#yeah its from a random internet poem | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

laterzgators · 4 years

Text

How the gang would be like in modern times.

Kinda basing this off of texts I have with my friends because I get reminding everyday that my old friend group (kinda still my friend group.) are like the gang.

————

Ponyboy

He would have like an iPhone 6 in 2020. And he would be so upset about it. But he wouldn’t complain cause his brother didn’t have money for him to have an iPhone 11 or something.

He uses every platform to text. He probably only texts like Johnny and sometimes Dally.

Johnny and him would FT for hours and during them be like “look what I sent you.” And then proceeded to a meme.

Still a whiny baby boy but 2020 edition

Didn’t pay attention to politics cause he isn’t voting so he has no say. :/

Would probably watch anime- but like mainstream.

Has two instagram accounts one for public people he knew and a secret one to post what he wanted cause Darry probably looked into his phone-

Tries to show Darry how to use a smartphone. Darry won’t understand it. But he tried.

Track team until COVID hit 🙄

Hated virtual learning. HATED IT.

Especially when Darry didn’t have work that day he would peep into Soda and Pony’s room to see him on his desk on a call.

Pony putting his arm down shooing him away. “Darry...I’m in class please shh.” “Don’t worry bout me I’m just listening. Making sure these teachers actually are teaching ya.”

Somehow went brain dumb with this type of learning some days so when a teacher would ask him to answer something he would mute and turn off the camera or leave the call.

He was happy when he did know the answer a certain day.

• Having to text Johnny or Two bit to join a class cause the teacher was doing attendance.

—

Johnny

Texts Ponyboy and Dally pretty evenly. Though Pony would start being whiny when he didn’t answer. Johnny also probably had an older phone like an iPhone 6 or se maybe even an LG but he wouldn’t complain. He was just fine with having a phone. At least it worked.

Has a whole Instagram account about memes. Pony probably helps manage it.

Watches anime with Pony cause he finds it interesting. Does he understand what’s going on? No not at all but if Pony likes it then it’s okay.

Does really like Naruto though-

He hates school. It’s bad enough he skipped it most days. But now ITS AT HOME SO HE HAD NO EXCUSE TO NOT DO IT!

He would usually join the zoom calls but he kept his camera off and was on mute. His parents were probably arguing-

Some days he could be with Pony at his house and did his zooms from there.

Pony spamming him to join the class.

Pony: “Johnny Mr Fullb-“

Johnny: “I’m about to join just be patient pony.”

Dally sent him a nude once and he was SCARED. Dally used social media for that purpose but we will get more into that later-

He apologized a lot btw-

FT calls were fun cause he would put his phone in a certain position and do work and Pony being high on adrenaline would run around his room and you could see it on camera. It was funny.

—

Dallas

Where do I even start for this man....

TAKES FREAKING A MILLION NUDES LIKE IM NOT EVEN KIDDING ITS GROSS

Poor Johnny once got sent one on accident.

He is still traumatized

Virtual women and real women double bonus for him. He would text or dm one chick and be asking a girls number physically at the same time.

Mans gotta multitask-

Bully people on the internet.

Mainly pony for some reason. He did it playfully but Pony would get upset so quickly-

Pony.boy_curtis posted a picture. Caption: Read this poem at school and I’ve been vibing with it.

Comments: @Dal_winSton: Haha THATS dumb. (And more spam of him that includes 😀 that emoji.)

People would call him an eboy and he didn’t like that. He was just edgy in his own way.

Stole a iPhone 11 Pro so that’s how he has this phone.

GC with the whole gang existence and he was like “This is dumb we see eachother everyday.”

He was a weird teen-

—

Sodapop

My manz always texted Ponyboy when he was to lazy to speak.

Texted a lot of people cause he was that guy. But mainly Steve, Sandy (when they were still a thing.), Darry, and Pony.

His IG was filled with nice pics of him and girls just commenting about how handsome he was. He got annoyed of it at a point and turned off the comment section.

Probably had tiktok and made Pony get it.

Had a free subscription of Spotify and my boy loved his music.

Texting pony is like.: “Hey could you tell Darry that I got the eggs he needed earlier.” Pony never told him. Darry got home with a carton of eggs and started yelling that they wasted money on extra eggs. And Pony stood there after hours of finally looking at the text and would just back up.

Random girls dming asking if he was single.

It made him uncomfortable.

But Steve would grab his phone and say random things to the girls and they’d leave him alone.

He didn’t understand Pony’s memes but liked them cause they were on his page.

He or Darry probably asked later on what it meant.

“Uh-huh.” Is the response after Pony took an hour explaining it.

Still didn’t get it.

Followed every single person he knew or liked on Instagram or any platform.

“PONY CAN I USE YOUR HOTSPOT MY INTERNET ISNT WORKING!!!”

Pony just yelled back sure.

—

Darry

You thought Soda was bad nah Darry is a full on Karen-

Had probably had a flip phone until 2018

Loved Karen memes. Pony would see him liking them on fb and he’d just LAUGH.

Yelling at Pony to help him with his phone.

Pressed the wrong buttons all the time.

Probably had an LG-

DIDNT get texting 🤦‍♀️

Telling Pony not to talk to strangers on the internet.

Would have Rants on Facebook.

He pays for cable even though no one in that house used the Tv except him.

Would be so confused on the GC

“IF YOU ARE GONNA GO OUT WITH JOHNNY PUT ON YOUR MASK PONY!”

In the GC: Two Bit: Calm down Jamal dont pull out the nine.

Darry: Who is Jamal and what do you mean by pull out the nine??

Pony: PFT- CHILE I-

Darry: WAIT I SEARCHED IT UP IN THE GOOGLE DO NOT SAY INAPPROPRIATE THINGS IN THIS CHAT TWO BIT MATTHEWS!!!

It’s scary seeing him in our times-

—

Two Bit Matthews.

MEME LORD

All the memes all the jokes he understands it.

He is an intellectual.

Was barley passing school. He was usually on his phone in class.

He probably also had tiktok.

Dmed girls all the timeeee-

Hey good looking

You have been blocked by this user

WHA-

Yeah he didn’t realize girls didn’t like that

Had a whole page dedicated to memes because obviously.

DIDNT join virtual school at allllll

He was busy playing roblox like the cool kid he was.

He is legit a 9 year old-

Hated wearing masks but he did it.

Still hung out with Pony and the gang even with Corona.

He spammed the GC at like 4 a.m when he was super sleepy but still awake and asked all kinds of questions.

“If we call an orange orange can we call orange fruit?” Confusion.

He was something else-

—

Steve

Texted Soda during work.

Also texted Evie during work.

Google was his new best friend.

He used google a lot he just did.

Only had Instagram cause Sodapop begged.

He got used to it after a while.

Would get Ponyboy in trouble whenever he posted something that he knew could get him in trouble

Would post pictures of Darry doing random things and say “Superman” in the caption. LOL

Used LMAO a lottt for some reason

On the GC if someone was spamming he’d just say SHUT UP. Like a lot but he would.

He never wore his mask and if he did it was on his chin.

Pictures of chocolate cake.

That’s probably it lol.

——

That’s all. I hoped you liked it. Sorry I’m posting so late lol-

#80s movies #the outsiders #ponyboy curtis #johnny cade #dallas winston #darry curtis #sodapop curtis #steve randle #two bit mathews #johnny cade headcanons #dallas winston headcanons #se hinton

61 notes · View notes

nattspencer · 4 years

Text

In case of boredom - Part 1

Missy x reader

Part 1 (you’re here) / Part 2 / Part 3 - Complete

Summary: The reader was always intrigued by the Time Lady. When she jumps into the TARDIS, the readers decided to write a little novel to take her out of boredom, putting little annoying riddles as a password to each file.

A/N: English is not my first language, I’m really sorry for any mistakes. Also, this is my first fanfic here, so please be kind. I already have a part two in mind for this, let me know if you want it.

Warnings: None

Word count: 1.9k

The GIF is not mine

Sometimes you think your major problem is having too much empathy and caring so much for other people. You can’t just see someone feeling miserable and not try to do anything to cheer them up, even if this means just standing beside them, however, despite your best intentions, it often ends up hurting yourself, since you always internalize some of their issues. This wasn’t any different when a intergalactic murder time lady started traveling with you, Bill, Nardole and The Doctor.

You had analyzed Missy since the first time you entered the vault with Mr. Eyebrows - you definitely adore calling him that way, the eyebrows always grows frowny proving your point right - primarily, it was just part of your hobby, you loved study people’s personalities - it always helped to create amazing characters for your tales - but there was something about her, something that scary and attractive at the same time and you never were so intrigued. Slowly, piece by piece, observing from a distance every single detail about her, you started to finally understand bits of what's going on under those pale blue eyes.

The memory of Nardole’s panicked face when he saw Missy sitting comfortably on the TARDIS after your meet with the ninth legion flashed in your brain and it still makes you giggle, it wasn’t supposed to be funny, you were kinda scared in the moment as well, but his reaction and protests were really hilarious. Bill also tried to complain when she found out that the Time Lady would become a regular in the police box, but The Doctor promised that Missy wouldn’t kill any of you, and also the ship needed maintenance.

As time passed by, you couldn’t agree more with the Time Lady’s words, she was as much a prisoner here as she was on the vault, and defitinaly as lonely too. Missy spent hours immersed in maintenance work while you all rushed throughout the universe in inimaginable adventures, and when the TARDIS finally fills up again, none of you dare to initiate a friendly conversation with her or even just be alone in her presence, too afraid of her impressibility. Nonetheless, the intriguing mocking smile never left her lips, always ready to toy with any of you, and without a doubt, always ready to annoy the Time Lord. No one would dare to say, but all of you loved to see her messing with Mr. Eyebrows.

“Head in the clouds?” Bill asked sitting on your side, in the stairs of the console room.

“Kinda, was it that obvious?” You just hoped not to be a weirdo for too long.

“Looking at a random spot in the ground for hm… fifteen minutes? Yeah, very obvious, and knowing your eyes, you would probably stay like that for some hours”

“Sorry, sometimes I just wonder off, you know” You smiled shyly.

“I do” She smiled back “I also know that your best histories comes out when you are like this, and believe me, I would let you wander off for hours just to read whatever you would write, but a certain Time Lady was starting to stare at you way too much, so I had to save my beautiful writer from weeks of mocking”

“Oh, you are really my hero” You gave her an exaggerated hug that made you both lay down on the stairs, laughing.

“Nothing is for free sweetie, I want a new tale on my table by tomorrow” She teased.

“As you wish ma’am” You did a floppy continence to her order, and then, an idea crossed your mind.

“Are you okay?” She asked when you got suddenly serious.

“I think I just found a solution for something”

“What something?”

“You’ll see” You answer simply.

“Just stay out of trouble little girl” She talked with a warning voice.

“Considering where we are and who we travel with, I don’t think that would be rather possible”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right” She admitted with a little chuckle while she stood up “I'm going to bed, try to go sleep soon as well, it was a tiring day”

“I’ll do my best, boss” She just showed you her tongue and left the room with a smile still dancing between her lips.

Books! Missy was always reading something to try free herself from boredom, it wasn’t unusual to find some bloody murder mystery novel around her, so the thought came to your mind, maybe, just maybe, you could try to help her through the characters, encourage her to be good and, with some luck, write something that she would really get excited about. Howbeit, you know it wouldn’t be so easy, the plot needed to be tricky, mysterious, unpredictable, and also, you needed her to wait between chapters while you write them - patience was definitely not among her qualities and because of it, she could get bored really easily - so why not put a password in the each file, leaving a little riddle for her to find out? That could be fun.

A week or so of planning and plotting has passed away and you started writing, thankfully it didn’t take long before two chapters were brought into life, although, you wanted to make sure that she was into your thread before finishing it all, so you began to ponder how to set the perfect bait. You waited until Missy and the Time Lord started their regular argument about some alien knowledge to sneak into the ship, fully aware that they would be busy for some hours and you wouldn’t get caught, you took one of the library's laptops and place it right in the middle of the central reading table, quickly transferring your files to the computer’s main workspace, aside it, you put a little printed note sticked to the screen with the words: In case of boredom. You knew it would trigger her curiosity, now you just have to wait.

Hours later, when you came back from another intergalactical adventure, you innocently decided to pick a book from the library just for the sake of bed entertainment, of course, and you glanced a little hand write on your sticked note: Pick harder riddles next time. She definitely was on it, and you almost couldn’t hide a little victorious smile crawling to your lips. You kept feeding her with new chapters almost every day with the same strategy, waiting for her to get distracted before you sneak into the place and every single night, after you write, you stood up for hours in front of the computer trying to come up with an even harder riddle. Were in one of these nights that you suddenly realized, nothing would be more challenging for her than riddles about earth’s history, she probably didn’t bother in researching any of it before since Missy despised the planet. It was perfect, and it actually worked.

Surely, even a terrestrial would have some problem solving your last one ’when the never setting sun empire had to apologize to the biggest lazio’s last flower’ but you didn’t expect to see one of the last of the Time Lords spend a whole three days in just one riddle. You could see by the little popped vein in her forehead how irritated she was for not finding the answer, however you didn’t dare to tease her about it or even talk about it at all, just allowed yourself to sense the little rewarding feeling taking over your chest.

On the fourth night, when you were walking towards your bedroom, after checking the Time Lady’s progress, you suddenly felt two arms smashing your body painfully against the corridor walls, and you didn’t have to look to know who it was, actually you were quite expecting this.

“What is the answer?” Missy demanded with furious eyes and an arm crushing your chest to the wall.

“Gave up already?” You don’t know where your courage was coming from.

“If I were you, I would turn all the mocking down, kitten, I’ve killed for much less than that” She placed a hand in your face roughly rubbing your cheek.

“You wouldn’t kill me”

“Why not? Did you forget? I’m bananas” She said very close to your face singing the last word.

“You wouldn’t do it because you’re too into the story to let it go, too curious, but also too stubborn to ask for a tip from a insignificant little human, especially a tip from the history of a equally insignificant planet, so all your ego allowed you to do was pin me to a wall and demand for a answer, that was the only way you would get what you want and still be in command” Her grip loosened a little bit, and you could see a hint of shock on her beautiful ice eyes, probably no one has ever read her like that “Or I’m just wrong and you’re bananas, of course” You smiled “Either way, I’m willing to give you a tip: Lazio is a italian region, its name refers to the latins, people from whom the Romans descended. Romans in its turn, had Latin as their official language and the vulgar version of it originated tons of others languages, the most recent creation, as people believe, is Portuguese, witch the largest speaking country is Brazil, also, last lazio’s flower is a metaphor used by a important brazilian writer, Olavo Bilac, in one of his famous poems to refers to his mother tongue”

“And how the hell I was supposed to know that?” Her teeth were clenched and her fingers were pressing your own jaw, not being gentle at all.

“You weren’t, that’s rather the point dear, but before you throw all your anger in tiny little me, you were the one who asked for harder riddles, and all the information were on the internet, you just needed to find the right track”

“That’s not harder, that’s just insignificant knowledge” She growned.

“I know, but that was the only area that I probably would had a little more knowledge then you, so why not take it as a learning opportunity?” Your heart was pumping on your chest, and the adrenaline was present all over your body. Suddenly, she redrew her hands from you.

“You’re interesting, pet, I’ll play your little game, but you better keep it high level, I get bored pretty easily you know, and you wouldn’t enjoy to talk with me like this when I’m not captivated, you might get kinda too dead”

“I do acknowledge your facility in get bored, Mistress, had this in mind since day one”

“Don’t get too arrogant, puppet, you don’t know so much of little old me as you might think”

“Or you’re too used to be the attention focus to realize that someone, in the corner, is actually observing and analysing you”

“Am I this important to you kitty cat? The Doctor might get a bit jealous” She raised a eyebrow teasefully.

“You’re intriguing, Missy, and as you can see, I love intriguing people, always a good inspiration to my characters”

“So you might want get a closer look” A smirk was growing in her lips as she got closer.

“I would, if you hadn’t a research to make, you’re four days late” You said as you placed your forefinger in her lips, pushing her back.

“You escaped this time baby girl, lets see for how long” the mischief was playing in her eyes.

“You might be a good flirt, but so am I” You winked at her and started to walk calmly to your previous destination.

“This will be definitely fun” Soon you heard her heels clicking quickly towards the library.

#missy x reader #missy/reader #missy doctor who x reader #the master x reader

54 notes · View notes

thegirlwholied · 3 years

Text

fic writer interview game

(though I go such long spans between updates 'fic writer' is a generous description... look, I may not have glorious purpose but I have glorious excuses)

& thanks @aurorawest for the tag 💕

name: Cara

(...not sure how many of you out there know this actually- except those of you who know me IRL! - as while I love my name I rarely reference it here & do enjoy that a certain corner of the internet knows me as lyin)

fandoms: I am a dabbler, a renaissance fan, a reader-of-all-trades (master of none!)- I'm all over the place; if I like something I check the Tumblr tag; if I reblog it I have probably at least stalked the AO3 page to see what folks are up to (I am in my own little fandom corner- but kitty-corner to many avenues!).

two-shots: the closest I've come to a two-shot I wound up putting up as a one-shot instead (or we could count my one fic that only has 2 chapters, but in my head it has more)

most popular multi-chapter fic: I had to check but my guess was right, it is Glass of Water, & you know, imho the one thing ol' fan fic dot net still has going for it over AO3 is its cool statistics - I don't know who you are, 50-100 people from all over the world reading till the last chapter every month on FF Dot Net even now, but much love!

actual worst part of writing: making myself sit down & get going. When I really get going - I forget to stop, I forget to eat, I don't hear people talking or music (when I toured the Louisa May Alcott house they described her writing like this and I related so much), I go for hours upon hours without meaning to and then I stop and - tend to stay stopped too long. I'm not good at the 'write everyday' process; I'm best at it when traveling, when I'd settle in at a coffee shop or location (or on a plane!), write some, & have to move on, but, uh, global pandemic put a cramp in that. I know it has to be on the page to count but I really, really do a lot of my writing in my head first. Most of my fics, if you've read one, are first drafts, straight up. They just got rewritten in my head & half-started notes & beginning scenes until I finally sat down and the whole thing came out at once feeling right. Or half comes out in one burst and the rest in another burst however much later. Typically I'd adjust a few typos & post. This is by no means writing advice! It'd be bad writing advice! But just how I operate. I've tried other ways but I've learned over years that my work's better when I accomodate/work around my natural creative process rather than trying to change it. (Also deadlines. I'm so good at delivering on hard deadlines; I am weak with soft deadlines.)

how you choose your titles: as this is a fic specific 'interview', how I title fics is very different than my og fiction. Most commonly: song lyric (...actually I did title my og fiction grad school thesis after a song lyric too; i may not hear/play much music while I write but I sure think about writing while listening to it), canon reference that is typically One Dramatic Word, poem/quote references with a heavy lean on Yeats.

do you outine?: not for fan fics, but I have a general shape in my head of 'this chapter where this happens' - if I have an unfinished fic with expected number of chapters, those are pretty accurately predictions; I have at least a big picture of what happens in each chapter. & probably some of the conversations, sometimes even already jotted-down dialogue. A written outline? Not so much (my original novel did have a list of chapters with notes to keep it straight but they looked like "Chapter Thirty-Seven: epilogueeeeeeee denoumenttttttttt job" - direct quote down to the # of t's, there)

Ideas you probably won't get around to, but wouldn't it be nice?: I still convince myself I will finish All the Things! but uh some have gone wayside yeah. One I really thought would be cool & know is blowing in the wind was this Buffy fic (yes, A Fic Not Appearing On My Actual Fic Profiles) which was a *whole* Big Concept thing even though I thought I could do it in 5 chapters. ...And then I didn't.

spicy tangential opinion: not that spicy but the fanon/canon gulf is often wide & deep for certain characters in particular &🎶I'm frightened by those who don't see it🎶. really, a character’s fanon version at times may be more fun (though more often it softens character's edges amd I like edges) but... with *certain characters in particular* it feels like that distinction’s been weirdly lost. Also, random, but probably because,my formative years were fan fic dot net, not livejournal, I always feel odd when my AO3 replies to comments (instead of reviews) are a) public and b) add to the comment count. AND I tend to wind up in a loop of 'wouldn't this person rather I spent this time working on an update' where I just... never reply which seems counter to the expected AO3-cultural norm these days, so I feel guilty? Despite the guilt I just reply to so many emails for a living (3 inboxes just for work, plus then my personal email & texts!)... so for the record my default approach is 'I appreciate all comments SO SO MUCH & do read them all but please message me on Tumblr instead if you want a response".

These opinions are 'pumpkin spice' levels of spice, not exactly cayenne here, but hey I think I achieved tangential

callouts @ me: I always think I will get there faster than I do - this is true when I am driving places too! My friends expect me to be late even though I don't expect me to be late!- so I have been known to, let's say, overpromise on update speed. (I meant to do my work today, goes a favorite poem that always applies @ me) (Time between 2011 and 2021 feels especially timey-wimey and oh no 🎶well, I guess this is growing up 🎶).

(also @ me: overly fond of parenthesis.)

& definitely some people-pleasing tendencies that spill over into, not so much my writing itself, but how I feel about it.

best writing traits: detail, dialogue, ...deaths? Lol but really. My favorite thing as a reader is when writing make you laugh & cry so those are my favorite compliments as a writer. Humor/angst: always my fic genre. Even my closest-to-fix-it fics are labeled 'somebody lives' not 'everybody lives'. ...and I need to update them (dammit)

tagging: ...this is way too long to tag, aka inflict directly upon, anyone else, except @aurorawest who asked for it 😂

#about me #tag games

3 notes · View notes

purplesurveys · 3 years

Text

1169

Do you take lessons for anything? No. I’ve done so in the past, but not at the moment.

Has something really heavy ever fallen on you? Other than siblings or cousins from when we played together as kids, I don’t think so.

If you wear makeup, what colors do you usually wear? I never wear makeup but whenever my friends have used my face as a practice stage (lol) they’ve usually just used natural or nude-ish colors, which I find look okay on me.

Does your shower have curtains or a glass door/wall? It has a sliding door. I’m not sure what material it’s made out of, but I can tell you it’s at least not glass.

If you have more than one pet, do they ever get jealous of each other? Cooper does tend to bark and/or whine when he sees me giving more attention to Kimi, but not always. Kimi couldn’t give less of a crap, but this is also because he is 13.

Is there a room in your house that you don’t like going in? I used to not like being inside my bedroom, especially after the breakup. For a long time it was a place I only associated with crying and breakdowns, so when I was doing the arduous task of starting over I haaaaated staying there because it only hurled me right back to square one. But I’m happy to say that I eventually got better, had enough strength to change the narrative for my room, and now I like being here again :)

Do you remember the last question you were asked? What did you answer? My mom just asked me to watch Cooper because he was having the zoomies.

Besides salt and butter, do you put anything on your popcorn? Not a big fan of popcorn but if I had to pick a topping, I’d go with cheddar cheese.

Are you lonely? I’ll feel it sometimes, but it only lasts for a moment or so.

What’s your favorite magazine to read? Wow I haven’t read a magazine in years.

Do you like pineapple? I hate it. In all forms. The pizza debate doesn’t even matter to me lmao, I just think pineapple downright sucks.

Have you ever seen fireflies? They used to be common in our village when we first moved in, back when there were only like 3 houses in the neighborhood (we were one of the first to move in here). As more houses were built and the place got more occupied the fireflies gradually lessened until they disappeared altogether.

Have you ever trespassed? I very vividly remember taking multiple trips to the school cemetery back in grade school (I went to Catholic school and ours had a cemetery below our chapel, where all our deceased nuns were housed...I really shouldn’t be talking about this at 10 PM...). I am 100% sure that was an off-limits area but we went there anyway because we were a naughty group of kids and because no one was guarding the area.

Do you tell your parents where you are going? Yeah; if I live with them, they have the right to know. < Ooh, I’ve never even thought about it this way before but this is a very good point. I’ll second this, haha.

Do you agree with the notion that all people were created equal? Yes.

Do you raise your hand or participate in class? God never. I hid as much as I can and only recited if I was called on purpose.

Do you like visiting the mall? Why or why not? I like the malls that we have. But then again, malls are the only decent public spaces we have - we don’t have public libraries, parks, playgrounds, etc. – so it’s not like I have a choice on where I can go if I want to go out.

Have you ever purposely hurt an animal? Yeah I kill bugs when I see them. Soz, I have no feelings for them whatsoever.

Would you ever see a therapist? I planned to finally do this last year but it just fell through haha and eventually I was able to care for myself too. Now that I’m doing a lot better for the most part, I feel like I’d have no clue what to talk about once faced with one.

Are you afraid of heights? Only if I had to jump all the way down. But if I ever found myself staying at an extreme height simply to enjoy the view, or if I was ever in one of those towers where the top floor’s floor is made out of glass, I think I would enjoy that.

Are you afraid of the dark? I always say I’m usually not afraid of the dark, and will only be if I was in a situation that was intended to scare me. I would definitely be afraid of the dark if I was in like an abandoned cave or a haunted house, but I would also find the darkness in my room comforting.

Are you a jealous person? When I am it’s mostly been in a playful sense and rarely serious.

When is your birthday? April 21st.

What are you listening to right now? My very very old aircon doing its very very loud whirring thing. It’s become a running joke in the family because it is literally SO FUCKING LOUD hahahaha Have you ever been caught doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing? As a goody-goody, I can only ever do this to my mom; but yeah, she’s caught me many times.

Are you still friends with someone from kindergarten? Sure, but I’m not ~close friends with any of them. Just chummy enough to like their photos on social media once in a while or greet them happy birthday. My oldest friend was from Grade 1.

What is the most important thing to you? Being happy with myself and making sure I don’t miss out on life and opportunities.

Do you like whipped cream? I can take it or leave it.

Are you close to your mother? We get along but not close.

Are you close to your father? I’m closer to him in the sense that I would be more comfortable around him, but we’re also not physically or emotionally close.

Do you walk around bare foot when you're at home? Or do you wear socks? I am Asian hahaha what do you think?

Do you like chocolate popsicles? Sure! One would sound lovely right now, actually.

Would you ever be your school’s mascot who wears that costume? Both of the schools I’ve attended don’t have mascots.

Would you rather see the Great Wall of China or Big Ben? Great Wall for sure. Sorry but I can’t see myself getting excited over a giant clock, and I’m sure there are other lovely spots in London I’d much rather visit.

Have you ever written a poem? Always unsuccessfully. It’s never been my forte.

Would you ever be a tornado chaser? That’s a thing? Uh...no way??

What is your favorite thing to eat with bbq sauce, if you even like that stuff? Pizza. And anything, I guess. Barbecue sauce is the bomb.

Your parents tell you that this summer, you get to pick the vacation. Where do you plan to go? Covid notwithstanding and budget permitting, probably New York City.

What do you think is a good theme for a prom? I could not care less.

Have you ever had to do a class in summer school? Thankfully, never.

Do you get nervous when you go to the doctor? About what? You know, I’ve always thought going to the doctor was no sweat until I realized just how nervous I was when I had to book a telemedicine consultation once as part of my job (PR can make you do the most random, out of context things sometimes, I swear haha). I surprised even myself with the reaction I had when I found out I had to do it, and how I felt like declining the offer...I guess I was scared about the possibility of underlying health issues suddenly being unearthed. Your whole life can always get turned upside down in the blink of an eye with just one diagnosis.

Have you ever been to the rainforest? I’m pretty sure the climate I live in is called tropical rainforest, so I guess yeah.

Have you ever created a website? Not from scratch. I had always made it under an umbrella website, like Blogspot.

Ever thought about writing a book? Sure, as a kid.

Have you ever had a dream where you killed someone? No. Whenever I have dreams of that nature it’s always me or a loved one being killed, but never me doing the killing.

Do you ever make up stories in your head and wish they come true? Yes.

Which is worse: stuffy nose or runny nose? Stuffy. It sucks not being able to breathe freely.

Which is worse: Sick to your stomach or sore throat? I super hate sore throat. I already get stomachaches frequently, so even though I know how sucky it can be I feel like the discomfort would be bigger with a sore throat.

Do you think your last relationship was a disaster? The way it ended was, but it wouldn’t be fair to myself to invalidate the genuine happiness I felt when I was in it.

Have you ever solved a Rubik’s Cube? Never.

Who do you think is the easiest to talk to? Angela.

Would you consider yourself to be emo? No.

Do you have a favourite metal band or do you not like metal? Not really, no.

What is your current desktop picture? It’s just one of the provided desktop photos on my Mac.

Thick or thin blanket? Thick.

Who are your favorite bands? Paramore, Coldplay, and Against Me!

How do you mark through your word search puzzles? Depends on my mood. Sometimes I’ll strike through and sometimes I’ll go ahead and encircle the entire word altogether.

Have you ever sewn something? I’ve done embroidery...does that count?

What did you eat for dinner last night? We had breakfast for dinner, actually hahaha so my dad made an omelette, hotdogs, and tapa.

Ever been grounded? If so, for what? Continued from last night. Yes, I was caught cursing all over Twitter when I was like 11 so my parents cut off my access to all my gadgets for a year or so. Which, in retrospect, is an acceptable consequence for my actions, but we’re also talking about a time when schools were starting to view the internet as a necessity in doing homework and research. I missed out on nearly all my homework for a while, and my mom didn’t buy it when I kept telling her I needed to do my research over the internet. At the same time, she kept demanding why my grades weren’t doing so well when she was the reason they kept being pulled down...so yep, not a very fun time.

Have you seen all of the Jaws movies? No and I don’t really have the desire to. Doesn’t seem like my kind of movie.

When was the last time you played cards? (not on the computer) Maybe 2 or 3 years ago.

Have you ever drank Cherry Coke? No, I don’t drink any soda.

Have you ever had a black eye? Nope.

Have you ever eaten a bug? Not to my recollection, but I would love to try cooked crickets and whatever bug can be prepared and eaten.

Do you like pranking people? Never; the idea makes me cringe since I never know when it’s considered going too far. I’d rather watch people prank other people.

Did you ever take a cooking class in school? Yeah, but we were required to take it. We also had some baking sessions, which to me was a lot more fun. I remember having to make macarons and rainbow cake which are both right up my alley, heehee.

Do you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? No, idk what that is. I just know people turn everything green on that day lol.

Do you use Skype? I’ve never used Skype on my own. That’s where I used to talk to my dad for video calls maybe around a decade ago, whenever he was abroad; but I never had my own account. These days I alternate among Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or Zoom.

Have you ever participated in local magazine cover girl searches? I don’t think so, but I did join a few contests on some of those kid’s magazines we used to have...none of which I won.

Have you ever been called a skank/slut because of the way you dress? No.

Is your ex sexually attractive to you still? I haven’t seen her in 5 months, which helps...that said, I simply feel nothing. I’m neither sexually attracted nor not sexually attracted to her.

Describe the most romantic moment you’ve ever had. I can think of one but I don’t see the point in still raising it, considering where I am in life right now.

Have you ever cheated on a test? Yes, once. I hated it.

Have you ever been to couple’s counseling? Nope.

How often does your employer ask you to work overtime? A few times a week. Sometimes I’ll do it willingly as well just to get the task over with or to save myself some deliverables the next morning. I’m fine with OT-ing tbh; since I work from home, I feel like my time is a lot more flexible.

Did you often read for fun when you were a kid? I read A LOOOOOT as a kid. I was a total bookworm. < Yeah, same. You could always find me bringing a book to school and reading during breaks, even though they technically didn’t allow us to bring any non-academic book. My spark for reading died when I was around 12, same time as when my depression started to kick in, and it never really came back.

When was the last time you were scared? Someone from the media called me up yesterday VIA LANDLINE to ask a question about a press release I had sent out that day. I usually read up on the materials we have, but I honestly didn’t give a shit about that particular story and didn’t really make an effort to know more about it, so I found myself stumped when he dropped the question. I ended up stalling for a bit before I was able to stutter an answer, so that was scary, but at least he was nice. Also, I hate phone calls.

What’s your favorite song by Rihanna? KISS IT KISS IT BETTER

Can you speak binary? No, I never understood it.

Would you rather live somewhere that had hurricanes or tornadoes? I already do, at least for hurricanes. I imagine I’d be terrified of tornadoes.

Have you ever had a pet that you disliked? Nooooooo, never. I was never close to Arlee but I still did my best for her to like me, and always fed her whenever my sister would be in her dorm.

When was the last time you saw hail? Never. Doesn’t happen all that often here, and when it does it’s always in the provinces.

What is on your mind right this second: I want to spend my remaining time awake reading fanfic (I’m into them again, omg) but I also wanna finish surveys...so I’m doing my best to breeze through this so I can finally look for something to read hahahahaha.

Have you ever given a nickname to your pet(s)? Cooper is Cooperino to me. Sometimes I’ll call him Cooperino Cappuccino. Kimi is Kimchi, Kimmerl, Kimberly, The Kimster, and sometimes Lolo, which is grandpa in Filipino heheh.

When was the last time you shaved your legs? Like 3 or 4 days ago.

Do you ever try free samples at the store? Nope.

Do you like boys with long hair? Physical traits don’t matter much to me.

Do you like rootbeer? I’ve never tried it but I don’t really want to either haha. It smells weird.

What is the best fast food place, in your opinion? KFC or Taco Bell. Or Jollibee.

Do you have faith in yourself? Starting to.

#survey #surveys

5 notes · View notes

kickingstonesandbones · 4 years

Text

ADA: Songs the BSD characters remind me of (even though no one asked)

I’ve recently watched all 3 seasons of the Anime, the movie and the OVA and have started reading the Manga from the beginning. Right now I am only at chapter 40 because I started reading like 2 days ago, so idk stuff that would happen after the Anime storyline (if it goes that much further than season 3 ending, I wouldn’t know). I based this off on either specific lyrics that made me think it would fit the character or a certain vibe I was getting from a character. For some characters it was easier, for some not so much lol It is why some characters have multiple songs that make me think of them while others only have one (if they even do have one, that is – but the ADA does, except for Katai). So please do not rip into me because you think a song might not fit them as well as I do, because I just have not gotten to the latest chapter of the Manga yet, so there are some characters I do not know that well yet but I wanted to do this for fun. Other than that, I hope you enjoy this list~ Also, feel free to add to my list if you have songs that I haven’t mentioned but think would fit the characters, if you want to~

My taste in music is also pretty broad and not limited to certain languages or genres (though I do have my preferences), so I will provide translations of the lyrics in different languages from English. The German ones (like Kontra K, Elif, etc.) were translated by myself (on the spot), for other languages like Romanian or Korean, etc. I had to look up translations on the internet.

Disclaimer: For the songs for Dazai, one might want to consider a TW, for one of his songs has extremely open-no-room-for-speculation suicidal lyrics. If this affects you, please skip that one, I will put that song last on his list.

And, well, because this is 12 pages long in the document, I will be making a cut here…

𝔸𝔻𝔸 𝕚𝕟 𝕘𝕖𝕟𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕝

💙 Wölfe (Wolves) by Kontra K 💙

It’s about so much more than just strength, it’s about solidarity and virtue / It runs so much deeper than your wounds could ever get / We’re walking through the fire together until the day we die […] /

And we are so infinitely far away from being perfect / But what doesn’t kill us will make us stronger / And hope dies last / It dies last /

A lot of the members have been through quite some shit, but they hold it together all the time and always pull through and manage to keep moving forward sooo (some random arsehole I talked to spoilered me about Yosano and Mori -_-)

💙 Born For This by The Score 💙

A force that they can’t stop / They just don’t get it, I think they forget / I’m not done until I’m on top / I know I was born for this / I know I was born for this […] /

We are the warriors, who learned to love the pain / We come from different places but have the same name / ‘Cause we were born for this / We are the broken ones, who chose to spark a flame / Watch as our fire rages, our hearts are never tame /

ℕ𝕒𝕜𝕒𝕛𝕚𝕞𝕒 𝔸𝕥𝕤𝕦𝕤𝕙𝕚

💙 Believe by Hollywood Undead 💙

I can’t believe / That when I breathe / That there’s something good inside of me / Just one good thing inside of me / So close to me / That memory / Of that one good thing inside of me / Just one good thing inside of me /

If I went out the back door, nobody would stop me / But, where would I go? / ‘Cause I ain’t never had a real home / So, what do I know? / So, I could keep runnin’, hide until they find me / But, what would that do? /

That he really hates himself that much and how insecure he is in his right to be alive not just simply because he is a living being really hurts to see.

💙 Face it by NF 💙

Don’t know how to face it / Let’s go back to basics / Yes, say what you mean, do what you say, but man I hate this / I just don’t know what I’m chasing, don’t know what I’m chasing / Yes, somebody told me / Life is something you don’t wanna play with / But I just keep on playing like life is just a playground […] / I look at myself and I ask what the goal is / Yeah, tell me what your goal is / I’m just so lost in emotions, I don’t even notice / I just slip into a place and I don’t think straight / Devil in my ear tryna tell me everything’s great / And in a year realize I’m in the same place / Running in the same race, same pace […] /

Get that sickness out my mouth / I feel like my train is derailing / I can feel it / Yo these words are only words until they actions / Words until they actions, strive on empty satisfactions / Yeah, the fact is I don’t know, fact is I don’t know /

💙 월식 (My Tragedy) by Taeyeon 💙

At the end of an empty day / Everyone busily returns from somewhere / In the red night sky / I disappear into the darkness little by litte / These many sparkling lights / There isn’t a single light that’s mine / Under the cold shade by myself / Like it wasn’t there from the start /

💙 Oceans by Jacob Lee 💙

I learnt to let go when I was younger / Scared of growing old / I would swim far into the ocean / And try to stay afloat / Until my lungs would cough up water […] /

I don't want love no more / Though it's the one thing I've been searching for / Though it's the one thing that I miss the most / Now I'm afraid to be alone / I learnt to grow old when I was younger / Scared of staying young / Afraid of the thoughts that I had conjured / That sat atop my tongue / Knowing I'd change the worlds opinion / If they would just, listen up / But they won't, now /

I feel worthless / Maybe I should open the drawer / Burn the pages / Write poems with the ash on the floor / Pour the ink, into the sink / And watch it drain from the shore /

𝔻𝕒𝕫𝕒𝕚 𝕆𝕤𝕒𝕞𝕦

I know Dazai has a looooot of songs, but tbh I could’ve added at least another 15 because. There. Were. Just. S O . M A N Y . T H A T F I T H I M S O W E L L ‼‼ (Well, at least the ones I could think of off of the top of my head right away.)

💙 Believe by Hollywood Undead 💙

Don’t you know, little boy, they’ll lay you to waste, man / Little do they know, every song is a lifespan / Yeah, they’ve taken one, but I’m takin’ my last chance / To hold all we know and let go with both hands / Though, don’t you know that plots are made from concrete / Right through the stone, can you hear my heart beat? / Beats through my bone, like no memory left me / Not for a second or a minute when I dream […] / My heart beats heavy in an open chest / And, I wanna say goodbye, but there’s nobody left /

I broke it all, and I put to the test / Put your hands in mine, and feel this emptiness / There’s no beat in my chest / ‘Cause there’s nothin’ left / No, it ain’t goodbye, its a last caress / What’s another dream? / You could hardly sleep /

Makes me think of Oda aka the bond they had aka the admiration Dazai had for him.

💙 Face it by NF 💙

I ain’t sleeping lately / I ain’t sleeping lately / Yes, I know that I’m the only person that can change me / Maybe, that’s why I ain’t changing / That’s why I ain’t changing / I got too much on my mind, I guess I don’t know how to face it /

He obviously has a lot of issues, and I bet he still doesn’t think of himself as a good person. It strikes me as if he’s thinking that Agency Dazai is not much different from Mafia Dazai. “Your hands are black. Mafia black,” as Higuchi said. I think he did not deny it when she said that, so he doesn’t disagree with her.

💙 Rain by Hollywood Undead 💙

I don’t mind, no I don’t mind, I don’t mind the rain / Simple things and subtleties, they always stay the same / I don’t mind, that I don’t mind, no I don’t mind the rain / Like a widow’s heart, we fall apart, but never fade away (fade away) /

Run like a child, do you know where I came from? / No, I don’t, but I’m singing all the same songs / I’m alone, and you’re looking for your anyone / Does it hurt just to know that it’s all gone? / I can feel the pain in the words that you say / Hidden in the letters that were written to no name […] / Buried in red, white, and a side of some blue / Some will die too late, and somebody too soon / If he could come back, we’ll see what it cost him / We had to lose it all, just to know that we lost one /

💙 Lass mich lieber allein (better just leave me alone) by Kontra K 💙

Man, don’t explain the world to me, it isn’t perfect / And just as imperfect are also you, her and me / All of that isn’t a problem to me / But tell me, since when does hatred laugh so audaciously into my face? / But it’s somehow alright for me […] / Man, I wish for a minuscule part of naivety back / But it seems it’s somehow too late for me / Somehow already too late for me […] /

Already been wandering for so long, you forget / Who is worthy of sacrificing yourself for and for whom you better not do it / You run along the street of success without any luck (on your side) / But she walks out of hell into heaven only once and then right back / If you end up where you started then where is the meaning? /

Because I also have my baggage to carry all on my own / Just like all of the fuckers that think I’m living in heaven all by myself / But the fire and the flames in which I’ve been standing in for so long already / Man, they refuse to see them / But it’s somehow alright for me /

You better just leave me alone / Because when they carry you on their hands, they will (eventually) let you drop / I’d rather fall alone/by myself / Rather alone/by myself /

💙 Lies by Will Jay 💙

I'd rather tell myself if I ignore / These thoughts they'll go away / And my toxic friends have changed / Truth is I hate confrontation / Deal with it tomorrow / 'Cause there's nothing I can do / That's my favourite excuse / Feeding my procrastination […] /

And I think I just realised I would do anything / To keep hiding the pain I've been burying / That's why I tell / Lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lies /

💙 Du willst es (You want it) by Kontra K 💙

Only the good ones die young, and not long after the best ones follow / No idea, ask death why he thinks that I am so damn bad / Still here, we’re almost not worthy of heaven / Working day for day, only the hatred kills the pain / Life will shoot you in the chest but only ever hit your heart / Thank God that place in my chest has been emptied a long time ago […] /

We asked God, “why” / But the devil said, “doesn’t matter” / We’re swimming in a pool full of misery / But bring us another glass of it /

💙 Wie gemacht dafür (like we were made for it) by Kontra K 💙

Pretty normal, normal / Because you can’t get me, get me further down (the hole/ditch) / Than I’ve already been, you get it? […] / I’m going one-on-one with my inner demons, and I’ve been doing that for the past 13 years / I’ve been there, no matter what happened / Ask your gangsters, they know my voice / Have respect, respect for the realness / But fucking piss me off, and I’ll be sending you to heaven […] /

What pressure are you talking about, I inhale this city deep into my lungs / Put it on the beat and I’ll be giving you a new reason for your hatred /

Like we were made for it, we’re running through hell barefooted / We’re living rent-free in their heads, with the real ones, with the real ones / Like we were made for it, always loyal to my people / Swapping none of my friends for money, for the real ones, for the real ones […] /

If you’re my enemy, I’ll give you lead (bullets) / If you’re my friend, I’ll give you love / Because a wolf stays fucking loyal only to his family /

💙 Lonely by Nathan Wagner 💙

Is everybody lonely? / Is everybody scared? / Is everybody worried / That no one really cares? / See I'm afraid to love, but afraid to be alone / Still I wonder why my heart is always broke / What a way to live, let the fear take all control / Oh, this ain't life, no / I'm not alive […] /

'Cause I'm afraid to show the people who I am / I'm not special, I'm just a simple broken man / So I will hide my face with my picture perfect mask / Oh, this ain't life, no / It's just a lie […] /

If I looked you in the eye / And showed the broken things inside / Would you run away? / Would you run away? / If you saw my darkest parts / The wicked things inside my heart / Would you run away? / Or are you the same? /

The following one makes me think of Mafia Dazai

💙 Body Count by Grey ft. Thutmose 💙

I got a hunger, I got a fever / And it just won't quit / I got a temper, I got a bullet / With your name on it / Everybody wonders what it's like on top / I don't gotta wonder 'cause I call the shots […] /

My blood runs cold and my feet run faster / I still got heart, I hear a heart don't matter / Say what you want and it'll be your last words / It ain't a secret, I got a hit list / And baby, you're up next /

Stack 'em up, stack 'em up / Teach 'em not to fuck with me / Bag 'em up, bag 'em up / Let 'em know who runs these streets / Take 'em down, take 'em down / Count 'em out like one, two, three / Add a-na-na-na-na-na-na-nother one / To the body count /

T r i g g e r W a r n i n g !

💙 Bullet by Hollywood Undead 💙

Gone too far and yeah I'm gone again / It's gone on too long, tell you how it ends / I'm sitting on the edge with my two best friends / One’s a bottle of pills, one’s a bottle of Gin / I'm twenty stories up, yeah I'm up at the top / I'll polish off this bottle, now it's pushing me off / Asphalt to me has never looked so soft / I bet my momma found my letter, now she’s calling the cops / I gotta take this opportunity before I miss it / 'Cause now I hear the sirens and they're off in the distance / Believe me when I tell you that I've been persistent / 'Cause I'm more scarred, more scarred than my wrist is / I've been trying too long, with too dull of a knife / But tonight I made sure that I sharpened it twice / I never bought a suit before in my life / But when you go to meet god, you know you wanna look nice /

We hit the sky, there goes the light / No more sun, why's it always night / When you can't sleep, well, you can't dream / When you can't dream, well, what’s life mean? / We feel a little pity, but don't empathize / The old are getting older, watch a young man die […] /

When you were young, you never thought you'd die / Found that you could but too scared to try / You looked in the mirror and you said goodbye / Climb to the roof to see if you could fly /

So if I survive, then I'll see you tomorrow / Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow

𝕐𝕠𝕤𝕒𝕟𝕠 𝔸𝕜𝕚𝕜𝕠

💙 Brunette Ambition by Qveen Herby 💙

'Cause it's been three weeks and four days / No days off, just runways / I’m fucked up, I'll throw shade / Outwork you on a bad day […] /

On a mission, got no competition / It's hard to sleep with brunette ambition / Revenge is sweet, pussy: my religion / They say slow down, but I never listen /

Old me forsaken, these rules are for breaking / I get lonely with no new friends / Associate, but they can't relate / When you want the world, they’re uncomfortable /

This one is 50% lyrics, 50% overall energy of the song. Yosano is a bad bitch, and I love her.

💙 STFD by TeZATalks 💙 [Flash Warning for epilepsy]

I'm not here to take no names or reservations / I'm the devil telling Satan I'm just wild / Sit the fuck down / Imma kill it let me live just how I'm livin' / Ghetto heart with good intentions / I'm just wild / Sit the fuck down /

I'm chasing freedom for the fearless / I gotta do it 'cause I can't chase fear myself / I'm 'bout as broken as I confess / But better than most that lay cower / Proud of who they crowd / You don't know me / Coming to take your crown / Bow down / You know that I can do better, better / I don't need you to come in and show me how / Settle down / Cause you know that I can do better, better /

This song is mostly just the vibe for me. Quite…. unapologetic. Like the badass bitch vibe Yosano gives off, despite (or probably especially because of) her past.

💙 Nur mir (only to myself) by Elif 💙

Can’t believe what’s happening to me / Your words have manipulated me / I shouldn’t lose the connection to myself / Because otherwise your words will always stay with me / At first, you were there for me / But then you wanted me as your property […] / This city is big enough for the two of us / I have to share it with 4 million others anyway / I get onto the same train, stand on the same platform / Oh, everything’s profit (to you), everything’s yours /

But I only belong to myself, only to myself / Belong to myself, only to myself / Not to her, not to him, not to you /

💙 Disease by Hollywood Undead 💙

Our words are broken but they’re spoken aloud / So come together, come together again / The time is now, let Armageddon begin / They say beginnings always start with the ends / I say forever and forever, Amen /

Forget what you are / Forget what you feel / We stand apart but fall together / Nothing ever lasts forever /

We’re born to live, we’re born to die / We’re forced to swallow these pills and to never ask why / What I’ve become, why can’t you see / That everybody, everybody, everybody’s got this disease? /

𝔼𝕕𝕠𝕘𝕒𝕨𝕒 ℝ𝕒𝕟𝕡𝕠

💙 The Wolf by SIAMÉS 💙

Each and every day / Hiding from the sunshine / Wandering in the shade / Not too old, not too young / Every night again / Dancing with the moonlight / Somewhere far away / I can hear your call […] / Ain’t no fairytale / What I see in your eyes / Awaiting your mistake / Not too close, not too far /

Honestly, finding a song for Ranpo somehow was harder than it should’ve been lmao Originally, this song is about addiction, but if you read them in the sense of it being about a criminal, whom Ranpo is about to catch, it makes more sense. I am sorry I can’t provide a better song for him right now djhfksjlhdfujhhgkfc

𝕂𝕦𝕟𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕕𝕒 𝔻𝕠𝕡𝕡𝕠

💙 Fuck You by Silent Child 💙

Am I wasting my breath on you / Feels like my words are never getting through, yeah / I never said I hate you to someone so much before / I'm light headed when we talk and then you shut the door, god damn / Like what are we still talking for, yeah /

I really hope you don’t see tomorrow / I tried to play nice with you / 'Cause all you ever do is try to fuck up my day / And you were successful / (But I know the truth) / No you don't have anything better to do / Everything you ever loved has tried to escape you / So why would I want anything to do with you /

Fuck you /

Don’t lie, he would blast this at full volume when Dazai fucks up his schedule again HAHAHA (I love their dynamic)

💙 Waiting by Zhavia Ward 💙

The truth is you don't even / Know what the hell you believe / But you should believe / Lions don't lose sleep / Over the opinions of sheep /

So if you're waitin' / To watch me fall / Watch me fall / Watch me fall / I'ma keep you waitin' / To watch me fall / Watch me fall / Watch me fall / I'ma keep you waitin' /

Empire State kinda view / And I'm up here with the crew / I got the feelin' that you wishin' / You could be up here too / Maybe I should feel bad for you / Be a little sentimental / But I don't, no I won't / Make excuses for you to hide behind /

This one makes me think of the time Fyodor tried to break him mentally by making that little girl sacrifice herself (Season 3), but he got back up pretty quickly again after having his ideals get shaken like that.

𝔽𝕦𝕜𝕦𝕫𝕒𝕨𝕒 𝕐𝕦𝕜𝕚𝕔𝕙𝕚

💙 S.C.A.V.A. by Hollywood Undead 💙

Here's the massacre, a mausoleum fit for me / Lived a hundred years, a hundred years I didn't see / Gave all my hope away, isn't any left for me? / Bombs are splitting atoms, what can the future bring? / We can fill a million choirs and wait till children sing / We can walk a million miles and end up in the sea / And our lungs just keep filling and lying when we breathe / The world's filled with liars, liars like me / And I look at my child, it's finite, this feeling / Eyes blue like the sky, I see all of this meaning / I reach up to God and I ask if I'm dreaming […] /

Everybody says greetings and goodbyes / Everybody pays, no one knows the price / We know the price of sin, the sin of sacrifice / I know I'll sin again, but who can save me twice? / How much can we ask? You'll get the answer first / How much can we kneel with the air that chills the earth? / The air keeps getting colder, my knees keep hitting dirt / The innocent can cry without the guilty getting hurt / You ask who you love and you don't know, no, do you? / The spirit of God just passes right through you / You gave away heaven, handed right to you / And I can see it all, tell me, is it true? /

Fukuzawa is that anime character that’s visibly been through a lot of shit (and has done a lot of shit as well, even morally grey or black), which could be why he’s so stern and not a man of many words. Marked by life, if you will. He also gives off a very “wise man” kinda vibe right from the beginning, so I think that this song somewhat fits him because it is wondering about the state of the world and human nature.

💙 Courtesy Call by Thousand Foot Krutch 💙

This is your last warning / A courtesy call / I am not afraid / Of the storm that comes my way / When it hits it shakes me to the core / And makes me stronger than before / It’s not a question about trust / But will you stand with us? […] /

There’s a rumble in the floor / So get prepared for war / When it hits it’ll knock you to the ground / When it shakes up everything around / But survivial is a must / So will you stand with us? /

This song just has that badass vibe. And no one can deny that Fukuzawa has a badass and intimidating vibe as well as he seems so stern and stoic most of the time.

𝕋𝕒𝕟𝕚𝕫𝕒𝕜𝕚 𝕁𝕦𝕟𝕚𝕔𝕙𝕚𝕣𝕠𝕦

💙 Nesimtit by Mark Stam 💙

I don't have lots of cash / But enough for me to buy you an ice cream / For us to go on a walk / And for you to whisper to me in the waves of the ocean / I've taken some days from the border / And I put some behind the door, on ice / For cloudy weather / So that we can have them when the movie of life passes […] /

Let me be your lifeline / When your world is in the process of demolition / Let your dreams fly / I promise, we'll catch them somewhere around the sun /

Oddly enough, the Tanizaki siblings were just as hard for me as Ranpo… There aren’t really that many songs that would make me think of them. But this Romanian one made me (partly) think of him, I also think it’s cute and would probably fit him lol Especially the last four lines make me think of him and Naomi. After all, he’d even burn down the whole world if it was for her sake. All in all, this just sounds like him in the sense of a really supporting person/friend/brother.

𝕋𝕒𝕟𝕚𝕫𝕒𝕜𝕚 ℕ𝕒𝕠𝕞𝕚

💙 You Should See Me In A Crown by Billie Eilish 💙

You say, "Come over, baby / I think you're pretty" / I'm okay, I'm not your baby / If you think I'm pretty /

You should see me in a crown / I'm gonna run this nothing town / Watch me make 'em bow / One by one by one / One by one by / You should see me in a crown / Your silence is my favorite sound / Watch me make 'em bow / One by one by one / One by one by one /

Naomi isn’t giving me the same “badass bitch” vibe as Yosano does, but she does have that “badass princess” vibe. Is that making any kind of sense? Like, she does not have an ability, but she is neither dumb nor completely helpless in all situations. So, there is a slight badass vibe, but not the “I can and I. W i l l . Kick your stupid. Bitch. Ass.” – so a…. “badass princess”? Because she also has that elegant aura about her. I hope I am making sense…?

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕦𝕟𝕠 𝕂𝕚𝕣𝕒𝕜𝕠

💙 2! 3! by BTS 💙

We know that you are happy right now / That you're slaying right now / You have all what you deserve / And we are so damn proud / But you're people, like us / You have spars, you get hurt / You get tired of the pressure / You get tired of the rush / God, thank you so much! / For giving us the chance / To tell you that we're here for you / And this will never change /

Lay on us / When dark times come and surround you / Our light will help you to get through / Our love is gonna heal you / Lay on us / The ones who would go to space to / Steal some stars just to give you 'cause it would make you feel good / We're gonna stay with you forever, until the end / We swear that we're not going anywhere / Yeah we're not going anywhere / We know the road can be so tough / But with holding hands / Together we take a nice deep breath /

Haruno strikes me as the kind of person, who’d be a really supportive friend, so I thought this might fit her. I have not seen much of her and her character neither in the anime nor in the manga yet, so I don’t really know whether this is any good or if it does her any justice.

On the other hand, I feel this song would also fit the Tanizaki siblings well.

𝕄𝕚𝕪𝕒𝕫𝕒𝕨𝕒 𝕂𝕖𝕟𝕛𝕚

💙 Puste sie weg (blow them away) by Kontra K 💙

Love in the air – blow it away / 9mm on the chest – then blow it away / 3g on the mirror – better blow it away / And the wind will do the rest / Hate in the air – blow it away / Pressure on the chest again – then blow it away / Seven sins in my head – better blow it away / And the wind will do the rest […] /

Because everyone’s talking, talking, talking too much / But unfortunately never do it, do it, do it / And I don’t hate, hate, hate the player / But I’d rather kill a whole team by myself /

I’d rather have three, four warriors than one thousand “brothers” / I’d rather pick up cents from the ground than break bread with liars / I’d rather be broke like I used to be than be a part time dealer / I’d rather have a heart of gold than sharing with no one at all (no one) /

Hatred in the air – blow it away / Pressure on the chest again – then blow it away / Seven sins in my head – better blow it away / And the wind will do the rest /

Take the lyrics quite literally, “blow them away”. The feeling of this song fits him, I think, because of his sheer strength. He just blows away hatred, malice, etc. and is unaffected by any of it as his heart and his head stay innocent and pure, even if naive.

I have to say though, it can be a pun, especially the part of “9mm (gun) on the chest” would be most obvious for it (especially considering that the “on the chest” part does not specify in German whether it’s your own chest or you are holding a gun to someone’s else’s chest lol). In general “puste xy weg” means to blow it away with the air out of your mouth, but colloquially it can also mean gunning down something or someone. And if you apply that meaning to every single line with “blow it away”, the meaning turns around from not letting it bother you to killing it, which I find interesting with this character. (Because he definitely has great potential to actually kill someone with his ability alone.) Though what I thought when I heard this song was that it might fit him with the meaning of him letting nothing bother him.

𝕀𝕫𝕦𝕞𝕚 𝕂𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕜𝕒

💙 Alaska by Elif 💙

Sometimes I’m thinking, I’m going insane like everyone else / They said I’d be going nuts and yeah, I’m starting to believe them / -7°C, I’m walking through the city park by myself / The down jacket is keeping me warm, but in my heart, there’s Alaska /

I don’t know what love is / No matter how much of it I get, I need more of it / It’s tearing me apart on the inside / When I, once again, don’t know where I’ll be getting it from / Even my therapist says, he doesn’t know any further / My dark side, it’s stronger than the good one / My youth was poisened, the future is uncertain / It is how it is yeah, it is how it is /

💙 Godsent by Smash Into Pieces 💙

I used to share, I used to care / The good in me is gone I'm bad / I used to give, I used to feel / The things you did will never heal / Take a look at me now / See what I've become / I will no longer feed the machine / Can't control the monster in me, no / The way that I feel / Makes it harder to breathe / When I'm thinking about you / The monster is real /

This makes me think of her in the Port Mafia.

💙 Boomerang by Smash Into Pieces 💙

I've been gone for a while now / But only to gain my power / I've been fighting my demons / And I'm back up on my feet (and now) / The harder you fall down / The stronger you come back later / Now I feel like an army / And I've only just begun /

This one in turn makes me think of her in the Agency.

💙 Circles (제자리) by G.Soul 💙

Oh, we know the ending / No matter how you escape / Here again / Always come back to me / Back again / Eventually / Here again / Why is it so hard to leave? / Here again / We always stay here […] / Answer me, I don’t know, no / Just don’t know / You’re getting stuck / Forever / Oh, we know the ending / No matter how you escape / Here again /

This makes me think of what Kouyou (I hope I am remembering her name correctly) was saying about her as a flower of darkness, as she was kind of turning in circles (no pun intended)–between wanting to be in the light and “accepting” that she only belongs into the darkness–at the beginning before she finally joined the Agency.

💙 Excuses (변명) by G.Soul 💙

I told you not to be too good to me / That it would make it too hard on you / No matter what you say now / I don’t hear a word of it […] / Even though I may be making a mistake / Even though I may regret this as time goes on / Baby, I think that we should just end it here now /

Even though the song in total has a different vibe (and story lmao), these parts of the lyrics makes me think of Kyouka telling Atsushi that there is no saving her, and that the light is no place for her (directly after saving her from the Port Mafia). It kinda makes me think of the part, specifically, where Atsushi suggests going on a “date” and at the end of it, Kyouka wants the last place they go to to be the police station.

𝔻𝕒𝕫𝕒𝕚 & 𝔸𝕥𝕤𝕦𝕤𝕙𝕚

💙 Sing To Me by Missio 💙

Somehow I got nominated as a king of sadness / Got so much I know that I could even feed the birds / And that's why / I prayed, I prayed, God sent me right to voicemail / It's like, all day my vanity is for sale / Take it away, my head is in my own hell /

Sing to me, I am not doing well / Getting tired of my own words / Sing to me 'cause I can't hear myself / Through the loudness of my own hurts / Call me selfish when I say this, say this / I'm kinda helpless, and I need you / Sing to me 'cause I'm not doing well /

Somebody told me that there's two sides to this life / I think I might've chosen darkness over light /

These two are two sides of the same coin, but no side is brighter than the other. I feel like they are kind of mirroring each other in the way they feel about themselves, which is why these lyrics mirror both of them towards each other as both are in need of salvation as they’re drowning in their own minds. Dazai is just better at hiding it from Atsushi.

💙 Namae wo yobu yo (Call A Name) by Luck Life (Season 1 Ending) 💙

I was searching / For the reason I’m able to remain as myself / If there’s a version of me / That exists within your heart / That even amid the darkness on this long, hilly road / I feel I can become a new me / Able to make my way through / So that each of us, walking our individual moments, can keep on smiling / So that we can keep moving forward, exploring the meaning of life together / I’ll call out a name / Your name / So that you can remain who you are /

Technically, lyrically it’s the entirety of the song, but I will not write down all of it lmao And it’s the Atsushi and Dazai parallels here again. It’s not just the ending with the animation that shows it for me, but the lyrics reflect both of them in them as well. I absolutely loved this ending. I never ship characters as I do not care about that, but I really love these two (separately)~ (What they mean for each other aka what they might mean for each other in the future [peace of mind/finding worth for Atsushi, and a reason to live for Dazai, etc.], how they’re already helping each other [Dazai helping Atsushi with feeling worthless, and Dazai finding a bit of piece of mind], etc. etc. etc.) I haven’t loved 2 characters in an anime as much as this in quite a long time (The last time was Kougami and Akane in Psycho Pass) as I find making up characters as complex as them and make them fit together as well as them/make them complement each other/balance each other out is actually pretty hard to do really well.

Making up this list took waaaaay longer than it should’ve. (I did not include Katai because I couldn’t think of a single song for him, sorry.)

22 notes · View notes

maverick-werewolf · 4 years

Text

Folklore Fact - The Asrai

Here’s one that prooobably won’t be super popular, but hey, I find them super interesting, so I’m going to tell you about them!

So, there’s an entire unopened can of worms on this blog insofar as folklore as concerned, and that’s the fae. Faeries. Fairies. However you want to spell it (I generally go for fae and faeries). Pretty much the only time I’ve really mentioned faeries before on this blog was in this ask about elves.

Faerie folklore actually fascinates me and I research it a lot for Wulfgard, one of my primary fictional settings. Thing is, fae are extremely complex and researching them takes a lot of time and work and absolutely mountains of notes.

So I won’t get too into the whole fae thing in this post, seeing as how this post is about a particular member of the fae... the asrai, from English folklore.

Now, there’s a big question about the asrai: did people actually ever believe in them? That’s, of course, a question with a lot of folklore things. In the asrai’s case, firstly, we have no known etymology. Yeah, none at all. That’s a little troublesome. Though most sources also say they are also called “ashray.”

Secondly, we do know that - obviously - there are plenty of “water spirit” legends out there. Heck, asrai have some aspects in common with even things like mermaids and nix/nixie/etc in a lot of legends. It could very much be that “asrai” is just another term for any number of other legends of similar nature.

Possibly the first surviving record of the term “asrai” pops up is in 1872, in a poem by Robert Williams Buchanan. He also wrote a sequel to the poem called “A Changeling: A Legend of the Moonlight,” which connects back to their fae nature (changlings are associated with fae; more on that in another post sometime!). To Buchanan, they are spirits that love nature and die in the sunlight.

There is another record of the term asrai, used by a writer who may or may not have been citing accurate information, as the author was citing only stories told by word of mouth that were supposedly passed down through generations. The problem with citing “local stories” or “stories your grandma told you” is that it’s like playing the telephone game over multiple generations and literally hundreds and thousands of years, and some of those generations don’t even care about it, either. The stories get so distorted over time that they’re basically useless information and no one actually believed any of it. This is why reliable folklore sources come from recovered written works, not from word of mouth - because we can’t trust the collective generational memory (unfortunately), but writing does not change with people’s extrapolations and failing memories. As such, you won’t see any professional citing “local stories” that don’t have a written source, or things a relative told them. It’s kind of like asking a random American for some American history and then taking everything he says as the absolute truth, just because they’re an American. There are late night skits that make jokes about that.

Wow, that was a slight tangent. Anyway...

So we don’t know much about the actual folkloric sources of the asrai itself, but we do know it’s very similar to a lot of other legends and is almost certainly just another take on several other stories, like things about mermaids and other nature spirits. Or the name could’ve been entirely made up by Robert Williams Buchanan. We don’t really know - but he probably got it from somewhere. That being said--

What is an asrai, anyway? They cannot exist long in the sunlight. Does that mean they’re undead?

No, not at all. Many spirits and things couldn’t stand the sun, such as trolls in Norse myth. They are defined as “water spirits,” more often than not. They are described in a lot of different ways, but my favorite source I have on the subject describes them as women, tall and lithe, with translucent skin. Sometimes they are just water, sometimes they have actual bodies of some kind. Generally, they are hundreds of years old.

In Cheshire and Shropshire, there were almost identical stories of fishermen capturing asrai in their boats. The asrai beg to be released, but no one can understand their language. The fishermen in both stories put wet weeds on the asrai even as it groans in the bottom of the boat. By the time they reach the shore, however, there’s nothing left of the asrai but a puddle of water.

In one of the stories, the fisherman handling the asrai tries to tie her up, but touching her burns his hands and scars him for life.

And... that’s it, really! That’s pretty much all we have on asrai in particular... but definitely not on general water spirits and other such nature spirits and water beings. That’s a topic for another time, though. Same for the fae - there’s so much to say about fae I honestly barely know where to start!

As for pop culture: looking around on the internet out of curiosity, I found out that the wood elves in Warhammer are apparently called “asrai” sometimes. I find that weird and interesting, given I know next to nothing about them. Do they turn into water sometimes? Like, water spirits? I don’t even know. I do know they look quite cool and creepy. But hey, either way, that’s cool that they’d use the word.

So there you have it! Curious about what an asrai might be like in a story? Maybe you’re thinking they’d just be water elementals, like in a fantasy video game? I had a different thought. You can find an asrai in my upcoming novel Wulfgard: The Hunt Never Ends, available online on Amazon October 30! Be sure to check it out and keep an eye on this blog for the release post and order link! Here’s a preview:

Didn’t take long for his eyes to adjust, then to adapt, thanks to that potion. Faint moonlight spilling in let him see limestone walls slick with condensation and a violently gushing spring, churning the water on the far end of the cavern at the base of the wall. Spitting it out straight into the reservoir, the flow of it turning gentle by the time it left the cave.

Heavy mist hung in the air here, maybe kicked up by the water. But something didn’t seem right.

Then he realized why.

Fear washed down upon them like frigid rain – so much fear that, for half a second, it froze every muscle in Caiden’s body. His nerves pulled taut, ready to break and snap down on him like a whip, hard enough to leave a few more scars on his back. Hand shooting to his sword hilt in a white-knuckle grip, he drew in a sharp breath and fought the chill that ran fast up his spine and forced him to be afraid.

This wasn’t natural. Gwen, from the way she was suddenly fumbling with her gear, seemed to know it.

Asger, on the other hand, didn’t. He bellowed out a hoarse shout, nearly fell spinning around to face the exit, and ran for the cave mouth.

All around them, a shrill voice echoed, “Leave this place!”

It spoke the words very clearly – not the gibberish he’d been told about.

Everything happened at once. A rush of air ripped by him, trailing cold in its wake, like off the surface of the spring itself. Asger screamed, his heavy boots scuffing the stone as something made him stumble and fall. Caiden charged forward at a surging shadow, blade ready to swing.

And an arrow lodged itself in his upper arm with a hard lance of pain and a meaty thunk.

Caiden coughed out a grunt and staggered from the impact, the arrow locking up his sword arm and stopping him mid-strike. Whatever had come past him and attacked Asger seemed already gone, moving faster than he could even understand.

Gwen appeared beside him in an instant, hand on his uninjured left arm and sputtering apologies. “Caiden!? I – gods— I shouldn’t have tried to shoot it, it moved so fast—”

The cave around him was far from silent. Asger swore as he scrambled to his feet, Gwen kept on apologizing as she tried in vain to tug Caiden out of the cave until he, halfway in a stupor, finally staggered along after her.

Boots against stone. Grass under their feet, bright moonlight overhead. Plenty of pain in his right arm that twitched useless and limp at his side.

These sensations stayed, but something was missing...

Find more like this on Wulfgard.net - and be sure to keep an eye out for the release of The Hunt Never Ends on October 30.

(If you like my werewolf/folklore blog, be sure to check out my other stuff! And consider supporting me on Patreon. Every little bit helps and helps me run this blog, and you get goodies and a chance to vote on the topic of the next werewolf fact!

Patreon --- Werewolf Fact Masterlist --- Twitter --- Discord Server --- Ko-fi)

#folklore #folklore facts #english folklore #asrai #water spirit #nature spirits #mythology #fae #faerie #faeries #fairies #fairy #The Hunt Never Ends #Wulfgard #writing #fiction #fiction writing

12 notes · View notes

theeyeofinfinity · 4 years

Text

Expression

So I have realized I need to start filtering my emotions more & actually letting them out again instead of holding it all in. Its been backing up for years now & while this blog has been an outlet to pour out years worth of anguish & pain, I feel like i can transform it into something better. I’ve grown attached to this blog again & I never wanted to delete it. I kinda loved the idea of an internet time capsule I could one day come back & read. To appreciate how far I went & how much better my life will hopefully be compared to what was arguably the lowest I’ve ever hit in my existence. There was just so much about me that needed to change & now that most of me has been improved I’ve never felt more chipper & capable. I was capable before but now I feel on top of my corner of the world. I still harbor some pain, I think we all do. We carry little fragments of every moment where we’ve had to endure hardship & decide whether this is what makes me give in or if we were willing to rise above & continue knowing we will see better days. I take a lot of time to think about what life is going to be like for me later, & I’d almost say its a bad habit of mine. I like to be prepared for what comes my way but, ironically enough, a tweet of all things opened my eyes. Not a poem or philosophy text. But rather, someone, an everyday person like me, sharing their thoughts on a social media outlet. It went something like “take the time to enjoy where you are now, because you made it to the point you were wishing for years before, & if you keep wishing & focusing on what comes next, you’ll never enjoy what you’ve worked towards”. It’s been a while & thats the gist of the tweet in my own words but it made me realize that I was kinda wrong to keep living like that. How AM I supposed to enjoy the fruits of my labor if I’m just moving towards the next step. The funny thing is you think “well yeah these are just the first step, once I get here, I can slow down & enjoy life” but it seems like you just hit your mark & find a new goal with that same mindset. I’m not as bad as before but I could definitely do better. Most things in life don’t worry me anymore, its always been love but even that I’m just trying to let go & follow the will of the universe. Because you come to realize, whats the point? If I was meant to be alone, nothing I do will change that. Same thing if I’m supposed to be with someone, theyll get here regardless of what i do. I’ve been on working overdrive ever since high school & I feel like i have lost touch with my favorite part of me. That piece of me that always looked to the abstract & the unknown. Picked up random facts & was just an information sponge. Love & life had consumed me to the point that i stopped dabbling in it & now that I’m recentering myself, I miss that. I miss the fun in bouncing those ideas off of someone & exploring the unknown, even if it was always from the safety of my head. Theres so much mystery out there, enough to occupy a thousand life times, & I’ve barely made a dent. My spiritual needs have been calling out to me for a long time now, & i finally feel good enough to get back into surrounding myself in nature & letting that serenity consume me & lead me into my next growing point. Because while the trees & life that surround us cannot speak, there is no greater teacher or care taker than sweet mother earth.

#me

1 note · View note

lilnasxvevo · 4 years

Text

Also just on the topic of “cancel culture,” I do think we need to talk about the fact that everyone acts like “cancel culture” actually successfully cancels things and people when this is very rarely true (and usually only happens to small-potatoes creators who are driven off the internet). Like, there were trending hashtags on Twitter a few months ago to cancel Jimmy Fallon and I think also Jimmy Kimmel for each having done blackface ~20 years ago and I’m...yeah, I’m pretty sure they both still host popular TV shows with their names on them.

I want to talk about the one member of Congress who consistently brings up “cancel culture” as if it’s actually a real threat to society. His name is Jim Jordan. He is a representative from Ohio. He is always so, so, so worried about cancel culture and often even brings it up at times that seem inappropriate or at least incongruous. Oh my god, according to Jim Jordan, people are getting canceled left and right for the tiniest little things. Except...except Jim Jordan, who used to be a college wrestling coach, has been credibly accused of helping to cover up years and years of sexual harassment and sexual abuse within that wrestling program, and is still inexplicably not-canceled to the extent that he is a goddamn representative in goddamn Congress.

Some things about “cancel culture” do suck. I’m sure we’ve all seen people get dogpiled over things we feel to be not that serious. Cancel culture can sometimes cause us to think of the people who are the targets of our anger as not quite human, as someone who is able to endure the vitriol of hundreds or thousands of random internet people, or who at the very least deserves it. That’s unkind, and it is not justice. We also all know content creators who are afraid to post their work or even to MAKE things because they are so afraid they’ll misstep in some unseen way and get dogpiled, and that sucks too.

But when it comes to, like, a TV show, or a goddamn motherfucking SEA SHANTY...Like...you can’t hurt a sea shanty’s feelings by calling for its cancellation. You can’t dogpile the writer on Twitter because whoever first started singing that song has been dead for a long fucking time. All you’re doing is being a little bit of a party pooper to tiktokkers who wanted to have a bit of fun, and that shouldn’t be treated like you stood up and said, “Hey everyone, today we should kill puppies for sport!”

Basically I think that “cancel culture” is too wide of an umbrella and is used to span everything from “we should definitely no longer enjoy the works of like, people who are in jail for rape,” to “this celebrity said a slur so don’t go see their new movie,” to “I’m PRETTY SURE this fic writer who wrote a fic about sexual assault must be glorifying and sexualizing rape so let’s all send them hate mail and make callout posts,” to “hey we are all having lots of fun but just so we are all aware, here’s the historical context to this thing from the 1800s, and spoiler alert, it’s some pretty awful stuff.” And those are all very different things with very different effects. Canceling a celebrity feels good but rarely does anything to affect their bottom line or popularity or status, while canceling someone in your fandom can drive someone off of a website forever if you get enough momentum going, which feels like a win to some frustrated people out there.

I don’t even get how you can cancel a song or a book or a poem or a movie, though. Like to me, “cancel” in the sense of “cancel culture” is something that can only really be done to a person as a result of how people feel about their actions. You can’t cancel an idea...can you?

1 note · View note

sambarvadai · 4 years

Text

#6: the curious art of crunchtime creativity (2/2): aha

posted on 14 nov 2019

exams happened yesterday, and also i wrote this blog post yesterday, but now it’s all gone and i’m rewriting it. c’est la vie! edit before posting: it is one week later and another exam has happened and now i have more material to write about. c’est la vie pt2!

so. there’s a second type of creativity – calling it creativity isn’t accurate; most would consider it to be going down the rabbit’s hole that is the internet. we’ve all done it before, somehow finding ourselves staring at something in horrified fascination with no clue as to how we ended up there. in my case – or at least, in this context, it is mostly subject-related, specifically to the subject on which i am about to write the exam. (future me: the exam is over) please note: this has only applied to tamil and chinese, the two languages i take (english doesn’t count. you can’t study for english), because those have scopes so wide that they might as well not exist at all. hence, it’s not me, it’s the subject. we move on.

chinese is a lovely, lovely subject ((please forget the fact that my exam is in two days and i’ve barely started studying) <– this exam is now over i hate it) and my love for it came from this book i found when i was starting out. it taught the story of each character by broke it down into radicals and connected these radicals into a coherent plot that told its meaning. that was a long sentence. so this made learning chinese, which is, primarily, a pictoral language, quite manageable.

a tangent here: simplified chinese is harder to understand pictorally as compared to traditional chinese, because in the name of simplification, many radicals have been bastardised to mean completely different things from what they were actually intended to be. for example, the character for listen (听, 聽), as you can see, has been grossly simplified from including the radicals for ear and heart to just including the radical for mouth. kinda sad, isn’t it

anyway back to story so i have amazing friends who kick my ass into studying and will absolutely scream at me for browsing taobao two days before the exam (which i did haha) and it’s great learning chinese in a chinese-speaking country because you have so many somewhat-native-chinese-speakers who will correct your chinese but still encourage you to strive on and not make (too much) fun of you. it’s lovely because my friends have similar pop culture exposure compared to me, so if i drop in a random korean reference or whatnot they get it. it’s really, really great and cool, especially when i want to write fanfic in chinese and they get it B)

speaking of fanfic, i recently discovered twosetviolin (why recently, you ask? i’ve been seeing their thumbnails in my recommended for ages but never clicked; sorry) and i was hooked. so naturally, i turned to fanfiction (idk if i actually ship them but the stories are cute). surprisingly, there was a large amount of chinese fanfiction about them, which led me to lofter (chinese tumblr)! and i learnt so much vocab from that and it was so so fun to read, because it was seeing familiar tropes in a slightly-less-familiar language. i do want to continue learning chinese, so hopefully this will prove to be a good gateway into the language.

the tamil section’s going to be shorter because it’s been a while since the exam, but anyway, i shall try my best.

tamil has been my pride and joy for the last four years, in no small part thanks to my peers and teacher who made me love the language and love myself for inheriting the language. i once regarded tamil as a burden and hated speaking it because of how i stumbled and had a funny accent. now, though, my accent is a lot better, and i speak it much more naturally. it’s still a work in progress, but i love the language so much more and that has translated directly into (or has affected) how i interact with my peers and family. i’m a lot more confident expressing myself in the language, and i like speaking it and making a connection to other people who have chosen the language.

because that’s what it is, isn’t it, you choose a language. you can choose to reject the language you were born with, or you can choose to cultivate it and respect it. you can choose to learn a language that was not yours to begin with, but has grown to become close to you in a different but equally inexplicable manner. you choose the language, and you give it the acknowledgement it rightly deserves.

anyway. the love for the language stayed largely within class, where our teacher showed us ancient tamil poems and translated them for us, showing us that themes of love, kindness, filial piety, and so many more have not changed one bit in the last 2000 years. recently, however, i found oldtamilpoetry.com, in which the blog-writer translates tamil poetry into bite-sized pieces. as i stayed up late reading the archives, i felt the language settling into my bones, draped over me as comfortingly as a childhood blanket. it was reassuring. calming. lovely.

this, i now realise, is just a really long love letter to my languages. these are my languages now, and i’ve made them my own by finding the beauty in them. that beauty was best discovered in the moments before exams, when pressure drives you to look for alternate ways to make learning bearable. this was when i discovered why i actually love the language – and love learning, really. yeah.

i don’t know where i was going with this but YES. tldr, during exam periods, i find how beautiful subjects – languages – are. it’s really cool, and i recommend you do it too. just go down a rabbit hole and find what makes you click. find that pull factor that makes you realise that yeah, this was worth it. this is probably kind of incoherent but hey. hopefully a bit of you resonated with this!

please watch out for part 3. idk when ill post it, but yeah! it’ll be a wrap-up to this academic year, or maybe just exams in particular. important! because i have quite a bit of reflection to do about that too. hope you enjoyed reading this haha thanks for reading so far !!!!!!!!!!! legitimately bless you owo (pls check out twosetviolin theyre amAzing) stay tuned for more !11!1!!

anbudan, noon xoxo

#exams #creativity #thoughts #creative process #words #word #languages #love language #love letter #mine #noonwords

2 notes · View notes

navk · 5 years

Text

An Open Letter to the Reader

Hello, lovely human. It’s me, Naveed - also known via the internet as Nav K. Actually, there’s a lot of people in the real world that still refer to me as Nav K. I always find that oddly amusing, it’s something that just stuck with people. I never thought it would, but it did, and that wasn’t even ever the intention.

This Tumblr blog was born in 2010, about either a month before or into my university career. That would make it about 9 years old now. Almost a decade. There’s so much here that documents these past 9 years. A lot of personal struggle, world events, politics, rants, debates, sadness, joy, 5am existential crises.

The purpose of this blog was just to write and have a place to put them. I never had any real intentions other than that. But over time, it grew to be so much more than that. It grew to be a part of a larger community of people, worldwide, that somehow became convinced to strap in and come along for the journey. And that - that by far, is incredible.

I have no idea how my readership and fpollowercount almost reached 8000 or so. I never really kept track, and why would I? I had no idea what I was doing. It was organic. It was fun. It wasn’t work. It was just a kid in university writing his heart out. Things got gritty. Things got tough. I wrote about love. I wrote about sadness. I wrote about family, friends, and all the things that were happening in the world that I felt so passionately about.

I always wanted to change the world. But somewhere along the way, I thought to myself that maybe the world as a whole is too big for me to change all at once. Maybe it would be a gradual thing. Maybe, just maybe, I could change one person’s life. Maybe I could impact them in such a way that it would inspire them to do the same for someone else, and so on and so forth.

But I had no real idea as to how I would ever achieve that. And I never thought to myself that writing would be it. But maybe I’ve been along that very path all along without knowing it.

Disclaimer, I say maybe a lot. Maybe and perhaps and absolutely. Those are my words. They are so powerful to me, and I love them.

So people often ask me what inspires me to write. It’s such a simple but complicated question with so many variations of answers. But truly, the most honest answer I can ever give you is that I write because it saved my life. I write because it helped me live another day, helped me see through things I otherwise thought I couldn’t. It helped me survive through the mess of this world, and in a large part, shaped the greater part of who I am today.

One of my personal goals have always been to achieve the best version of myself possible. Writing has enabled me to be introspective enough and vulnerable enough to identify what I need to one day get there. And I’m still working at it. I know I’ll never achieve it, but the best I can do is come close.

When I started this blog to share my writing, I was nobody. Actually, I’m still nobody. I never considered myself a writer. I still cringe at the thought of calling myself that. Why? Because I simply don’t think I’ve earned it. I’ve just told myself throughout my life that I’m just a guy who writes. But doesn’t that make you a writer? I don’t know. Maybe it does, maybe not.

I chose to share my writing as a leap of faith. It was my belief all along that I was just sending it off into the void, never to really achieve anything from it at all. Like a vessel launched into the stars, drifting cautiously towards some distant abyss. But what began happening over the years astonished me. When I think back to it now, it still leaves me in disbelief.

What happened?

You happened. You, who maybe happens to be reading this. You, who supported me. You, who shared my writing. You, who shared with me how in awe you were by my words. You, who messaged me privately and shared with me the emotions it evoked in you. You, who provided me with feedback. You, who gave me constructive criticism. You, who cheered me on silently. You, who sent me love and kindness and support and prayers. You, who were so kind to purchase my work and encourage me to produce more.

You, who saw something in me that I failed to see in myself all those years. I was so grateful to you then, but I never quite allowed myself to accept your kindness. To truly believe in it. It was so hard for me. It’s still hard for me. But I’m learning to be gentler with myself. It’s that introspection that my writing has afforded me that has allowed me to realize how amazing this platform has been for me and despite its waning numbers and inevitable maturity, I am still so, so grateful.

Sharing my work has never been an easy feat. In all honesty, I hardly ever shared everything I wrote. But then I started sharing less, and less, and less, to the point where I didn’t quite feel okay with sharing anymore.

I actually attributed a lot of reasons to this, such as the bastardization of writing, the rise of the “instapoet” trend, the “hashtag” poetry, the tweet poems, all that and what not. But if I’m truly being honest, I stopped sharing because I didn’t feel good about the writing, and that was more of a reflection of how I felt about myself for some time. I wrote less, and then I wrote nothing at all. I’d be happy to get a meaningful sentence out on some days, but even those days were rare.

I couldn’t write. I was stuck. I didn’t seek help. I left it. I left it alone in hopes that it would be there for me. When you’ve written for as long as I have, I would tell myself, it must be like driving - it’s muscle memory. It just comes back.

But it doesn’t just come back. Nothing is ever that simple. It takes work and effort. And the courage to be vulnerable - with myself - which I had lost somewhere along the way.

What became of Nav K, the writer, the accidental brand of sorts, was somewhat of a miracle in my own eyes. The fact that this platform has shown so much love and support is, to me, rare and incredible, and perhaps in some ways undeserved, but that’s just me being hard on myself. But you showed your love by elevating my work and having it seen, read, shared, loved by the count of “notes” - ranging from a few hundred to over 160,000. I mean, shit. Thank you.

What’s the point in all this vivid reflection, you ask?

Well, it so happens that I’m falling (hopefully gracefully) into the tail end of my twenties. Soon, I’ll be 30. And sometime before I fade to dust (okay, I’m being dramatic, but maybe I’m not), I want to be able to really be able to leave something behind in this world that I’m proud of.

That was the purpose of publishing my own work. It all began with Cheap Therapy in May 2012. I don’t love that book. In fact, I kind of hate it. But so many of you loved it for it’s raw honesty. I’ve had messages from people from all over the planet telling me how much it spoke their truth, that it voiced things that they felt but could not say.

There was this one instance that someone messaged me saying that they had been reading it in one of their university classes at some point, just casually on their own. Their professor caught a glimpse and asked to see it, read a page or two, and told her that it was actually really good!

DUDE. I was barely 21 when I wrote that. I was still, technically, an adolescent (in terms of psychological development). But I never let that get to my head. I studied English literature in my undergrad in hopes to become an English teacher (I did, but the market for teachers sucks so much!) and I tried so hard to maintain a sense of honesty and compassion and not even let a literary education get to my head. I just wanted to be real. Always.

But I never quite felt accomplished. So I self published again. And again. And again. And … yeah, you get what I mean. In total, I self-published about 14 books. Yes, 14. And you’ll never really know or find them all anywhere because there’s a bunch under my name and another bunch under pseudonyms and heteronyms. Yes, I did that. Why? Because I wanted to write so badly that I didn’t just want to be a great writer, I wanted to be 5 great writers. Where am I on that counter? Probably still at 0, because I’m still far from great.

But then I received other messages too, about how my work has inspired others to write. How it inspired you. How it saved you. How it allowed you to survive. How it allowed you to see yourself out of a dark place. How it allowed you to feel. How it gave you hope. How it made you appreciate the world. How it made you want to love again. How it made you see things differently.

Not too long ago, I received a random private message on social media from someone (who I obviously won’t name) who told me that they were so inspired by my writing that they decided to pursue it as a career, and that they had just completed their master’s degree in journalism.

I was in awe, and even that is an understatement. I mean, I did that?! I inspired you? HOW?

So in a way, I suppose I did change the world, or at least small parts of it. I impacted you as individuals, and I pray that you strive to do the same for someone else. That you seek to enrich and inspire and keep doing good. And to keep striving to be a better version of yourself. And no matter what, never stop creating.

And that’s what made me realize that I should perhaps take my own advice.

From my self-perceived worst (Cheap Therapy, 2012) to my best (By Bodies of Water, 2014), I feel as though I still have so much to give to you and this world. I feel like I’ve just begun even though it so often feels otherwise. But that’s the struggle, that’s the process, and that in itself is beautiful in its own way. By Bodies of Water was 5 years ago, and today, it just doesn’t hold up in my eyes as the best representation of who I am and the work that I am capable of producing (most of which I have not shared anywhere, period).

I’ve never really been good at self-promoting or talking about myself. I’m the worst at it and cringe every time I try. But I realize now, more than ever, that I need your support. That I can’t create work without you. Because this work is for you as much as it is for me.

In the past, whomever I have utilized an illustrator or designer, I have always tried to pay them for their contribution. Admittedly, this has been incredibly difficult for me because I never really put my work out with the intention of making lots of money from it. In fact, using a platform like Amazon, which I currently still use for self-publishing, takes a significant cut from any sales proceeds because it’s hosted and managed by such an established platform. So, I actually have never been able to have a budget for my books and any work I commission from others by way of illustration or design comes out of my own pocket with little to no hopes of ever really making it back in a sensible way. Yeah, I know it sounds awful, like why would anyone do that, but I did it for the love of the craft. In fact, putting work out with illustrations has resulted in net losses every time, and that’s further driven by the fact that I don’t promote my work.

Ideally, I would love nothing more than for a publishing deal that remedies these aches and pains fo self-publishing. That’s the dream. That’s the ultimate mark for me, but I have no idea if that is ever going to be a reality. Some dreams stay dreams. But I really can’t let that stand in the way of creating my own mark on this world.

If you still have love for me or my craft (well, hopefully both, it’s kind of a package deal, ya know?), then I ask for your support. I ask for you to help share my work, to help contribute to sharing the love and the joy you feel and have felt.

My publicly posted work can all be found under a single hashtag and contains all 9 years of works posted. Find them here: https://navk.tumblr.com/tagged/navk

If you would like to support my work and help me produce more and pay other artists that I employ and help cover related costs, please consider some of the options below. I would love for you to have something of mine in return, and there is no better way that I can personally think of than to offer you my actual work!

If you would like to contribute by purchasing my work, you can find physical/digital versions here: https://www.naveedk.com/books

You don’t have to spend anything if you don’t want to. I still believe that somethings in life should be free. I have PDF copies of some works available online for free, or you can contribute whatever amount you choose. Some have a nominal fee attached, some are up to you. Anything helps. You can find them here: https://payhip.com/navk

Pay what you want digital package (500 pages of work /5 books and 1 sample), here: https://www.naveedk.com/downloads

Personalized Signed copies of By Bodies of Water, here: https://www.naveedk.com/signed/water

If you are feeling generous and would like to simply donate, you can do so here: https://www.paypal.me/navk

As always I am so eternally grateful. Thank you for joining me on this journey. I hope you choose to stay for the ride, because we’re just getting started.

Find me on social media

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_navk/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/_navk

Web: https://www.naveedk.com

Love,

- Nav K

60 notes · View notes

awed-frog · 5 years

Note

When you say romance should be 18 and over do you mean the brand of romance we know today (aka toxic) or romance as a whole? If we wrote healthy romance aimed at younger crowds or presented unhealthy behaviour as unhealthy behaviour in regular romance (for older crowds) would that be a good solution?

Well - I see three questions here, all of them incredibly complex and beyond interesting: should art be political and is censorship ever a good idea and also is the romance genre okay? The answer to all of them, in my opinion, is ‘no but’.

1) Should art be political?

The stupid thing is, art is inherently political, whether you want it to or not, but art that’s deliberately political tends to be awful, and that’s a universal truth both for left-wing stuff and for right-wing stuff. When you willingly create political stuff, what you’re crafting is propaganda, and proganda is generally sad and bad. I guess there is propaganda that’s also good art - Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs comes to mind - but the problem is, not all of us are Victor Hugo.

That said, since whatever we create is political (because man is a social animal) and will have some kind of moral message, yes - ideally we want more art with an ethically ‘good’ moral message than we want garbage, because art (and here I include everything: books, movies and so on) is perhaps the most effective and impactful mind-shaper ever. That’s why Disney is doing its very best to be a monopoly, after all. But: I don’t have a good solution for how to ensure art is nice. I think art is nice when artists are nice, and artists are nice when they grow up in good, healthy societies. So the more a society rots from the inside out, the more likely it is you’ll find art that’s also rotten. I mean, while romance as a genre was always a bit dodgy (see below), what that article was talking about - the rise of the possessive, violent boyfriend and domestic abuse as the great love story - is sort of a recent phenomenon, and goes hand in hand with the deterioration of women’s rights in (Western) society.

(As an aside, I’m not sure I agree (young) women are necessarily misogynistic for reading crap like Fiftfy Shades: I think (young) women are exhausted. Fifty Shades is, more than anything, an ode to undeserved capitalism - the only kind that seems open as an option today. After all, we know trickle-down capitalism doesn’t work and most of us will toil and toil for very little; Christian Grey is the antidote to that, the guy who shows up, basically kidnaps you, and smothers you in a life of riches for which the only thing you must do in return is give up. Having someone else decide on your job, your car, your possessions and clothes, where you’ll live, what you’ll eat and when, whether you’ll take birth control (lol: obviously not), when you’ll see your friends and family plus when and how you’ll orgasm - what women tried to escape for generations is suddenly the dream for many of us - not because of any new political ideology, but because we’re beyond tired. Women, like men, are now crushed in a neverending cycle of bs, underpaid jobs, and are apparently fed up enough in taking responsibility for anything that not only romance and ‘superhuman’ characters are booming, but a very specific kind of subset of that: essentially, slave fics.

Just give up your agency, and you’ll be taken care of and cherished - forever.

I understand a kink is not the same as your actual political opinion, but still - I’m not enthusiastic about this trend, and I’m even less enthusiastic when it gobbles up young women who haven’t had time to experience real life relationships.)

No, I think that in the end, the answer is - if you reverse the rotting of society, automatically - statistically - you’ll get healthier artists and a healthier audience. So, really, the fight is always the same: better paid jobs, better (and free) schools, more opportunities for continued education of any kind, more democracy and transparency, more green spaces and better living conditions.

2) Is censorship ever a good idea?

Sadly, no. You’d think the logical conclusion of what I just said would be, ‘In the meantime, let’s ban the most dangerous stuff’ or something, and while part of me is tempted to support that, censorship has a way of ending very badly no matter how good and noble your intentions are.

(Self-censorship should be more of a thing, though: not everything that goes through our minds deserves to be seen and shared.)

What sucks at the moment is that on the one hand, capitalism is operating its own censorship; and on the other, its desperate search for new markets has led to a disastrous disintegration of actual human interactions.

So, problem one is that we only publish and market what makes a lot of money, and while that’s normal, to an extent, the result today is that everything is ‘almost the same’ as the previous thing (think sequels, prequels, remakes, obnoxious book covers for books that are basically all the same). So if ‘asshole boyfriend who beats you up’ suddenly makes money, it becomes very hard to escape the trope, because what will be offered to you everywhere is exactly that. This was less of a thing back when our main sources of entertainment were shared (movie theaters, the one family TV, school libraries and so on); now, it’s an epidemic, and as we see with Youtube algorithms, a dangerous one, because this obsession with watching and rewatching ‘almost the same’ inevitably leads to more and more extreme stuff.

Meanwhile, problem two is that the more tailor-made our entertainment is, the less we connect to real people. I know I sound about 90 here, but when all family members are glued to a different screen - mom watching the 50th remake of Eat, Pray, Love, dad down the rabbithole of lizard conspiracy theories, big brother now exploring some milk&peanut butter weirdness on Youporn and younger sister 30 fics deep into Stucky high school AUs - what do they have in common? What do they talk about? What can they even learn from each other? Until recently, and for aeons, fiction was shared, and its primary goal was to form a connection between group members. Now, that’s gone. We destroyed it, without even realizing what we were doing, in the space of twenty years. And yeah - I know you can create new communities, but a) these communities are virtual (which means, for the most part: not real) and b) they tend to connect like with like, which is comforting, perhaps, but not very useful. The whole point here is that we need to learn how to feel empathy and trust for those who’re different, and build a community with them - instead, what the internet is doing is isolating us inside our little bubbles, so much so that any minor disagreement is now seen as good reason to break off contact.

Censorship, however, doesn’t solve any of this. For starters, we need more regulation on how big corporations can get, what social media companies can and can’t do and who can access what kind of material. And it’d be great if we could all unplug a little, but uh - fat chance of that.

3) Is the romance genre okay?

Again, just my opinion, but personally, I mistrust it. There are no romance books for men? Instead, books for men feature a Main Character doing stuff and improving himself while accidentally meeting a Sexy Lamp he can go home to at the end of the story. And, well, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but isn’t this a healthier way to look at life? While good relationships are very meaningful (or even the most meaningful) part of any human life, if your goal is to get them, they won’t grow right. You shouldn’t be hyperfocused on finding love; I think it’s much better to be like Main Character: you work on your drawing skills, try a new sport, read poetry, defeat evil Russians, thus developing inner happiness and self-confidence, thus leading you towards towards a partner who’ll fall in love with who you are - not a partner who was looking for some empty shell to fill with their own expectations and preferences.

And I know - romance books and movies are full of exciting non-romantic events and stuff - but still, the fact they’re classified and intended as romance does imply that finding a romantic partner is the ultimate goal. Which, I don’t know, I don’t think it’s healthy, and is a particularly inappropriate message for young women. After all, why is it okay that young men are encouraged to go on ghost hunts, study dinosaurs and save the world while young women are taught to wait around for a broken (possibly violent, but it’s not his fault) bad boy only they can fix? It’s messed up, is what it is, and I may be extreme here, but even the tamest, sweetest romance revolves around the same message: that you’re not complete on your own, and that you should focus on relationships as a way to become a better, happier human being.

Now, as much as I love this quote -

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.” — Oscar Wilde

- obviously there’s no direct cause-and-effect here - you don’t read one book and become a mindless Stepford wife - so I’m not saying, ‘no one should read romance ever’. It’s just - as I said in that other post, we should all enjoy diverse stuff. Read your romance novels, but also read the classics, read some philosophy, a random poem, a badly-written thriller - read Stephen King, read how the OED was written, or a Wikipedia article on the French resistance - anything and everything. Because of capitalism, because of this push towards personalized entertainment, we’re being forced and pigeonholing ourselves in smaller and smaller cages, and the worst thing is - we’re comfortable inside them, because this is the awful truth: cages are comfortable, and that’s why we need to get out before we forget what cages are for.

[As a final point: you say ‘if we wrote’, does it mean you’re an aspiring writer? If so, you shouldn’t worry about any of this. You write what you want, you write the stories you want to read. Just remember to get out of your cage as well - experience, discover, grow, read, dare - and then put all that into your books. I’m sure they’ll be great, whatever your favourite genre.]

#ask #books #romance #entertainment #capitalism #ya #fifty shades of grey #narrative tropes #old woman yells at cloud #the end is nigh #i miss the 90s #potentially unpopular opinion

64 notes · View notes

caveatauditor · 4 years

Text

Best albums of 2019

I am a strong believer in belated music lists. Hindsight! The past year was stressful for me even before COVID-19 broke, and my favorite music was on average noisier and more irritating than usual. I find comfort and excitement in a mischievous sensibility; if music as chaotic and unpleasant as Jpegmafia’s can hold together, maybe there’s hope yet.

1. 100 Gecs, 1000 Gecs

I’m addicted to everything that I see, yeah! Including screamo death growls, Auto-Tuned cackles, comically heavyhanded drops, pop-punk bangers in disguise, secretly tender love confessions, insanely catchy hooks, and flimsy guitar trash. This marvelous album throws every absurd pop trope of the past decade into a kaleidoscopic blender, spitting out a misshapen musical wind-up toy that never stops exploding and recoagulating, falling down a flight of stairs and revealing a new ghastly face with each bounce. Taken as some musical equivalent of shitposting by writers who think irony and sarcasm are the same, it’s a pop mindfuck that computes emotionally, as awkward kids and/or evil spirits of chaos Laura Les and Dylan Brady make their voices big and ugly and demented because that’s how they feel. Anyway, shitposting is its own species of rock & roll.

2. Taylor Swift, Lover

To be straight is for experience to confirm expectations. Taylor Swift has written about the delight of watching fantasies fulfilled (“Today Was a Fairytale”), renewed (“Begin Again”), or constructed (“Wildest Dreams”). Even when putatively rejecting conventional heteromance, she also sneakily reconstructs it by using its same vocabulary (“Speak Now”). Her best songs address not just desire but the stories we tell about desire, the moments when dreams and reality converge. But Lover is the first time she’s written about the delight of watching experience surpass expactations, the moment when fantasies are gleefully, unexpectedly discarded for something better (“I once believed love would be burning red, but it’s golden” is a lyric whose emotional force requires no familiarity with her catalogue). It radiates calm, a long exhaled breath after years of drama. She made a monogamous maturity move her queerest album, and the colorful electronic beats sound so pretty in the afterglow.

3. Lana Del Rey, Norman Fucking Rockwell

A quietly hysterical collection of observed Hollywood singer-songwriter fictions, played on the piano by a glamorous lady of the canyon who has just shooed guests out of her shag-carpeted parlor and drawn her nicotine-stained curtains after watching California tumble into the sea. In the same year hating boomers became mainstream, the year’s most critically acclaimed album was also a tribute to the most boomerific of rock critics. Greil Marcus, of course, whose taste has never before been so exquisitely pandered to, and I think that’s beautiful.

4. Blueface, Dirt Bag

Blueface doesn’t rap off beat, it’s the beat that can’t keep up. Or as Blueface himself puts it: “I’m literally talking in this bitch and it’s still knockin!” Or as Greg Tate puts it in “The Persistence of Vision: Storyboard P”: “At moments of revolution in artistic form, innovation frequently involves discarding flashy displays of technique. The reduction of ostentatious moves in favour of subtler ones is often read as laziness or limited ability (Flyboy 2: 86).”

5. Jpegmafia, All My Heroes Are Cornballs

Jammed up by jerky segues and pauses, constantly shifting to the next random thing in an endless procession of abrasive diversions, this experimental rap clusterbomb fashions a music of dynamic impatience, wrenching ugly harmonic convergence from the splattering of keyboard doodles, industrial crunches, electronic glitches, roaring guitars, death-factory sirens, repressed shrieks, goopy fusion keyboards, smears of electronic color. Jpegmafia’s rhymes compute mainly as yet more barrage, more proper nouns competing for your attention, but there’s a mischievous energy in his voice that adds a crucial smidgen of humanity. If this music seems the product of online information overload, it’s also the sound of working in the gig economy and/or the service industry, where “directed attention fatigue” has become a cautionary buzzword. My headaches feel like “Rap Grow Old & Die x No Child Left Behind”.

6. Otoboke Beaver, Itekoma Hits

Hardcore punk as hardcore comedy. Rage channeled into hyperactivity. Gnarled riffs and howled tantrums played at violent speed. Keening voices letting loose because they can’t hold the noise inside. Tension and release games crammed with sonic jokes. Tempo changes and dynamic jerks that seem tokens of the band’s impatience but in fact work as tension-building devices, with explosive kickback later--or now! Dissonance as byproduct of acceleration. In the playful intricacy of their group shout-singing I hear the Raincoats too. Angry giggles. Boom!

7. Kim Gordon, No Home Record

Lacking the guitars of her former bandmates, she threw a wall of synthesized barbed wire around some of her meanest basslines ever and made something unprecedented, for her and Sonic Youth--electroindustrial, basically, riding a bass rumble so deep it overpowers the music. The spoken pieces here (“Don’t Play It”, “Cookie Butter”) initially recall her willful avant-filler on A Thousand Leaves and NYC Ghosts & Flowers; then you notice how much more brutally these tracks bring the noise.

8. Kankyo Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990

Billed as ambient but sprightlier than the aesthetic that term suggests to an American audience, this two-hour set captures a moment in Japanese music history when the influence of Erik Satie and John Cage intersected with new ideas about architectural acoustics, inspiring a craze for minimalist electronica designed to peacefully fill a space (as in-store music for Muji, say). Lent contemporary relevance by the influx of chill lo-fi hip-hop beats to study to as well as the vaporwave-derived fascinations with banality and nostalgia, it’s considerably more beautiful than those lineages would imply, as tranquil and friendly as a book of nature poems. These pieces abound with cute tunelets, yet derive their spacious charm from nonmelodic elements--bells, pitched percussion, and the recorded outdoors: running water, chattering birds. Unlike most ambient music, they are not self-contained; when played outside, the synthesizers merge with the sounds of the city.

9. Teejayx6, The Swipe Lessons

By styling himself as an expert scammer, Teejayx6 invents a new internet-era edition of gangsta macho: he’s a master criminal, king of the deep web, fluent in cryptocurrency, relying on his wits to stay ahead of the online piracy brigade. Don’t cross him, lest he steal your grandmother’s social security number. Over darkly stylized beats, his chattering, perpetually surprised flow enters a realm of formal delight accessible to only the most playful. When he hits you with the requisite “All my fans, I really wouldn’t even scam you, I was just playing,” he acknowledges the figurative nature of the game.

10. Clairo, Immunity

A queer adolescent musical diary, tracing the highs and lows of a conflicted relationship that ends ambiguously. Rostam’s production lapses into self-parody exactly once, with the harpsichord flourishes on “Impossible”; otherwise the smoky bedroom-pop shimmer is flawless. “Sofia” exists for inclusion on romantic playlists.

#favorite albums #best of 2019 #100 gecs #taylor swift #lana del rey

5 notes · View notes

iainwrites · 4 years

Text

Take a look to the picture of the OP. You see that guy? That’s me. White male, young-ish, generic in looks. People like that are everywhere. You turn on your TV, he’s the face of the majority of TV shows. You check on Youtube, he’s the guy you’ll see in the thumbnails. In a decade or two, he’s the expert on the news programs, the one trying to talk louder than everyone else, who explains what’s happening and why it’s happening, even if he knows nothing about anybody else’s perspective.

That guy is me. I’m talking for myself, of myself, and from my own thoughts. Right now, I’m pissed at myself and conflicted with who I am or who I thought I was and angry at myself for making promises that I have a history of breaking.

I’m a teacher. I teach English and Social Studies. My job is to teach students about literature and historical/social events, concepts and practices. On good days, I like to think that I do a better than decent job at that. On bad nights, I realize that I don’t just fall short: I’m doing a disservice to my students.

Historical/social studies, sure. Maybe I do a good job with that. Laws, social growth and shortcomings, being a citizen and what that entails, rights and freedoms and responsibilities. I teach that. On my good days, I like to pat myself on the back for raising awareness about things other teachers might skim over, or “talking bluntly” about topics that don’t get addressed a lot in Canadian classrooms. I teach students about the injustices First Nations people in Canada have faced and still face. I talk about how Canada likes to paint itself as this squeaky clean country of openness and equality, but buries all the racist things that have been done. On bad nights, I ask myself how much I’m really doing or if I’m just patting myself on the back because I did the bare minimum.

In English, I teach Shakespeare. I teach Lord of the Flies. I teach Animal Farm. I teach The Outsiders. I teach The Book Thief. I teach short stories, and poems. On good days, I pride myself in thinking that I’ve taught those things well, that I made them interesting and my students “got it.” On bad nights, I look at the list, I look at the authors and I see, by and large, myself. A white male. And I start asking “If you’re so progressive, and you want to teach students about true things, why is this all you have?”

I can come up with excuses: it’s what my board has on its reading curriculum, it’s what my board provides, it’s whats available in the schools, it’s what the students can relate to, it’s worked in the past so why change it. It’s the easy option. It’s the familiar option. It’s the one I’m comfortable with. If I use books not approved by the board, I can get in trouble and lose my job.

Maybe its because I have prejudices. I don’t think I do, and I don’t like to think I do. But my brain picks memories of my screw ups seemingly at random and drops them front and center. There’s the usual “I was young and inexperienced with things” memories that I can laugh off because yeah, I was young, dumb and inexperienced and I don’t do that anymore. And there are the moments where I look with hindsight and think “That’s just ignorant” or “That’s just poorly done” or “That’s just wrong.”

I can come up with excuses (young, dumb and inexperienced), but what’s the point? I’m trying to excuse myself, to show myself a point of view that will make me feel better. Why I teach what I teach. Why I sometimes act the way I act. Who I am without all the excuses covering up the truth.

I want to think I’m a good man. I want to believe that I was raised by parents that taught me to treat people fairly and kindly, that I learned and practice those lessons, and that I do my best to pass those lessons on to my students. I want to believe that I help people, even if I don’t announce everything I do, which fucks me up because the bold line says that silence is the problem.

But I don’t know anymore. Everything is starting to feel hollow. Someone is always going to point out how my help is somehow a failing. And if its not another person, it’ll inevitably be me. My lessons to students are always going to be lacking and slanted, so how good of a teacher am I really? I’ll always have some sort of excuse for my choices and actions, but is the bottom line that I’m not a good person?

Melancholia isn’t my usual state of mind, but recent events and reactions and choices have put a mirror up in front of me, and the reflection isn’t something I’m happy with. Normally, its something I avoid or cover up, but I can’t always get away from it. And this isn’t meant to be a “oh woe is me, the poor white guy feels bad about himself he needs pity” post. But sometimes, the only way I can keep my thoughts from chasing themselves to the early hours of the morning is by talking them out. I’m a lonely, introverted person who doesn’t have many people to talk to in my personal life, so the vastness of the internet feels like a safe place to do it. It can be carried out and nobody will ever see or read it; it can be read and immediately dismissed as nothing but blubbering; or some stranger can see it, feel some sympathy and try to be kind to a stranger in turn.

I want to be a good person. I want to treat people fairly and kindly, and to pass on those lessons to my students so that things get better, even if its in our tiny corner of Canada. I want to help people, even if it’s in my own quiet way that’s interspersed with more evident actions. I want to be who I try to see myself as. I’ll stumble and screw up and I won’t forgive myself. But I’m going to try. And I hope you can be patient with me as I try. I’m doing as best as I can with what I have, I’m trying to learn more as I go and keeping an eye on what I’ve done so I don’t make the same choices that make me look and feel like I’ve failed.

#late night thoughts #venting #trying to understand myself #long post

1 note · View note

purplesurveys · 4 years

Text

707

Do you think you're clever? I can be but I wouldn’t say it’s a dominant personality trait. Did you wear socks today? No, I haven’t worn socks since the last day I went to school :/ Can you remember how you celebrated your 10th birthday? I don’t remember how the whole day went but I do have a photo of me on that day. We were in our old house then and I was at the dining area smiling with my cake, surrounded by my mom and sister.

Know any magic tricks? Nah I can’t perform any of them. Do you sleep well most nights? These days I certainly do. They’ve suspended online classes, and acads is really the main thing taking up my time (and head) most days until recently. Without that I’m just sleeping, eating, and having random bursts of productivity everyday.

Are your nails painted? No. Is there somebody you know that you really don't trust? Yeah I have a couple of orgmates that are a little sketchy. I also dunno if I can trust my mom in the bigger scheme of things - we’re just not close like that. Is there music in your head right now? No need to have it playing in my head, I already have a lo-fi livestream playing on YouTube at the moment. When's the last time you baked a cake? Grade 6 when we baked a rainbow cake in home economics. What time was it half an hour ago? 7:26 PM. Did you ever play cowboys and indians when you were growing up? I have no idea what that game is. Probs an American thing? Can anyone confirm? When did it last rain? My dad said it drizzled earlier this afternoon, but I wouldn’t know because I was taking a nap. The last time it rained and I caught it was two nights ago. Would you like to become a dancer? I would love to be able to dance gracefully and call myself a dancer, but I wouldn’t want it to be my Number One Agenda, as in joining contests or have it be my whole career and stuff. It’ll be nice to simply have it as a hobby. What colour is the bathroom of your house painted? The top half of the wall is white, the bottom half consists of light brown tiles. Which country is to the north of your home country? Taiwan. Name one person of the same sex as you you wouldn't mind doing: My girlfriend. Haaaaah you thought. What is the most gory film you've seen? Evil Dead, but I’ve only seen the 2013 reboot. Is there anybody that you know that you just feel really sorry for? Yeah I guess, like my uncle for stubbornly never getting his life back on track. I’ve been done waiting for him to get better. Do you like the Austin Powers films? I’ve never seen any one of them, even the one Beyoncé is in.

Where is the worst place you have ever travelled to? All the places I’ve been to have been wonderful and it wouldn’t feel right to tag one of them as the ‘worst’ because all the trips have been paid for by my parents lmao. But the one trip that didn’t exactly turn out the way we would’ve wanted it to was Caramoan in Camarines Sur. It was raining almost the entire time, so the scenario was either 1) the rain messed with the cable signal and we only had one channel every time we were in the cabin or 2) we had to make do with being rained on whenever we wanted to go out to the beach. It was also in the middle of nowhere, so we didn’t have internet. Ever fallen down a hole? Nope. That’s one of the scenarios I’m particularly afraid of. Do you like to read poetry? No I hate having to. I’ve never understood poems. What's your preferred frozen snack? Other than ice cream? Idk, frozen fries maybe? Those hit differently. Is rap music overrated? I’d say some are, but rap generally has a rich underground culture as well so I wouldn’t say all of it is overrated. Do you work better in a clean or messy environment? That doesn’t matter to me. I care more about how warm/cold it is, because I can’t start working anywhere I find too hot or else I’ll feel too sluggish. Do you know any vegans? Only from the internet. Filipinos are big meat eaters so it’s hard to find resources for if you want to become vegan. There are vegan food stalls but they’re VERY few and far between, and they’re typically situated in hipper, more cosmopolitan parts of the city since veganism isn’t a known concept here. Earphones or headphones? Earphones. Do you like bananas? Eugh no. What's a film you've seen that confused you? Interstellar confuses me to this day. But I loved it a lot and I enjoyed the premise, and that’s what matters to me. Do you ever wear black lipstick? I don’t think I’ve ever worn it before. You can take any illegal drug without any bad consequences, which one? That’s a really dark question but uh... I’d go with meth because idk, Breaking Bad? I certainly wouldn’t want to try heroin though. What is next to your bed? I have a drawer with my clothes and other knickknacks on one side, and a chest with a bunch of memorabilia and old books I’ve had since I was a kid on the other side. Are your fingernails dirty? Nope. What would you change about yourself appearence-wise? I’d straighten my front teeth and make my teeth in general smaller. I’d also have some hair grow on my left eyebrow because I permanently damaged the hair growth there by plucking too much as an anxiety habit. How long do you normally spend in the shower? Depends on how relaxed I need to feel. If I’m showering for school it takes me 4-5 minutes. If it’s been hot all day like in the summer I’d take up to 15. When's the last time somebody called you "baby"? Sometime today, I don’t exactly remember when. Have you ever had to keep something important from your family? Like... my 4-year same-sex relationship? Yup. Don't you think things feel much better after a good cry? The things that made me cry don’t get better or automatically get fixed, but it’s always nice to give myself a break and to let everything out. Do you think the UK should keep its monarchy? I honestly don’t know enough about their system to confidently form an opinion about it. My only contribution to this conversation is that the royal family does interest me and I know more trivia about them than the average person should hahahahaha. True or false: you'd do Mila Kunis. I’d do her character in Friends with Benefits but like I don’t really feel that way for IRL Mila, mostly cos I’d rather do wholesome stuff with her hahaha. Which colour would you rather have your hair: pink, grey or green? Green > grey > pink. Don't you just hate the sound of people eating? NOOOOOOO are you kidding. Mukbang ASMRs are my faveeeeeee. What's your favourite music video? Meh I don’t really watch music videos. Is it your aim to be perfect? About the things I do, yeah. I’m not obsessed about having *everything* be perfect, even stuff I have no control over.. Ever climbed to the top of a mountain? No. That’s on my bucket list though. Have you ever fell for someone believing you could "fix" them? No. That’s never been a reason I’ve had feelings for someone. Someone's paying for a fancy dinner, where do you eat and who do you take? BLACKBIRD. I’ve wanted to try it for a while now but Makati is a bitch to get to + their food would literally take away two weeks’ worth of my allowance. I’d take Gab with me for sure. Can you honestly say you are truly happy with your life? Not right now, but I’m not hopeless about it either. Can you paint well? I can’t paint at all. Describe a picture of yourself that you hate: The candid ones are the ones I end up hating the most. If you could keep any animal as a pet, which would you choose? Just all the dogs would be fine, thanks. Something you did in the past that you're embarrassed about: I was bidding Gab’s dad goodbye because he was leaving to meet up with his friends or something. Anyway my shoes chose to be slippery that day and I completely tripped the whole way walking over to him and I even unconsciously grabbed onto his arm to keep myself from falling flat on my face. I AM WINCING JUST TYPING THIS OUT PLS SEND HELP Would you rather play a good or an evil character in a play? Evil. It’d be easier acting that way. Do you like porridge? It’s alright. I mostly avoid it because it was all I ate for breakfast from when I was 4 up to when I was 10, and I’m so so sick of the taste and texture by now.

Has anybody ever lied to you just to impress you? Idk, probably. Strangest gift you ever received: Don’t think I’ve ever received anything I was genuinely baffled by. But I try not to be like that - all gifts are gifts so I’m always grateful whenever someone gives me one. Do most people annoy you? Nah. But 14 year old Robyn taking surveys would probably say yes just to sound edgy :/ Don't you think you should really be doing something more productive? Idk man we’re in the middle of a global health crisis. I think being productive shouldn’t be a priority for once. Have you ever felt really out of place? Yesssssss this was me when I was trying to apply for AIESEC. The crowd was just too different and I didn’t last long in the application process. What's your favourite shade of blue? Royal and sky blue. Do you have any odd phobias? I used to be afraid of watching advertisements at night, but I think it’s mostly gone now. What's the longest you've gone without sleep? 18-20 hours maybe. I don’t let myself pull all-nighters. When was the last time you just wanted to be left alone? Earlier this noon when I felt disrespected by my dad. Do you believe in karma? Sure. Can you remember a world before iPods? Nope. Google says the first iPod came out in 2001, and I don’t remember being 3 years old or younger. When was the last time it was sunny? This morning. Would you like to be photographed by Terry Richardson? I’ve never heard of him but I checked Google just now and apparently he’s been an asshat to his subjects? So no. Smoke? Yes please I so have been needing one throughout this quarantine. I ran out of puffs for my vape pen which is even worse. Would you rather have a lazy day or a day of being really busy? I’ve had 31+ lazy days now. I wouldn’t mind a busy day. Do you like the way that spoken French sounds? I don’t get to hear it all that much but it was spoken so beautifully in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, so I guess I’m alright with it for the most part. I just don’t like the times it comes from the throat and it sounds a bit like hawking. D: But maybe it’s just a cultural thing - Filipino isn’t throaty at all so when we hear sounds like that we’re just not used to it. What's the best film soundtrack? As stupid as the storylines were, they really made sure the Twilight Saga soundtracks SLAPPED. Bon Iver, St. Vincent, Muse, Death Cab for Cutie, The Black Keys, Florence + The Machine, PARAMORE?????? They weren’t fucking around. Interstellar and Gone with the Wind also had amazing scores. Where did you go on your last date? My informal first date with Gabie was at a museum + this quaint Italian place in Greenbelt that has since closed. My legit first date with her was at a Bonchon LMFAOOOOOOOOOO Do people find you "cute"? Not really... only my girlfriend calls me that. Who does the best remixes? Eh not a fan. What is most of your money spent on? Gas, food, dates.

#survey #surveys

3 notes · View notes