#some will depend on if this remix/possible video is any good

[taylorrepdetective]

It’s been very interesting to see how this is slowly being picked up in the mainstream media. No one outside the fandom really cared when it was him just being reported as a creepy, misguided edgelord. Then once the porn stuff went around, more people got upset within the fandom, Buzzfeed picked it up and it made it into a few other semi-mainstream publications, like Insider. Black Twitter picked up on it and it spread. But still, no significant impact in the general public. And just when it felt like she might have been winning the PR war with her concerts last weekend and him not being seen, as well as her gaining sympathy because of the crazy crowds, she brought him out again and it picked up again just in time for her to include Ice Spice in the mess, and now it’s in the Washington Post. Regardless, everyone will be watching and listening tonight to see what the fuss is about and I have yet to see any sign of a dent in sales/streams/ticket prices (they keep going up), but I do wonder about that cash grab purple swirl vinyl they put out the other day and how that sold. As well as speak now preorder cancellations. Because those are bought by the die hard fans and that would give them a really good datapoint to see any actual effects from all this, beyond people yelling into the void.

[gynandromorph]

Hey there, recently god rain world and I am struggling though it lol.. wondering if you'd have any tips other than just "get used to dying a bunch" haha. I'm literally playing as the survivor (default slugcat, sorry if I'm remembering the names wrong). Anyway, thank you for the help if you have it, and if not, I'll just power through lol

look up the advanced movement video on youtube. most important takeaways: -how to slide -throwing an object while jumping makes you jump farther, with spears boosting the jump distance most -how to backflip and throw a spear straight down (i've never been able to pin an enemy this way outside of the arena, but there are some places only accessible if you can throw a spear into the ground and use it as leverage by climbing it like a pole) -how to fast swim without boosting by pressing A

any object you come across, it's good to look at its wiki, there's a ton of stuff that's never stated in the game.

always give scavengers pearls and always save pearls or take them with you when you can. if you end up on their bad side, it's also easy to avoid their attacks by moving vertically, as they can only throw horizontally. but scavengers will generally let even low reputation slugcats through tolls for a pearl (excluding artificer). also, crouch when near scavengers if you aren't high reputation with them yet and drop all weapons or they may attack you anyway.

start to memorize "easy" shelters such as shelters with food nearby and the rooms surrounding those shelters.

play with remix options on to make the game as easy as you need it to be.

do not play aggressively and try to fight creatures you can run from. pressing A to jump constantly when fleeing makes it more difficult for an enemy to grab you. if you learn to slide and spear boost the slide spears may have more worth in fleeing than fighting (i never learned to slide well). especially true for survivor, who can't even eat the meat from predator creatures.

that said, most enemies are incapacitated with a spear throw or two, even though it won't kill them. vultures may start to flee and have a difficult time getting back into the air, lizards fall off the background and poles they're trying to climb repeatedly and may also flee depending on their health, and so on. being able to get one good spear shot in pretty much guarantees safety from a predator who isn't already right in your face, but it often incapacitates and stuns predators who have even grabbed you in their mouth already enough to get away from them. the worst creature to do this with is the green lizard, who is heavier and takes significantly more hits. it really pisses them off if you spear them. they can't climb, though, so they are easily fled from.

learn to juke enemies by going through connections or doorways repeatedly while they try to chase you. they can't attack you while you're going through, although they can attack you in the doorway or connection opening (the little arrows). this is possibly the most vital skill i can think of in rain world. usually when i'm juking i will bait lizards if they don't chase me depending on which way i want to go. i'll either run in the opposite direction on the other side of the door once they go through or go back through the door again to spear them in the back because they are slow to turn around. do not try to juke king vultures (vultures who can shoot lampoons from their face). just run for cover. i learned this the hard way, multiple times--

if you're getting slaughtered by a specific enemy over and over again, give up on getting past them and practice killing them. it makes them less scary overall and gives you a lot experience getting away from them. assuming your karma is at the bottom of the ladder anyway, it's really no loss besides affecting your score.

have a map open to consult which way you should go.

a lot of enemies don't spawn immediately and they don't stay in their spawn rooms forever. you can get through some areas by leaving immediately and trying to get through before an enemy spawns, or by waiting a bit and seeing if they aren't even there.

i elect to always have something in my paws when i can, even if it's just two pieces of rubbish. a piece of rubbish works just as well to force a lizard to let go of me if it's latched its tongue on or cause it to fall into a pit while it's climbing the background.

that's all i can think of off the top of my head. i'm not even a great rain world player, most advanced movement i can't do because of how precise it is (fast pole climbing for example is a frame-perfect trick over and over again), but these things got me through all of the scug campaigns except for enot and monk (presumably i can do monk, i just never bothered to)

[studiocutepet]

Kurvy - Rough Draft: Full Process.

Original Date: 12/06/2016

Artist: Ecchi-Star!

Music:

Moonstruck Blossom (Jazz Ballad Remix)

Artist:

くふ

---

Notes:

Hello everyone, Ecchi here. I haven't been around these parts in a while, and by these parts, I mean online. 2020 and 2021, quite the pair of years. You'd think that as a shut-in type of artist, I'd be in my element during a catastrophe that necessitates the avoidance of any and all social contact. For me, a day during the Corona plague could have been just another day in the studio, another day spent happily huddled over my monitor, drawing pretty cartoon girls. But during these bleak, nearly 730 days, circumstances have made my carefully crafted artworker's paradise a distant dream whose shores I rarely visit.

These have been trying years for ole Ecchi. No art and so many responsibilities. So many for whom to care. It seemed the self-centered time of my youth, with its carefree spilling of creative juices on the digital canvas, had come to an end.

Nevertheless, here I am two years later, alive, older, and fatter (or thinner, depending on the era). Though I've barely picked up a pencil, or turned on my work PC during these two years, the inner fire, no matter how many times life has conspired to snuff or suppress it, that drive and desire to create art still burns away within.

As part of reconnecting with my passions, I've been doing some deep cleaning in my head, my surroundings, and on my computer. When it comes to digital files though, the word "reminiscing" might be more accurate. As I plumbed the depths of directories long forgotten, I happened upon a cache of recordings from several years back, during my golden time of artistic productivity… A time (mostly) before kids, before Coronavirus, and before people around me started dying or needing constant care.

This is a video from that archive, a simple screen capture, a partial process. As I rediscovered and rewatched the archive, I thought, I may as well share anything interesting. I've watched my fair share of art process videos over the years and learned a good amount along the way. Perhaps this is useful for someone?

About the video:

The original capture was about 40 minutes, during which I broke down and rebuilt the thumbnail's geometry. For ease of watching the playback is set to 16X throughout most of the length.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I stopped recording after the rough draft. This is all I have for Kurvy. Regardless, I wouldn't have been able to post any of the more...developed work… here. Creating hentai art and staying within the boundaries of YouTube's content guidelines is sure to prove a challenge. We'll see what's possible.

So, in full knowledge that this video is nothing special, I wanted to edit it together and post it anyway. It's a new start.

See you later friends and fellow travelers,

--Ecchi

[elitegymnastics]

Q: What is this?

A: It’s a flyer for a virtual fundraiser on June 4th that Elite Gymnastics is playing. You can access the show at quietyear.com

Q: Hasn’t Elite Gymnastics been inactive for like, ten years?

A: Yes. This is the first Elite Gymnastics performance of any kind since November 30th 2012, at the Horn Gallery at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. 

Q: Why did Elite Gymnastics stop playing shows?

A: Elite Gymnastics started out as me (Jaime) and a bunch of my friends agreeing to help me play my songs live back in 2009. I made a lot of weird demos in GarageBand and my friend Dominique Davis from the band Dearling Physique got tired of watching me sit on them. So, he booked me to play at a show he was curating as part of a small local music and arts festival called Clapperclaw. For several months that’s mainly what EG was. At some point the focus shifted to making recordings rather than playing shows, to participate in the emergent culture of new music distributed via MP3 file-sharing. The lineup winnowed to just me and Josh Clancy, who began creating digital EPs that we posted on this Tumblr page as ZIP files full of MP3s accompanied by a PDF of artwork. This is the incarnation of the group that most people are familiar with.

This was before Patreon existed. If Bandcamp was around, we’d never heard of it. Though MP3 file-sharing culture and file transfer sites like MediaFire and MegaUpload allowed anyone to distribute music freely across the world via the internet, it was still pretty difficult to get people to pay you for it. I think it was for this reason that a lot of internet music back then featured a lot of sampling. A lot of artists’ first forays into the world of DAWs and production took the form of mash-ups, bootleg remixes, and DJ mixes. Artists like Animal Collective, MIA, Kanye West, and Daft Punk for whom sampling was a pillar of their creative process were extremely influential. Elite Gymnastics was no exception - the first song of ours to gain traction online was “Is This On Me?” which made no attempt to hide the fact that it heavily sampled Faye Wong’s “Eyes On Me.” The fact that it was so difficult to make money off MP3s pushed people to make different creative decisions than they would have otherwise. It was sort of a free-for-all.

Eventually, all of this started to change. The major labels started getting a lot more aggressive about trying to destroy MP3 file-sharing culture. Platforms like MegaUpload were raided and taken offline. The replacements that sprung up to replace them were increasingly infested with ads and malware. Corporate platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud adopted Content ID filters to prevent the proliferation of copyrighted music there. Blogs and private torrent trackers being taken down meant thousands of hours of labor were wiped out in an instant. Some of the best archives of the history of recorded music ever created were destroyed without hesitation. Even the most devoted participants lost the will to keep repairing and re-making the stuff that cops and record companies kept obliterating.

Josh and I both dreamed of being able to make a living as musicians. We still do. Back then, we were willing to accept a lot of changes in order to make that possible, which seemed necessary. A lot of the stuff that we were great at just didn’t make any money. Once, we were asked to do a remix of a song called “Sa Sa Samoa” by the band Korallreven. I did the remix by myself, which was normal for us, and Josh was so inspired by it that he spent a week working non-stop to create a video for it. People loved it - the day the video dropped, Pitchfork designated the song as a “Best New Track” and New York Magazine wrote about it in their “Approval Matrix.” The video led to a ton of exposure, but from a financial perspective, it just did not make sense to put that much effort into promoting a remix of someone else’s song. The stuff we were personally excited by just seemed to have less and less to do with what actually makes money.

A lot of internet bands during this era began to palpably shapeshift in an effort to succeed in music as a career. Artists who’d first attracted notice for sample-based bangers they made on a laptop started posing with vintage hardware in their press photos and trading in their laptops for live bands and recording studios. It became harder to distribute DJ mixes or mash-ups that contained copyrighted music in them. Influential bloggers either closed up shop or were absorbed into the traditional music industry in some way. Feeds that once touted bizarre songs by laptop-toting weirdos with no industry connections started to become populated mostly by artists with labels and publicists. The bottom rungs of festival lineups started to consist mostly of new major label signings who have lots of money to spend on stage production but not much in the way of grassroots fan enthusiasm or media buzz. 

Internet music and what people tend to refer to as “indie music” split off into two separate streams. Today, there’s a pretty intense firewall between internet culture and whatever you want to call the culture of vinyl records, mid-sized indie labels with publicists, and positive reviews from the few remaining websites that still pay people to write about music. I call it “publicist indie,” “lifestyle techno,” or “prestige electronica” depending on whether or not the music features guitars and/or vocals. The recent online kerfuffle about NFTs really emphasized this split. The worlds of digital illustration and game development campaigned aggressively against mass adoption of cryptocurrency - if you saw any Medium posts explaining crypto’s environmental issues, chances are they were written by someone from those fields. Every new announcement by an artist that they had minted an NFT was met with a swift and vocal backlash from fans. Though I’ve never really been much of an Aphex Twin fan, it was still pretty startling to look at the replies under his NFT announcement tweet and see hundreds of furious people announcing that he was now dead to them. That’s an artist who has seemed more or less unimpeachable for most of my life up until this point! All of that seemed to change in an instant.

There is a massive disconnect between the insular world of the industry establishment and the cutting edge of online counterculture. We saw this again a couple of weeks ago with the online response to the crisis in Gaza. We saw passionate advocacy for Palestinians from games journalists and developers much more often than we saw it from musicians. This is a very serious problem for music! I do not believe it is possible to please both sides - that is to say, I do not believe it is possible to be part of internet counterculture and the industry establishment simultaneously. The music industry is too conservative, too compromised, too corrupt. If it weren’t for the ocean of valuable copyrights that labels are sitting on, most of them would be bankrupt within a year. If the industry was forced to live or die based on how they handle what’s happening right now in the present, it would most assuredly die. The only people who don’t realize this are those who are being paid to stay ignorant. 

Josh and I did not know this back then. From where we were standing, it looked like internet culture and established media industries were on track to converge. A career in the arts seemed genuinely, tantalizingly possible, right up until the moment that it no longer did. 

In my case, I had really been struggling up until that point. My life had been this ongoing sequence of evictions and hospitalizations, and it seemed to be getting worse, not better. I donated plasma twice a week to pay for groceries and while I was sitting there with a giant needle stuck in my left arm for an hour I would see my picture in The Fader or my songs being recommended by one of the Kings of Leon on Twitter or whatever. Music seemed like the only thing the world thought I was any good at. It felt like my only chance at a peaceful, happy life was somewhere out there in a world I could only perceive through a laptop screen. 

Gender, for me, was a big factor in all of this. The more invested in the craft of songwriting I became, the harder it was to repress or ignore my gender stuff. At that time I’m not sure I even knew what the word “transgender” meant - I just knew that when I showed up at a venue wearing a skirt, no one would talk to me or look me in the eye, and that reading about people like Anohni or Terre Thaemlitz or on the internet made me feel like if I could get out of Minneapolis maybe I could find a place where people would accept me. The internet was like, a pretty toxic place for someone in my position. When I tried to find people to talk to about what I was feeling, nobody tried to tell me to read Judith Butler or ask me what pronouns I preferred. The internet was just like, overrun with predators who just wanted to fetishize me and exploit me. Music seemed like the only way I’d ever have an actual life as myself. I was desperate for that. I was well and truly desperate.

Between all the big changes that were happening to us individually and the music industry moving farther and farther away of the anarchic free-for-all of MP3 file-sharing culture, the strain on us just got to be too much. We stopped trusting each other. We became the unstoppable force and the immovable object, crashing haphazardly against one another’s resolve in a dazzling display of youthful futility. Our partnership ended, and after finishing out the remaining live shows on the calendar by myself, I retired the name “Elite Gymnastics” and started making music on my own under other names. That was that.

Q: Why is Elite Gymnastics coming back now, then?

A: Over the years, Josh and I eventually started talking again. Though there was a lot we did agree on, and potential future projects were discussed, nothing truly felt right. We haven’t been in the same room since Summer 2012, and we’ve both changed a lot since then. We both have other projects and we’ve both developed other ways of working since we stopped working together. It’s a pretty big commitment to put all of that aside in order to join your fortunes together with someone you haven’t seen in a decade.

Recently, Josh decided to leave Elite Gymnastics. His reasons are his own, and I was very surprised by his decision, but after having had time to adjust, I’m really grateful to him. I had kept these songs at a distance for many years, because it seemed foolish to allow myself to get too attached to songs I didn’t feel like I was allowed to think of as mine, if that makes any sense. The songs felt like casualties of a conflict that I had to bury in the ground and try to forget about. Being able to embrace them again felt like re-growing a severed limb or having a loved one come back to life, almost. Feeling like it was safe to love these songs again made me feel whole in a way I didn’t expect to. I became really excited by the prospect of revisiting them, so that’s what I decided to do.

Q: Does this mean you’re going to put RUIN back on Spotify?

A: No. Taking the record off Spotify was the right thing to do. That record was only ever intended to exist during the era of MP3 piracy. I never envisioned a world where the music industry would be so aggressive about policing the way that copyrighted music is allowed to exist online. If we hadn’t opted to take the record down when we did, someone would inevitably have forced us to. If you want to hear those specific recordings again, you’re going to have to do it the way we originally intended: by downloading MP3 files from the internet. Try SoulSeek.

Q: What’s next for Elite Gymnastics, then?

A: Here’s the situation currently. There is no Elite Gymnastics music available to stream or purchase in an official capacity anywhere on the internet. It wouldn’t really be possible for me to put the old stuff on Spotify or Bandcamp now because of all the samples. Like I said before, it was a different time. Those records were created to thrive on a past version of the internet that no longer exists. They weren’t designed to be compatible with the 2021 internet.

Technically, Elite Gymnastics didn’t ever release a debut album. We had EPs, a compilation, and a remix collection. We didn’t make an album, a record that existed as the distillation of all that experimentation that contained all of the songs that fans of the EPs would want to hear, all in one place. It’s like we did Good Fridays but stopped before we made My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

So, I am currently working on the first Elite Gymnastics album. If you were following my stuff as Default Genders, you may have noticed me posting demos on my SoundCloud page from 2015-2018 that were all eventually reworked into the album Main Pop Girl 2019. The album I am making is taking that approach to all the old EG songs, including some unreleased stuff. I’m collaborating with others on some songs and I honestly feel like it has resulted in some of the best and most exciting music I have ever been involved with. It is a drastic reinvention, but iteration and reinvention have always been a big part of what I do. I want to make something that feels like the culmination of everything that came before, and so far, I think I’m succeeding.

Q: When will I be able to hear this new music?

At a virtual fundraiser on June 4th, 2021, where there is a suggested donation of $10. You can access it at quietyear.com

[scottymcgeesterwrites]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Review

Year: 2020

Platform: PS4

I finished this game shortly after posting all my main single-player series Final Fantasy reviews. I was still digesting it and thinking about it to put together my review.

Synopsis:

The Shinra Electric Power Company rules over the city of Midgar, and the eco-terrorists AVALANCHE stop at nothing to try and prevent the life essence of the planet from being used as energy. Barrett, leader of AVALANCHE, hires a mercenary named Cloud Strife for their bombing mission on a Shinra Mako Reactor. Cloud doesn’t care much for the greater cause and only wants his pay. But then, after a mission goes awry, he meets Aerith, a flower girl who is the descendant of the Ancients. He quickly finds himself wrapped up in the greater conflict against Shinra.

Gameplay:

Final Fanatasy VII Remake has one of the best gameplay styles of any Final Fantasy game. It’s that good. It seems like after all these years, this is what Square really wanted to do. Since this was released after Final Fantasy XV, it’s pretty much the successor to its gameplay. While Final Fantasy XV has you more or less spamming the attack button with occasional spell casting and item usage, Final Fantasy VII Remake has you much more involved with the Materia system, abilities, and guarding/evading. One notable example is that Final Fantasy XV always told you when you should guard in order to counter, but Final Fantasy VII Remake has you figure that out on your own.

The abilities are so goddamn flashy and cool during gameplay. Tifa’s moves are quite possibly the most awe-inspiring.

My only complaint is locking onto the enemy during battle. You have to press down on R3 to lock onto an enemy, and I sometimes found that jarring with the camera controls. Sometimes I accidentally disengaged from an enemy and missed an attack. Since your moves are dependent on an Active Time Battle system, you can waste a turn if you get hit while conjuring a spell or taking out an item. That sometimes made me go “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”. But in the long run, those were very small gripes. The battles are so much fun.

Since the game follows only the Midgar portion of the story, it’s linear. But you reach sections where you are free to roam around and do sidequests before continuing with the main objective. I’m sure the later releases of the remake will feel much less constrained. But this remake does a good job at expanding upon Midgar without feeling too redundant.

Graphics:

Jesus Christ. This game is gorgeous.

Both in-game graphics and pre-rendered cutscenes. The switch between a pre-rendered cutscene and in-game cutscene has become much more seamless than ever before.

If you remember my Final Fantasy XV review, I mentioned how NPCs and other in-game animations seemed stiff and stilted. Final Fantasy VII Remake takes steps to remedy that. Characters have more fluid movements and everyone’s lips move a lot more. However, lip movements can come off as awkward. My friend was watching me play, and during one in-game cutscene they said “Something looks weird with their lips.” At times, lip movements seem too dynamic when the character is standing relatively still, which comes off looking like Mr. Ed the horse trying to talk.

Despite those small awkward things, the rest of the game is extremely polished. Remember how blocky Final Fantasy VII was? We now finally see these characters and the world of Midgar brought to life in beautiful HD graphics.Like holy shit. Everyone looks so beautiful.

Before I played this game, I was a Tifa stan, but now, ho man, they made Aerith so much more appealing.

SO.

MUCH.

MORE.

APPEALING.

And Tifa shines better than ever. I’m very tempted to just gush about her but here is just a couple enticing gifs.

Imagine playing this game and still thinking gamers are oppressed.

Story:

Final Fantasy VII Remake follows from the start of the original game up until the party leaving Midgar. Square plans to release the rest of the remake later.

I have to say, they made the story a lot more engaging than the original. That may seem like blasphemy, but the dialogue and voice acting was just so damn good. Some of my favorite moments included the banter between Aerith and Cloud. Like I said, I wasn’t into Aerith that much until I played the remake. She’s just so damn cute and charming. One of my favorite parts was when she said, “Shit” and almost fell, after mentioning how she didn’t need help climbing a ladder. Her voice is so lovely and amusing to listen to. The growing romance between her and Cloud doesn’t come off as forced or cringey, because we now spend so much time with Aerith.

Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie have much more important roles in the story. This gives us a greater sense of Avalanche as a ragtag group.

Entire chapters focus on them, especially Jessie. I cringed a bit at Jessie to be honest, despite her popularity. She now comes off as a copy of Aerith in the sense that she comes on strong to Cloud. But really strong. Like “I want that D right now” strong. Cloud has officially become your usual anime boy who is good at everything that can make any woman magically fall in love with him. So that whole thing made me roll my eyes.

There are some new characters inserted, such as the SOLDIER Roche. I thought they were going to do more with him but, apparently not. The new characters can be a bit “meh”, such as Chadley. Johnny isn’t a new character but may as well be since his role is so expanded. He was probably the most annoying, constantly calling Cloud “bro”. That gave me some bad flashbacks of Prompto’s modern-speak in Final Fantasy XV.

The remake adds a certain new plot element that you’re not sure at first where it’s going until it’s revealed at the very end. The ending can be a bit out there, as the original storyline is changed significantly. SIGNIFICANTLY I was curious if this game would make sense to first-timers, but, probably not when you reach the end. The ending heavily relies on you knowing the original game.

My only complaint about the story was how they started the motorcycle chase cutscene. That was my favorite cutscene of the original game, with Cloud driving down the stairs and the group getting into the car. I liken it to the barrel scene in the original Hobbit novel. But like the Hobbit movie, they made the motorcycle scene pretty outrageous. Like so over-the-top that my initial reaction was to scoff at it. It also struck me as awkward, because there were many moments when the bad guys could have shot them but just. . .stood there watching Cloud kick their asses.

Some people may be upset by how the remake ended, while others find it cool. I thought it was cool. But at the same time, now I want an official “remastered” Final Fantasy VII too. Just a game strictly like the original but with vastly improved graphics.

Music:

The music was pure eargasm. There were many moments when I fanboyed screaming “THIS IS THE SONG! YESSS!” They remixed the songs so well, from the battle theme to the Shinra theme, and the Wall Market theme. Everything you loved about the original soundtrack but MORE gusto, more pomp and circumstance.

A couple complaints though.

1 – I think the focus on making the music more orchestrated takes away the mood of the original music. I missed some of the synth and electronic from the original game because it related well to the technological city of Midgar. The synth and electronic featured in the original game gave off a brooding, darker mood.

2 – I didn’t like what they did with the Crazy Motorcycle music.

Notable Theme:

It’s difficult to find pieces of the original soundtrack as of today, because Square is taking them down from YouTube. Still, some people have managed to keep up some of the coolest tracks from this game. Unfortunately, the videos have gameplay footage, which could be spoilers, technically.

I’ll just leave it as this:

The Jenova battle theme is a much longer piece in this game, but it pays off at the final quarter of the song.

Trust me.

Verdict:

The remake does the original justice. We waited so long for this game and it delivered, unlike Final Fantasy XV.

I don’t think a first-timer would really appreciate it though as much as a fan of the original game would. Sure, there’s nothing stopping you from just going into it without knowing the original game, but there are things that one wouldn’t understand unless you played the original game. In that sense, the word “remake” is a bit misleading. Maybe they’re “rebooting” the entire Compilation of Final Fantasy VII? It seems like they’re going for what they did with the newer Star Trek movies, if you catch my drift. But I can’t say for sure exactly where they’re going with it until the next game comes out, but it seems that way to me.

[matpisound]

memes, and the role of music

Yeah, you heard me right. I'm gonna be talking about memes. Lately, I've been thinking about how much music has become intertwined with meme culture, and how certain songs can become memes on their own. Given that I write a music blog, I thought I'd write about my thoughts on the subject. How DOES music reach meme status?

Well first, we have to define what a meme even is. Obviously it's not just an image edited with a funny caption in Impact font or oversaturated to the point at which it's incomprehensible. Music has to be involved somewhere in there, or else this whole argument falls to pieces. There has to be a broader definition somewhere, right? Yes, there is, and it gives us a perfect grounding for establishing the meme status of music. According to Wikipedia, the term "meme" was coined in Richard Dawkin's book The Selfish Gene, and it defines the word as a cultural entity that can be considered a replicator; basically an idea that can be spread by people copying it and showing it to others, and it can include images, melodies, behaviors, and anything else that can easily be transmitted.

So why does this matter? We can now devise a way to categorize music memes based on what aspect of culture they appeal to. I won't go into every single meme song that exists, but I will go over some of the biggest meme songs in the past couple of years, and there are four main categories that all of them fall into:

Songs that have some sort of cultural significance on their own

Songs relating to shared cultural experiences

Songs that serve as part of a meme, without which the meme potential is lost

Remixes, typically of a sound that has cultural significance

For songs with their own cultural significance, we need look no further that January 2021 with the sea shanty craze; specifically, "The Wellerman". It's a perfect example of how social media has become embedded in musical culture and how sites like TikTok can bring people together through features that allow collaboration. Adam Neely made an in-depth video on this, but the gist of it was that the duet feature in TikTok allows people to come together with collaborative projects like singing sea shanties in a time when we're forced to stay apart. There are other songs that became memes through similar means. "Gangnam Style", "The Cha Cha Slide", and "The Cupid Shuffle" all became popular to the point of memes because they went viral on social media (mainly YouTube) and they were participatory in the sense they had signature dances, which were easy enough for anyone to do, solidifying them into a widespread culture. Some songs are memes due to their established presence in this culture, and they're songs people are expected to know either within a certain group or just in general. Just think "September", "Mamma Mia", and even "Renai Circulation" all became memes simply because of their existence within modern culture.

Culture also follows songs that are entertaining, i.e. funny, and funny songs are part of the epitome of meme culture. These come from the very early days of YouTube all the way to some of the newest TikTok audios. Take the keyboard cat on YouTube for example. Who doesn't love a cat in a suit playing some funky tunes on a keyboard? And Nyan Cat; an upbeat tune made out of synthesized meows while a cat with a PopTart for a body flies through space while farting rainbows. These random gems reflect the spirit of the internet in terms of creativity and just pure fun. There are also songs that are almost like musical shitposts; songs that have almost no meaning but exist for the sole purpose of entertainment through the random. Big Shaq's "Mans Not Hot" is such a fun song, and was really popular a few years ago because of its random lyrics and especially the verse that was just beatboxing. Songs that are so bad they're funny are popping up a lot as well. "Gucci Gang", sporting a laughably terrible sounding beat and 99% of the lyrics just being "Gucci Gang", climbed its way up to meme status just because of how bad it was. The meme status of these songs depends on the hilarity and ridiculousness that internet memes were founded on, and because of that, have embedded themselves into the worldwide meme culture.

Next is songs that relate to shared cultural experiences, so basically all of the movie tunes, game soundtracks, and just other experiences that aren't inherently musical, but contain musical elements. Everyone loves Smash Mouth's "All Star", and was popularized through none other than the hit movie Shrek. On its own it's a great song, but it's unlikely it would have reached the fame it has today had it not been for Shrek, which in and of itself has become a meme. Of course, the other one that everyone knows is "Megalovania" from the game Undertale. Its simple musical motifs combined to make it the insanely recognizable tune it is today, and has almost detached itself from its source entirely. Mario Kart has had several songs that have become memes, including "Coconut Mall" as well as "Dolphin Shoals", which gave birth to the famous Mario Kart Lick. And who could forget about Star Wars with its main theme, "The Imperial March", and "Duel of the Fates" among others. Lazy Town gave us a few gems as well, like "Cooking by the Book" and of course "We Are Number One". Most of these reach meme status because there are simple musical elements that make them instantly recognizable and can trigger pleasant memories of whatever media they came from, that media being a shared piece of culture among the majority of a generation. "All Star" begins that iconic leap from the the root to the fifth of the scale on the opening line, and "Coconut Mall" creates that frenzied feeling like entering a Macy's on Black Friday which just makes it so fun to listen to.

I need to take a minute to comment on the songs in this category that arguably had the biggest impact on the culture of this generation: Minecraft Parodies. Simply say "Creeper" in a room full of high schoolers and I guarantee you it will be followed by a chorus of "Aww man", most likely followed by the rest of the song. You probably already know what song I'm talking about. "Revenge" by CaptainSparklez and Tryhardninja was the song that powered a generation of Minecrafters, and its resurgence in recent years was met with a flash flood of nostalgia and overall good vibes. We had other hits that grew to immense popularity, like "Fallen Kingdom" and "TNT", along with countless others (and I really do mean countless). The parody craze was so prevalent, some people who otherwise probably never would have gotten into music began releasing hit songs. Not to mention all of the original Minecraft songs that came into the spotlight, like "Take Back the Night", "Creepers Gonna Creep", and so many others. This craze spread beyond Minecraft to some newer games like Fortnite, which allowed the creation of one of the most popular parodies today: Leviathan's "Chug Jug with You". Overall, these helped define a generation and not only allowed musicians to be involved in the things they like, but also allowed many people into the world of music.

This next category involves music that became associated with a certain format, as in there's little to no meme within the music outside of that format. The one everyone knows is the iconic Rickroll, the act of building suspense and breaking the tension with the beginning to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" rather than whatever else would logically release tension. Meme formats are tailored to the individual song, and this is no different. The song begins with a sudden electronic drum fill before going into an upbeat 80s dance tune. Often the video preceding the Rickroll will build up to something desirable to the viewer, and that sudden fill subverting their expectations invokes a sense of disappointment, having been cheated out of their reward. However, the fun sound of the rest of the song helps ease that disappointment. The Coffin Dance and Shot on iPhone memes employed a similar concept by building up tension and releasing it by cutting to the music. However, here the music played throughout to help build up that tension while a video, often depicting someone doing something risky or getting hurt in some way, cutting to just the music at the climax of the clip. This employs driving principle of EDM, building up tension and releasing it at the drop. The meme works by mirroring that suspense and resolution of the video with that of the song, and that resolution being different than what would otherwise logically happen is what allows the meme to spread. Obviously, this isn't the only way songs can be part of a format; songs like "Baka Mitai" and "Shooting Stars" have all had their time to shine. However, these memes that work to subvert the expectations of the audience arguably have the biggest impact of the songs in this category.

Finally, we have the remixes, which typically involve altering any of the songs from the above categories. One of the most popular forms of the remix is the mashup, and who better to bring up here than the legendary SilvaGunner, whose videos advertise a track from a video game OST, but end up being some other meme mashed up into it. The reason mashups work as memes is because it subverts our expectations, even when we know it's a mashup. Our brains know how each song goes, but when we listen to them together it creates something completely new that either sounds great or absolutely horrendous. Yet we still listen to them because they're interesting. Additionally, remixing a meme song in a funny way is a common form of musical meme. It can occur through, super heavy distortion, or repeating a section of a song throughout the song at a level far more than a mere motif, or deleting parts of a song leaving only the memeable parts, or simple pitch shifting, among so many other ways of remixing. The possibilities are endless. The reason remixes are such good memes is they take songs with cultural significance and change them entirely, giving them a whole new meaning.

Well there you have it. Music and memes have gone hand-in-hand since the very beginning, and as culture evolves and memes become more advanced, there's no doubt that these threads will entangle themselves even further. Thanks for reading and if you have any interesting thoughts on music memes or just wanna talk about your favorite ones, feel free to share! That's all, and I'll catch you at the double barline!

[antonradke-music]

DJ’s: YOU AREN’T PRODUCERS. TAKE THAT WORD OUT OF YOUR SOCIAL BIOS.

Possibly controversial opinion:

TLDR: DJ's: If you're not posting original music, edits, remixes, or anything of the sort. Please don't put "producer" in your SoundCloud bio. It's alot like that guy in High School who would say "Yea man I play guitar, I shred like, all the time" then you hand him a guitar and he just starts goin ham with a poorly executed and under-practiced "Smoke on the Water" or "Enter Sandman" opening riff. On repeat. The entire time he plays. Except with DJ/Producers you can't just hand someone a laptop to "hear them shred on a DAW" so its alot easier to get away with in our EDM world.

FULL RANT: There is a huge difference between "DJ" and "Producer" and there isn't a single thing wrong with just being a "DJ" and not both. People still need and want DJ mixes. There's zero shame in admitting that you don't, or don't know how to, produce music.

  It only bugs me (and to be clear, it doesn't even bug me all that much) coz producers like myself and my friends spend countless hours learning and mastering our craft, so that title of "producer" is somewhat earned in my opinion. You can't just download a DAW and say "I'm a producer" if you've never once truly used it.

  Producers create. DJ's mix. If your SC page is only mixes, you're a DJ. If your SC page contains original content/music you created yourself, then there's nothing wrong with adding that "producer" bit in your bio. Even if what you're posting is ID's, WIPs, ideas, bootlegs, etc. It doesn't need to be fully finished and mastered music.  If you created it, you produced it, you are a producer on some level (beginner/intermediate/TUNE GOD, etc)

If you're a DJ now, and are just now learning to produce, just wait until you start posting/uploading your tunes. THEN add that fabled "producer" title to your socials.

  I'm also not alone. Myself and several of my producer friends have expressed at least some frustration towards the DJ's that both call themselves a producer in their socials and even (sometimes) out in public. It can definitely be a "wtf" moment (and this has literally happened to me before) when you are talking to someone, be it an Entertainment/Booking manager or a bigger DJ, telling them about your music and your work. Then another DJ shows up and starts doing the same. But you know that person, and you're aware of the fact that they've never made a tune or have even tried to start learning.

  Now there's the possibility that someone who's never worked on tunes in their life could get the credit or booking that you were working so hard for, and they didn't spend a minute doing the same. They just happen to be VERY good at talking to promoters, knowing what they want to hear, and manipulating the truth to fit a narrative that will get them hired or booked. And this has happened to me. They ended up getting a better time slot than me as they grossly exaggerated their SoundCloud stats, and played a song to the promoter by an underground artist claiming that it was their own. I kept my mouth shut. I should have spoken up, but I didn't think his ploy would work and I was new to that particular local scene, I wanted to avoid burning bridges or looking salty/bad. His set ended up being really rough, he'd lied about knowing CDJ gear (he didn't), spent an hour trainwrecking almost every transition, the dance floor was empty by the end of his set, he left the venue in a hurry afterwards and I've never seen him since.

Unfortunately it's not like many local event managers actually care. They just want a good DJ, and they'll often believe you if you tell them you're more than just a DJ. They likely don't have a reason to doubt you, and often don't care enough to check the validity of those claims. Or maybe they don't even know the difference between "DJ" and "Producer"

So in in summary: DJ's. You're not producers. Not unless you make your own music/Unless you are a creator. And just for the record, opening a DAW, playing with Serum for a few minutes, and tossing a few loops into a bus/channel doesn't count. Take the time to learn properly how to write progressions/melodies, program sequences, mix-down your track elements, structure your tune and bonus points for doing it all without presets (learn sound design) and without loops (learn drum & pattern sequencing) If you have that DAW installed, you're already sooo much farther ahead than tons of others in your position. Hit up YouTube for some tutorials and you're on your way! 

In Conclusion: Please. Please. PLEASE don't take credit for the kind of work producers spend up to 10-15 hours a track doing (my average time to finish a song entirely). You could cost a talented soul a gig or time slot they've been busting their asses for for years. There really isn't anything wrong with being JUST a DJ. Its a good thing, and still a valid and useful skillset with tons of work/gig opportunities. I played plenty of gigs before I really started calling myself a "producer". You may not get the best timeslots as compared to producers. But be honest with yourself, you could be a fantastic DJ, but who most deserves good timeslots at events? The guys with something to promote. A product to offer. And that product is their creative content/music/whatever. And that guy could be you, you just need to take the time to learn and work hard at honing your craft and skillsets.

  Soooo take "producer" out of your bio if all you're posting is mixes and mashups. And if your bio says it, or you identify as a Producer, you better expect me to fuckin test you on it cause I will. Immediately. And if you don’t pull a home made, non-plagiarizing, ORIGINAL piece of creative expression/content out of your ass in that very moment then I swear to Cthulhu I will perform a social/career crucifixion (alot like “social/career suicide” except I do it to you) on you. Your ‘music career’ ends right there on the spot, ESPECIALLY if you play some underground artist and act like its your music and take credit for it. That’s just so far from ok. And I WILL notice. I was an underground non commercial radio DJ for over 2 years. and a lifelong enthusiast all around. Trust me. I will know. So just be honest with yourself, and others. Please, and thank you.

           - Signed, bedroom producers the world over.

PS - I’m SERIOUS guys. I won't stay silent next time. If I see a DJ try to take credit for another artists work (especially while talking to promoters, and especially taking credit for underground artists work) I will shut that shit down instantly. I will ensure they're instacancelled on the spot and won't play a gig in that area ever again. Plagiarism is NOT COOL. Don't plagiarize. Seriously. You will never have a career in music if you make Plagiarism a part of your “strategy for success” in the music industry. And I will personally work towards ensuring that. (example: I still to this day convert people to the cancellation of DJ Bl3nd. That POS blatantly ripped off so many artists, and is a perfect PERFECT example of a DJ claiming to be a producer. But isn’t. AND he used plagiarism + ghost producers COMBINED to make it seem like he was a producer) I don’t care if you do end up learning to produce after the fact and start making decent tunes.. If you plagiarize and try to use it to advance your career, I will do everything I can to stop you. For ever. 

P.P.S. - For those of you DJ's who are learning to produce, don't take any offense to this rant its not directed at you guys, and please PLEASE don't get discouraged. You're likely not even applicable to this rant as you're actually working towards the title. So let me help you in that, below this text I'll be linking a few awesome YouTube producer channels who upload educational music/producer content. As well as some links to great sample/drum kits and more useful tools to help in your learning curve. I am also always available for producing tips and advice, just send me a direct message or comment on this post and I'll give you the best answer from my own experience/abilities/knowledge. Thanks for taking the time to read this ridiculous and stupidly long rant. I hope you can see where I’m coming from. And I’m sure many actual producers can agree with a lot of my points and reasoning. Have a good one. Peep my tunes if you have some time. Peace and deuces to all! -Anton Radke

www.soundcloud.com/antonradke www.facebook.com/antonradkemusic booking/collabs/commissions/general inquiries/demos: antonradkemusic@gmail.com

Resources and tools for learning producers: Some production education channels on YouTube that I highly recommend:

Dylan Tallchief has some fantastic tutorials for many different EDM genres which cover more than just production. He talks in depth about music theory, sound design. All of it. He shows how to use both Ableton and FL Studio. HIGHLY RECOMMMEND this channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIu2Fj4x_VMn2dgSB1bFyQA

For rap/hip-hop producers, I recommend watching videos made by these two gentlemen: 

Praxi Plays covers tons of genres/sub genres, and different styles of commercial, and less than commercial rap/hip hop music. He teaches using FL Studio:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAE7Doxo5WQRjLPz7JYa7Fw If you prefer darker, more underground rap music, or just less than commercial stuff in general, Based Gutta covers tons of styles of rap beats from the underground rap culture. He’s great, and also pretty hilarious. Also uses FL Studio. Oh and he does Lo-Fi stuff a whole lot as well:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTrrlfsv-5IBQ1SgPBawT3w

COMPOSERILY is also a good one. But a lot less serious. His videos are definitely more parody and satire than anything, but there’s still lots you can learn from watching him. Tons of useful stuff in his videos. He also does both Ableton and FL Studio depending on the song/artist he’s trying to sound like.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Ujq8PBm0MWraaXd8MsIAQ

For drums and other samples, I highly recommend getting a Splice Account. Its incredible So many options! And you can download individual sounds. You don’t have to download an entire sample pack if you just want one kick drum that it happens to have which is great. A good brokeboi alternative would be Looperman. Its basically a discount/Wal-Mart level “Splice” style service but free.

www.Splice.com

www.looperman.com

Some useful sample kits I recommend getting for the sake of drum sequencing/programming:

XFER Pack by Steve Duda and deadmau5 (great for house and 4/4 edm genres) 

BIGHEAD Sample Pack by BigHead (available on Splice) [great for trap/rap/hiphop] 

literally ANY vengeance or cymatics sample pack will also be a great choice for practically any type of bass music. Face it. Bass music drums are boring and are all almost IDENTICAL from song to song (with the exception of the kick drum) so any Vengeance or Cymatics dubstep sample kit will do you justice here.

VSTs to consider: EDM: Sylenth1 (must have), Razor (underrated), Massive, Serum (must have), U-He Diva, Nexus (overrated but useful), Dblue Glitch, DBlue Tapestop, Engineers Filter (free, amazing Equalizer. deadmau5 approved), CamelCrusher, OTT (overrated but useful), Cthulhu (MIDI sequencer programmed by deadmau5, hella cool but confusing)

Rap Music VSTs to consider: Omnisphere. that’s it. I’m not kidding. A talented producer armed with Omnisphere, and a decent drum sample kit, who is very good at sampling and writing melody/progression can create THOUSANDS of Grammy worthy rap/trap beats without even once reusing an Omnisphere preset.  Its like Nexus. Except it truly doesn’t suck, and is worth the absurd price tag.

-Anton Radke  www.soundcloud.com/antonradke www.facebook.com/antonradkemusic booking/collabs/commissions/general inquiries/demos: antonradkemusic@gmail.com

[dumb-american]

The Rebuild of Final Fantasy VII: Your Expectations Will (Not) Be Met

I apologize for the stupid title and I promise I’m going to talk about the Final Fantasy VII Remake, but I have to get this out of the way first. Sometime in the mid 2000s, acclaimed artist and director Hideaki Anno announced that he was going to remake his beloved anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion the way it should have been the first time, free from technical and budgetary restraints. Evangelion had a notoriously strange ending when the original anime aired, consisting of character talking over still images, abstract art, and simple animations. It was highly polarizing and controversial. Anno, for his part, received death threats and the headquarters of the studio that produced the anime was vandalized. Soon after the initial uproar Anno would direct The End of Evangelion, a retelling of the final two episodes of the anime, and that seemed to mostly satisfy the fanbase. Looking back now, The End of Evangelion wasn’t “fixing” something that was “broken,” no, it was a premonition: a vision of things to come. Why remake the ending when you can just remake the whole damn thing?

The mid 2000s also saw the birth of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII: a sub-series of projects expanding the universe and world of the video game that had “quite possibly the greatest game ever made” proudly printed on the back of its CD case. The Compilation consisted of three games, all on different platforms, and a film. First was Advent Children, a sequel to Final Fantasy VII, where three dudes that look like discarded Sephiroth concept art all have anime fights with our beloved protagonists, culminating in a ridiculous gravity defying sword fight between Cloud and Sephiroth. Before Crisis and Crisis Core are prequels that expand the story of the Turks and Zack Fair, respectively. Then there’s Dirge of Cerberus, an action shooter staring secret party member and former Turk Vincent. Were these projects good? I’d say they were largely forgettable. Crisis Core stood out as the obvious best of the bunch and I think may be worth revisiting.

As a business model, the practice pioneered by the Compilation would continue on and eventually brings us FFXIII (and sequels), FF Versus XIII (which would later become FFXV), and FF Agito XIII (which would later become FF Type-0). If that’s all incredibly confusing to you, I’m sorry, I promise I will begin talking about the Final Fantasy VII Remake soon. Suffice it to say, both Final Fantasy VII and Neon Genesis Evangelion have a certain gravity. They punch above their weight. They are both regarded as absolute classics, flaws and all. And yet, in both cases, the people responsible for their creation decided that their first at bat wasn’t good enough and it was time to recreate them as they were meant to be all along. I think this way of thinking about art is flawed, limitations are as much a part of the creative process as vision and intent. Yet, we find ourselves in a world with a remake of Final Fantasy VII, so I guess we should talk about it.

From this point forward, there’s going to be major spoilers for every Final Fantasy VII related media. So, be warned.

So, is the Final Fantasy VII Remake any good? To me, that’s the least interesting question, but we can get into it. FFVIIR is audacious, that’s for sure. Where Anno condenses and remixes a 26 episode anime series into four feature length films, the FFVIIR team expands an around 5 hour prologue chapter into a 30+ hour entire game. Naturally, there will be some growing pains. The worst example of this is the sewers. The game forces you to slog through an awful sewer level twice, fighting the same boss each time. This expanded sewer level is based on a part of the original game that was only two screens and was never revisited.

Besides the walk from point A to point B, watch a cutscene, fight a boss, repeat that you’d expect from a JRPG, there’s also three chapters where the player can explore and do sidequests. The sidequests are mostly filler, but a select few do accomplish the goal of fleshing out some of the minor characters. You spend way more time with the Avalanche crew, for example. Out of them, only Jesse has something approaching a complete personality or character arc that matters. The main playable cast is practically unchanged which was a bit surprising to me. I figured Square-Enix would tone down Barret’s characterization as Mr. T with a gun for an arm, but they decided, maybe correctly, that Barret is an immutable part of the Final Fantasy VII experience. Also, it’s practically unforgivable that Red XIII was not playable in the remake considering how much time you spend with him. I don’t understand that decision in the slightest.

The game’s general systems and mechanics, materia, combat, weapon upgrades, etc. are all engaging and fun and not much else really needs to be said about it. I found it to be great blend of action/strategy. Materia really was the peak of JPRG creativity in the original FFVII and its recreation here is just as good. The novelty of seeing weird monsters like the Hell House and the “Swordipede” (called the Corvette in the original) make appearances as full on boss fights with mechanics is just weaponized nostalgia. In general, the remake has far more hits than misses, but those misses, like the sewers and some of the tedious sidequests, are big misses. It is a flawed game, but a good one. If I were to pick a favorite part of the game, I’d have to pick updated Train Graveyard section which takes lore from the original game and creates a mini-storyline out of it.

If that was all, however, then honestly writing about Final Fantasy VII Remake wouldn’t be worth my time or yours. The game’s ambition goes way further than just reimagining Midgar as a living, real city. There’s a joke in the JRPG community about the genre that goes something like this: at the start of the game, you kill rats in the sewer and by the end you’re killing God. Well, when all is said and done, the Final Fantasy VII Remake essentially does just that. Narratively, the entire final act of the game is a gigantic mess, but if you know anything about me then you know I’d much rather a work of fiction blast off into orbit and get a little wild than be safe and boring.

In the original games, the Lifestream is a physical substance that contains spirits and memories of every living being. Hence, when a person dies, they “return to the planet”. It flows beneath the surface of the planet like blood flows in a living person’s veins and can gather to heal “wounds” in the planet. In the original game, the antagonist, Sephiroth, seeks to deeply wound the planet with Meteor and then collect all the “spirit energy” the planet musters to heal the wound. The remake builds on this concept by introducing shadowy, hooded beings called Whispers. The Whispers are a physical manifestation of the concept of destiny and they can be found when someone seeks to change their fate, correcting course to the pre-destined outcome. Whispers appear at multiple points throughout the game’s storyline both impeding and aiding the party. The ending focuses heavily on them and the idea that fate and destiny can be changed. We receive visions throughout the game which some will recognize as major story beats and images from the original game. After dealing with Shinra and rescuing Aerith, the game immediately switches over to this battle against destiny and fate that you’re either going to love or hate. The transition is abrupt and jarring. While Cloud has shown flashes of supernatural physical abilities throughout the game, suddenly he has gone full Advent Children mode and is flying around cleaving 15 ton sections of steel in half with his sword. The party previously took on giant mutated monsters, elite soldiers, and horrific science experiments, but now the gloves are off and they’re squaring up against an impossibly huge manifestation of the Planet’s will. Keep in mind, in the narrative of the original FFVII, the Midgar section was rougly 10%, if that, of the game’s full storyline. This is, frankly, insane, but I’d be lying if I didn’t love it.

The Final Fantasy VII Remake, with its goofy JRPG concluding chapter, is forcing the player to participate in the original game’s un-making. We see premonitions of an orb of materia falling to the ground, we see an older Red XIII gallop across the plains, we see a SOLDIER with black hair and Cloud’s Buster Sword make his final stand, we see Cloud waist deep in water holding something or someone. We all know what these images represent, they’ve been part of imaginations for decades. But the Final Fantasy VII Remake allows us (or forces us, depending on perspective, I guess) to kill fate, kill God, and set aside all we thought we knew about how the game would play out post-Midgar. The most obvious effect of our actions is the reveal that Zack survived his final stand against Shinra and instead of leaving Cloud his sword and legacy, helped him get to Midgar safely. I have my doubts and my worries about the future of this series. I’m not sure when the next part of the game will be released or what form it will come in, but I can’t believe I’m as excited as I am to see it.

Of course, part of me wishes they’d just left well enough alone. Remakes are generally complete wastes of time and effort. Not all, but most. Maybe I’m, to borrow a term from pro wrestling lingo, a complete mark here and I just love JRPGs and Final Fantasy VII so much that I’ll countenance close to anything bearing its name. I’ve tried my best to be as critical and fair as possible to the game and I hope that if you’re on the fence and reading this I’ve maybe helped you decide if it’s for you or not. I think the Final Fantasy VII Remake is worth your time if you’re looking for a good, meaty JRPG. It’s not perfect and it’s final act is insane, but that just makes me love it more.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like for Zack, Cloud, and Aerith to face Sephiroth in the Planet’s core? I know 15 year old me did. And he may get his wish.

[lukebennett]

Week 2 - Activate the Collection

A way I started to engage with the material for this week is asking myself a series of questions that showed up in the lectures.

What do I want to make?

What am I Making it from?

How will it be made?

What are the reasons for making it?

Answering these questions will aim to define my practice and what ideas and approaches will inform my work and why.

My initial thoughts about conducting creative work in the audio field is to take a more art thinking approach, rather than solving a problem, i’d focus on forming idea’s from existing ideas and creating a chain of ideas that isn’t dependent upon solving a problem.

Design thinking however could be a viable approach, as the main difference between the approaches in my eyes is that design thinking aims to solve a problem, in this case, it is how the art collections interact with the audience, this applies as our goals within the subject are to enhance and re imagine these art collections within an online environment.

However if I am to make use of the creative freedom we have been given to engage with all of these art collections, it would be a wasted opportunity I think, to take a design thinking approach, where as an Art thinking approach I would be able to bounce off whatever Ideas I have without being bound to the thinking of ‘will this work’. In short, the ability to try things with no proposed outcome is an approach I want to explore, this is inspired partly by David Lynch when he said that ‘great ideas are caught’ and not intended to be great from the initial formation of the idea (Lynch on creativity).

Something else that I engaged with was the ‘what comes after a remix’ question posed by Manovich. This particularly interested me given my electronic music background and electronic music being discussed as an aspect of ‘remix culture’ in Manovich’s article. The thought of, ‘when will we get bored of the same cultural objects being re-used again and again’ this makes me think that logic in creation might not be the best way of creating something new and unique, given my skillset in audio is heavily weighted in this remix culture, not necessarily directly, but defiantly ideologically, I find myself constantly borrowing ideas and techniques that I learned from other people. The main question from this document which I would like to engage with is “will it be still psychologically possible to create a new aesthetics that does not rely on excessive sampling?” (Manovich 2007)

Collections I would like to engage with:

My thoughts at this stage are still very broad, however I was most attracted to the Richard Grant works as this felt very familiar to music I have listened to in the past and visuals which accommodate the music well. My thoughts on addressing this would be to use the existing audio and visuals and create something using these as my starting point. My thinking is using the idea of remixing as a starting point then not drawing on any other ideas from outside this context, thus limiting the approach of remixing to simply the initial idea where I can hope to address creating something by letting the ideas flow from there and implementing an art thinking approach.

I am also interested in pursuing some of the ACMI home video collections however I haven’t found any good ideas for how to approach any particular video’s yet but I am really interested in taking up the opportunity to work with that collection.

Refs:

Lynch on creativity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNufijIDD-Q

Manovich 2007, What comes after a remix: http://manovich.net/content/04-projects/057-what-comes-after-remix/54_article_2007.pdf

[gqazngaming]

The Musou Mashup! Warriors All-Stars Review

Warriors All-Stars is a celebration of Koei Tecmo characters in one a new musou game.

The Roots

I still remember my first taste of musou. The Dynasty Warriors series has been around since the launch of the Playstation 2 era. Released on August 3, 2000 Dynasty Warriors changed the beat em up formula from the 2D platform on to the 3D platform. Just in case you don't know what Dynasty Warriors is, it is based off the Romance of the Three Kingdoms franchise. ROTK is famously known as a strategy game and Dynasty Warriors is to be the action genre of ROTK. This was my first memorable jump from 2D to 3D on the beat em up genre.

The Mechanics

Much like my Dungeon Fighter Online review, beat em ups are often labelled as repetitive. But much like Dungeon Fighter it's all about "how you fight, which means characters play a big role in creating variety in a game with repetitive gameplay. It's no secret. You have to like this type of game to enjoy it. If you enjoy the characters of Koei Tecmo games and the Dynasty Warriors formula this game was created for that desire.

Every musou iteration will have it's own special game, combat, and system mechanics. From Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, Orochi Warriors, and more each game has it's own type of combat system. As the games developed over time W-Force (DW's developer) has added and removed certain things to keep the game fresh. Some changes are welcome and some changes seemed unnecessary. Personally, being able to add more into a game is more important than taking away. The player can also choose to use certain combat mechanics and options. Having that option will always add value to the game.

New(ish) but familiar combat

If you've played a musou game, picking up this game will be natural to you. Typical Dynasty Warriors fanfare. There's an main attack and a heavy attack, a jump button, and a musou (special) button. Reach character will have it their own combat tree but not every character is unique. The characters fall under specific combat molds and skill trees. There isn't really much new to the combat with a few exceptions of a few addition "tag features". Pressing a direction on the d-pad will enable you to temporarily tag in one of the 4 members of your squad. After a few minutes you will return to your main character. It's a strange addition but I applaud them for trying to keep it fresh.

The Look

Warriors All-Stars is not going to break any boundaries in it's graphics department. Character models carry specific rigs that are will be shared with the roster. You'll find many of the character models share the same neutral pose and moving animations. I will say that Warriors All-Stars does do a great job with "keeping it together". Very seldom I encountered frame drops especially with all the spark effects and the amount character models on the screen. I still remember in older Dynasty Warriors titles where character models would disappear during combat so compensate for frame rate. The power of the older system could not sustain the vision of what musou games were trying to achieve.

The Story/Plot

Koei Tecmo characters are summoned to a new world where three members of the royal family are fighting for each sacred treasure they hold to save their world from impending doom. The goal is to combine the three sacred treasures to save a spring that brings life to the world. Each member of the royal family summons their own set of Koei Tecmo characters and as you progress you will meet and acquire more heroes to add to your roster. The plot unravels the more you play. And as you play you find out that there is more to the story than meets the eye.

SPOILERS Once you unlock specific heroes and achieve certain criteria different story paths will unlock that will lead to one of the many endings. This game offers multiple playthroughs depending on which characters you have unlocked and which faction you decided to fight for. Personally, I unlocked about seven to eight endings on my blind run. I later returned to the game to pursue the true ending. There are also hero endings that are more focused on the relationships of some heroes. These are what I call optional endings.

The Sound

In my opinion, EVERY music of a musou game sounds the game. It doesn't matter if you've played Dynasty, Samurai, Arlsan, Berserk, One Piece, musou music is very noticeable. Instrumental J-Rock riffs with some remixed themes from certain stages of each franchises games do show up. Another good thing is you can pick the background music before a stage loads. Having control of the music does give it more variety but personally, I did not pay much attention to the music.

The Feel

It feels.. well.. like a Dynasty Warriors game. LOL. There are some characters that offer more impact with some of their move sets but it will ultimately break down to which characters move set you prefer to beat the level as quick as possible to move the story along and grind out those levels. It always feels good to play a musou game when you want to feel like strong bad ass. Video games are suppose to be fun right?

The Why

Why should you play this? Check some off this list:

Do you like Dynasty Warriors? Do you like the Musou series in general? Do you like any of the playable characters in the game? Have you ever wished there was a Musou game of the character you picked? Do you want to feel like a super powered warrior in a battlefield?

If you said yes to 90% of these things you should play it. I'd like to confess that I DID NOT buy this game at launch nor did I buy it a full price. As a long time gamer I KNOW what musou games are and what they have to offer. Personally, I don't like to play full price for games that I want to play and not NEED to play. I already knew what this game had to offer and I picked it up at a $19.99 price point new. With so many games release and my ever increasing backlog, I can afford to wait. And unless they release another musou game that blows me out of the water I won't be picking up any of them at launch anytime soon.

Last Thoughts

Referencing on "The Why" if you are a fan of the series, just add this to the many other iterations of the musou series. If you are collecting, it's a must have to add to your collection. I enjoy mash-ups and collaborations and Warriors All-Stars did a decent job placing characters in cel-shaded JRPGS into an action brawler title. If you are a fan of any of the playable characters, you will either enjoy this game or think this game is weird. I don't blame you. Remember when they made Hyrule Warriors? They put Link in turned him into a musou character. Many people thought it was a weird Zelda game, but what they really needed to know was it was a musou game with Link as the main character.

If you can pick up this title at around $20-30 dollars it will be worth your time. There is over 20-30 hours of gameplay in there. Fair warning as I repeat my statement from earlier, if you aren't a fan of musou games this game may not change your mind. But if you have an open mind and a wallet, it wouldn't hurt to try and play this decent average action game.

If you are looking to pick up this game check out my affiliate link below: https://amzn.to/31NweGo

GQAzndood

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[twatd]

Once Again

We return. WicDiv is in the final stretch, and so is TWATD. The first of our two essays on #44, focusing on the issue’s echoes and callbacks. Spoilers – like oh so many spoilers – below the cut.

Alex: Remember issue #14 of The Wicked + The Divine? The Woden remix issue? I reckon, with a bit of ingenuity, you could use the same method – cutting up panels from elsewhere in the series, pasting them in new contexts – to make a fan edit of #44, front to back.

The issue is crammed tight with echoes of old images. It put me in mind of Avengers: Endgame, the way it’s constantly calling back to moments from the past twenty-one movies, and the criticism of that tendency as ‘fan service’.

In WicDiv, this echoing feels inevitable. The series has always had its repeating motifs. Going  back to the very first issue, we get a whole host of phrases we’ll be seeing over and over: “Once again, we return.” 1-2-3-4. “I’ll miss you.” “Don’t.” Kllk. And images, too – from that very first cover, with its carefully-framed headshot echoed on the first page inside, something the first arc plays with again and again.

But what is the purpose of it, other than reminding us of something we’ve seen and loved in the past?

To answer that, let’s look at some specific examples – beginning, as the issue does, with Lucifer. From the very first panel of her, stood in a variation on her classic power pose, Luci is pretty much playing the Greatest Hits here. She lights a cigarette on her own inferno, holding a familiar eyebrow-cocked expression. She teases a finger-click, taking us back to the courtroom. Her threat of violence to Laura, framed side-on, recalls Lucifer’s murder in issue #5, and Ananke’s millennia of practice for that moment as seen in #36.

Lucifer wraps herself in motifs and echoes possibly more than any other character this issue, and it feels like armour. She’s the one member of the Pantheon clinging on to the lie of godhood, playing her role because it protects her from the consequences of what she’s done. She’s perpetuating Ananke’s cycle, and so she reaches for the easy iconograpy, the tropes, of the Lucifer myth.

It’s worth noting that most of these images are inverted. In that last example, Lucifer stays on the same side of the panel, but switches her role, from victim to the position of power. Even the colours of her outfit are flipped – white to black, blue to red – and her pose too, with arms up rather than down. Tim is going to be exploring the Two Girls in Hell sequence in his essay, so I won’t go too deep on that, except to point out that when Laura saves Luci, it’s by taking Ananke’s “I’ve missed you” and making it sincere.

#44 does this over and over, taking a familiar motif and inverting the meaning. We’ve heard a lot of variations on “it’s okay”. Minerva, begging Ananke to tell her it’s going to be okay, a conversation we’ve likely all had with ourselves at some point. Its answer at the end of that arc, laid out in black and white: “It was never going to be okay.”

Here, it’s Dionysus who wields the phrase, and for the first time “it’s okay” isn’t a lie. Dio isn’t pretending that death won’t come for us all, or that Minerva’s situation is anything less than fucked. Instead, he’s encouraging her not to fear the inevitable. He isn’t offering denial, but acceptance.

Then there’s the other character interaction Minerva has this issue, which inverts something familiar in a much uglier way – her relationship with Baal. Time and time again, we’ve seen Baal wrap his arms around Minerva’s tiny frame. It’s indicative of the role he thought he played in her life, somewhere between bigger brother and father figure, but he now knows this was just a way of manipulating him.

In #44, Baal takes Minerva in his arms one last time, with very different intent. That big hand, able to cup her entire head, used to comfort or protect her, is used instead to smother. That tight embrace becomes a murder weapon. The contrast turns what could be a triumphant moment – this is the defeat of WicDiv’s big bad, after all – into an unsettling one.

Of course, it wasn’t much better the last time WicDiv’s big bad got taken out, as #44 is ready to remind us. The issues it draws from more than any other are the series’ first, and its midpoint. #22 and #44 are both stories about what happens when you beat the minions and get to the dark lord in their tower to find them helpless.

Here the repeated image – Laura with arm outstretched weighing up whether to kill the villain – acts as a kind of mental hyperlink. We’ve been here before. Twice before, in fact, just a couple of issues apart. (The second also introduced the idea of Woden’s kill-switch video release, which is vitally important to where this issue ends up.)

Both times, Laura hesitated – and then acted anyway. Our expectations are primed for the same thing to happen again. But, as any comedian will tell you, you set up pattern on the first and the second beat, then break it on the third.

This time, Laura hesitates – and is talked down. We see how much she’s grown as a character, because she’s put in the exact same situation, right down to the composition of the image and the people around her – Cassandra always hovers over her shoulder like a goth Jiminy Cricket – but the outcome is different.

I’ve mentioned fan service already, but there’s an alternative term I’ve been skirting around: payoff. A good final chapter (depending on how you view the epilogue) should bring together the threads of the story up to that point. That’s as true of WicDiv as it is of Endgame, as it is of a Dickens novel.

I do still worry about accessibility – how much of this comes across if you’ve only read each issue once, like a normal person – but maybe that’s not giving enough credit to the fantastic work of Jamie McKelvie + Matt Wilson making these images so immediately iconic, so mentally sticky, that you can recognise their vague outline five years later. As Tim suggested when I raised this question, these connections are likely kicking around in the subconscious of a more casual reader, even if they couldn’t put together the full serial-killer wall I’m making here.

There’s another thing, too. The fact that all these echoes are backing up feels indicative of what Laura is trying to do: breaking the cycle. Ananke’s six millennia-long plan is in its death throes, and this is one final twitch. Over and over, the issue shows that while the circumstances and tools might be the same, intent can change the meaning and outcome.

I suspect we’ll be free of echoes next issue, for the first time. I wonder if I’ll miss them.

Enjoyed this essay? You’ve got like 24 more hours to throw a bit of cash our way over at patreon.com/timplusalex, before we close down the Patreon in August. Think of it as a going-away present. Or a tip.

[winnipegpatty]

baby just say yes | s.m. one shot

a/n: here’s a cute little one shot, nothing related to the post i made yesterday. just some fun! 

Taylor Swift wasn’t like your idol or anything; she was pretty bad ass though. And you were a sucker for a good concert. So coming to Taylor Swift’s Reputation Tour with your best friend wasn’t exactly a chore for you. Cassy was the true T Swift fan and was, rightfully so, in the middle what she would no doubt call the best night of her life tomorrow morning.

Going to a Taylor Swift concert was never a bad decision, if you catch the drift. She just knew how to perform. She had quite possibly some of the best visuals you’ve ever seen in a live concert, and it was hard not to feel completely engrossed with her and her stage presence. Which is why Cassy hadn’t as much as looked over at you in the 45 minutes that Taylor had been on stage. Her eyes were glued to the singer like her life depended on it. You weren’t much better yourself though. Lights were flashing everywhere, fireworks shot into the sky. And frankly, you felt a little disoriented in the best possible way.

Taylor was singing a shortened version of Style currently, before she finished it out.

“Would you please make some noise for my band!” She screamed, throwing her hands into the air where her band began making their way onto the stage with her.

The tell tale notes of Love Story began playing, and it was suddenly 2008 again. And you were suddenly a middle schooler again, playing on your sidekick phone, listening to your iPod nano.

Despite being eleven years old, this song still had you (and let’s be real, everyone in the stadium) rocking out like you were listening to the greatest hits album of a class rock band. As the chorus of the song came around, it felt like the stadium was literally shaking. Everyone around you was jumping, including yourself. Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone. You and Cassy turned to look at each other, screaming the lyrics at the top of your lungs. I’ll be waiting. All we have to do is run. You’ll be the prince. And I’ll be the princess. It’s a love story, baby just say yes. The energy was unlike anything you’ve ever witness before, and the crowd settled just a bit as the second verse came around.

Taylor was on stage going to town with her band, jamming out just as hard as we were. You could tell, it didn’t matter that the song was so old. She wasn’t tired of it. It were her own words, and she was proud of them.

The second chorus came back through, and the crowd upped the ante. Flashing lights were everywhere, and it felt like you couldn’t even see straight. You screamed the lyrics at the top of your lungs, not caring who heard you. You flipped your hair a bit dramatically just for the hell of it and you were having the time of your life. It wasn’t until half way through the chorus that you noticed the guy next you slowly creeping closer to you, completely unaware of his own surroundings. He was just up and down, pumping his arms in the air with a beer in his hand. He was faced away from you, and you figured it wasn’t a big deal. He was clearly just enjoying the song as much as you were. Romeo save me, they’re trying to tell me how to feel. This love is difficult, but it’s so real. Don’t be afraid we’ll make it out of this mess it’s a —

You felt a elbow jam into your ribcage completely unexpectedly and your breath shot out in a sharp yell.

“Fuck!” You heard the boy say as he swung around to see you.

You let out a breath for completely different reasons. He was beautiful. Like, a greek god sculpture beautiful. He had these perfectly smooth brown curls and rosy cheeks. His eyes were so kind. He grabbed onto your forearm to steady you. He had fucking gigantic hands.

“I’m so sorry!” He shouted at me, leaning in closer to make sure I heard him.

You nodded stupidly for a moment before coming to your senses, “It’s okay, yeah. No problem.”

It felt like a little bit of a problem, considering your rib cage was throbbing, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Jesus, I’m sorry. I should really be more careful!”

You smiled at his second apology, “We’re just all trying to have fun. No harm,” you shrugged it off.

He smiled at your, finally letting go of your arm. “Let me make it up to you. I’ll buy you a drink.” He was still shouting, even though the song had just gone into the quiet bridge, causing Cassy to look over at you in concern.

“It’s really not a problem,” you smiled at him.

“Please,” he asked, quieter this time. His smile was absolutely blinding and you couldn’t find it in yourself to deny him again.

“Well, okay…” You trailed off as he turned away from you.

You expected him to leave to go get a drink. But he only took a few steps away from you, speaking a few words to a tall man in a black shirt. The man nodded before he turned and went in the opposite direction of the stadium’s concessions area. It was weird, but you decided to turn your attention back to Taylor on stage who had just shifted to the song You Belong with Me. You looked at Cassy, who was still staring at you. You just shrugged before you both when back to singing the lyrics along with Taylor.

“Let me see you jump!” Taylor shouted, and again the stadium erupted.

Soon after, the song finished out, screams filling the entire stadium so it was impossible to hear. The lights fell dark, and the stadium full of people quickly went silent. A eerily dark video of Taylor playing remixed clips of old songs began to play in front of you, and you knew something big was about to happen. Next to you Cassy was literally vibrating from excitement. The video ended as Taylor dramatically took her place on a throne, looking like a mother fucking badass queen and she winked, just as the beginning of Look What You Made Me Do came to life.

You felt a hand reach onto your lower back, and you quickly looked over to your friend with spastic elbow, smiling lightly. He handed you a Corona, which you thanked him for before you both returned to looking at Taylor. As the lights came up, and Taylor came through the floor of the stage. The boy dropped his hand from your side, but didn’t make any move to step further away from you.

Deciding to ignore the obvious move to stand closer to you, you simply sipped on the beer and continued to enjoy yourself.

It surprised you every time the boy got hyped up for certain lyrics. Throughout the concert, it was clear that he knew most, if not all, of the lyrics to her songs. He wasn’t drug along to this concert against his will, but was certainly here for his own enjoyment.

“Look at the stage, you’re gonna miss it!” Shawn shouted to one of his friends, right before a giant fucking snack crept in behind Taylor.

“Oh, god, Brian!” He shouted at one point to his friend, “I love when she does this! Watch! Watch! Watch what she’s about to do. God it’s so fucking epic!”

“Listen to the note change, ugh.”

It was odd, he somehow knew what was going to happen before it happened. Like he’d seen it before, but not just once. Like he had to know...more.

About half way into the concert, your curiosity had peaked. He still stood close to you, and you were close enough to touch. You lightly bumped your shoulder against his, and he looked over at you with that blinding smile. He bent down a bit so that he could hear you when you said, “How do you know everything that’s about to happen?”

He looked at you confused for a moment before realization seemed to set in.

“You’ve seen her before, I’m assuming?” You questioned again.

He laughed at that, his head falling back, and hand coming to his chest. “Try over thirty times.”

You eyes blew wide, “What? How is that even possible?��

Shawn laughed again, “I opened for her 1989 tour, hun.”

You stared at him, and then looked back at Taylor. Then you looked over at Cassy, who was completely unaware of these proceedings. Surely she would have recognized a famous person standing next to them, right? She was always up on the latest celeb gossip and stuff. That was her scene, not yours. You turned back to Taylor who was now standing in a beautiful black dress singing a song called Dress. Finally you looked back at him.

“You’re shitting me right?”

His eyes gleamed, “No, I swear to god.”

“Who are you?” You finally asked.

“Shawn Mendes,” he reached out his hand to shake yours. You slowly reached out, in complete shock.

You didn’t know who Shawn Mendes was, if you’re being honest. Not based off pure facial and name recognition, but maybe you’d heard his songs before in passing?

“Nice to meet you,” Shawn said sweetly. “What’s your name?”

You told him your name, still completely lost for words.

“So, you like...sing?”

He just nodded, beaming with pride.

You turned to Cassy, tapping her. She looked at you, and you leaned over to her. “Do you know this guy?” You kind of shouted at her over the music.

Cassy leaned past you to look at Shawn. She smiled and waved before turning back, “Yeah dude, that’s Shawn Mendes.”

You’d never seen Cassy so calm in her entire life. She was feet away from a celebrity and couldn’t care less. It was so out of character for her, but you figured she must have been more interested in seeing Taylor Swift sing than care about some boy singer standing next to you.

You turned back to Shawn, “Guess I’m the only person who had no fucking clue who you are.”

“That’s okay,” Shawn smiled. “I’m nobody special.”

You highly doubted that just based off what little interaction you’d had with him, but you let it slide anyway. Returning your focus to Taylor, you did your best to forget about the utterly gorgeous famous man standing next to you. Shawn, however, seemed to be doing the exact opposite. Instead of saying things to his friends, he now spoke to you randomly. Saying cute comments about something Taylor did on stage to you. His arm was pressed fully against your own, and his heat radiated off of you. People jumped and screamed around you, but the two of you stood still. Connected in some odd way.

“Oh, this is a good song!” You told Shawn as Taylor started singing This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.

“Oh yeah, and she totally kills the stage aspect of it too. It’s absolutely epic.”

And he was right. Taylor completely destroy the stage for the last song of the concert. It was the perfect energy to go out on. Shawn, standing next to you, was singing along with Taylor, his head bobbing up and down. You took the moment to just look and admire him. His jawline and rosy cheeks. The cute hoop earring that you’re just noticing in his left ear. He was a site to see, and his voice was heavenly. So you understood why he must have fans.

Shawn eventually turned to you, smiling when he saw you looking at him. You quickly looked back towards the stage, hoping it wasn’t as obvious as it seemed like it was. He bumped your shoulder lightly, chuckling as he did. You looked up at him, and he looked down at you. You could feel the smile across your face, and frankly your cheeks were starting to ache.

“You know, I’m glad I elbowed you earlier,” Shawn laughed.

You laughed with him before responding, “Well it hurt, so I mean...maybe next time just say hi?”

Shawn nodded, “I can do that.”

Taylor finished her show only minutes later, and you started to feel a sinking feeling in her stomach. A tightening in your chest formed, thinking about how this was the end. The end of a concert always sucked, and post concert depression was always sure to follow. In the moments after such a huge high, a rush of excitement and adrenaline, the low point sucked. But you were thinking about a different end. The end of a night spent with the boy standing next to you. Who still had moved, despite people hustling out of the concert quickly trying to get out before the rush of cars. Cassy was crying next to you and you and Shawn stood completely still for a moment, before he finally turned to you.

“It was really nice meeting you, Y/N. I’m really sorry for elbowing you,” He smiled shyly. He paused for a moment, tugging at a few of his curls. “Uh, would you? Could I maybe, give you my number?”

You felt your heartbeat quicken as you smiled at him, “Yeah. I’d really love that.”

tagged: @peacedolantwins2 @fourtristattoos @rosecth @unhealthyobsessionwithmarvel 

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[peaches-of-1]

📷 Photo Evidence 🍋

Jay Park x Female!Reader x G Dragon

Summary: You and your friend are invited to a pool party for Jay Park’s not yet released song and it’s not only the water that gets you wet.

You had put on your favorite bathingsuit today for the pool party concert you were invited to through some connections. They would be using it for filming but wanted it to be a genuine party. One of your best friends was a makeup artist, so she wanted to do your makeup for it.

“I have products that could withstand armageddon.” She said.

“I’m going swimming. I don’t need makeup to swim.”

Then she corrected you, “You’ll be swimming on camera, though. I won’t do anything crazy. At least let me give you a red lip or something. Please? It’s an AOMG party. You have to let me do your makeup. Glitter. C’mon, (Y/N). I’ve never bothered you this much about makeup before.”

“Prom?”

“It was prom, and it was just foundation, eyeliner, and gloss!”

You rolled your eyes, but she got on her knees and hugged your legs. There was no way you could reject her. She was a makeup artist. You’d look fine no matter what she did.

With a sigh, you said, “Ok, only a red lip and some liner. I don’t wanna do any foundation or anything too extreme.”

“BB Cream at least? Smooth the pores?”

“Tilly!”

She put her hands up, “Ok, lip and liner. Nothing more. I’m doing eye primer though to make sure it lasts.”

“Fair enough.”

After Matilda aka Tilly finished, you were glad she didn’t do more than she said. The lips were more pink than red, but at least it matched your bathing suit. It wasn’t too extreme considering how she usually styled you for celebrity events. You weren’t even a celeb. Not an idol. Not a model. Just you.

You threw on some denim shorts, a crop top, and some sandals you wouldn’t mind being affected by the pool chlorine. After borrowing a pair of Tilly’s glasses and making sure you had everything you needed in your tote bag, you and her left your apartment and hopped into a taxi. The drive wasn’t too long, and all expenses would be paid once you showed the valet your invite. You and Tilly listened to all of the songs that had come out by AOMG artists.

To be completely honest, rap and hip-hop weren’t your favorite genres, but you loved the artists more than their art. However, 90% of Jay Park’s stuff was a bop. Tatted head to toe. You wondered if there were any that you didn’t know about and where they were.

Tilly tapped your arm, “You good, sis?”

“Uh, yeah. Just thinking.”

“You think too much.” She scoffed. “What was it this time?”

Jay Park’s possible dick tat…“Nothing.” You replied. “Just a bit nervous, ya’know? What if something happens?”

She laughed, “Like what? Jay-oppa notices you and you get into the VIP area?”

“Oh my god! Even if I did, we would only be using our lips.”

“To suck dick!”

“To talk! To ask why I’m there in the first place.”

Tilly laughed, “You don’t have to be innocent with me, (Y/N). I’ve seen your computer.”

Your cheeks began to burn, “You what?”

“I was joking, but now I’m curious.”

“Don’t be.” You shoved her arm.

The pair of you began to wonder if you should’ve gone to a cafe first even though you had eaten at home. Not too much because you wanted it to all be down before getting in the pool and drinking some booze. Once at the party, you got the driver paid and he asked if you guys needed to be picked up afterwards. Tilly said she’d let him know and he drove off.

The shorter valet asked if you girls wanted to be entered in a raffle to get backstage passes. You both said yes cuz why not? Phone number and name. They’d text you if you won. Then off to the pool deck. Lots of people had shown up already and sat around the edge looking cute. Why the hell were there heels beside some sunbathers? Ugh. Like, it’s fine to be fashionable and whatnot or like to feel tall, but it’s a pool High heels weren’t the smartest idea for footwear.

Then again, Tilly was wearing peep toes behind you. You two parked your things besides two pool chairs that were next to each other and then walked around to check things out after discarding your tops to reveal the bathing suits underneath. You had talked her into wearing matching gold body chains the day before but now wondered if it made you stand out too much.

You looked out from behind your reflective monsters that a fan gave Tilly from Gentle Monster, but she had just bought the same pair in a different color. The fan sent one was her fave color, so she gave the ones she bought herself to you. So many young fans, no one over 35 in sight, or at least they had gotten enough work done that they didn’t seem their age.

“So, we gots a bar, an off limits lounge, food, and lots and lots of pool toys.” Tilly announced. “What do you wanna do first, (Y/N)?”

“Food.” You answered as if it was the obvious answer. Cuz it was.

Where the food was located, it was all Valentine’s Day themed. The video would be coming out that day as well. In a week. You were excited to see it mostly because of Jay Park and whoever his special guest was. Most of the internet said it was Mino from Winner or one of the rookie rappers that came out this year.

If it was being teased this much, it probably was someone more famous than a rookie. At least, that was your plan of thinking. You piled your plate up with fruits and all sorts of chocolates. There was a fountain, so you stuck a skewer through some mini soft pretzels and let the milk chocolate drizzle all over them.

“Someone’s got a sweet tooth.”

A voice made you jump as you pulled the skewer back. You set it on your plate and looked back to see Jay Park smiling at you. Where the fuck was Tilly?

“Yeah,” You said. “It’s a 24/7 thing. Never a thing as too many sweets.”

He laughed, “You got that right. Wanna do me a favor?”

“Depends what it is.”

Jay smiled, “I like a clever girl. Anyways, here.” He handed you a pink camera. “Take a few good shots for me? Just stick ‘em on any board you come across.”

You shrugged, “Sure, sounds like fun.” You grabbed the camera. “Can’t wait to see you perform later.”

“Well, I just hope you like it.”

“I probably will.” To say you couldn’t breathe would be an understatement.

The Jay Park was smiling and chilling right there in front of you. Someone called his name and he had to go prep or something. You exhaled and wanted to scream, but you were able to snap a pic of him walking away with one hand. He turned around, and you just smiled.

“You told me to get good shots.” How the f were you being so smooth?

He pointed at you and then continued on his way. Internal screaming intensified. You looked around and  noticed the other eyes watching. Tilly. You walked back to your seats and set your plate on the small table near it.

“Gorl,” She said.

“I know!”

Her eyes were wide with shock, “What the frick? He gave you a camera?”

“He wants me to get some good shots of the party. I don’t know what they’ll be used for, but I can’t believe he asked me directly.”

“What did you say to him?” She patted her knees in excitement.

So you told her about how you might have flirted on accident and she told you to secure the Jay shaped bag. As if you could! You decided it was just an artist to fan thing and did as told after eating your fill of chocolate covered salty bread. Most of them were taken of just the scenery and of Tilly. Some of them were taken together in cute poses.

After they were spat out all aesthetic and stuff, you went through and chose your favorites to put on the board. They were sectioned off into colors. Blue, mint, pink, white, red, and orange. You guessed it was just to make sure that’s how they made sure which pics came from where or whatever.

Then as the sun went down, an official looking person asked for the camera back. It was hard to take pics in the dark. Made sense. You danced to the music on one of the floating stages with Tilly’s hand on your hip. Some tipsy dude bro decided to dance behind her. She raised her brow, and you put your tongue in your cheek. Not her type.

The two of you jumped in the water and swam off to the next stage over.

You were now closest to the stage when the lights suddenly changed.

“Yo, waddup, waddup?” Jay showed up with a mic pressed to his lips.

Everyone cheered.

“How we feelin, tonight?”

Louder cheering.

He smiled, “That’s what I like to hear! Now I know y’all out here to hear my new song tonight, but we gonna sing some of your faves first.”

He launched into “Ain’t No Party Like an AOMG Party” and went straight into “Soju” the remix and all the other peeps he collabed with showed up to. Then your fave Jay Park song came on, and you screamed so loud that Tilly was shook. Then she laughed at you. This was your song! Your body moved to it as your mouth moved the words like it was a prayer you knew from birth. Then again, if this was prayer, you’d become a nun or a monk.

Some girls in hot pink bikinis and guys in their own bathing suits began to get into place and dance as a familiar song came one. It was the tattoo you had gotten on your hip. “Mommae” You and Tilly began to twerk to the song like every other girl at the party, even some guys to be real with you fam.

“Get it, Gold Chain!” You heard from the main stage.

Turning your head, you saw him pointing directly at you. At this point, you were loosened up enough not to care about everyone staring at you shaking your ass. So you turned around and twerked in a circle getting more cheers.

“Yeah, girl!” he laughed and copied you.

You laughed as well and onto Tilly’s shoulder. Once a new song came on, you didn’t know this one, like at all. It was a bop and a half. You danced with your bestie as he rapped and then another familiar voice was heard.

Then screams so loud that they’d break the sound barrier. G Dragon’s first public appearance since being discharged. He got a lot of the weight off, but that was the life of an idol. There was like half a love handle left and you loved it for sure. They sounded damn good together. Everyone cheered when it was over and didn’t mind the cameras and drones.

“Thank you!” G Dragon said and bowed.

Jay jumped on his back and screamed. They were such dorks. Then the two men went backstage and told everyone to have fun. You and Tilly went back to your seats to dry off and get some more drinks and food. It was greasy and carbfilled, so you hadn’t gotten too drunk yet. Maybe a little bit past tipsy.

You still had your own head and chilled on the side for a bit as other AOMG hits played. Tilly began gushing about how Jay had noticed you again. She loved coming to parties with you because of how different you seemed. Of course it was just cuz you loved a party whether there was booze or not. As long as there was music and room to dance, you were gonna have a good time.

Then you checked your phone and replied to some messages, took a selfie or six. Some Snapchat video. Insta too. Then you got a text from an unsaved number.

> Hey there, (Y/N). You win the backstage pass! Meet me by the Tiki Bar ASAP.

OMG are you serious?<

>Absolutely! Do you accept or should we choose another winner?

I’m on my way! <

“Tilly, I won the backstage pass!” You said as you pulled your shorts on. “Watch my stuff and don’t go home with any strangers unless you send me a pic of their face first.”

“I ain’t going home with anyone. Here.” She said as she handed you the lipstick she had used on you.

Just because you didn’t know what would happen and a part of you hoped your fantasies had part in it, you refreshed it and then stuck it in your pocket. You thanked her and then started walking to the meeting location.

Tilly then called after you. “Get sum dick, gurl!”

You shook your head with a smile and went to the Tiki Bar with your phone in your back pocket and praying no one knocked you into the water. Luckily, you made it to the bar as dry as possible. The woman checked your phone to make sure you were actually the winner. You also had to take a breathalyzer test.

“Good enough.” She said.

What did that mean? Then you were taken into the VIP area. Black lights and neon lights led you up the stairs.

There were three doors at the top of the stairs. One with a cloud, a pink heart, and a t-shirt. You were told to ender the cloud room, so you did.

You approached the bed and saw your pink camera there on pink fur. Well, it wasn’t yours, but it was the one that had been given to you earlier by--

“So, you won.”

“Holy fu--Jay!” You were thinking of punching him. “Stop sneaking up on me, holy crap!”

He laughed, “Sorry. But I’m glad it was you.”

You smiled and felt your cheeks blushing, “Thanks. Um, so what do we do? This seems more VIP than Backstage.”

The platinum blonde GD walked up to you two, “Depends. What do you wanna do? I mean, I have some ideas, but I wanna know if you’re up for it.”

“Tell what you have in mind and I’ll let you know.” You replied.

“You were right about her.” He smirked at Jay and picked up a camera. “First, some memorial pics.”

So the boys got some pictures of you and them being all cute in the neon scene. One of their managers took the photos when both of them wanted to be next to you. You were sitting on their laps when GD kissed your neck, and you made a noise. It was maybe a moan. More like a gasp. Jay just smirked and told the manager they’d take the rest of the pics. She set the camera down on a surface and left.

“What was...that?” You looked at him.

“My original idea.” He smirked at you.

Jay squeezed your hand, “Do you want to?”

You nodded, “Yeah, but I get to say no at any time.”

He smiled and then you looked over at G Dragon to see him grinning as well and then licking his lips as he surveyed your body.

“Of course.” Said Jay Park.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” G Dragon agreed and began kissing your neck once more.

You giggled and the other began to wrap his arms around your waist and pull you closer to his chest. Your eyes fluttered shut as he kissed your lips as if it were the last drop of water on Earth. Ring covered hands began to feel up your body through the bathing suit. Even though you felt G Dragon move from the bed, you were too preoccupied to give it any more thought. Jay’s hands rubbed up your thighs to the waist of your jean shorts.

He unbuttoned them with his lips still locked on yours and slid his hand down. You moaned into his kiss when you heard the click of a camera. Looking at the source, G Dragon had the pink camera in his hands once more...and his tank top was tucked into his pocket.

“What a beautiful shot.” He said as he grabbed the photo and fanned it to help it dry. “Very nice. You wanna see?”

You nodded and he showed you the sensual picture. Jay asked if he could keep it, and you said yes. He smiled and turned you around to straddle him as your lips met once more. Another click, but you ignored it this time as you got brave and took off Jay’s shirt to place pink kisses all over his neck and chest. This was all going to your head, but you’d let it just for tonight.

His hands grabbed at your breasts, and you could feel him smile as you returned to his lips. You tipped him over until his back was flat on the bed. He rolled over so that he was on top of you now. Another click, this time from Jay Park himself. You were already breathing hard and things had barely even started.

“God damn, Beautiful!”

He got off of you as G Dragon began to slide your shorts off. Click. Click. And tossed them to the side. You only saw wet blonde hair as his mouth tugged on the area of gold chain which rested on your bathing suit covered stomach. A moan escaped when you felt his fingers slide into your wet pussy.

Click.

“Oh fuck!”

“Who, me?” GD asked with a cocky grin.

He trailed his tongue all the way up the chain until it reached your neck. You’d be wearing turtlenecks until summer with all the attention he gave the space above your shoulders. Although you wanted to give a cocky response, his tongue was too good to even think about speaking. And the way he was grinding on you told you he wanted to use so much more to please you.

Your hands began to undo his belt and you gave breathy moans from underneath him.

“Take ‘em off.” You said and looked over at Jay. “You too.”

“Yes, ma’am.” GD said. “Eager, aren’t we?”

You bit your lip as their members sprang free. They had been ready for a while, it seemed, probably since pictures. You couldn’t help but lick your lips. Click. It wasn’t until now that you realized that the kiss marks you had left on him were glowing under the blacklights. GD’s lips had a slight glow to them as well.

A naughty part from inside you wondered what else you could get to glow as you beckoned Jay towards you. God, you just wanted his cock inside you. Wanted to taste it. So you did. You licked around the tip and grinned to yourself when you saw that there was a tattoo on his cock. It said “Handle with care”

You laughed, “Oh look, it comes with directions. Hopefully it’s not the only way it comes.”

Before he could reply, you loosened your jaw to take him in. Not spectacularly long but thick as hell. He cursed as you took him in. Click. He really wasn’t one to miss out on a photo opportunity.

“Look at me, Beautiful.” He said and took a photo when you did.

GD grabbed the straps of your bathingsuit, “Don’t want this getting dirty, so let’s get it off of you, huh?”

You let him strip you of the rest of you ‘clothing’ and noticed Jay shifting his attention to the man behind you. Click, and G Dragon chuckled. You couldn’t really look back, so you just trusted him to show you the picture once it came out of the camera, which he did. It was a photo of G Dragon opening a condom wrapper with his teeth.

Then click from behind you, “You’re so wet, Beautiful. You ready?” the blonde asked.

You nodded and he slid into your vag with much ease, letting out a lovely moan as he did. The trusts on both sides became more animalistic. Jay used both hands to keep your head still as he fucked your eager mouth. Your favorite part was that they weren’t afraid to let out their groans of pleasure and praise you every chance they got.

“Oh, god, (Y/N). You’re so. Ah! Good, (Y/N)!” the AOMG member crooned while the BigBang member left hot breath and steaming kisses down the spine of your back.

“Oh, your pussy clamps down on me when we say your name. You like us calling out your name, (Y/N)?”

You could only moan in reply. It did make your pussy tingle to hear two of the most handsome men on the planet say your name as if it were the name of a goddess. As Jay got more erratic with his thrusts, you could tell that he was close. The strings of curses got longer.

GD chuckled, “Close, old friend?”

“Yeah. Yeah. So, unf, close. (Y/N)~” He had his head thrown back, and you couldn’t help but whine at the way he moaned your name. “Close your eyes, Beautiful.”

You did as told and kept your mouth open as he rubbed himself in front of you, moaning and panting until you felt wet ropes of heat on your face. He was pleased with himself. Click. A souvenir of his work. It was soon after that G Dragon did the same, releasing into the condom and taking a moment before sliding out.

He tied it off and then the two boys switched. Jiyong kissed your cum covered lips and flipped you on your stomach, 69-ing you while Jay got himself ready again. Your legs began to shake as you came. GD kept them open as you moaned all over his cock and your eyes were shut tight as he kept lapping up your juices as you orgasmed.

When he took his cock out of your mouth, you were breathing so hard. You couldn’t recall the last time you came like that.

“Fuck.” You laughed.

“Speaking of which. We’re not done yet, (Y/N).”

You couldn’t help but smile at the wild sparkle in Jay’s eyes. You spread your legs wide enough and let himself get situated. He pulled you up into his lap so that he could kiss you while GD kissed your shoulders. Part of you told you not to be so loud, but it was being drowned out by your moans. The smells of sex and three orgasms filled your nose.

Tilly was right. The passing thought came to you. Your tongues tangled with the rapper in front of you as you gripped his shoulders tightly. The next orgasm was collecting rapidly in the pit of your stomach.

“Relax, beautiful.” Jay said. “We’ve got you.” He looked into your eyes.

You nodded, “Ok, Jay.”

That boy was tiny but knew how to work his mf’n hips! You screamed his name and GD’s as he played with your exposed breasts and nipples. You were gonna cum again, and Jay chuckled in your ear.

“Let’s do it together, yea?”

“Yeah.” You replied breathlessly.

It wasn’t even five minute later as you rested your head in the nape of neck and felt the wave of pleasure crash. Jay Park pushed your back on the bed and then slid out of you to let himself cum onto your heaving stomach and chest while GD came on your face. They laid next to you and told you to smile for the camera.

Click.

You didn’t know how long you had been gone until you saw Tilly backing dat azz up on a cute stranger. The three of you had had one more round in the shower as you got cleaned up. Your bestie quickly came towards you, drink in hand and obviously knowing what happened.

“I want details.” She smiled.

“You were right, but it was both of them.”

“Both of who?”

They had come out of the house and people cheered for them as they jumped into the pool with the remaining party guests. Mostly just AOMG members and the people they were planning to sleep with and their friends and a few managers who were off the clock. Also a few people passed out here and there. G Dragon called out to you.

“Yo, Gold Chains, join us!”

“Gorl.” Her eyes widened at you.

“Girl, I know!” You replied.

The two of you grabbed hands and ran and jumped into the pool together. You stayed until the threat of sunrise showed in the sky. The two of you were given gift bags and one of Jay’s drivers to take you both back home. You and Tilly couldn’t stop talking and fangirling as you told her everything. She was only shown a few of the pictures of you still clothed.

[nimi0us]

La Squadra Strip Club AU

Considering the bullshit rate La Squadra is paid for their contracts, it had me thinking which side gigs each of them would have to make ends meet. This somehow devolved into something of a Strip Club AU, where the club is still under Diavolo/Passione's influence but all of La Squadra manages the club to some degree. I have no idea how this happened, but it was fun to write!:

Prosciutto 

One of the Bartenders of the Club

Uses his gig to listen in on information, especially info about or from potential targets

On slow nights, or when money is tight, he'll use Grateful Dead on customers so they'll keep buying drinks and keep his tip jar fat. 

If customers get too handsy with the dancers or harass them, he'll use Grateful Dead to make them so thirsty they'll have to come to his bar. He doesn't even greet them when they walk up, just gives them an ice cold glass of water and calmly explain how they are going to act when they go back to their seat if they want to enjoy the rest of their night. God forbid they don't give him a response he likes, he will personally throw them out of the bar.

Customers tend to ask him for clothing & relationship advice. He hates when customers come to him with their relationship problems, but he'll entertain discussions on clothing if it doesn't get in the way of his work (and monitoring) too much.

There's a rumor among the dancers that he's amazing on the pole. The few people who have seen him dance have been sworn to secrecy and refuse to confirm or deny his talents.

Risotto

One of the many Dancers of the Strip Club

Works on his own terms, meaning he absolutely refuses to wear anything that isn't made of leather & has his own music he wants to hear when he dances.

Dances to a mixed tracklist of sensual Doom Folk songs & rapid Industrial tracks. 

Has an absurdly large collection of leather harnesses, chokers, thigh high boots, and opera gloves for his look.

His music & clothing choices can be unsettling to the customers unfamiliar with his routine. Regulars tend to know which nights Risotto is coming in based on the sudden change of music so they can either grab a drink in the meantime or run to where he's working. Either or is likely. 

Dances either slowly & sensually, languid moves and body close to the pole like a lover, or like he's been completely possessed by sexual desire and rage. There's no in between.

Has a dedicated following of regulars who keep the money flowing.

Melone swears Risotto uses Metallica to arouse the customers so they pay him more, although if he does no one knows for sure.

Metallica has repeatedly saved him from particularly bad injuries from riskier moves on the pole.

Pesci

The club's beloved DJ. Works with the dancers to create a tracklist they can work to & occasionally remixes tracks with Melone when certain tracks just don't flow right. 

Dancers tend to vent to him on bad nights, finding him to be a kind ear during stressful moments. This ends up fostering long term work relationships between the dancers & Pesci over time.

Helps clean up the club on very slow nights & during the day. This usually results in him getting roped into many behind the scenes pictures with the dancers when they catch him. 

Can get Prosciutto to attend to any angry or fussy customers with a quick look of desperation. Prosciutto will tell him how to handle things on his own later but, whenever he witnesses Pesci's visible distress, he goes into protective big brother mode immediately. 

Some unsettled customers beg Pesci to change Risotto's track list, with Pesci promising to have a talk with Risotto when he gets a chance. He never does.

Melone

Wants to be a dancer but his skills, both on and off the pole, leave something to be desired

Manages the club's webpage & social media with Ghiacco, mainly the advertising & social media portions

In reality, maintaining the advertising for the webpage just gives him a chance to be extremely voyeuristic and take as many videos & photos of club nights as humanly possible

His eye for beauty really comes through in his photography, although there's an unusual amount of pictures of the dancer's feet

Prefers to work in one of the VIP booths when he's managing the social media pages or editing photos. When he's not doing that, he routinely dresses like he's one of the dancers while taking photos and videos around the club. He occasionally gets propositions and offers while wandering the club and, depending on the person, he'll either accept their offer and find a nearby (relatively private) room or brush them off. 

Some customers will ask for him, figuring he must be one of the dancers of the club. It irritates Risotto & Prosciutto, figuring his vices will result in future problems & confusion, while Pesci will point to where Melone currently is to get them out of his hair.

Ghiacco

Does the majority of technical maintenence concerning the club's webpage & social media.

Banned from speaking with customers on the club's social media page because he's gotten into (and started) one too many flame wars. Luckily, he isolates too much to cause problems in the club itself.

Usually hangs in the quieter back rooms so he can avoid annoying customers & the shitty music he doesn't like.

Gets flustered around some of the dancers, which result in them teasing him occasionally. It pisses him off but he secretly loves the attention.

Besides a select few, nobody knows he's played a part in coming up with the club's more popular dishes & food offered to customers in the VIP sections. He figures that, if he has to suffer working in the club instead of the comfort of his home, then he deserves good food too.

Formaggio

Works with Sorbet & Gelato concerning routine club maintenance outside of their office, including security concerns. Fixing equipment, helping Illuso set up his complicated routine, calming down bar fights, helping remove customers with the bouncers (or Prosciutto), etc. He's the club's Jack of All Trades, keeping the peace by helping things run as smoothly as possible.

If Sorbet & Gelato are off on a mission or pulling off a robbery during club hours, Formaggio usually picks up the slack. Risotto & Prosciutto help as needed, with Prosciutto handling customer concerns & Risotto handling whatever the dancers need when he's personally not performing. 

Occasionally joins in on Sorbet & Gelato's robbery schemes. His stand makes him useful for getting in and out of spaces the average person can't.

Will use Little Feet to shrink down & monitor customers he think could cause issues. Whenever things go wrong, he's there before anyone else to fix things.

Illuso

One of the many other dancers besides Risotto. His routine involves him dancing on multiple platforms of the club, sometimes seeming as if he's dancing on multiple poles at once. 

Customers have been trying to figure out the magic trick to his routine for years, figuring the club used expensive lights/cameras, a very good set designer, and a light technician to make it all work. In reality, Illuso just uses the reflections from conveniently placed mirrors & the pole to rapidly move himself, and occasionally Risotto, in between the different platforms throughout the club.

Actually isn't an amazing dancer, but the creativity he puts into his routine keeps the customers coming. 

Frequently argues with Risotto over musical choices when he gets him to join in on his routines. This ends up with Pesci being roped in, to his dismay, and Melone settling things by coming up with unusual remixes to songs the average person wouldn't think of. Sometimes the remixes work, combining Risotto's love of gloom with Illuso's penchant for funk & electronic beats. Other times the remixes just sound like Prince going through a bad goth phase.

Risotto tends to be the one doing the more complex dances in their joint routines. Alone, Illuso prefers effective simple moves that can be used in his routine with minimal potential for injury. If it wasn't for his tricks with Man in The Mirror, more would catch on that he's only an above average dancer. He doesn't really mind, he considers his work an experience in itself regardless.

Sorbet & Gelato

Managers of the Club by day, casual Bank & House Robbery Duo by night

Particularly rich customers who raise a fuss, especially if anyone has to throw them out, may find themselves being their next robbery target

The sexual openness of the club, especially with the knowledge of their close relationship, fosters a sense of freedom for customers. Customers know they can go here for a good time without judgment or having their desires publicly exposed.

Generally prefers to hang out in their joint office handling any business concerning the club or messages handed to them via Diavolo's many proxies.

Regardless, they are sometimes spotted in a VIP booth enjoying each other's company over drinks, food, and the occasionally requested for dancer. 

[montepitcairn-blog]

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[robtblaze3288-blog]

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Should you're a fan of -the smartphone app that lets you lip-sync to create mini-music movies-be prepared for a shock the next time you replace it. Bytedance, the Chinese agency that purchased Musical.y late final year for $1 billion, has decided to mix with one other similar app in its portfolio, TikTok. ✅ On the MY FREE MP3 music downloader portal customers will find songs to their liking genres - Rock, R&B and soul, Pop, Latin, Jazz, Hip hop, Folk, Electronic, Country, Blues, Asian, African and a whole lot of Remixes. And so as to download music that captured, you don't want to go through a tedious registration course of. Moderators of the resource have opened access to all songs for portal users. One click - and the specified melody is already in your phone. You'll be able to easily obtain time-tested hits and "high-profile" novelties. Yes, you will discover music and it is first rate high quality, interface is simple to know and use. Some issues that need bettering, the downloading of more than one music file at a time, I used to be underneath the impression you might download as much as 10 within the settings but that's not the case, it should be 10 connections though it doesn't sound that means. Also, the results convey up some stuff that has nothing to do with the search so you must rifle by way of every thing to seek out your music. If these improvements have been made, it would be a 5 straightforward.

Archive has a massive database storing tens of millions of music and live music archiving. You're in a position to view music via Media Type, Yr, Matters & Topics and extra different classes. Archive contains audio information starting from Grateful Lifeless concerts, to Old Time Radio exhibits, to ebook and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by its customers, to Thanksgiving music , and many others. It at all times permits you to obtain mp3 albums and single information free. Simply discover various kinds of music or download full albums free as you want through Archive. On balance, Archive will never let you down.

It's all the time a pain to explore out further space for music applications in android. Nicely, for this you, ve something which comes default in many of the Android devices. whether you wish to stream on-line or play any downloaded monitor, Google Play Music is a one-cease vacation spot. It has been one more nice selection for all of the mp3 downloading needs. Over the time, Google play music has turn out to be probably the greatest mp3 downloaders for Android, and together with the subscription presents it has, it'd as effectively allow you to download music at no cost. It is among the finest music gamers for merging MP3 Android , it fetches and allows you to play all of the music from your telephone.

You acknowledge that the Web site is a common-goal search engine and merging MP3 tool. Specifically, but without limitation, the Website allows you to search multiple websites for music. Moreover, the Web site is a common-function software that means that you can download audio information from movies and audio from elsewhere on the Internet. The Website could only be used in accordance with legislation. We don't encourage, condone, induce or allow any use of the Web site which may be in violation of any law. There are times you'd need to listen to a music, while different times you're eager to watch the video. It doesn't matter what you are within the mood for, naijaloaded music download has all of it found out. You will find a number of the newest music you can obtain in audio or video format depending on what you're craving. This downloader is the most effective as a result of it shops all kinds of file formats and adjusts the codecs as per the compatibility of your music participant in your telephone. There'll by no means be a music that you simply cannot play in contrast to different music apps. You can now take heed to all songs that you simply need. Coming back to fully free solutions, the above list comprises the most effective sources the place you could find a vast variety of songs without any price. Nevertheless, I wish to clarify that not all musical tracks on these platforms are at no cost as a few of them are paid and obtainable solely totally free music streaming. It will present you a window to manage the imported tune tracks. Now choose the goal music tracks then press the + Merge" icon so as to add pack to the Merged" part. You possibly can rearrange the audio files orders in every pack by dragging. After merging MP3 information into the packs, hit OKAY" and go back to the principle interface.Wynk Music is a good music downloader app for android. The app has over 12 million customers. It allows you to to stream limitless advert-free music. Wynk app means that you can tune-in to internet radio for uninterrupted music. If a window pops up with a "Switch Purchases" button, click on that. Do not choose "Erase and Sync" — you'll erase your music before you progress it. If the window does not appear, go to the File menu and select Switch Purchases from iPod. Free Music and Video Downloader is a tiny MP3 ripper. It's possible you'll get it from SnapFiles for Home windows. No installation is required: just open the ZIP file and run the EXE app.On the consolation of dwelling, while touring or at work get pleasure from, let go of stresses, swing your head, inspire yourself, move your hips or heal your soul with music. Hassle not investing time to verify lots of of apps and web site. These are the very best of the choices android music lovers can make. Kapwing allows creators to trim their audio (to concentrate on the refrain or one soundbite, for instance) and specify when in a video the music should begin playing. You can import immediately from YouTube or add from a computer or cellphone.Use this service to add audio or music to a video file on-line and without spending a dime. You possibly can add audio (in mp3 format) to a video file (avi, mp4, mov, wmv). This service replaces the audio of the video file with the chosen mp3 audio file. Just select the video and audio file, then click on the "Upload" button. It might take a while depending on the video file size. converting an M4A file into an Mp3 doesn't improve the file high quality. It's going to nonetheless sound like an M4a file. You're only growing the file size, which is pointless.