#gnash fibonacci

[ecunderbase]

Sometimes a family is a dad, a kid, and two... *double checks transcript* tw-... *triple checks transcript*... two species of aye-aye.

(i.e. @thehowlingowl and I made the most normal family in gw2)

[starseers-garden]

September NA [VS] art party! I can’t say I was a huge fan of the location this time. I appreciated the relevance to SotO (and attended as an obnoxiously green, blatantly-a-demon Kabus), but the dang ettins. Everyone was so wiggly bc of the ettins! I couldn’t get a lot of good pictures.

Gnash Fibonacci you are so handsome

[bitemedotmp3]

16

16. — daybreak

This happens sometimes. Uzi gets so caught up in whatever she's doing- thrifting, looking through junkyards, trying to sneak into bars to catch concerts- that she forgets that eventually, the sun must rise. Sometimes it's not a huge deal, depending on where she is; in Fibonacci, she can stay in the canyon, or here in Golden there's enough stuff to do indoors that she can just stay up for a full 24 hours. Sure, she ends up a bit frazzled by the time she gets home, but whatever! There's no rules and no parents in this city so she can do whatever she wants.

But right now, she's just sitting on a bench in the Mermaid Cove Mall.

"Mkay, cookies were two-thousand dust, the tea was thirty-five-hundred, if I wanna get that adapter it's only nine-hundred and I guess I don't need it but I do want it..."

If someone was looking very closely at her face, they might see a calculator running on it, just some fun post-holiday shopping math. Uzi watches as the number gets higher and higher, coming precariously close to her savings ceiling. The end result is obvious, and Uzi sighs before saying something she never wanted to say for as long as she's lived.

"Man, I need a job."

Boo, hiss. To become another cog in the gnashing machine of capitalism was against everything Uzi had ever stood for, but she kind of wants some money to buy anime merch with. She could, like, become a criminal and just start stealing shit, but that... doesn't seem very in-character for her as a world-saving hero.

"Heya Zee, long time no see!"

A relatively-familiar voice cuts through all the boring math and numbers, and thank robo-god for that, because it sucks. Uzi blinks back to the physical world and spots Frye pretty dang close to her.

"Oh, 'sup Frye?" she says, giving a small wave. "Sorry, didn't mean to space out. Just doing some calculations."

"Let me guess. Squidmas shopping? Yeah, that'll clear you out quick if you're not careful."

"That's a fun name for it. But yeah. I've never really done gifts before, so..." She trails off, just shaking her head. "Harder than I thought."

"Do you not have a robo-Squidmas or something?"

"No, we do, it's just..." She frowns. "Look, I don't think I know you well enough to get into my traumatic background. Also it would take a while, and I don't really have the energy for it."

"Oh, well... Fair enough, I guess. You do seem kinda tired, but I know what would put some pep back in your step! C'mon!" Frye starts to tug on Uzi's hand, but the worker drone's metal frame stays still. "Woof, what are they feeding you?"

"This isn't gonna be something, like, active, is it? 'Cuz I was just gonna spend the next few hours in the manga section of Barnes and Spiral."

"No, promise! It's something where you can just sit and chill! C'mon, I wouldn't lie, would I?"

"I... don't really know you well enough to know if you would."

Frye stops tugging. "Harsh, but I get it. But seriously, if you just wanna sit there and do nothing, you can! I just want an audience where I'm going!"

A grimace spreads on Uzi's face. "I dunno..."

"I'll pay."

Uzi hops to her feet. "Let's go."

She allows herself to be pulled along for a few feet before taking her hand back and sticking it into her hoodie's pocket, because she still has her cool teenager image to maintain. While Frye won't tell her where they're going, she at least trusts the other girl enough to not think she's being led into some kind of trap or anything like that. It only takes a few more minutes for the pair to arrive at their destination, and Frye spreads her arms wide, turning to Uzi.

"Ta-da! Whatcha think?"

Uzi squints up at the neon signage. "Mermaid Cove... Karaoke? I-" Her eyes go wide once the connections click; she's never been to a place like this, but she's seen it plenty of times in anime. "Oh, karaoke! Like with singing and stuff, right? Yeah, I know that."

"Cool! Sounds like you're already sold, so c'mon!"

Uzi doesn't need pulling along anymore, so she follows Frye to the front desk, and then to their own personal room. The other girl/squid/whatever seems to be an expert, and Uzi takes a seat on the vinyl cushions as Frye grabs a microphone and strikes a pose in front of the screen.

"You're in for a treat today, Zee! Your own private Deep Cut solo act, courtesy of... Frye Onaga! And you're catching it live!"

Uzi's visor plays a soft blip as she blinks. From next door, they can hear a deep bass as someone else enjoys their karaoke session. "Oh, is that like, your bandcamp or something?" says Uzi. "That's... cool."

Frye holds her pose for a few more seconds before drooping like a limp piece of seaweed. "Girl, you're killing me. No, Deep Cut's our group! We're super well-known all across the Splatlands! It's just... just me right now, so I'm branching out! Flying solo! Or, trying to. You know how it is."

She does, kind of. Uzi wasn't part of a band, but she did have her little group of Solver-squashers back on Copper 9. Coming to this city, suddenly being out of her element and all alone... It's rough.

"Being lonely sucks," says Uzi, nodding.

"Yeah, yeah... But I'm here to sing, not mope! Here, let me show you! Uh, let's see, it's gotta be in here..." Frye turns, scrolling through the tablet's song selection until her eyes light up. "There! Till Depth Do Us Part! No promises on Shiver's section, but just listen! I promise it'll blow your... whatever you use as ears."

The synth and bass blow over Uzi nearly instantly, and you know what? She's into this. Aside from the string instruments, it reminds her a lot of drone music, and when Frye starts singing, Uzi gets why her group is so well-known, even though she can't understand the lyrics. And maybe it's a little peppier than she usually likes, but it's good stuff. Uzi shows her appreciation the best way an angsty teenager can, with a subtle bobbing of her head and the tapping of her fingers along her leg casing. Also, she's been recording this the whole time.

When Frye finally finishes, arms spread wide, Uzi claps a few times. Not sarcastically, either, that's genuine appreciation. "That was pretty good," she says, nodding. "You said your group's famous, right? Don't they have that dome for celebrities?"

"Just pretty good? Tough crowd," says Frye, wiping sweat from her brow. "But I've thought about it, it's just hard to imagine it without Shiver and Big Man. So this is fine for now! For now, anyways. Now, let's see, what else do they have from us here..."

"Nuh-uh, it's my turn!" says Uzi, holding out her hand. A ring of violet light appears around the tablet, and then it's yanked out of Frye's hands and flies over to Uzi. "You think I'm just gonna sit here for a few hours if it's on your dime? It's my turn! Hell yeah, they've got Dead Batteries on here!"

Frye is about to protest, but she shrugs and takes her own seat on the couch as Uzi leaps to her feet. "Okay, guess I can take a break. Let's hear what robot music sounds like!"

"Worker Drone music! Songs we made after all the humans died! This is Lithium!"

Aside from the synth, it couldn't be more different from Deep Cut's upbeat, uh... beats. And Frye is super impressed by Uzi's ability to lower the pitch of her synthesized voice to match some of the more guttural lyrics.

[punishercross]

And there it is again. A matter of 'deserve' (and he didn't deserve anything, really, not a damn bit), or what he should do. (Deep down, he did want a life like that. Like his double. Content to cook in a shirt and shorts in his own kitchen, in his own house, with his own partner and their garden and their porch. But he didn't know how to be that. He's wondered for a while if there's something wrong with him, specifically, that he can't feel remotely at ease, not here or anywhere. Not anymore.)

He needs his gun.

He needs his vials.

He needs to feel useful, and there's scant few things a weapon's useful for. There's not much else monsters can do except gnash with teeth and claws and make sure its aimed at the right target (it makes him look at his other self with the eyes of someone who recognizes an imposter, or maybe just the jealous eyes of someone who wishes he could be less of himself, too). If he's aiming himself, that monste,r in a way that makes use of what he knows while not acting on the instincts bore into him from years of training, then…

Then that should count for something, right?

"What? Am I supposed to open up some fuckin' cafe instead? I'm not him, Vash." It might have hurt more before the apology, before something gentler, but…It's still difficult to disguise that very hurt that's been there the entire time, even if he could at at least offer a snort of amusement. The first thing most people see when they look at him is 'the other Wolfwood'. Even people who knew him first compared him. His double was cleaner, less openly temperamental. Ran a nice cafe - wasn't running around the depths of Fibonacci cleaning up messes and getting shot in the ear. Not so publicly, anyway.

(It doesn't change the tightness in his chest, when he thinks about it too long. A feeling that doesn't ease up, and only grows with his own discontent.)

His shoves his hands in his pockets, a poor attempt to disguise the fact that his hand had twitched in reaction when a hand was reached out to him, and taken away. "Don't worry, I get it. Everyone else seems to prefer him, so join the club."

Shoulders hunched, Wolfwood finally turns away. At least his expression can't be seen in the lowlight.

"I said it before. Yer seein' what - who - ya want to. I'm not that guy."

('What a monster.')

"…" Nicholas doesn't walk away this time. His voice wasn't nearly so angry or defensive as it was the last time a version of this conversation happened. Nicholas simply stands quietly, only the muffled sounds of the swamp to broach the silence he let linger.

This rush together, skirting past danger through the edges of Fibonacci, leaves Vash breathless and exhilarated beyond the chase. But as their steps slow to a stop, Vash feels that inexplicable elation begin to ebb, too.

It's as though he never expects for them to reach the end of their journeys, together, no matter how many times they already have before. It felt too cruel to accept that they'd have to keep parting ways. All the more, now, anxiety bubbles up in his chest. The pacifist's effort to catch his breath is left to the wayside as he realizes how close he's stopped himself to the other man.

Wolfwood looks so happy. It had been rare to see the cross-bearer let his guard down like this, but it felt wrong to chase after these moments. As if he'd done anything at all to deserve something as precious as this. After all the pain that Vash has caused—to the undertaker, to the world around him—how is it that Nicholas can decide to care about him anyway, again and again?

"Sorry," he so rudely blurts over Wolfwood's thanks, because he can't stand to hear the gratitude. He's smiling, sadly, like usual.

"I'm sorry. That I hurt you so much. Never wanted that. And sorry for making you clean up my messes all the time. And when—when I leapt onto doubting your work, earlier, I…"

Laughter, somehow; bashful and sheepish. Vash notices finally that his hand's risen up to his waist, spread fingers aimed at the other man's hand, so he pulls it up and away to scratch at the back of his head instead.

"Just don't want you t'get into all this again, y'know? You deserve better."

[saltpixiefibercraft]

For someone who claims to despise math, I sure did sink my teeth pretty hard into a hobby that is, at its core, So Much Math.

Wild how that happens.

[100albumcountdown]

31. Tool - Lateralus (2001)

This album is a bit of an anomaly in this list. The only other metal album on here is Isis’ Panopticon at number 99, which is an album that veers close enough to post-rock to not stand out hugely amongst the general genre trends present. This isn’t because I don’t like metal, but more because I find it a very difficult genre to find a way in to (a trait reflected in turn by the large amount of metal fans that tend to be unimpressed by any music that isn’t loud, abrasive and head-bangable). Metal seems to me to be one of the least self-aware genres of music, and in many ways the most separate. Where the best music from other genres tends to sidestep or subvert the tropes and clichés to create something original, metal absolutely revels in them – be it operatic or screamed vocals, sludgy guitar riffing or pulverising drumming – metal tends to beget more metal. As an indie kid at heart, this flies in the face of all my instincts. I am conditioned to appreciate genre bending, textural variety and musical subversion, and cringe away from anything that lacks irony or trades in direct, uninhibited displays of expression. Basically, this is all just a roundabout way of saying that whilst I like some metal, I find most of it to be really cheesy. Lateralus is something else though. It’s undoubtedly a straight up metal album; released at the ascendancy of nu-metal (the absolute pinnacle of metal as clichéd, cheesy bullshit), packed full of distorted guitar sludge and ludicrous drum heroics, and packaged in a sleeve that Spinal Tap would probably consider tasteful. Yet at the same time, it subverts all of these clichés – the ‘none more black’ album artwork peels back to reveal the album’s dual themes of psychology and spirituality, whilst the churning guitars and drums form one solid unit that allows for a surprising depth of dynamics, with darkly incandescent atmospherics as well as surging, epic breakdowns. Singer Maynard James Keenan is anything but a traditional metal vocalist; delivering rage with a seething beauty, his voice as delicate and nuanced as it is powerful and emotive. Barely anything on Lateralus is by the book. ‘The Grudge’ begins in a flurry of teeth gnashing anger, but culminates in hand claps, tribal stomping and a fluid, arcing guitar solo that precedes a gloriously cathartic finale. ‘Schism’ rides on an angular, twisting guitar riff and a dense, shifting time signature, before a brief burst of pure aggression explodes out of the speakers and then tumbles down into a looping, fluid mid section. The title track is a musical representation of the Fibonacci sequence, but with an anthemic chorus that shatters the moody mathematical verses in between. The three part back end of the album ‘Disposition’, ‘Reflection’ and ‘Triad’ pushes even further into atmospheric territory with the inclusion of eastern inspired drumming and a 20 minute long song cycle that ebbs and flows like prime Pink Floyd. ‘Ticks & Leeches’ is the most obviously metal moment on the record, built on a thunderous drum pattern, some grinding guitar riffs and Keenan screeching and seething like a man possessed – but it still contains a slow, creeping breakdown that sounds like something off an early Mogwai album. The one-two punch of ‘Parabol’ and ‘Parabola’ is the album’s pinnacle, with the shimmering, melodic stillness of the former bursting into the epic sweep of its dramatic counterpart. ‘Parabola’ is the single best song Tool have ever produced, it’s tight, razor sharp riffs and whiplash inducing dynamic shifts carrying it’s haunting melody toward it’s epic, strobe-lit, slow motion finale. I can’t think of any other albums that sound like this, with it’s combination of matte black metal tones, atmospheric, complex musicality and accessible melodic sensibility. It’s like hearing all the best elements of Metallica, Pink Floyd and Radiohead combined but without any of those bands defining features, allowing Tool to forge a sonic identity all of their own. If more bands aspired to these heights then there would definitely be a lot more metal on this list. As it stands it seems we’re just going to have to wait another 12 years for their next album to finally appear.

Also listen to: Ænima

[ecunderbase]

wait, hold on, I made more, because I don’t know when to stop being silly

doctor (MD) on doctor (PhD) violence!!!

also tbh sibling-ly antagonism should just be a staple of Sylvari culture

[mahatschi]

I love them..

Sometimes a family is a dad, a kid, and two... *double checks transcript* tw-... *triple checks transcript*... two species of aye-aye.

(i.e. @thehowlingowl and I made the most normal family in gw2)