just exceptionally good at small-talk, baby.

[Luz Cresceno]

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_______________________ CHARACTER PLAYLIST _____ Female leads whose voices ride on a subtle build of intensity, lyrics of a decidedly more poetic persuasion, cymbals rather than the slap and crash of other perscussion: this is what inspires Luz Cresceno inside me. I myself am slave to the grit of garage-rock, with drums like an ass-backwards avalanche of sound and adolescent frontmen here to tell me all about their woes (in three stanzas or less), but she is not. There is always a sort of sadness and anger to her music, unless it’s sonic sensuality. Adjectives always fall short for me. I can attempt to describe my characters personality, but music does it so much better for me. This tidy little list, this handful of ballads? This is what Luz feels like. 1. Just Like Friends, by Shimura Curves “You're just exceptionally bad at saying when.” 2. Superball, by Helium “My mouth is full of sand, everything I say ends with 'and'.” 3. All Hail Me, by Veruca Salt “So sorry, mister, but don't look now. I got your sister, I shot her down.” 4. Who The Fuck?, by PJ Harvey “I'm not like other girls, you can't straighten my curls.” 5. We Will Vacation, You Can Be My Parasol, by Be Your Own Pet “What aggravates you will be my demand.” 6. Ooh La La, by Goldfrapp “Oh child of Venus, you're just made for love.” 7. I Get Around, by Dragonette “Here I come when I better go. I say yes when I ought to say no.” 8. Teenage Lust, by the Jesus & Mary Chain “Well she's been told about sins now, but it feels fine.” 9. YFLMD, by Giant Drag “And if we kiss here, my word dear, you and your gun.” 10. Staple Gun, by Ladyfuzz “And if I tell everyone that I'm so strong?” 11. Evil, by Interpol “Tell them now your pleasure's set on slow release.” 12. Lydia, by the Butchies “Close encounter's the first risk. Psychic goes physical, break it down.” 13. I Want To Love You In My Room, by Irving “You have such a pretty face; maybe tomorrow you'll clear out the space.” 14. Those Bold City Girls!, by the Shins “What's it take to bend the lens?” 15. I Am My Father's Daughter, by Juliette and the Licks “When is it the right time to never do what you're told?” Of course, being a rather auditory person, there are songs that remind me of other’s creations. These are also very nice for delineating how my character feels about another. Please, bear in mind, I can only get vague impressions – and even then, only after extensive threading. I hope my choice of song (or genre, or artist, or what have you) doesn’t offend. This list will be cautious and short. Poe D'Angelo: AM 180, by Grandaddy “And if you come down, we'll go to town, I haven't been there in years.” The tone is intentionally childish, as the song is one of friendship’s tender-hearted naivete. I love it. This song has very personal meaning to me, and it’s happily applied here. There’s a shrug to the lyrics, a ring of complete certainty around the phrase ‘or whatever, together.’ It’s a song not only of trust and delight in another’s company, but mutual awe, without breaching romantic parameters. Lovely. _____________________________ TABLE STUFFS _____ I do all of my own stuff, only because I’m always too bashful to ask anyone else to. I try not to use brushes, textures, anything I don’t make myself, although I can’t take credit for the photographs I mash up. Everything is done in Paint Shop Pro 7 and compressed into glorious JPEG format for you, here. Click on the little square to see the whole table with the standard Lorem Ipsum text. TABLE ONE POINT OH: t3h purple one Table one was a lavender affair that began life as a picture depicting my bloom of choice: the gaudy sunflower. I trashed it, of course, with pallette play, color adjustments, and the unceremonious abuse of the blur function. The heart in her signature is one of the preset shapes that comes with PSP7; I just toyed with erasing to make it a syntax error'd one. Her name is in [ank]* font. The lovely gray coyote used as her avatar was stumbled on in Google Images, as was the field of sunflowers. Unfortunately I found them so long ago I can’t even remember who to credit. It's one of my favorite layouts. Simple, the right mood, not a whit of lyrics but a whole dollop of whimsy. (Er, or so I like to think.) TABLE TWO POINT OH: lady and vial Aah, this is a bit more risque. I never saw any souls layouts depicting humans before, but I was struck enough by how the illustration of the woman and the vial made me think of my character that I decided to use her in it against my misgivings. The drawing, sadly, is not mine. She’s property of Zak Smith, and part of a collection of images meant to illustrate Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon. Beyond her and the coyote in my character’s avatar, it’s all Sophie. Again, the avatar was located through the love of my life, fire of my loins: Google Images. The font used is Courier New Baltic. Although I'd love to claim both the lone line of lyrics in the table and the adage in the signature, I can't. The former is extraced from Virginia Black, by Knock Knock Ginger. As to the latter, I have no idea where it's from, but I have a feeling I heard it somewhere else. I like grayscale layouts best; I turned back to a classic look, with some HTML tomfoolery, for my second Luz table. It’s best viewed in the Another Castle layout. TABLE THREE POINT OH: er, moody gray much Take one Le Soleil in Teh Sky-shot, dick with color reduction, add a dash of text and fashion matching avatar by thorough use of grey-scale and color retouch, and there she is. The avatar is Luz to the nth power; the table is one of my pooerer (yes, the double-er is/was totally intentional, haha) attempts. Everything is from Alamy.com. I don't dig the lyriclessness and dire lack of coding flair, but I'm on a simplicity kick lately.

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