we would not keep them out there if possible but we're already over capacity to the extent the current cats constantly squabble, and we literally can't seem to find homes for cats when we discover them. Shelters won't even take them in. There's just too huge of a outdoor cat population already. If you cannot offer to come here and pay for them and take them in, vet bills and all, please do not harass or vague me over this. Thank you.

[angstandhappiness]

NEAT

The Hollow Knight to lmk pipeline is real

Yep! Glad to see more buggies joinin the monkey kid gang!

also i drew someone wearing macaque's outfit but you need to guess in the tags of your reblog of who it might be before you look

look he was my previous blorbo im not gonna pass up the chance to dress him up as my current blorbo

[lordtraco]

Behold!! My Shadowpeach Bio Parents AU TAKEOVER contribution! Rìloù Bàng in teeny tiny form!

And an accompanying mini fic under the readmore

Mk gripped the weapon born of his own shadows. It thrummed in his hands, as full of life and energy as Monkey King’s staff. The key difference was that this was his.

Would it be rude to ask his new staff to perhaps not yeet him into the sky on their first day together? Probably. He saw a faint shift in the colors.

Oh no, you like that idea, don't you? 

MK wasn't certain how much his own silliness was just being mirrored back at him, but it slowly started growing as if playfully threatening to do so. 

“...you can morph it freely as you're capable of.” MK tuned back in to the end of Chiyou’s explanation.

“It’s-It’s… WOW it's perfect!” He smiled at them all, looking back at the staff for a moment. 

It was quiet, solid, real. It was his through and through, but… It needed an ode to his hero-turned-family, a reminder of the joy and wonder he felt upon first seeing the staff. 

“It's only missing one final touch!”

Taking a piece from his scarf, MK tied it to his new staff. It cascaded down, not catching on any wind. There were no explosions, no battles to run towards or from, just a quiet, happy moment with his family and a very kind god of war.

It wouldn't last, something would come along and twist his life into a tornado again. But when it did, Rìloù Bàng would be at his side to face it head on. And their ribbons would flow, a heroic sight in both light and shadow!

Thank you @kyri45 for this wonderful comic and inspiration!