Music to write, roleplay, or study to! These playlists are works in progress and are continuously growing and improving. Titled after like-themed action movie and game music, the playlists each have their own personality, and encourage different moods or activity levels. Most music is from soundtracks. The calmest playlists, Temple Ruins and Party Camp, are useful for getting into the mood. This music is less distracting. Once your pace is set, or if you want to get in the mood for an action scene, Underworld or Boss Fight are the playlists for you. Tavern Nights is what it sounds like, full of highs and lows but can be distracting. Field Music is right in the middle, with lots of color.
All playlists are available to follow on Spotify, and can also be accessed via the web player with a free Spotify account. Just click on the [listen] for the link. Please do not hesitate to suggest music/changes to me, either here or on Spotify.
Updated: 3/19/17 – New playlist “Into Battle” features a highly dynamic range between “Field Music” and “Boss Fight” and moods for rallying the troops and preparing for war. In addition, the older playlists have been added to.
Curator Note: Thank you all so much for all the reblogs. This post now has 40k notes, and the older playlists on Spotify each have between 500 and 2.7k followers. I continually get notifications about activity on this post and am so amazed and happy that people find it so useful!
Title: Temple Ruins Mood: tense, eerie, dark and scary Volume: quiet, few musical swells Action: creeping through a dark ruin and avoiding spiders Instruments: minimal orchestral Lyrics: few (non-English)
Title: Party Camp Mood: calm, mysterious, romantic Volume: soft, somewhat dynamic Action: resting after a long day of travel Instruments: minimal orchestral
Title: Field Music Mood: cheerful, adventurous, vigilant Volume: low to medium, dynamic Action: adventuring with your companions Instruments: orchestral Lyrics: few (non-English)
Title: Tavern Nights Mood: cheerful as well as sombre Volume: medium to high, dynamic Action: eating and drinking with the locals Instruments: mainly guitar and fiddle, some harp Lyrics: yes (including English)
Title: Underworld Mood: terra incognita, on the hunt, betrayal Volume: mid-low with many dynamic moments Action: venturing into the land of demons and the undead Instruments: orchestral Lyrics: yes (non-English)
Title: Into Battle Mood: nervous, inspired, bloodthirsty Volume: wide range with many dynamic moments Action: preparing for battle, rallying the troops, charging the enemy Instruments: orchestral Lyrics: yes (mainly non-English)
Torture is a very difficult topic to write and with so much
misinformation presented as fact it can be extremely difficult to research.
It’s difficult to know where to start.
This blog was very much suppose to serve as that starting
point but now, several hundred thousand words in, the blog itself is a bit of a
labyrinth.
So this is a quick summary covering some of the most common
points that affect fiction and writing.
Common Misconceptions
about Torture
If you’ve followed the blog for any length of time you’ll
probably have heard me talk about the prevalence of torture apologia in
fiction. Here are some of the common inaccurate stereotypes about torture that
fiction continues to use.
These are the ‘arguments’ fiction often uses to support
torture, arguments that have no basis in
reality.
Showing torture making victims obedient. The evidence we have
suggests torture makes victims much more strongly opposed to their
torturers and any group the torturer represents than they were previously.
Victims may become compliant in the short term but this isn’t the same as
long term obedience.
Showing torture ‘forcing’ victims to change their strongly held
beliefs.Brainwashing does
not work. There is no way to force
someone to change their beliefs.
Showing torturers as superhumanly good at detecting when victims
are lying. They are as terrible at it as everyone else.
Showing torturers as skilled. Torture really doesn’t require
any degree of skill, intelligence or even training.
Showing torture as ‘scientific’. It really isn’t and the idea
that torture can be ‘made better’ pervades arguments justifying abuse.
Showing torture as something only the ‘bad guys’ do. This
often means twisting the definition of torture so that the ‘good guys’ can
continue to beat people to a pulp without being called into question for
it.
There are also a lot of inaccurate tropes about torture
victims, giving at best misleading and at worst insulting portrayals of
survivors. These include:
The idea that torture victims are ‘broken’.
The idea that survivors can never live full, happy lives.
The idea that torturers can control the victim’s symptoms or
experience. They really can’t. So
far no one can accurately predict an individual survivor’s symptoms, much
less control them.
The idea that certain physiological responses to torture are
‘better’ then others. This is particularly unfair to victims as it
often judges their worth based on which set of symptoms they happened to
develop.
The idea that survivors can ‘always remember’ what they endured. Torture
causes memory problems and while victims rarely completely forget such a
traumatic event they often get
key details wrong because of this. This makes prosecuting and proving
torture extremely difficult.
The idea that ‘good guys’ resist torture and ‘bad guys’ don’t.
This rather neatly blames victims for being tortured, whatever their
beliefs.
What counts?
The legal definition isn’t really what most people think. It
depends less on the practice or technique used to inflict pain and much more on who is doing it.
For an act to be ‘torture’ in the legal sense it must be
carried out by a government official, public servant or member of an armed group occupying territory. A police officer
beating someone while on duty is a torturer. The same officer beating their
spouse is an abuser.
Beyond that torture is: ‘any act by which severe pain or
suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted [] on a
person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or
confession, punishing him for an act he has committed, or intimidating him or
other persons.’ (UN Declaration
against Torture)
This means that lot of things that get dismissed as ‘not
really’ torture definitely count.
Practices like sleep deprivation (for example constant noise and light),
starvation, dehydration, stress positions, beatings, forced exercise, virginity
tests and prolonged solitary confinement- all count.
Be aware of what you’re writing.
Torture in Narratives
So where does that leave us as writers and what kind of role
can torture play in a piece of fiction?
Barring tropes that are used to encourage real life torture
I don’t think there are ‘bad’ plots
so much as badly executed plots.
Well written torture isn’t
a narrative shortcut. If you’re looking for something to keep a character out
of the story for a short time with no long term effects or an easy way to add
drama then a torture plot probably isn’t
a good fit.
But it can add greater
depth and emotional impact to a story.
Pratchett’s Small Gods
and Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children both use
torture to tremendous effect: adding depth and urgency to their stories along
with searing critiques of the societal structures that allow abuse to flourish.
The Age of Shadows
and Pan’s Labyrinth both use torture
to highlight particularly bloody historical periods, showing the pressures
normal people were put under to allow abuse and how they often rebelled.
If you’re considering using torture in your story think
about what it’s actually adding to the narrative. Is it essential? Does it have
a long term impact on the characters and situation, even if it isn’t the focus
of the story? What does it reveal about the characters and the plot?
These are stories
worth telling, whatever the genre. If you need help writing them I’m here. 🙂
People over 50, demonstrating endless patience explaining things to young people who never ever in their entire life knew or spoke to these definitely non human aliens, people over 50.
BTW, in a few weeks I’ll be 69. Is it the time yet to weave a cocoon, shrivel up and die? I decided not to, since there’s still much smut on AO3 to enjoy, and the YOI movie did not come out yet, and then there’s that, you know, other thing… that three letter word starting with s…
I get that the asker may honestly have no idea about… let’s call it “middle-life sexuality.” I mean, the asker is statistically most likely to be an American teenager, and fuck knows (ha) that our country is TERRIBLE at sex education. So them not knowing anything about it doesn’t surprise me; they likely don’t even know much about how their own body works.
But this isn’t a question about people over 50 feeling sexual attraction or wanting to read/write porn; it’s a question about whether women are recognizablyhumanonce they’re no longer youthful. It’s misogyny right down to its core.
I don’t blame the asker. They’ve been soaking in it their whole life.
I wonder what they think they’ll do when they get older, regarding both sex and fandom. Like the people who say “you’re too old for fandom” – do they think they’ll ever be too old for fandom, or sex? Do they truly believe that at a certain age they themselves will flip a switch and never want sex again, never write fanfic, and only be interested in work and children and shit? Is it that they don’t think they’ll ever age, or are they simply afraid that this is what will happen to them?
No and no. The only feeling you have after you hit 50 is a deep feeling of utter contempt for the young.
Okay, maybe I should tone down the salt, because it’s just possible you don’t really know how ageist and rude this is.
First, I’m going to answer this like it wasn’t rude. People over 50 are…people. They fall on the same sexual spectrums (gender and orientation and all that good stuff) that people under 50 do. Obviously people change as they age—emotionally, mentally and physically,—but trust someone who’s been in fandom since 1995 and has been sexually active (in one way or another) since 1976, plenty of older people read and write porn, and plenty of them look at attractive people and think “yeah she could get it.” If that is, indeed, the correct phrase. Sure there are people over 50 who aren’t sexual, just like there are people under 50 who aren’t sexual, but plenty of us are still interested in reading, writing and doing the sex.
Now…I’m going to go a little deeper, because this is just a fucking weird question. It is all but impossible, if you engage with pop culture at all, to be unaware that men over 50 like to consume and create porn. Jesus fucking Christ, if you watch TV at all, you know men over 50 feel sexual attraction in real life. There’s a whole branch of pharmacology dedicated to making sure they can act in that attraction. On this very hellsite, I’ve seen a lot of posts complaining about the age of actors compared to the age of the actresses playing their love interests. I can’t check my newsfeed without seeing a woman who is literally in the news because a man over 50 had sex with her and then paid her to not tell anyone about it.
Harvey Weinstein is 66, for fuck’s sake.
So I suspect the “people” you’re asking about are women, specifically women in fandom. I don’t know if I’m being asked to furnish proof that women over 50 aren’t really active in fan fiction and therefore what we say about fandom can be disregarded or if I’m being asked to furnish proof that women over 50 in fandom are actively sexual and therefore can be thought of as predatory, but either way, this is weird.
I’ve said this before, I know that having old people around when you are a young person can be weird and annoying. We can come off as judgmental, condescending and dismissive. Our weary cynicism can really harsh the buzz of youthful enthusiasm and that’s a drag sometimes. We post selfies and we have saggy boobs and grooves around our mouths and young women don’t always like seeing the future like that, especially when we also bitch about our health or our kids or jobs or the dreams we had to leave behind. Politically, especially if we’re white, we make you wonder who we voted for and if we really have your backs when it comes to social justice issues.
I get all that. And I could go on a rant about how important older women have been to fandom and how you literally would not have it if not for women who were in their fifties in 1975, but those rants are a dime a dozen on tumblr and while I do understand being uncomfortable around older women, I refuse to apologize for my presence in a space I have helped create over the years. I refuse to justify myself when I shouldn’t have to.
If this is a genuine question and you’re upset by my ranting, I do apologize. However, while it isn’t talked about much in Tumblr SJW circles, ageism is real and I see it all the time on this site. Think about all the misconceptions about your own generation and how annoying it is when some stupid article acts like you’re part of an Other monolith.
tl;dr: Many people over 50 enjoy reading and writing smut and many of them still feel sexual attraction. Thank you for asking this question, although since I a) list my age as 55 on my bio, b) link to my almost 3 millions words of smut on AO3, you had the answer to the first part, like, literally in front of you.
Though The Villages – which spans three counties with 40,000 homes and more than 70,000 residents – boasts 34 golf courses, nine country clubs, two downtown squares and a slew of restaurants and bars, getting lucky is one of the residents’ primary pastimes.
The huge complex began growing rapidly in the mid-1990s, and reported cases of gonorrhea rocketed from 152 to 245, of syphilis rose from 17 to 33, and of chlamydia from 52 to 115 among those 55 and older in Florida from 1995 to 2005.
We had an entire show in the 80s about this.
Tumblr is atrociously agesist and it’s the one phobia that’s never called out or rallied against. Instead it’s the opposite; 20-somethings try to make older people feel uncomfortable for living in a space they literally created. They accuse us of being predatory, or gross, for enjoying LGBT content as much as anyone else, because that LGBT content usually stars 20-somethings. Yet they refuse to acknowledge that older LGBT people are never portrayed in media and never represented – once again due to ageism, especially in women. So basically the voice of 20-somethings on tumblr says : “this stuff is too young for you old gross people, we don’t care that you made this space safe enough for this content to exist, we don’t care that you have no alternatives in your own age bracket – please just die”
i'll apple your turnover 