#which imo can be just as important as genre

[madtomedgar]

I agree with what everyone is saying re needing plot summaries and representation style marketing being incredibly annoying but also sometimes i am in a bookstore and what i want is a (good) book (for grown ups) that is by for and about gay people. And since there's no gay bookstore anymore here (pour one out for calamus and also wild child) and bookstores (rightfully probably) don't categorize fiction by identity group, it can be really hard to find that outside of recommendations. And it would be nice if it was easier. Jussayin.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

❗❗Official Class Swap Sorcerer!Kristen Post Alert❗❗ you can: look at her

[enluv]

in another life.

lee heeseung x f!reader x ??? (it'll make sense when you read I promise)

SYNOPSIS: in which losing you is the least of heeseung’s worries, until he’s forced to watch you slip through his fingers.

wc: 1.9k (almost 2k fr)!

genres: best friends to strangers, unrequited love (or is it), best friends to lovers

warning(s): heavy angst, toxic friendship/relationship, heeseung is mean, very very mean, manipulation (nothing too crazy), refusal to take blame, and heeseung needs to be humbled imo...ANYWAYS, small plot twist but not really! (a/n: header is ugly because I made it in like 2 minutes since it felt naked without one 🤣☝🏽)

Lee Heeseung knows about your feelings for him at  the mere age of eight, when you give him the other half of your popsicle stick that you’ve just bought with your very own allowance. His smile is so bright taking the food from your hand that it doesn't even matter if you've spent all five of your dollars on the popsicle because as long as your youthful heart can see Heeseung smile, that’s all that matters to you.

Heeseung also knows about your feelings for him when you're both sixteen and he proudly exclaims that he’s finally asked Jisun out after months of pining after her. A hurt look flashes across your face for one, two then three seconds, then as if it was never there, it’s gone. He thinks it might have been a bad idea to tell you but he doesn’t reciprocate the feelings you have for him and in his mind, he never will. 

“Come on Y/N, it’s one party, please come with me please, I don’t want to be alone all night,” he pouts tugging at the sleeve of your sweater. Heeseung knows it’s not right to do things like this, knows he shouldn’t force you to go with him everywhere but he likes that you can’t say no to him, it swells his heart with pride to have someone care for him as much as you do.

“I already told you I have to study for midterms, go alone or with Jay.” Your tone isn’t dead-set and Heeseung knows he’s cornered you. He smiles as an idea forms in his head, maybe he can persuade you with just enough charm, it’s worked in the past so why not now?

“I seriously can not believe Heeseung got you to come, I know he said he could do it but honestly Y/N, I thought you were stronger than that.” It’s always the same sentence or form of it. It tugs at your heart, just like in high school people in college are just as aware of how you feel for him, even he knows it himself. He plays a blind man to your feelings.

An ache begins to pump in your heart, whatever liquor Yeonjun had handed you when you stepped in seems to not be working and that night as you watch Heeseung dance with Mina, you vow to yourself silently that you'll start your process of healing from whatever feelings you have for Lee Heeseung.

A few days later Jay watches a frantic Heeseung search for his phone charger in amusement, “Missing an important call?” He quips playfully, the whole house knows why he’s so desperate to charge his dying phone. The past three days since he ditched you at TXT’s frat party you’ve been ignoring his texts, calls, and even him.

“Hyung, why are you so worried about Y/N calling? Didn't you ditch her? I wouldn’t call either if I was her,” the small comment earns Sunghoon a smack to the back of his head.

“It doesn’t matter, Y/N would never ignore me like this. All I have to do is apologize with breakfast and she’ll accept it every time, we’ve done this before and never gone a day without talking.”

The boys can’t fully grasp why Heeseung is acting the way he is, to them he sounds like a desperate boyfriend after a fight that’s resulted in the silent treatment but Heeseung has continuously said he does not feel the same towards his best friend so they write it off as some form of separation anxiety and leave his room.

“I’m surprised you’ve held out this long Y/N,” jokes a sheepish Jeongin as he takes a glance at your phone screen that’s currently being lit up by multiple unread messages from Heeseung.

“I told you I’m ready to move on, I’ll talk to him when I see fit, I just need a few more days to myself.”

He hums in response as he lifts himself off his chair reaching a hand out for you to follow, “I’m proud of you ‘s all, he’s an asshole for using your feelings against you and making you feel the way he did, you don’t deserve that at all. You deserve someone who'd never ditch you." 

Two weeks. It's been two weeks since you've spoken to Heeseung, his room is a mess with clothes and books scattered on the floor, usually you come by and help him organize things. He's had enough of this. Your contact suddenly flashes across his screen while he's out on a date, he doesn't hesitate to answer, bidding the girl he's dropping off a quick goodbye.

“Hello? Y/N? I’m really glad you called me, I have so much to ask you but guess what, I just had the most amazing date-” he’s cut off by your loud sigh and for a moment his heart drops, you've never stopped him from ranting about dates.

“Heeseung,” his name sounds foreign coming from your mouth, “we really need to talk, I have a lot to say to you so could we please meet tomorrow?” He isn't sure why but his stomach twists at your request.

The meeting between you two is quick and to Heeseung's surprise, brief. You explain to him that leaving you at a party he begged you to come to had upset you since it wasn’t his first time doing so, you also tell him that you needed the two weeks of space from not only him but everyone else to care for yourself, and you’d hoped he understood that. Of course he did, he felt shitty just thinking about the situation and promised to never do it again, to be a better "friend."

Things after your initial break from Heeseung fall back into place quickly and it's as if you never left his side, but he could tell you were different now, you refused to go with him to parties if he asked and any charming tricks he had up his sleeve fell flat when you'd respond with a hard “No.” Heeseung also noticed the interest you'd taken in Jeongin, and that made him feel things he'd never felt before. 

It’s difficult to watch you flirt with one of his best friends, on one hand he should feel happy watching your attention sway to someone else after having caught it for so many years but on the other he isn’t happy at all, to be completely honest he feels bitter at the thought of you two together. 

“You're an asshole Heeseung, like a really big one, do you know how long Y/N has been in love with you? Since we were like eight playing cops and robbers in the streets, and she loved you throughout the time that came after and every time we asked, you denied any feelings for her, but now all of a sudden you think you might love her back? Just when she's finally healing from the shit you put her through? That’s such an asshole move dude, super low of you,” and as Beomgyu’s rant subsides Heeseung stares at him puzzled, what did he ever do that was so bad to you?

“Don't give me that look, you've done so much shit to her, hell I don't know how she’s still your best friend, if I was her I’d have left you already.”

Heeseung continues to give Beomgyu the most confused look ever and with a small eye roll Beomgyu answers his question, “You use her to get what you want but never have you done anything to show her gratitude or any reciprocated feelings. All you ever do is give her hope, you act like you like her back when you need her but as soon as you get what you want, you leave her behind. It’s fucking sad dude. You're a horrible friend to her honestly.”

Heeseung’s heart burns, he’s known his whole life that he’d done this to you but to hear it laid out in front of him now, he can see how terrible it all actually is. How had you continued being his friend? If he was in your position he’d have left ages ago, but you didn’t, and that single thought is what gives Heeseung hope for you and him. He knows it’s dumb, he knows he doesn’t deserve you at all, but he wants you terribly and if he has to beg he will, if he has to lie he will, hell Heeseung would drop everyone for you. All that matters is that you stay with him, not with anyone else, and especially not with Jeongin.

Heeseung can spot you from a mile away. His smile grows wide before dropping instantly as he watches Jeongin hand you what looks to be a flower. The look on your face mirrors Jeongin’s, it’s happy and full. You've never smiled at him that way. Heeseung realizes that the only smiles you give him now are filled with sadness. His stomach knots, why does he feel so unsure of you right now. He’s never felt this much uncertainty from you ever. 

He blames it on the fact that you two haven’t been talking as much lately. He blames the short break you had because there’s no way you’d actually stop wanting to be his friend, no way he’d ever lose you. You’ve always been by his side, and it will continue to be that way, because you love him and he has you wrapped around his finger. But, Heeseung knows deep down this security can’t be fed any longer as he watches you walk past him, hand in hand with Jeongin, not a single look his way, he's lost you.

It’s proven to him in the months to come as you slowly slip out of his pinned messages, as you take him off your private stories, and he has to watch you live your life through others. Heeseung knows he’s lost you especially when all together you stop coming to his rescue, won’t pick up the phone to hear his ramblings about dates and girls. He knows he’s lost you when you tell him you’re busy and can’t do what he wants. When you send him an awkward smile and gesture to your hand entwined with Jeongin's, as if to say, "sorry I'm with him now, you're too late."

If anyone ever asks Lee Heeseung about his one true love, he’ll say your name. He’s never been sure of what love is, never found it for himself, but he knows deep down that if he’s ever loved anyone, it’s you. You were the person he called at 3am when he crashed his car into a pole, you were the same person whose dorm had housed him a multitude of times when he was too drunk to crawl back to his own, the same person who loved him for years, until you couldn’t any longer and stopped waiting on him to give you the same love back, thinking he could never give it to you.

Heeseung likes to think that in another life he wasn't a complete asshole, realized your worth sooner, and maybe even had the balls to ask you out. He pictures himself in Jeongin's place, dating through college, moving in together after, getting married, having kids, living domestically. All he can do now is dream, maybe that's why he likes to sleep so much, because in his sleep-ridden mind, you're with him.

coco’s love note: mwahahahaha did you guys like the plot twist? are we happy 😁 are we mad? should we fight heeseung?! tbh writing this fic has been a wild ride, originally i had mc & heeseung end up with one another but then I decided that no, i didn’t want that, I wanted to show the results of a toxic “relationship” running it’s course through and through, that’s why heeseung never quite admits he’s wrong/he still feels entitled to mc even till the end! I wanted to show that he’d never change, even if he did “love” mc. anyways…thoughts?! comments?! concerns?! make sure to leave a comment or rb this with anything you’d like me to know or tell me how you felt about this fic :) muah ily! ty @odxrilove for reading it for me and not letting me change it again 😁🙏

ENHYPEN TAGLIST! - yeoforce @bloom-bloom-pow @nikis-mum @yourlocalhotgf @kyublr @spoooooooooooon @enhacolor @yoongimooni @blaqpinksthectic @gyuuss @eternallyhyucks @dinosdance @simpforsung @misschubswrites @junityy @jjunry @jwonsgirl @fxckingshame @stealanity @haoreo @jxp1t-3r @chaerybae @bobariki @vatterie @tytrackfebreze @veryjeongintxtkid @w3bqrl @heefys @haechan-nahceah @telesvng @queen-klarissa @odxrilove @s00buwu @j-wyoung

[youremyheaven]

Uttara Bhadrapada & Revati: Psychic Insight, Time Travel & Dreams

In my last post about Punarvasu & Swati, I had briefly gone into their association with time travel but in my research since I have found that Pisces rashi (0-3 degress Purvabhadrapada, Uttarabhadrapada & Revati) is also connected to time travel, as well as with psychic powers and using these abilities to solve crimes, prevent disasters or save others. This is an important distinction because not everybody uses their paranormal/supernatural powers to do good necessarily.

The word spirituality has been so over used in the last decade or so that it has now kind of lost all meaning as most people don't understand it in its true sense of transcending the material but instead as a way to play around with crystals or tarot or astrology, engaging with these tools in the most shallow way possible and using it as a balm to remain in the loop of earthly attachment.

Some people are born with an inherent understanding of what it means to be connected to the spirit. Due to the way religion & belief are often structured, not all of these people will identify their own beliefs as spiritual ones but you've got to admit that some people are just naturally intuitive and capable of understanding things in a way that goes beyond education or any taught knowledge. What is intuition though? Is it just a profound inner knowing? Usually, it is a combination of several things, including observational skills, the ability to be perceptive and understand what lies beyond the surface, deduction etc. Intuition isn't always knowledge from the beyond but it can also refer to the ability to read a room or a person and be emotionally intelligent enough to behave accordingly.

I am by no means suggesting that all Pisces natives are this way. They are not. But I have noticed several Pisces natives possessing a heightened sense of perception & intuition. This is just water sign culture tbh and as you'll see in the post, also extends to other rashis/nakshatras.

Derren Brown, the British magician & mentalist is a UBP Moon. He's a skeptic himself and has repeatedly said he does not possess any psychic powers but he's never really gone into his methods either. You could say that he has astute observational skills that makes his performances truly one of a kind but its pretty incredible to train yourself to do what he does; you can only build on the natural acumen you possess.

The Sixth Sense is a pretty iconic film in the "child has visions" genre and it stars Haley Joel Osment, Revati sun & mercury as well as Bruce Willis who is UBP Sun

Bruce also starred in a movie (also directed by M Night Shyamalan) called Unbreakable where his character has psychometric powers.

Psych is detective comedy drama series (very underrated imo) that features a guy who possesses eidetic memory and great observation skills and uses it to convince the police department he is a psychic.

James Roday Rodriguez who plays this character has Revati sun & mercury, Venus in Pisces (2 degree Purvabhadrapada )

Patricia Arquette stars as a psychic medium in the show Medium (honestly the police department x psychic consultant is one of my fav tropes of 2000s television). She has a Revati stellium (sun, saturn & rahu) and UBP mercury and venus.

Salma Hayek, UBP Moon, plays a psychic medium in House of Gucci (based on a true story)

Devon Sawa who played the main character on Final Destination (he has premonitions and tries to help others avoid death) has Ketu in UBP

Joan of Arc, UBP Moon went to King Charles at the age of 17 as she was guided by visions from the archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine to help him save France from English domination. Convinced of her devotion and purity, Charles sent Joan, to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief army. After several military defeats in which Joan played a role, she was put on trial by Bishop Pierre Cauchon on accusations of heresy, which included blaspheming by wearing men's clothes, acting upon demonic visions, and refusing to submit her words and deeds to the judgment of the church. She was declared guilty and burned at the stake on 30 May 1431, aged about nineteen.

Baffled is a movie about a race car driver who has psychic visions. He is played by Leonard Nimoy who has UBP Sun, Mercury in Revati (amatyakaraka) & Rahu and Swati Rising (Swati is a nakshatra that is associated with ESP but more on that later).

The Dead Zone is about a man who wakes up from a 5yr coma and learns he has psychic abilities. Christopher Walken who plays this man has Revati sun & UBP mercury (being in a coma/waking up from sleep is also a very Pisces theme a la Sleeping Beauty)

In Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining, Ewan McGregor plays Danny Torrance (who has psychic abilities). He has UBP Sun

Harry's ability to see things is kinda overlooked (in Goblet of Fire for instance when he makes those predictions in Trelawney's class). We know that he sees a lot of stuff due to his connection with the Dark Lord but still. Harry's intuition has saved his ass on more than one occasion. Daniel Radcliffe has UBP Moon.

The Initiation of Sarah is a movie about a nice girl who is bullied by her sorority sisters and then unleashes her psychic powers to get even. Kay Lenz who plays her has Mars in Revati atmakaraka, UBP mercury (swati moon & rising)

Nostradamus who had prophetic visions of the future (many of which have come true) had Rahu & Rising in UBP

This brings me to Pisces' connection to time travel because if you think about it having premonitions and making prophecies is tied to an ability to see into the future; you are mentally time travelling.

I have noticed that in several instances Pisces natives are cast in time-travel movies.

Nathan Fillion who was in Firefly & Serenity (time travel series & movie) had UBP sun, Revati moon atmakaraka

Bliss (2021) a movie about alternate realities accessed through drug induced hallucinations??? (i dont know for sure the plot is kinda dense) stars Salma Hayek, UBP Moon and Owen Wilson, Swati Moon with Saturn in Revati atmakaraka

Predestination is a time travel movie starring Sarah Snook who has Revati moon & jupiter

Joseph Gordon Levitt, UBP rising stars in the time-travel movie Looper as a hitman from the future who has to kill himself.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a movie about a girl who can travel through time, its directed by Mamoru Hosoda who has UBP Moon and Saturn

La Jetee is an experimental French short film about a man who travels through time to understand the past/present/future of WW3. Its directed by Chris Marker who has Ketu in Revati

Pisces is kind of obviously connected to the story of Sleeping Beauty (I'll explore this more in a separate post) but I think Pisces and dreaming (not sleeping but dreaming) are also connected.

Joseph Gordon Levitt, UBP Rising stars in Inception a movie about dream thieves essentially

Werner Krauss, Ketu in Revati starred in The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920) as a hypnotist who uses a somnambulist to commit murders.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep etc was made my Michel Gondry who has Venus in Revati amatyakaraka (he is also Punarvasu Rising but I'll discuss more in my post about Surrealism)

Dreams (1990) is a movie by Akira Kurosawa and is based on 8 dreams he had. He is UBP Sun & Punarvasu Rising

Dreams That Money Can Buy is a surrealist film about a guy who sells his dreams to others. Its directed by Hans Richter who has Revati Sun

All of Miyazaki's movies have a dream-like quality and one is literally a dream (won't spoil by saying which one hehe). He is UBP Moon.

I have noticed many Shatabhisha natives be drawn to similar themes and tropes in their work.

Dreamscape is a movie about a psychic who works for the President of America. Its directed by Joseph Ruben who is Shatabhisha Sun & Jupiter (he also has Venus in UBP) and stars Dennis Quaid (Punarvasu Moon) as the psychic.

Firestarter is a movie about a child with psychic powers and stars Drew Barrymore who is Shatabhisha Sun & Punarvasu Moon

Jennifer Love Hewitt, Shatabhisha Moon starred in The Ghost Whisperer as a person who can communicate with ghosts.

Sissy Spacek starred in Carrie about a girl who has supernatural powers. She has Shatabhisha Moon

Scott Bakula who starred in Quantum Leap, a TV series about a scientist stuck in time, has Shatabhisha Moon

I hope this post was interesting and informative, pls lmk if you have any other examples!!

[connorsjorts]

beloved connorsjorts, I am new to the fandom! I was here in 2018 when the game came out, but I was also a kid. Grew up and have now realized how romantic the Hank and Connor route was.

Do you think it was on purpose?? Or did they accidentally insert incredibly gay vibes bc the buddy cop genre is inherently homoerotic or something??? I mean they had the Tracis so they aren’t against gay couples or something, but there’s a world of difference between gay side characters and gay main characters in gaming, if you know what I mean??? What does it all mean???

Anyways, love your fics!!! You slay every day.

Hi and welcome to the fandom!! I hope you’re having a great time, and thank you so much for your kind words about my fics 🥹💖💖

I really wanted to write an in-depth response to this, I wrote out bullet points and everything! But feeding my baby is literally a full-time job rn and it would have taken an embarrassingly long time to turn those bullet points into something coherent considering that this ask has already been sitting in my inbox for a week 🫠

So, in the interest of ensuring that I actually answer your question: The short version is that while David Cage is unfortunately homophobic, imo that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t use a queer narrative for his own gain 🤷🏻‍♀️ He already did something similar by making the game an allegory for race—he uses social issues to make his stories seem Important. So I think it’s plausible that Connor’s story revolves around intentional queer subtext, and that yes, Hank plays a “love interest” role on some level. But because gay men make Cage uncomfortable and he didn’t actually want his Cool(?) White Man character to be queer, we’re left with remnants of this idea on the thematic and structural level only. Which like, thank god, in terms of the story—the man is not subtle, can you IMAGINE how over the top it would be if he had followed through.

Fig 1: Dramatic reenactment of the Eden Club in a version of the game where Connor Detroit is allowed to be gay

I feel like this is an unpopular opinion (I think most people think it’s just 100% accidental) but if anyone wants me to plead my case in Old Man Yaoi v. That Coward David Cage lmk. Otherwise I’ll be busy plunking out my next Human Disaster Connor fic 😌 Thanks for your question!!!

[twitteringthings]

Fresh Thoughts Chapter 57

After reading spoilers on twitter (no spoilers here though^^)

The way Yoneda uses bl stereotypes as a tool while also rejecting some aspects of the genre is so interesting to read. In most bl I've read, sex is seen as the epitome of love - the culmination of two characters' pining and is seen as the end goal that suddenly fixes everything. The dick and brain are one and suddenly everything magically makes sense. But in Saezuru, Yoneda uses sex to unravel the characters while twisting them up even more-so. I believe that sex has never been and will never be the answer for Doumeki or Yashiro, and I think that is what she’s getting at. That is the point of all these sexual encounters that yield no real progress. You need more than three words and some head, ding dongs!

Doumeki thinks that all he has to do is give Yashiro passionate and gentle sex to make him realize that he loves him and imo he has it all wrong. It’s almost like Doumeki doesn’t truly hear Yashiro when he speaks. There's a pause and then a kiss or a continuing of sex as we've seen. I really wish he would’ve probed even further with the questioning instead of giving into desire and kissing Y. To me, it looked like Y was ready to talk more or hear what Doumeki had to say in response to his ‘confession.’

I don’t think D realizes that this is about Y and his view of himself. It doesn’t matter if Doumeki treats him kindly and calls him beautiful. Every person in Yashiro’s life has had an agenda against him or a plan to use him for something (nana excluded). There are always, always strings attached and his heart cannot accept anyone having no intention at all, except to love him purely. I do think D is on the right track though, making Yashiro chase him in a way. Not giving anything away as to make Y either trust his intentions or distrust him, Y needs to choose for himself.

It’s so interesting how the relationship between the two of them is outwardly focused on the physical aspect (which is definitely important), but the story is about the hearts of men. Twisted and broken men. Men with baggage and secrets and deep wounds. Men who seem to be the upmost composed but in reality, the soft touch of a feather can send their entire fortress crashing down. That's what we have here.

Yashiro’s coping mechanism protects him but is also the cause of his continuous pain. Saezuru is about choosing the right pain, the pain that will numb you and have you walk through life as a ghost, or the excruciating discomfort in accepting a foreign act of kindness that you know will save you. And for Yashiro, being saved means there was something wrong done to him in the first place - which I don't think he completely realizes yet. This would mean everything he ever told himself was a lie, and that he deserved none of the cruelty. The truth that would destroy him the most if he truly chose and accepted kindness, is that he is a good person and that he deserves to love himself and to be loved. With Doumeki, this has always been Yashiro’s battle.

Vile actions accompanied by cursed words are what has held Y back all his life from the moment he was raped by his stepfather and throughout the continued abuse, even up to the most recent events post-timeskip. And I think the exact opposite is needed from both sides to finally free both of them from their mental prisons. They just need to hold out and to talk to each other for more than five minutes. I hope they'll get there soon.

Lastly, I'm sure it wasn't her intention to make such an impactful story that subverts a genre and goes against the grain - in a wonderful way. I saw something another person posted that said this story and these characters are just a result of good storytelling and great care and I could not agree more.

I haven't posted anything of actual substance in a while (stupid work is stopping me from my true passion - alas!). These are some messy thoughts; I can't wait to read the actual chapter for true understanding! I need to analyze every pen stroke, blush, and body placement. I just had to get this out of my head, now back to my essay that's due at 11:59 *sobs*

Edit 1:55 am: Still have not started essay

[letteredlettered]

Since people expressed interest in the comments about the music I used to write my current fic, I wanted to share some of what I explored to write it. I don't think that you need to know this canon or have read this fic to read this post, though I do spend a bit of time talking about how canon influenced the choices I made. Anyone who has been following this fic knows that it was supposed to be porn, and largely, it really still is for the most part a fic about sex. But I did do a lot of research on music with which I'm frankly not very familiar, and the process was really rewarding.

The fic is Time Signature, if you're interested. This post has a lot about music, electronic music, Chinese music, and music theory, as well as some links to music that interests me and inspired portions of the fic. I don't expect anyone to read anything this long, but it was nice to write it.

Canon. One of my favorite things about both book and drama canon is how in synch WWX/LWJ are cultivation-wise. It’s not just that they can predict the talisman the other will use or the seal the other will cast; they also have the same hunches solving mysteries, the same instincts protecting others, the same ideas about where to go. When writing an AU, it’s important to me to show that synchronization (beyond physical attraction and sex), mostly because I think it’s hot.

In canon, however, WWX revolutionizes cultivation, inventing a whole new method when no one ever thought that possible. I also think this is hot. I also think it’s hot if LWJ thinks it’s hot. Look, canonically, LWJ disapproves of demonic cultivation because it will injure WWX’s spirit and body, but imo there is a reason LWJ is so into WWX, and it’s not just because WWX bugs him. It’s not even just because WWX is really cute and happy and exuberant and everything that’s the opposite of his upbringing. I also like to think that it’s because WWX is a fucking genius, and LWJ doesn't mind the idea of upending tradition and the entire cultivation world as much as it really seems at first that he would; he just struggles with anything that could hurt WWX. So anyway, WWX being revolutionary, in basically a technological sense, is important to me.

Wangxian both play music canonically. LWJ’s playing is noted to be particularly powerful, and WWX’s chosen music is at least one part of his revolutionary cultivation method. Additionally, the song LWJ writes for them is an important plot point. It makes sense that in a modern AU, music is a point of connection, so that is what I chose for their careers.

The final point about canon I want to make in connection to the music for this fic is that this is a Chinese canon with Chinese characters set in China. I don’t think it’s wrong to write AUs set in the west. I have done so, and I think there is value in examining a Chinese canon that has become very popular in the west through the lens of the Chinese diaspora. But I also think that there is a lot of value in a western person such as myself trying to learn and understand the cultural context for a canon that I really like, even if I sometimes get it wrong.

I had decided to set this fic in China because I thought the setting would not strongly feature, which would give me an easy “in” to write something set in a place I don’t know much about. Directly after choosing the setting I chose their careers, which made me realize I needed to do a lot more research—both about the careers but also about the setting--than a fic that was supposed to be mainly porn should have really required.

Music genre choice. Lots of AUs I’ve read have Wangxian’s mutual interest be that they both play western classical instruments. This baffles me, but it’s what I’ve seen, so I loosely started there—ie, I spent some time thinking about what would be revolutionary in western instrumental music, which entailed doing some research on contemporary classical music. There are obviously pioneers in any music genre, folks doing new things, but it turned out I just did not know enough about this genre to really understand what would be truly avant-garde.

I took a step back and thought about the instrumental music I have personally heard that feels really new and different, and Philip Glass was the first thing that came to mind. I first heard of Philip Glass when I saw The Hours, for which he wrote the soundtrack. I still think that soundtrack is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard, and I did use it as inspiration for music in this fic, particularly LWJ’s. More on that later.

Philip Glass is great, but for all his eastern minimalist influences, he is a strong figure in the western paradigm. I did some research on Chinese contemporary instrumental music, but most of what I found had a really western flavor. I think there are two reasons for this—one is that I am in the west searching for articles in English; for all that we like to imagine the internet is universal, search algorithms and search history is actually making it far harder than it used to be to find material with which you are completely unfamiliar. Secondly, western music did in fact have a notable impact on Chinese music, which is fine, it’s still Chinese, but I worried about everything I wrote just sounding like it was about western classical, which is a concern of mine I’ll address more later.

Since I wasn’t finding what I wanted, particularly for WWX, in the “art music” (aka, lowercase “c” classical music, which Wikipedia says is also known as “cultivated music, serious music, or canonical music”—ie, instrumental music with strings, winds, percussion) scene, I realized I needed to examine the other contemporary music, by which I mean everything else. Since I am most familiar with rock, Radiohead immediately came to mind, but Radiohead is a band, and there are lyrics. Though the lyrics are not where the meaning of Radiohead songs lie (the vocals are treated as largely instrumental), if there were lyrics, I’d need to write about them, and I didn’t want to. More importantly, Radiohead is singular in what they do, which makes them difficult to categorize, and this makes them difficult to describe textually. You can say that Radiohead revolutionized rock, or even reinvented it, but that is not really addressing how fundamentally avant-gardeRadiohead is. Describing how revolutionary Radiohead is on paper really is just saying “but they’re different!” over and over again.

What I needed for WWX was a music genre that was revolutionary, an entire school of music that felt cutting edge and frankly, unfamiliar, and for that, I realized I needed my brother.

Some stories about my family. My brother is a music artist who creates electronic music. If you want to understand why it took me this long to get to my brother in this thought process, you should understand a few things about him. First, I love him a lot, but we’re not very close. Second, my brother is probably the quietest person I know—like, idk, LWJ levels of non-talking. Last, I do not understand my brother’s music. I’ve tried! I listened to it a lot! But when I didn’t understand, I asked questions, and my brother cannot explain any of it. He’s an expressive guy! Just not verbally, and as a very verbal person, I have a tough time when people cannot use their words. Like, even asking him what type of music he plays, he’ll say something like, “It’s complicated.” (This is a lie. He’ll look at me and say, “Type?” And I’ll try to explain what I mean. And he’ll say, “I don’t know.” And if I said, “Okay, but if you had to label it?” He’d laugh and say, “Why?” And if I said, “So I can better understand your music,” he’d think for a long time, then look very frustrated, and laugh, and say, “I don’t know?” I think we’ve literally had this exact conversation).

Anyway, possibly through one of these type of exchanges, where I’m grilling him like a school marm and he’s acting like I’m making him take a standardized test he hates (I’m his little sister. Would it be easier to subject him to these horrors if he was my little brother?), I learned that one of my brother’s influences is Aphex Twin. My brother loves Aphex Twin. I . . . don’t. I’ve listened to a lot of him (in order to understand my brother better); I do not like it, and I do not understand it. My brother talks about Aphex Twin like he’s a genius (if and when my brother talks at all). Now, my brother is a very smart guy; it’s not that I didn’t believe him when he said Aphex Twin was a genius, but he also gets . . . swept up by things, and as previously discussed, he doesn’t talk a lot, so I didn’t really understand what my brother meant by this. It took hearing about Aphex Twin randomly, in a couple other places, for me to realize Aphex Twin is a Big Deal. When I looked up Aphex Twin at some point in order to better understand the music my brother makes, I found that Aphex Twin is considered by many to be a genius and also a pioneer. Apologies to all of you who already knew that about Aphex Twin.

Sidenote, my brother’s wife is also a musician, though not professionally. She could have been, considering that she was ranked as one of the top flute players in Texas, and Texas is fucking huge. But no, professionally, my sister-in-law is in cognitive science and linguistics, which you may remember was the career LWJ had in Say More (my fiancée is also a linguist. I also know a few other linguists. My life is convenient for my Wangxian AUs, I gotta say). I mention my sister-in-law because my sister-in-law has enough musical acuity to also recognize that both my brother and Aphex Twin are geniuses, which really helped me to understand that even though I’m not really into this music at all, it really is a Big Deal.

So, I researched Aphex Twin and also went to my brother’s website for his music to find out what the hell this type of music is called, and it turns out there’s not a good name. IDM, which stands for intelligent dance music, is a label Aphex Twin himself famously does not like, and my brother labeled his own music as “acid, techno, house, electro.” Wikipedia said that Aphex Twin is known for techno, ambient, and jungle.

Anyway, into this confusing morass of electronic revolutionary music is where I decided to plunk Wei Ying.

Electronic music. Note for this section that I know nothing about electronic music. I’m writing this post partly to document the journey of discovery I went on to write this porn. I’m not really trying to educate anyone so much as I’m trying to provide insight as to what I researched for this fic and what the references are, in case the fic interested you.

When you really get down to it, music made with electronics has as many genres and styes as music made with more traditional instruments, and the labels are just as confusing (see this Wikipedia list of electronic music genres). For instance, “electronica” just means music made with electronics to some people, but to others it’s more specific. You’ve also got a bunch of other terms: ambient, EDM, techno, house, IDM.

This is all based on what I learned from Wikipedia, but here are some loose definitions as I understand them: There’s ambient, which is really made for background listening, and then there’s EDM (electronic dance music), which is made for active listening—ie, dancing. Within EDM you have lots of genres, such as techno; techno is usually characterized by a specific tempo and repeating structure, and house, which . . . is also characterized by a specific tempo and repeating structure, but the tempo is different. From what I can gather, house is also a bigger tent than techno; ie, many different genres and styles can be house, but techno is more often just techno. (Note that part of the reason all of this terminology has so much overlap is that it originated in different places; techno was invented in Berlin, house in Chicago.) Meanwhile, the list of genres of house is so big that it also has its own Wikipedia page, which is almost as large as the list of electronic music genres.

Note that there is such a thing as “house ambient”, which explodes the entire concept of ambient vs EDM. To aid in that explosion, IDM is described on Wikipedia as including styles such as ambient techo, and “is regarded as better suited to home listening rather than dancing.” What stands out about IDM, and the reason it is featured in the fic, is that it’s known for being experimental. (I’ll add that it emerged in the 90s, which isn’t great for my fic. Whatever WWX is doing, he is on the edge, and 90s music already old to him, even if he’s Aphex Twin’s biggest fan! But alas, my research could not tell me what is happening right now, because you really have to be involved in The Scene to understand what’s new. By the time it’s documented, it’s already really a little old.)

If you are researching electronic music and how it is revolutionary, you’re probably going to get into its evolution and history, since this is a new style of music. And if you are looking into the origins of this kind of music, you’re going to find Brian Eno. And if you’re looking into Brian Eno, you’re going to find minimalism.

Minimalism. Brian Eno is an extremely famous dude. I’d probably heard of him before, but I am very good with big concepts and pretty bad with details, so because I didn’t know anything about the bigger concepts behind ambient/electronic music/minimalism, I never paid attention. Now I’m hearing about him literally everywhere, which is funny, since it’s not like he’s new news. Ezra Klein was literally waxing poetic about Music for Airports just a month ago.

Eno is famous for his pioneering work in ambient music and electronic music, and, as one might expect, electronic ambient. Eno was always doing experimental, avant-garde stuff, and early on he embraced a minimal style. He later coined the term “ambient music.”

What’s interesting about this is that around the same time as Eno was doing this in later 1960s/early 1970s, a new kind of art music was being born in classical circles. This is the capital “M” Minimal music, for which—you guessed it—Philip Glass is really famous. And when you look at Philip Glass’s influences, he was deeply influenced by the minimalism of eastern music, especially Indian and Tibetan music. I couldn’t really find anything saying that Brian Eno was directly influenced by traditional eastern music, but Eno is definitely a fan of Glass and vice versa; they really build on each other.

This ended up just being a very cool intersection for the fic that I didn’t plan. I didn’t end up using it very much, but I must say I was stupidly pleased that the kind of music I was looking into for both of these characters has such deep roots in eastern music traditions. So now let’s talk a little bit about eastern music, specifically Chinese music, since that’s where this fic is based.

Chinese music. I did read a bit about Chinese music for this fic, and I have to say that I still don’t know a lot about it. As stated above, I’m in the west, using my western search techniques, looking for primarily articles in English (though I get Google to translate some things). I also just have a western understanding of music and music history, and it turns out, surprise, different cultures are different, and my entire paradigm for understanding music does not really apply to music from other cultures.

I, and many of us, want music to be a universal language, something that can move through all barriers and touch us in our souls. And it is! I have listened to and loved music not from my culture! But thinking of music as something intrinsically universal and therefore immediately moving to everyone really collapses the rich history of musical tradition all cultures have. Music really is like a language, in that it is built on the culture that creates it; it has its own internal logic; it has style and meaning that depend on the history of that tradition and the understanding of its audience. The brief reading I’m going to do to write some porn will not give me to understand the deep and rich tradition of Chinese music, but also, frankly, even if I turned all my efforts and career to learning and understanding this right now, I still would not have the best comprehension. I don’t even comprehend western music, and I grew up with it. So, forgive me for the paucity of my understanding and knowledge, and please correct me if I make mistakes.

When I think about Chinese music that I know about, I think of two things: modern and traditional. The modern stuff I’m thinking of is stuff like C-pop, but also the things you might hear on the soundtrack for a drama or movie. To me, none of this music sounds that different than western pop or western soundtracks. There are a few reasons for this: one, there are tons of Chinese music that is not reaching me. Two, maybe I just think it doesn’t sound that different because I can only really process what I recognize. Three, in a similar vein, maybe I’m thinking “that sounds like what I know” when really what I know sounds like what I’m hearing. Globalization is definitely doing things to music; if you’re telling me that Asian pop is not influencing western pop right now, I’m going to think you’re crazy, considering the influence and popularity Asian pop has in the US and Europe right now. And four, western music did have an impact on Chinese music, so there’s that.

Obviously, the music genre I chose for Wei Ying falls into the modern sphere, and I certainly looked into the techno/EDM/IDM/electronic/ambient/house scene in China. Articles I found stated it took a little longer for EDM to pick up steam in China, but now it’s definitely going strong. There are some great electronic music festivals, EDM clubs, underground EDM scenes, and EDM music artists (composers and DJs!) in China. Researching these artists was pretty difficult, especially because I wanted Wangxian’s musical discussions to be highly technical, and for highly technical discussions about EDM you are wandering into some very niche spaces. I’m sure such spaces about EDM in China exist, but they’re most likely to be in Chinese.

As I’ve said, globalization is a factor when it comes to cultural difference in music, and I’d add here that because this genre of music is so new, globalization has even more influence, from what I can tell. That said, I do not want to diminish how much influence very specific locations have to do with this type of music. EDM is very tied to clubs (because of the dancing) and performance (because of deejaying, and also because of things like live coding/algorave), which is probably why we get so many granular genres of house—Chicago house is different from Detroit, just for example. Regardless, I stuck with researching a lot of western artists for both the music and musical discussions in the fic, mostly because the music is supposed to be so new and avant-garde that is should not be something overly familiar to the reader, even if they’re steeped in electronic music genres.

Then there’s traditional music.

Traditional music. Traditional music obviously had a huge influence on Chinese modern music. The influence of traditional eastern music on modern eastern music, as well as traditional eastern music itself, is what really influenced a lot of western minimalism of the 1960s and 70s (and onward). To be clear, not all “eastern” traditional music is the same. It’s just as richly diverse regionally as traditional western music, if not more so, given “the east” is fucking huge—though I will say that a lot of people think of western music as pretty monolithic, because folk is characterized as a separate tradition than classical. When you consider ancient western folk, there’s a shit ton of it, and it’s quite diverse. There is also folk music in eastern music traditions, and this is different than music that would have been played in courts and palaces, so there’s really a ton going on.

Traditional music is what people think of when they think of eastern music being “weird,” which is something I really hate. Look, I love being weird; I think weird is cool; it’s great. But weird means unusual, and traditional music is very usual; people who say that just mean it’s unusual for them, and they should think about their words. What they’re trying to say is that traditional eastern music will sound very different for many western listeners, even though, again, we like to think of music as so universal, actually!, because it’s based on math, actually!, and math is so universal!!! The truth is that math is patterns, and patterns are things that your brain recognizes when there are familiar elements, and when there are unfamiliar elements your brain has trouble recognizing the pattern. So, again, music is a way to communicate across all kinds of boundaries, but it is not a universal translator. (But it does make you wonder . . . if Lan Zhan played Inquiry, could Aeneas answer???)

Regarding the unfamiliar math, what we’re talking about is scales. I think most people know this part. Eastern scales are based on math, just like western scales, but the frequencies are divided up differently. Among other things, traditional Chinese music did not use equal temperament, which means depending on what note you start with, the intervals for all the notes on the scale were be different. A way of thinking about this, at least as I understand it, is that a piano is even tempered. All the notes are always the same whether you’re playing in C major or B flat, because you have no control over the frequency produced when you press the key. But if you’re using just intonation—say you’re using an instrument with just a few strings—you’re adjusting the frequency of the note to match your scale. It requires extremely precise hearing and playing ability.

Notation for traditional Chinese music was really different than how I as a westerner understand it. For one thing, it didn’t include rhythm, and for another, it represented more a framework for improvisation than every single precise note. (See Gongche notation, Wikipedia.)

Authorship was also thought of pretty differently. When I googled “great Chinese composers,” the only results I was getting were twentieth century. There are some great ancient Chinese composers, but I had to do a lot of digging to find them, and trying to find someone like the Chinese equivalent of Beethoven is just the wrong approach. When you get right down to it, this really seems to be about the fundamental difference between western individualism vs eastern collectivism and community-based thinking. The individual artist is not the hero of the story. That said, the tradition of the music is very heroic. For instance, the notation allows such variation that the same piece can really build and grow through different artists, much like a story through oral tradition. Additionally, for an artist in an ensemble piece to stand out would really be quite rude; the point is not the individual talent of the musicians but the fundamental beauty of the piece. (This was a particularly hard thing to research, and I mostly found out what I laid out above from various folks answering questions in forums. The best one I found is here.)

Another thing is that harmony, as we think of it, was just not really a thing in traditional Chinese music. The focus was on a melody, which is where minimalism comes in. I’d add here that the “as we think of it” is pretty important, because the western paradigm, including western music language, is not super great at really capturing the nuance of Chinese music. I am terrible at tracking my sources when I research stuff for fic, so I was trying to find some of them now, and I came across this article, which examines the harmony that did exist, but how different it is from what we think of when we think of western harmony.

Despite the reading I did on this subject, very little about Chinese traditional music made it into the fic. I do have Lan Zhan reading a book on traditional music that he hates. This isn’t based on a book I found, but rather to show that Lan Zhan isn’t really into the idea of musical “purity,” that is, ideas of what you should and shouldn’t do with music. That said, I’m not really aware of what strictures around traditional Chinese music are like, or what the Chinese thought is on that. I am aware of how deeply restrictive western thought is regarding music theory, and that’s really where that part of the fic was coming from.

I’d originally had Lan Zhan reading a book on western music theory and very deeply hating it, but I also felt like having him read a book on western theory could reinforce the idea that he’s working within a western paradigm, when really the whole point is that this Lan Zhan very intentionally uses traditional music values. Due to his inspiration from Wei Ying, he’s breaking the norms of how that music works, but he's not necessarily making it western; he’s making it avant-garde. Basically, my inspiration was a Chinese Philip Glass, but I didn’t want to say that because as mentioned above, Glass is still western, no matter his influences. That said, Wei Ying does compare Lan Zhan to Philip Glass and also Tan Dun, who you might recognize as the guy who did the soundtrack for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, among many other very famous projects.

Tan Dun has in fact been called the Chinese Philip Glass, which is probably not very respectful to Tan Dun, who is himself an incredible (and experimental!) composer. I should note, however, that Tan Dun is Chinese American—he was born in China, but got a degree at Columbia and has lived in New York since. Also, he is particularly famous for marrying Eastern traditionalism with western style, and that really wasn’t what I wanted for Lan Zhan. I didn’t want Lan Zhan to be incredible because he was using western traditions, though he is familiar with them and can make very talented use of them. A lot of very famous Chinese modern composer are famous for that, and that music is still very Chinese. That said, I felt that if I made that Lan Zhan’s style, it would feel like I was saying Lan Zhan’s music is special because it’s western, and that was something I really wasn’t keen on.

In the end, I possibly did the fic and traditional Chinese music a disservice by having Lan Zhan read his book and hate on it. One of the whole reasons western music theory sucks is it can be pretty racist, and that’s what I was trying to avoid, but by conflating my rage at western music theory with eastern, I didn’t really help things much. But anyway, since I’ve now mentioned it, let’s just take a slight detour to talk about what I mean by racist music theory.

Western music theory racism. There’s a scene in the movie Tár that really solidified my feelings on the subject. In it, a student who identifies as BIPOC and pangender, says they don’t really have much use for Bach because of Bach’s misogynist history. The extremely famous director, Tár, played by Cate Blanchett, lambasts the student for “cancelling” Bach because of Bach’s personal life. The student goes on to say that they really just don’t have much interest in cis male white composers, and Tár continues to lambast the student for considering things like gender and race in conjunction with the art.

My understanding of this scene was that it was demonstrating that Tár is a jerk, so full of herself that she can’t listen to other voices, and so steeped in her 18th century western ideas of genius that she’s literally silencing the music voices she’s supposed to support. That was not most people’s reading of the scene, and in retrospect, possibly not the intention of the film. It seems rather telling that not a lot is known about Bach’s misogyny or lack thereof; there are plenty of other “great” western composers that are known to be worse in terms of misogyny and abuse, and yet the film did not make this scene about them. In retrospect, maybe that scene wanted to paint this student as kind of ignorant for cancelling Bach, and Tár really puts them in their place when she describes how art is more important than the artist.

Fuck that. I certainly believe that art is more important than the artist. JK Rowling sucks; that doesn’t mean I will stop loving HP fic and the part it’s played in my life. But the ugliness of the scene is that it hinges on importance of Bach, and look here, shocker, Bach is not essential, just as JKR is not essential if you decide you don’t ever want to familiarize yourself with the literature of TERFs. Even if you want to be a musician and create or conduct music, Bach is just not essential.

He’s pretty important if you want to be a western music historian, true, but when we talk about music there are many, many music traditions that are incredibly worthwhile and important that not only weren’t created by cis white men, but also weren’t ever derived or influenced by cis white men. If you think that you need Bach to know and love and create and perform and conduct music, it’s because you’re operating in a single paradigm that has become yes, universally known, but also for that reason oppressive and imperialist. I am not saying western classical music is bad because it’s imperialist, just to be clear. Bach’s great! Hate ‘im, but I do love me some Beethoven and he was also very cis and male and white and also a complete douche! What I’m saying is that forcing this music tradition on others is deeply imperialist, and it happens all the time.

Anyway, this is really a tangent, because despite my very good intentions to write about Chinese music, as I have stated, almost everything I used for reference was western, even a lot of the stuff I listened to. Maybe I just wanted to acknowledge that that’s a little racist, even though I tried not to be. Maybe I also wanted to hate on Tár and leave you with this interesting video about white supremacy in music theory.

References. Finally, we’ve reached the part I had originally intended to post, which is why I started writing this. Below are the essays and articles I used to write this fic. They were used in three ways: 1) to describe the music (though I also listened to things, see next section), 2) to inform Lan Zhan’s critiques and Wei Ying’s ideas—though I read a lot of essays to do that, just a crazy amount considering how little of the fic is actually about that, and 3) to describe the reading material Wei Ying and Lan Zhan exchange.

Music Beyond Airports – Appraising Ambient Music

This is a series of essays largely focused around Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, though there’s a lot of other stuff as well. I didn’t read everything in here, but the collection is absolutely fascinating. “Ambient House: “Little Fluffy Clouds” And The Sampler As Time Machine” is one of the “articles” Wei Ying sends Lan Zhan; meanwhile, the collection as whole is what Lan Zhan sends Wei Ying when he says he’s been reading about ambient house. Additionally, “Adaptive Game Scoring With Ambient Music” really influenced Lan Zhan’s commentary about arpeggiation, the first time he comments on Wei Ying’s music.

Counterpoint - Tracking in the Music of Aphex Twin

I have some embarrassment about this, given that the article is about counterpoint, and as I have discussed above, eastern traditional music doesn’t really employ that in the way westerners think about it. However, it’s also pretty backwards to restrict Wei Ying to traditional eastern music, as modern Chinese music includes plenty of counterpoint, and part of the point of the fic is that Wei Ying is doing entirely new things that haven’t been done before. Well. They’ve been done by Aphex Twin, as described in this piece, which also describes the first piece that Wei Ying plays for Lan Zhan in the fic, in the car. I did lift the phrase “pedagogy of counterpoint,” and could not decide whether it was long enough or significant enough to credit in the fic.

Unequal Temperament: A Review of Aphex Twin’s SYRO

I can’t remember what I used this article for. It’s an interesting read.

Reverb Machine (the entire website)

This is the site I kept returning to over and over and over again. Most of the articles about electronic really focus on either the equipment used or chords. In the fic, Lan Zhan isn’t supposed to know much about equipment or how any of it is used, because he does not do electronic music. Also, I didn’t really want to talk much about chord progressions, because those discussions are steeped in western music theory, and I wanted it to be possible for Wei Ying to be using the kind of scales traditional Chinese music used, even if a lot of modern Chinese music does use an even-tempered 12-tone scale. However, this site has a lot, and I ended up returning to it again and again so Wei Ying could say an offhand thing about reverb, and to describe certain things.

Notably, Wei Ying’s track, sex.mp3 is loosely based around Trent Reznor’s and Atticus Ross’s soundtrack to The Social Network. I haven’t even talked about Trent Reznor, but he was also someone I considered deeply when I started thinking about making Wei Ying do electronic music. In case you don’t know, Reznor was the artist behind Nine Inch Nails, but in later years he moved on to more experimental things, including movie soundtracks. Side note, movie soundtracks and video games is where a lot of these experimental artists doing either minimalism, ambient, or electronica, or a combination of all three end up, and I ended up reading a lot about video game music.

But anyway, when I saw the Social Network, I came out of it 1) admiring Aaron Sorkin and wishing I didn’t admire Aaron Sorkin because he’s kind of a douche, 2) shipping Mark and Eduardo way too much for my comfort, 3) going HOLY SHIT THAT SOUNDTRACK. Turns out I was not alone in finding that soundtrack totally different and new compared to anything I have ever heard, because as it turns out, it really was—wait for it—revolutionary. I understand that I have now said that about Glass, Eno, Radiohead, and Aphex Twin, but hey, people are doing things in music. Like I get that pop and hiphop artists are revolutionizing their genres all the time, but also it is possible for music as we know it to be redefined, and it’s not just the weird shit you hear that sounds like noise (there is a place for the weird shit that sounds like noise, and Brian Eno is closer to it than any of the above mentioned; I am not dissing weird shit that sounds like noise, because it is part of how we get where we are going).

Anyway, I used this website’s essay about The Social Network’s piece, “In Motion” to describe some of the music and inform some commentary on it.

“East Meets West: A Musical Analysis of Chinese Sights and Sounds, by Yuankai BaoSounds, by Yuankai Bao” by Jiazi Shi

This was the only essay I found that really had the extremely niche technical jargon that I really wanted for the fic that was also about Chinese music. You’ll note that it’s about a Chinese composer who is, again, famous for marrying eastern and western tradition, but this was what I could find in English, and I searched a lot. You’ll note that Lan Zhan’s very specific comment about the key change is something very directly inspired by this grad school dissertation. You’ll also note that this is where I found “Flowing Stream,” including a description of the song and the lyrics.

Music. A lot of fics like this one will link you to a specific piece that the character is playing. I could not do that, because the music in my fic is very intentionally made up. As I have been saying, the whole point is that Wei Ying is pushing the boundaries, inventing music that does not exist. So is Lan Zhan, by the end. I listened to music to inspire the descriptions, but it is not what they are playing, and almost none of it is Chinese. I’d be very interested in finding some Chinese music that is working on some of the principles of minimalism and electronic that these pieces employ.

Aphex Twin – Stone In Focus

Now you’ve come to the climax—this is really the story of how I learned to love Aphex Twin. This piece makes me cry. It’s what I used to describe the piece that has the remix of Lan Zhan’s guqin piece from 12 years ago. Obviously, the guqin piece mentioned in the fic is the canonical piece, Wangxian, but I find Wangian in the drama cheesier than I want it to be, and this Aphex Twin piece doesn’t have the Wangxian part. It’s just the sad longing part before Wangxian enters, but you’ll also notice that there are no flutes! Again, this is not the piece Wei Ying wrote; it’s just what I used for the description.

I didn’t link to the YouTube video I was watching, because the video was a collection and this didn’t come on until after minute thirteen. But that video just has this very sad tunnel that looks like maybe it’s for a train, and the rain is falling, and that makes me cry as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHl4NVytGpo&t=1074s

Book featuring Ndidi O - Hold On, I'm Coming

Wait, you’re saying, this is not electronic/house/ambient at all; this is just a trick to get me to watch one of your favorite wangxian vids! You’re right! But frankly, I was not focused on the genre when describing the music; I was focused on getting the feel of it that I wanted. The opening sequence to this was what I used to describe the track they make love to. (Lan Zhan starts making out with him and kind of slowly humping him to the track with the wangxian remix, but then Lan Zhan demands he plays something else, and this is what I listened to to get the feel for it.)

This pieces is a cover, and frankly, I can’t find out much about it. But just thinking about it turns me on and makes me cry and makes me feel so much, I can’t do it too often.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – “In Motion,” from soundtrack to The Social Network

As noted above, this piece inspired sex.mp3, but I will say that the article I linked above about this piece, as well as the memory of the soundtrack itself, inspired descriptions more than listening to the piece itself. In the fic, sex.mp3 is initially described as “violent.” This was because I didn’t know if the track would play a big part in the fic, and then when it did, I really had to change to both to fit the meaning and the flavor I wanted; it became “anxiety inducing,” and that’s when it became “In Motion.” “In Motion,” however, is kind of too bright and peppy to really be sex.mp3, though I will say I was trying to listen to it just to write this section of the post, and I had to turn it off. It makes me SO anxious.

Philip Glass – soundtrack to The Hours

I’m linking the whole soundtrack, because in the fic Lan Zhan writes several related pieces, which is what this soundtrack is. I can’t even recommend one piece on this soundtrack, because it’s the thing as a whole that really makes you cry, and I can’t say I listened to a specific part of it to describe Lan Zhan’s music, because I know it so well that I only have to listen to a small piece to get all of it.  

Flowing Water, played by Chen Leiji

The part this played in the fic is obvious. I listened to at least five versions of Flowing Stream/Flowing Water, and this is the one that I like the best. However, like all the renditions I listened to, the piece eventually becomes pretty complex and different than I wanted for Lan Zhan. In fact, what the narration describes as “showing off technique” is what I found in all recordings of this piece. I guess if you’re going to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on YouTube you’re going to do something impressive with it, but I will say this piece is still very close to what I wanted.

I will also say that when I searched for this piece, as well as several other traditional songs, the search results had a lost of stuff that said you can listen to these pieces for tranquility and calm and meditation. I suggest listening to this one as extremely passionate and longing, and you’re going to get a lot more from it. If you resign it to the background, yeah, it’s kind of nice. If you let each note really speak to you, you’re going to really ache in a beautiful way.

Brian Eno – Ambient 1, Music for Airports

After hearing so much about Eno and Music for Airports, I was a little afraid I wouldn’t like it. After all, this isn’t really my genre, and witness how long it took me to find something I liked by Aphex Twin. However, I really needed some inspiration for the piece Wei Ying composes after Lan Zhan breaks them up, so I started listening to it.

The opening to this album is not the heartbreaking thing that the fic describes. It in fact does break my heart, but that is because there is something so sweet about it, lonely and sweet, but also perfectly fine being by itself. This piece is like a child alone in a room, figuring out blocks. This piece is like a cat on a piano, content with its nonsense noise. This piece is what it’s like to be alone and to be fine with that, to love from afar and be fine with that. It still brings me to tears, listening to it.

Radiohead – Everything in its Right Place

Apparently I did not succeed in writing all the music without Radiohead. I will say it happened because I happened to be watching a TV show that just happened to use this song right when I needed something powerful. I was already thinking about them, because my BFF was listening to a podcast about In Rainbows, which explains the children shouting “Yay!” in 15 Step. I really wanted something other than rain to get sampled in Wei Ying’s music, and my brother has specifically used his children talking or his babies crying as samples. Once Lan Zhan knows about A-Yuan, I wanted to use that idea, so I listened to 15 Step again, which is far too peppy for what I needed. But then Everything In Its Right Place came on, and it’s actually way too melancholy for what I needed, but that doesn’t really matter; I just needed to get a few notes described, so this is what I used for inspiration for what Wei Ying plays Lan Zhan after he admits to being in love with him. I will just say that re-listening to this song really does remind me of just how much Kid A means to me, but also how much it means to, like, music. There was really nothing like it at the time.

-

I will end this post by saying that I am not, in fact, a "music" person. So many people need and rely on music to get them through tough times. I mostly don't care about it. I don't have a Spotify account, and I can't imagine taking the time to really curate playlists.

But one thing I can say about me and my tastes is that I'm interested in learning. I want to try new things and hear things that I haven't heard before. To be a little self-aggrandizing, I think that that's a good thing. I think it makes me a better person to work on listening to things that I'm a little unfamiliar with and learn what's great about them. I think I got to do that quite a bit writing this, even though in the end I used a lot of pieces I was familiar with to do the actual writing. I hope that maybe someone reads this and decides to listen to something new, just like I did.

[mint-yooxgi]

Forever - Yandere!Kitsune!San

Yandere AU & Gumiho AU - First Person POV

Genre: Mature, Smutty Themes, Internal Monologue

Pairing: San X Implied Chubby!Reader

Words: 1,873

Warnings: Possessive thoughts, some smutty thoughts, and minor violent thoughts. This is a Yandere story, it will contain themes such as stalking, violence, obsession, possessive natures, and just general overall creepiness and swearing. You have been warned.

A/n: Oof, so I finally got around to writing this one and I'm honestly really happy with how it turned out!! It's a lot fluffier than I thought it would be, but Sannie is just a very excited boy in this imo. Anyways, as always, Feedback is greatly appreciated! Enjoy!~

The Eighth of The Feral Drabbles

The full moon is bright tonight. The leaves of the forest do nothing to hinder its glow, the light filtering through the branches and dancing across your skin. Yet, you are what truly captivates me.

Your hands are so soft, held delicately in my own. We fit perfectly together, as if you were made for me. A fact of which I know to be unquestionably true, for I am now certain that I have been made for you.

In all of my long years on this earth, I have found no other like you. It is you that has captivated me ever since the moment that we met, and I don’t think I will ever stop loving you. You have claimed my heart in a way I never thought possible, and now, all I want to do is consume you in the same ways that you have consumed me.

It’s nothing malicious, I promise. I could never hurt you. I would rather cut off my own tails than so much as bring you any ounce of pain. Besides, I wouldn’t be holding true to the promises I just made you this evening, now, would I?

There’s more than one reason why I asked you to meet me tonight. The moon was only one of them. I wanted it to set the scene - to be the unmistakable backdrop to the start of our forever together.

I had to have you. I love you. I need you, and I think it only fair that I tell you this.

You’ve always known what I am. You’ve known from the very first moment that we met. I honestly don’t think I could have hid it from you even if I tried. You’re very perceptive that way. A fact of which only made me fall for you harder.

You never feared me. In fact, you welcomed what I am with open arms. I can still remember your curiosities that came spilling out of your mouth when we first met, and even now, I don’t think I will ever grow tired of them.

I could never grow tired of you.

I have guarded this mountain for as long as I can remember, and now, it shall be ours. This will be our path that songs are written about; our love that legends get told of. Nothing, no one, will ever change that. I’ll ensure of it, even if it’s the last thing I ever do.

Gently, leaves fall all around us. Their vibrant colours of red, orange, and yellow only serve to make this moment all the more special. After all, this time of year is important for my kind. It’s when we choose our life mates, if we ever find someone worthy to be called that.

I most certainly have.

I found you.

Courting you hasn’t been easy. I am, unfortunately, bound to this mountain, so I could never go and visit you like I constantly wanted. I always had to wait for you to come see me. Being away from you is like suffering from a severe drought without being able to ever quench my thirst no matter how much water I drink. Without you in my life, I am empty; I am lost.

I’m pretty sure I made a fool of myself more often than not whenever you finally came to see me, but waiting for you to show up each time drove me to the very brink of insanity. So, really, you can’t blame me for all of the times I tripped over myself as soon as I sensed you cross the boarders of my land. Besides, seeing you smile - hearing you laugh - and all because of me made me- makes me happy beyond belief.

I knew I had to have you, to make you mine. I can’t live without you.

You- you complete me.

Every time I saw your face I would immediately become overjoyed. I could barely keep my heart from racing, just as it does now as I lead you back to our home.

Our home.

It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

I won’t lie to you, My Precious, I have desperately been waiting for the day where you finally come to live with me. I have been fantasizing about it for too long. I’ve always wanted to curl up next to you in bed, pulling you in closer as I wrap you in my tender embrace. I want to cook for you, and watch your face light up like it always does when I bring you special treats meant only for you. I want to hold you while we gaze at the stars, of which could never compare to your beauty.

More than all of that, I want to love you unconditionally. I want to be the first thing you see when you wake up, and the last thing you know before you sleep. I want to kiss you breathless, and wrap you up in my tails when you’re cold. 

Fuck- speaking of my tails, I want to hold you close as we make love, wrapping one or two around your waist as we cling onto each other desperately. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get enough of you, and I hope you can say the same for me.

I’m not blind, I’ve seen the way you look at me. I know I can make you shy. Heck, just the other day you started stuttering when I was showering you in praise! You looked so cute trying to hide your face behind your hands. Really, all I wanted to do was take you into my arms and kiss you, but you weren’t mine yet.

If I’m going to court you, then I’m going to do it properly.

And I did.

Now, I don’t have to worry about holding myself back! I can hold your hand whenever I want. I can shower you in all of my affections like you’ve always deserved! I can kiss you, and hug you, and hold you close like I’ve always dreamed. More than all of that though, I can reassure you of my never ending love for you until the end of time. Those doubts and insecurities will have no place in your mind any longer. Not while I’m around to quell them.

Of course, I will always make sure to do everything with your consent! I’m not a monster. At least, not to you.

I can’t promise I’ll be able to stay as calm as I usually am with you if anyone were to try and take you away from me. Anyone that dares to hurt you, cheat you, steal your heart from me, or anything of that sort will know the true wrath of the mountain spirit that guards that which is most precious to him.

In case you’re wondering, that’s you. You are the most precious thing to me in this world. That’s why you’re My Precious!

Oh, how I cannot wait to fall asleep beside you tonight! I’ll do my best to control myself, but you seriously have no idea what you do to me. Simply being this close with you, and knowing you fancy me, too, is making my head spin. Already, my thoughts are consumed with absolutely ravishing you when we get home, and completing every mating ritual I know of to solidify that bond between us.

Maybe I should stop holding your hand…

No.

Impossible.

I don’t think I could tear my touch away from yours, even if I tried. You’re mine now, and I’m yours. Feeling your fingers intertwined with mine only solidifies that.

Though, it’s certainly not helping my wandering thoughts…

This is what it will feel like holding onto your hand as I make love to you. This is what your warmth will feel like radiating against my own as our bodies intertwine in the most intimate of ways.

It only makes me even more desperate for that which has still yet to come…

I want to serve you, My Precious, and I want to make sure I do it right. Too many nights have been spent living in my fantasies of all that I want to do to you - all that I want to do with you. Nights exactly like this.

Oh, I know it’s still quite early in our relationship - we only just agreed to live together - but I can’t help it! I have spent countless hours thinking about all of the different ways I will claim you, and everything in between.

If I’m being honest, I desperately want to do so beneath the light of the full moon on my sacred grounds near the summit of my mountain. It’s a place only I can get to, and now that you’re with me, only you are allowed to set foot upon such a sacred part of my territory. I can just picture how your skin will glow, just as it is now, beneath the uninterrupted radiance of the moon. 

Your back will arch upon my alter as I lose myself between your thighs. Lips, tongue, fingers, cock: all of me belongs to you. I live to serve you, and I can think of no better place to do so than on my most holiest of spaces.

I worship you, and I will spend the rest of our lives proving just that.

Oh, please, Precious, won’t you let me get lost in you? All I want is to feel your body pressing against mine. I want to feel your thighs trembling around my head as I give you yet another earth shattering orgasm. I need to feel your juices dripping down my chin as an offering to the ecstasy I’ve provided for you. I want to feel you pull me closer, your nails scratching into the skin of my back as your legs squeeze around my waist. I so desperately want to feel you brush a delicate hand over my tails- hell- all over my body.

I know from the way you stare at me that you want this, too.

You’re not subtle in the least, Precious. I’ve seen you admiring me when you think I’m not looking.

Do you also think about what it would feel like for my arms to wrap themselves around you as I roll my hips so sensually into yours? Do you long to run your fingers through my hair, only to grip it tight to pull me in closer to you? I bet you’ve longed to know what I’m capable of, if I’m truly capable of pleasing you as your lover should, just as I have, haven’t you?

Don’t worry, Precious, even if it takes time, I promise to learn every little detail about what makes your body sing. I promise to please you in every way I know how: physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. I want to see your soul come alight with me, for you have already begun to make my own shine.

I promise you’ll never have to worry about anything again.

Everything that I am belongs to you. For now, though, let’s take it one day at a time.

For now, let’s start with tonight.

The start of our forever.

[amrass]

8 films that inspire my RDR2 fanfics

So this is for the kind and patient anon who asked me for some movie recs relevant to my writing, and for anyone else who might be interested.

This list has genres like western, drama, crime and horror. Most of the films have darker themes, half are non-English, and some have that surrealistic edge that I try to emulate as a nod towards Rockstar games. I consider fanfics closer to screenplays than literary fiction, and so it feels natural that this list has an emphasis on fun!!!

1. Il Grande Silenzio / The Great Silence (1968)

I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is my favorite western film of all time. It is a classic, a spaghetti (Italian) western made by Sergio Carbucci ("the second greatest spaghetti western director"), and it has a Morricone score - buuut it is set in snowy mountains as opposed to deserts, have anti-fascist themes and is revisionist and dark.

The main character Silence, who is an outlaw who kills bounty hunters, reminds me of Arthur Morgan, and the main villain, the evil bounty hunter Loco, of Micah Bell. I think it served as an inspiration for them. It's great if you want to get that western atmosphere seen through a colder lense.

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2. Utvandrarna & Nybyggarna / The Emmigrants & The New Land (1971 and 1972)

These two movies are best seen as one imo, as they follow the same Swedish family of farmer immigrants through the 1800s, as they travel across the sea to settle in the USA. These films are great for getting into the history at the time, as they are quite accurate, and might give you a realistic portrait to "lawful" human beings lived and died, such as Abigail and John in RDR1-2. To say it's a harsh life puts it mildly, but there is also joy, and I love how unflinching this film is in showing the life at the time. Great for seeing why it isn't easy for the Van der Linde Gang to settle down.

The last one might be the most relevant since it's set wholly in the USA, but personally I adore the shift from the Scandinavian landscape to the American one, a contrast that helps me describe it better. It has great actors you might associate with Ingmar Bergman films (no one is as good at dying as Liv Ullmann lol, kudos).

PS: PLEASE DON'T WATCH THE NEWER NORWEGIAN REMAKE. THE SWEDISH VERSION IS SUPERIOR.

-

3. The Thing (1982)

AHHH I couldn't not put it here, and not only because the main character wears a cowboy hat, or it being my favorite horror film. No, this one is just great for learning how to write tension. The whole movie is super tense, and made more so by the characters being smart, the stakes being high, and the whole setting being used. It’s also gory and FUN.

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4. Le Cercle Rouge / The Red Circle (1970)

Lolol when I first wanted to watch this I got the German one made many years prior, which was pretty meh. Afterwards I watched the correct version, and MAN, truly a great heist film. It really gives young Dutch & Hosea vibes. This one is great how at showing how much planning and carefulness one has to do if one wishes to lead a life of crime, and how it might not save you. It’s also just a cool movie. Old school cool.

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5. Le Trou (1960)

More tension ... And god, the sound picture in this movie is something else. This is a French prison escape film, and can help you if you want to see just how important loyalty is among criminals. It really has that harsh, high testerone vibe to it lololol, and I'm sorry, but the French butts in tight and sexy prison uniforms are a sight to behold.

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6. Sin City (2005)

Okay this is the sort of film I can't watch with just everyone because it's so exploitative and over-the-top, but it's my favorite comic book style movie. It has extreme violence, very sexy men and women in nice coats or underwear, and it's just so much fun. The character Marv reminds me of low honor Arthur Morgan, and Dwight, of high honor John Marston. I love the comics too. Just know that this isn't for everyone, but it is very me.

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7. Female Trouble (1974)

LOLOL another film that isn't for everyone, but it's kind of considered mandatory viewing if you're queer. I know this is an odd choice to inspire RDR2 fics, but I write crack fics, and believe it or not they require work as humor requires a degree of form, seriousness and precision.

I love also John Waters so much, I remember watching this exact movie with my first queer friend at sixteen and we were like, hugging and kissing each other in sheer joy. I am inspired by this type of surralist, over-the-top, dark humor across all my stories. Tbh if Divine showed up in the Rockstar universe, probably toned down for Rockstar due to marketing reasons, would you be surprised? I'd love to see her on a horse spray painted with glitter.

-

8. The Hateful Eight (2015)

I almost translated this movie title into Italian just for fun, but ... Yeah, I guess I had to kind of end this list with a circle composition, what with The Hateful Eight being inspired by Il Grande Silenzio and all, and those two GIFS before the list being from the film.

I grew up with Tarantino movies, and when I watched this in the cinema I liked it but was underwhelmed. It's only after rewatching it a couple of times that I started to really, really like it. I like and understand the references, I love the atmosphere, it just helps remind me how fun a movie can be. It's also great for giving characters the necessary degree of coolness. I reference this one a lot in all my works, and would love to do write a fic directly inspired by this.

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That was it! I can mention some more movies I like that are kind of relevant to this list: Army of Shadows, Django, Man Without a Past, Werckmeister Harmonies, Jackie Brown, Diary of a Country Priest, The Price of Fear (French one!), Event Horizon, Hellraiser, Braindead, Green Room, Rec, Withnail and I, Ravenous …

I always welcome movie recs! Just know that I got specific tastes lol.

Thanks for reading!

[theshowoffpod]

The Real Tragedy of SwanQueen/OUAT

Expanding on my swanqueen thoughts in our recent pod here (bc why not) :

Check out the pod for my initial rant (starts at around 1:17:30 if you want to skip there, but there are mentions of them throughout)

I think this comes across in the pod somewhat, but the point I really wanted to make about Emma and Regina and swanqueen as a ship, is that it's not just a letdown that they didn't get together for the gay of it all.

Obviously representation is important, and SQ would have been an insane leap forward for that in this era of media. But IMO, that's still not the real tragedy here (since we've made a lot of progress in that regard).

The real tragedy is that doing the enemies-to-lovers thing with Emma and Regina would have been the ULTIMATE manifestation of the concept of the show, which is taking fairytales and retelling them in a way that subverts your expectations. Subverting your expectations around what a fairytale is, how a happy ending goes, and what is possible for the genre. Making swanqueen the endgame for the OUAT fulfills its premise in a way that few shows can even hope to achieve, much less actually have the opportunity.

Built into swanqueen, you have these subversions of the original fairytale genre:

the "villain" gets a happy ending,

the villain is redeemed/redeems herself and in doing so acquires romantic/familial love,

the princess retains her agency,

the princess saves herself, everyone else, AND the villain,

the villain also saves the princess,

the princess does not find love with a prince,

the princess and the (former) villain live happily ever after together.

And that's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there's more. I didn't even bring Henry into it either.

That's the real bummer for me. It's the absolute once-in-a-lifetime chance they had here to turn an entire genre of stories on its head and tell an even greater story from the pieces, and they didn't do it.

Even if they did it in a clunky way or it wasn't written the best, it still would have made the history books for the attempt alone. Not to mention the opportunity to tell a fairytale that completely puts agency back into the hands of women. Sigh. What an absolute waste.

But I guess that's why god invented fanfiction. :)

I hope you enjoy the pod!

[utilitycaster]

What are some of your favourite podcasts / podcast recs?

It's hard to pick a favorite though I will say at the moment Midst is the one I think I look forward to the most, so I'm just going to go through basically all podcasts I currently or relatively recently previously listened to and sort them by rough genre. Note that as with all recommendation requests it helps to know the vibe of what you're going for and what's important to you (I know I just was like hey I'll take most music recs but the commitment for music is like the length of a song, whereas podcasts/books/movies/tv are a bit more time put in)

Actual Play:

Longtime listener of NADDPod and TAZ which I'm guessing if you follow me you are broadly aware of but if not feel free to ask more; I also post about Worlds Beyond Number enough that you might know what it is. I checked out Burnt Cookbook party a while ago both because I liked Jenna Stoeber's work with Polygon and because someone asked me for Actual Play podcast-only recs with more than one woman or nb player that weren't RQG and I was like oh I should find some. Anyway it's quite good! it's definitely lower production values than bigger podcasts but the plot is highly original and really good, the vibes are fantastic, the characters are a lot of fun, and all in all worth checking out. I also do listen to the Re-Slayer's Take which I've really enjoyed! Everyone's good but while I was familiar with (and a fan of) Jasmine Bhullar and Jasper William Cartwright's work, Jasmine Chiong as Farah speaks to the Grouchy Old Hunter Woman fan in me and has been a personal standout. It is very heavily edited, which does take some getting used to. Also, I mentioned RQG (Rusty Quill Gaming). It comes with the caveat of "very good but slow to start and then doesn't really stick the landing, imo, though the epilogues help" but I can recommend with that warning.

Scripted Fiction

Camlann. Modern post-apocalyptic Arthuriana/Folklore of the British Isles, with some hints of other folklore as well. 1 season; hoping they get funding for a second because it was very well done and also I want Gwen and Morgan to kiss.

Midst. Hard to describe but if you follow me you've seen a lot of posts that might help. Extremely good! About to finish in a bit over a week's time! Check it out and I advice you check out the first 3 episodes at once to get a feel for it; the three-narrator thing is also "get used to it and it will be fine".

The Penumbra Podcast. Originally envisioned as an anthology podcast but then two specific settings (noir-y space opera and medieval court monster hunters) were very popular. Also nearing its end.

The Silt Verses. Quite literally everything on this list would be described as "New Weird" and "has queer characters" and this is maybe the New Weirdest. Anyway, set in a world where gods are real, require human sacrifice to live, and society is both very complicit and also uses the gods to sell shit. I think people who are mad about D20 or CR not being explicitly political enough should listen to it. Extremely good. Also in its endgame, but they've had a very drawn out schedule as of late.

Welcome to Night Vale. You are on Tumblr; presumably you know the drill. I can't say I'm like...super following what happens but it's one of those things that's been a constant in my life for over a decade and takes up a very pleasant hour-ish per month. This feels like damning with faint praise but the earlier stuff was great and it's still strong, it's just, you know, the inevitable slowness of an indefinitely long slice-of-life-ish show vs. the more plot-driven ones above.

Within the Wires. By one of the Night Vale Creators. I have a post about it but it's set on an alternate history Earth where a cataclysmic war/plague/various other bad things absolutely destroyed the population in the early 1900s, leading to a very different global society. Some people say the seasons are very uneven in quality. They are incorrect. The seasons follow different people and all are in the form of found audio, so they are all quite different, but it's entirely a matter of personal preference if you like a season or not; it's not that some are Objectively Better.

Wolf 359 finished a long time back and I haven't relistened since my original listen in like...2018, but of "podcasts that have finished" it's worth it. Weird space stuff.

Informative(?)

Home Cooking by Hrishikesh Hirway and Samin Nosrat; was a pandemic project that now only airs yearly, really, but worth checking out if you like cooking.

I found out about Home Cooking via Song Exploder, which is just Hrishikesh Hirway talking about songs. Great podcast; the editing is fascinating and I have found a lot of good music from it!

I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats. Has only two seasons but they are both very good if you like The Mountain Goats as a band.

No Such Thing as a Fish: the QI (British quiz show) (if you're British you know this better than I do) researches talk about weird facts and riff on them.

Sawbones: Justin McElroy and his wife Dr. Sydnee Smirl McElroy talk about weird medical history and dumb wellness trends on tiktok. This is one of the earliest podcasts I subscribed to back when I did not drive nearly as much.

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. Has also completed and there's a book that's basically covering the same ground. It's not like, purely informative; it's very anecdotal (as is I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats) but I learned a lot from it.

Honorable mention: I just didn't have the time or energy to keep up with Ologies by Alie Ward but what I listened to was fun and interesting and my sibling is a big fan.

Comedy and Miscellany:

Beef and Dairy Network: also British, on the Max Fun network with the McElroys. Fucking weird. I debated putting this in the scripted fiction because it's basically "what if Welcome to Night Vale was a little less story focused but still had throughlines and was specifically about the cattle industry in some absurdist alternate version of our world" but stuck with comedy bc the absurdity outstrips the plot. It's weird!

My Brother, My Brother, and Me: you probably know this one; either you love it or you don't.

My Dad Wrote a Porno: also British and from what I understand a bigger deal over there. Has uh. reached completion, in that they decided they were done, but the books apparently go on (sorry Rocky I'm not buying them). A guy and his two good friends read and roast his father's self-published erotica e-books about Belinda Blumenthal, Pots and Pans saleswoman, ft. bad accents, corporate espionage, and, of course, The Duchess.

The Empty Bowl: Justin McElroy and Dan Goubert of Cerealously's ASMR podcast about cereal. legitimately has helped me calm down when anxious at night. I am not even a big cereal eater it's just entertaining and chill.

Anyway any other podcasts I have listened to I've either forgotten, weren't good enough to recommend, just disappeared without any conclusion [*cough* king falls am] or involve way more reservations than I am willing to go into without knowing more about what you are looking for.

[runabout-river]

It's just utterly rushed. It seems everything are just straight up cliffnotes. Gege could have really needed a few chapters more to actually execute the ending.

Some of the important info storywise in this chapter are:

- Tengen being found in the remnants of Sukuna and allowing the barriers to remain for now. But it seems they are in a running clock about that and the barriers will fall in the future if they don't find a solution.

- The incarnated players are getting slowly hunted down to free their vessels, or in the case of Sumo and Katana guys, are allowed to fight the curses in Tokyo until they are released as well (they want Maki to do it)

- Tokyo is basically ground zero and a No-Go Area

- As curses are known now, non-sorcerers who experience weird stuff can turn to sorcerers for help with no Trouble

- the new players who got new powers return to their lives but use the growth they had to better their lives or start to make amends

IMO that sets up the solution of teaching non-sorcerers about curses, cursed energy, maybe even ways to control it, integrating both societies into one (as Yuki proposed to Geto in their talk, the other solution being removing CE, which she concentrated on during Shibuya). Meaning one of Yuki's solutions is within reach and can be done. It additionally solves one of the major factors of Geto's downfall which was the thanklessness and sometimes violent prejudice against sorcerer

I'm not quiet sure I would call this ending rushed, I'm going back and forth with it, but I would call it cut off but like you said its kinda like checking off notes and putting a ✔ at the end of it.

Your last point about being closer to realizing Yuki's dream is interesting and not something I thought about. Honestly, I've only been thinking of this from the opposite end: Gege took out every piece of conflict from the story in a single chapter.

Culling Games: no more. Reincarnated players: their cursed object will be removed the nice reincarnated players: get to have fun after accepting their future deaths Tengen: is not imprisoned inside Megumi, isn't dead, her barriers don't fall Yuta: has his body back Higuruma: won't be tried for manslaughter Megumi: doesn't have any lasting trauma from Sukuna Tsumiki: nice grave Abducted sorcerers: we'll get them back The invasion: ?? instability after the big clans fall that was talked about last chapter: ?? Change of the status quo of jujutsu after the Six Eyes died: ??

For me, it feels like JJK suddenly changed its genre in the last three chapters...

[midoribleak]

Angeline is a dick

at least, when she wants to be.

I made a list of all the things Angeline is found to be good at/ fun facts in the various books I got a hold of;

-gets tutored to speak italian

-knows how to play guitar bc she took lessons

-had a chubby phase (therefore knows lots of nutrition facts)

-knows how to fix cars

-Fixed her own hair

-Can groom dogs because she learned hair ^

-Plays soccer

-babysits 

-Didnt know how to jumprope

-Had a speech impediment when she was younger (Went by Annie) 

-Is not good at school, went to summer school to catch up

-Only criminal record is thievery (mints from a teacher) 

-Jealous of Jamie’s art skills and vocab

-good at magazine quizzes (trivia)

-Dances well

-Decent at poems / haikus

-RAISED 900 DOLLARS IN TOTAL FOR CHARITY (300 walkathon 600 jump a thon)

Now obviously these are amazing things that should be celebrated, but everyone at the school only loves her for her looks and surface level kindness, when in reality shes much more than that.

and that deeply upsets her.

She starts acting out by being rude and sassy JUST so people would stop stereotyping her as just a pretty face, which is COMPLETELY fair, she knows how to do so much and is learning and working hard every day!!! I love the fact she can fix cars and gave Aunt Carol an oil change!! I love how she only pretends to not know how to play guitar just so she doesnt show off when playing with Jamie and Isabella!! I love that she cleans up Stinker for Jamie so she doesn’t look ugly next to him in an art project and i LOVE how she uses her popularity for good!! Heres some examples of her going out on a limb for Jamie using her magic because shes gay because she cares!!

Also, heres a really, really important Angeline interaction that i think is so interesting for a kids book. Kinda unrelated but also pretty cool imo

And then lastly, in my FAVORITE book You Can Bet on That, Angeline and Jamie bet that Ang cant go without saying anything nice and Jamie the opposite, and Angeline finds it east to act mean because she’s channeling her jealousy for Jamie. It’s pretty entertaining how much more popular she gets for being mean tbh definitely worth a read, heres some bits I took as well, but in conclusion Angeline is probably one of the best characters in whatever genre of book DDD is and I will die on this hill how can you NOT love her?

[gardening-is-punk]

Lunarpunk gardens

Okay, I'll admit I'm not on top of the whole aesthetics of the various -punk genres, but looks imo should be considered after function and ethics. SO...

I was inspired by this post and got to thinking about what a Lunarpunk garden would mean on my site.

I decided the most important part of the post was "Let me propose lunarpunk being more than just witchy aesthetics. It should be about reducing light pollution, protecting all endangered species including the ugly ones, and most of all seeing darkness as a coexisting counterpart and not something to conquer." So, that's three ideas that I can work with.

reducing light pollution: Working through this idea the same way I would evaluating an established garden in terms of layers and scale of objects in the space, at a site-level the only exterior lights are those at the front and back door. Various flying insects are very attracted to the back light, which is a normal incandescent bulb, and less are attracted to the front ones, which are green. In both cases, we never leave them on all night, but working off what several websites say about bulb color and warmth, I can swap all the bulbs for a warmer-tone LED bulbs and that would cause less issue when they are on at night. Scaling up, I'm not sure what I can do about the huge streetlight on our road, which has the most hideous white-light. Before I DO anything, I probably should dig into the city's files, since I know the bulbs were changed into those LEDs a few years ago, and maybe there was some thought put into that decision.

protecting all endangered species including the ugly ones: Given I'm looking at Lunarpunk, an obvious connection here was moths, the 'ugly' relatives of butterflies. Personally, I love moths and understand their greater ecological role compared to butterflies from a video presentation I watched a few months ago (I'll post that later). Focusing in on the "endangered" aspect, I used Xerces Society's 'Species Profile' tool to look at my state and see what moths are endangered in my area. (Side-note: I also looked at the other categories, like Bees, Beetles, etc. and nothing was specifically noted for my area, so I'm putting those categories on the backburner for ideas rn.) I identified three species of moth as endangered for my area: Diana Fritillary, Dukes' Skipper, and Early Hairstreak. The idea to then ID what plants the eggs and larvae need as host plants, what adults need for sustenance, and what mirco-climates I can make to support their life cycles.

Diana Fritillary (Speyeria diana) "As a forest-dependent species, threats to the Diana fritillary come mainly from forest management: logging operations and pest control... There is one flight from June to September. Males emerge before females and patrol within the forest. Females lay eggs later in the flight period, mainly August, walking along the ground and attaching eggs singly to twigs and dead leaves. As with other Speyeria species, the caterpillars hatch and hibernate without feeding. They emerge in spring to feed on the leaves and flowers of various species of violets. Adults feed on nectar from a variety of plants, including milkweeds (Asclepias sp.), ironweed (Vernonia sp.), and red clover (Trifolium pratense). Males will also drink fluids from dung...Habitats for the Diana fritillary are the edges and openings in moist, rich mountain forests. They will also use pastures, shrublands, and fields for nectaring but will only breed if there is a suitable forest margin. Larval hostplants are various species of violets (Viola sp.)" (quotes from Xerces Society).

So, this species wants a forest edge, which my neighborhood is certainly not; however, I have a decent handful of trees which I mulch using unprocessed leaf litter and stems over the winter, and this provides a decent base for supporting any number of species in my site. I also have lots of self-sown viola in the lawn and beds, which I greatly enjoy not only for their tiny and delicate looking flowers, but also the fulsome heart-shaped leaves the rest of the summer and autumn. I have two Swamp Milkweeds planted, and I'll consider more species as space and needs arise. So far, off to a good start.

Dukes' Skipper (Euphyes dukesi) "It can be found in a variety of moist habitats with long grass, such as marshes or ditches, but the primary habitat is patches of sedge—its main larval host plant—in forested swamps. Dukes’ skipper deserves conservation efforts wherever it is found. Its forested wetland habitat should be protected from drainage, logging, and spraying...In the mid-south, there are two between June and September... Adults visit open wetlands to drink nectar from flowers such as pickerelweed (Pontederia sp.), sneezeweed (Helenium sp.), hibiscus (Hibiscus sp.), and blue mistflower (Conoclinium sp.)...Dukes’ skipper can be found in a variety of moist habitats with long grass, such as marshes or ditches, but the primary habitat is sedge patches in forested swamps. Larval hostplants are sedges, including hairy sedge (Carex lacustris) and shoreline sedge (Carex hyalinolepis)" (Xerces Society).

Again, not a habitat that is immediate to my site. The good news is that I'm already starting several Swamp Hibiscus from seed this year for various spots, and I've been looking more into sedges for a couple wet spots. In particular, I want to run an open pipe from the AC drip into a spot where I removed a non-native 'hibiscus' this winter after some damage. I could feasibly do a few sedges around the Swamp Hibiscus. I doubt I would get a breeding population on my own, but if it becomes an effective use of the water, this might be a technique that I can demonstrate to others in the neighborhood - and again, it's a good habit for several species besides the Skipper.

Early Hairstreak (Erora laeta) "The habitat is mature deciduous and mixed woods containing its host plants, American beech and beaked hazelnut. As a forest-dependent species, both logging activities and pest control spraying are possible threats...There are usually one flight (May – mid-June) in the north and two flights (mid-April – mid-May and late- June – July) in the east. Rarely, a partial third flight (late-August – early-September) in the southern Appalachians. Males perch in treetops on ridges and hilltops to watch for females. Adults nectar on fleabane (Erigeron sp.), oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), and steeplebush (Spiraea tomentosa) Early Hairstreaks spend a considerable part of their life in the canopy. Some observers note that adults visit moist ground in the morning (for example, along dirt roads) before returning to the canopy in the afternoon. Eggs are laid singly on the hostplant fruit. Caterpillars feed on nuts, initially the husk in early instars and later boring inside. Most of the year is spent as pupae, probably in the leaf litter" (Xerces Society).

I'm realizing now that the reason these three species are threatened so much is that their habitat is decidedly not urban or adaptable to the swathes of monocultures that have swallowed my area. I don't have any Beech or Hazel nut yet, but I do have some beechnuts sown in a pot, that I picked off the path in a local park. If those germinate, I can probably keep some in pots and maybe get one in the ground depending on the circumstances this summer. I don't have any of the nectar plants, except the fleabane which randomly pops as a volunteer ( a "weed" to those more judgmental about pioneer-recovery species), and I can look into Steeplebush seeds, since they do look gorgeous and I can probably sell the more reluctant in my household on that factor.

seeing darkness as a coexisting counterpart and not something to conquer

This one is a bit tougher to work with outside of my own praxis, specifically in convincing others visually through my site. Honestly, I think the best way to suggest this visually is in using plants that are either dark foliaged (I have a ninebark and planning on some corn that fit this bill) or silver foliaged/white flowering ( a garden sage I have in a pot and the sown buttonbush, maybe). In daytime, I'm hoping to focus a lot on bright masses of color paired with bright hardscape, like the existing white accents and planned turquoise painted pots. The dark foliage are native plants; the ninebark is a replacement for the awful barberries I spent hours hacking out, and the corn is "Flor de Rio" a burgundy-colored popcorn variety. Those alone I hope are visually different enough to catch people's interest, but I know a lot of people take walks in my neighborhood in the evening, at dusk or after dark. The white flowers and silver foliage might actually benefit from the harsh streetlight, here, shining out from the muted greens and darker foliage.

The easiest way to try and further this point is naturally to talk to people about the idea, but I think this visual communication/demonstration could serve as the backbone of those potential conversations.

further thoughts

Lunarpunk isn't a genre I've really worked with before, but I hope this interpretation of the idea (a dark/hidden counterpart to the more well known Solarpunk ethos) can meaningfully help people reconsider their biases about visibility and usefulness, and of course provide support to various critters in the area.

[hollowboobtheory]

okay as a person who was raised on new wave but has gotten into goth recently. how the ever loving fuck did tiktokers think rock lobster was goth. how??? they out there listening to love shack and own private idaho and somehow thinking that was goth???😧

couple factors

tiktok kids do not seek out context generally. this is how we got any/all pronouns cartman. they engage with south park based only on the sound clips that become memes on tiktok. similarly, i think they just heard the song and accepted it at face value and didn't look into who the b-52d are or notice that these are the same people who made love shack.

goth is a very broad (group of) genre(s). rock lobster admittedly sounds like it could have been made by the cramps.

goth dad (@awfullysinister) has admitted to playing it at the clubs he djs for years

there are a lot of bands whose goth status is contested like strawberry switchblade and even the fucking cure.

in my opinion rock lobster on its own is goth purely because a lot of goths like it. same with strawberry switchblade even tho stylistically they're more like an early ancestor to vaporwave.

goth classification in general is quite complex tbh there's a lot of nuance. imo its more of a vibe check. and rock lobster passed the goth vibe check to those kids.

the blind leading the blind is kinda the guiding principle of tiktok and none of those kids talk to people older than them.

now now it turned into drama. hot takes coming.

i think a lot of them have tricked themselves into thinking that gothery is objective and easily quantifiable and not largely vibes-based.

they've tricked themselves into thinking that "music based subculture" means the music itself IS the subculture nothing else that grew out of the goth scene is important (they do this while stanning elvira and collecting bones and ofc wearing tradgoth apparel but ignore that doublethink is at play here)

i'm blaming the influencers with amazon affiliate links here. they're seeing girlies posting their looks plus a shopping list for how to replicate their life exactly plus affiliate links (or worse, tiktok shop links ew) and it doesn't pass the sniff check for them, but because they don't talk to people older than them and because the version of goth that's presented in mainstream media is stripped of its anticonsumerist ideals, they only way they can think to counter it is to parrot "goth is a music-based subculture" back and forth forever

not thinking about how the fashion being antique and vintage and reused and diy and gloomy and spooky are extensions of the ideals put forth in the music, as applied to a more everyday form of self expression.

they get that goth isn't something that you can buy but they don't know how to articulate that

um in case you haven't noticed, tiktok, a highly trend-based and consumerism driven platform, yanno with all its influencer shills and brand accounts and ads disguised as content and clones of each other and viral song of the week and they've recently baked shopping right into the app itself and every other video you see has that damn "eligible for commission" badge under it, where everybody is copying each other to sell shit or as an audition to sell shit, just might not quite line up with goth ideals.

which imo is more important than the music but obv the platform itself doesn't really lend itself to putting that into practice. again frankly tiktok as a platform is fundamentally incompatible with the goth subculture.

ok back to rock lobster bc the politics have been cut out all these kids have to back up their sense of gothenticity is music based subculture. meaning when they find out they've been dancing to a song that isn't even technically goth, that's really fucking embarrassing.

cue one zillion identical "um we can still listen to other genres and still be goth" tiktoks. which, like, true. still funny that you were preaching that shit while dancing to the boomer equivalent of like. idk old town road. what does the fox say. i don't fuckin know.

anyway now everybody's having a damn identity crisis calling each other posers and elitists and the influencers are laughing all the way to the bank. also setting their makeup haul videos to rob zombie who while liked by many goths is DEF not goth.

oh yeah and dollskill have been making the sponsored content rounds too. because this wasn't already enough of a shitshow

[myaoiboy]

Can you try explain what you mean about Ocelot looking like a drag king in mgsv? I feel like your boyfriend in that I just. Don't see it? I'm trying to understand why Ocelot would even have that applied when he's always been just A Guy™

Okay so I'm going to try to do this without getting into Grad-Level 5D Queer Theory Media Criticism, but I also fully realize that in doing that, a lot of this is going to sound very much like I'm saying "Source: Just Trust Me Bro".

(anon i am SO sorry that you happen to be the first person to directly adress me about gender in MGS)

I also wanna be straight up front here and say that I'm not trying to imply that Ocelot is anything other than a guy, he's just also a guy who's playing a million roles (this is important) and lying to damn near everyone, including himself. He has some of the worst identity issues I've ever seen in a character, and that comes to a head in 4 where he literally isn't even *Ocelot* until the final moments of his life. So yes, for the sake of not writing War and Peace, I'm going to assume Ocelot is "just a guy" and come at this from a pure queer theory/media analysis standpoint, not a headcanon one.

So first it's really important to point out the order in which we see Ocelot through the series. In the timeline, the last time we see Ocelot before V is 3 (or PO which I haven't played due to its placement in canon-limbo, but Ocelot looks basically the same). So we see him go from A to B here.

I am going to say something potentially controversial: even before saw V ocelot, I thought 3 Ocelot looked like he was wearing drag *queen* makeup. I don't know whether it's intentional, or an attempt to circumvent the lower poly models and lower definition textures of the PS2, but the first image looks like someone who is going for a highly exaggerated, feminine cheek contour. Here's a few drag queens who, imo, do a very similar contour look:

Whether the color filter or the texturing of the PS2 or something else, the MGS3 version of Ocelot also has a look of mascara and frosted lipgloss (frosted lips being much more popular at the time of MGS3's original release than today, but alas).

So from that I was already very much primed to look for femininity in Ocelot's whole vibe. It was actually kind of jarring how much more rugged he is in V than in any of the previous games, to the extent that it sent up alarm bells in my head that something was going on.

I don't remember the moment that I went "hey, wait a minute," but it was certainly pretty early on. As someone who's been on tumblr a hella long time and remembers when we used to swap passing tips, the specific combination of facial features remind me of a very specific genre of "ftm makeup tutorials" that were also pretty contemporarily popular on tumblr. A very quick summary being mascara on the eyelashes and specific peach fuzz to give the impression of a squarer jaw and having more facial hair, as well as specific contouring to give a "masculine cheekbone." Most of these tips basically came directly from drag king makeup.

Gonna include some drag kings as well, some things to notice include the tendency towards using stubble as contouring and vice versa, the shaping of cheek contouring, and the tendency to accentuate mustache and sideburns.

I'm pretty bad at wording descriptions of hair and makeup so you'll have to forgive me for not going ham on explaining the similarities bc now we actually get to the interesting part which is: so fucking what? If this is true, if you take my word for it, what does it say about the text? If I want to make this argument to someone else, what can I say that will convince them that, even if it's not *intentional,* it's a valid and meaningful view of his character?

Like, you can make a character based on anything you want, but why does it matter whether Ocelot is based on drag either direction?

Ocelot's "drag"iness is multipurpose. One: he's queer. Like, I grant that he never comes out and says "I love 'Big "Naked 'John' Snake" Boss'" but we get a hell of a lot more confirmation that he's gay than we get straight confirmation for a lot of presumed-straight characters. I feel comfortable saying he's canon queer.

Two: it's a visual metaphor for being a double/triple agent. While he's literally performing several roles (KGB/GRU/CIA, or MSF/Real BB/US, or US/Patriots/BB, or anything in between), he's also visually playing two (or more) gender roles, a feminine man, a mannish woman, something neither or in-between. The implication of drag specifically is pretending to be something that he isn't (which he literally always is, holy shit, again, does he even know who he realiy is?).

And before anyone says "Well, if it's so important to his character, why did they wait until 3 to start doing it?" They didn't!!

This is THE most classically masculine that Ocelot ever looks. But there's still precious polygons invested into giving him long hair and a flowing coat. Working with sprites and low-poly models means having to very carefully select traits that you want to display on your character, and Ocelot's go into making him a cringefail cowboy.

The fact that he's a cowboy in itself is also pretty important to the whole gender/sexuality situation. I mean, Brokeback Mountain might not have been out yet, but the male-to-female ratio in the west meant a lot of men cozied up together on the frontier. Hell, hankey code comes from cowboy culture, with men wearing certain colors to announce who would take the "man" or "woman" role while square dancing.

I could go a lot into gender and how it works on a social/societal level in general and why that matters, but OOPS I have been writing this for a WHILE.

I was actually going to go a lot more into queer theory and gender in MGS in general but ngl, I could write a whole doctoral thesis on gender and how different characters perform or subvert gender. Because holy shit when you start peeling back the very thin macho facade of Kojima's work to do a feminist reading of it, boy howdy do you get. A whole lot to talk about. (ask me about death stranding sometime i dare you)

Basically what I'm trying to get across is that Ocelot has a lot of roles that he's playing and NOT playing, and more than a few of those are gender roles, which is very much visually symbolic of his character.

I am so sorry anon I have been thinking about him nonstop for a full year </3 I hope at least the first part of this answered your question about what features I see that scream drag to me.